My Diana.
Her voice, a melody I’d only heard in the echoes of my nightmares for two decades, was right there, a tangible presence in the stale air of the clubhouse. Turning slowly, my heart threatened to burst through my chest when I finally saw her. Not a ghost of a memory, not the idealized phantom conjured in my dreams, but her. Standing there, frail and beautiful, her eyes were wide with a mixture of disbelief and overwhelming recognition.
She was real.
Tears, hot and stinging, blurred my vision, but I didn’t dare move, didn’t dare breathe too deeply lest my fragile reality shattered.
Twenty years of pain, of relentless pursuit, of enduring the unimaginable—it all converged in this single, devastating moment. The secrets, the lies, the sacrifices, even the agonizing decision to walk away from everything I knew, they all culminated in this. Seeing her, truly seeing her, alive and breathing and somehow, impossibly, looking at me, was both a balm and a fresh wave of agony. The fight was over, the battle for her was won, but the cost... the cost had been my very soul.
“Diana.” Her name was a ragged gasp, torn from my throat, raw and imperfect, a stark contrast to the phantom whisper I’d just heard.
I took a step, then another, my legs feeling like lead. The world narrowed to just her. The chaos of the clubhouse, the worry of my brothers, the lingering threat of Dakota Stone and Meredith—it all faded into an insignificant hum. I needed to touch her, to feel the reality of her against my skin, to finally, after twenty hellish years, believe she was mine again.
I was done with the darkness, done with the fighting.
I just wanted my wife.
And then, she was in my arms. The scent of her—a ghost of perfume and a lifetime of memories—filled my senses. Her body felt fragile beneath my touch, like a bird that had been through a hurricane, but she was alive. She was real. My tears fell freely now, not from pain, but from joy so profound it threatened to shatter me.
“Diana,” I choked out, my voice raw and broken. “I’m so sorry.”
She clutched me tighter, her own tears wetting my chest. “I knew you’d find me,” she whispered, her voice stronger now, though still tinged with the trauma she’d endured.
The world outside this embrace ceased to exist. The machinations of Dakota Stone, the lingering threat of those whostill wanted to do us harm, the fractured brotherhood of my club—it all dissolved into insignificance.
For twenty years, she had been my sole focus, my guiding star through an ocean of darkness. And now, she was here. Safe. My personal war, the one that had consumed my life, was finally over. I had endured the pain, the manipulation, the unimaginable horrors, all for this moment.
I held her, breathing in the reality of her, the proof that I hadn’t lost my mind, that my sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. The ache in my soul, the phantom pains from my past, they all faded into nothingness. All that mattered was Diana, the woman I loved, the reason I had fought so fiercely for so long.
This was it.
This was the end of the fight, and the beginning of... what? I didn’t know. But for the first time in twenty years, I was ready to find out, with her by my side.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Diana
He was real. I wasn’t imagining him this time. The man holding me, his arms a fortress around my fragile frame, was the very ghost that had haunted my dreams for two decades.
August.
My August.
His name was no longer a whispered plea, a desperate confession of disbelief, but overwhelming relief. My body, so accustomed to the cold and the sterile confines of my captivity, thrummed with the alien warmth of his skin against mine. It was a sensation so potent, so profound, that for a terrifying second, I feared he might be another hallucination conjured by the relentless cruelty of my mind. But the tremors that ran through him, the ragged sound of his breath against my hair, the way his grip tightened as if afraid I’d vanish—these were too raw, too desperate to be fabricated.
Tears streamed down my face, mingling with the phantom scent of him that had been my only solace. He was here. After all this time, after all the fear and the pain and the utter desolation, he had found me. The world outside his embrace, the lingering threats and the fractured bonds of his club, became distant whispers muted by the roaring truth of his presence. He had fought for me, endured for me, and now, here we were, a testament to a love that had refused to die.
“I’m so sorry,” he choked out again, his voice thick with an emotion I knew intimately, the crushing weight of regret and a love so fierce it was almost agonizing.
I tightened my arms around him, anchoring myself to my newfound reality. “I never gave up. I knew you would find me,” I said, my words a fragile promise I’d clung to even in my deepest abyss. The battle might be over, but even I knew the long, brutal war would wage on. But our scars would always remain, etched deep into our souls. Yet, as I held him, as his strength seeped into my shattered spirit, I knew that for the first time in twenty years, we could finally begin to heal, together.
“Diana?” A gruff, stern voice seeped into my joy, infecting it like a plague, and I slowly turned my head to see the man behind my nightmare. I stiffened, slowly removing myself from August’s embrace as the man stepped forward and said, “I want to—”
Before he could even finish his sentence, my hand shot out and slapped him hard across the face. The slap echoed through the clubhouse, a sharp punctuation mark to the twenty years of silence and suffering. George Stone flinched, his hand going to his stinging cheek, his eyes—those icy, predatory eyes that had watched my torment from the shadows—narrowed in disbelief and something akin to fury. He had expected me to be broken, a willing victim of his depravity, not to fight back, not to possess a spark of defiance. August shifted beside me, his arms wrapping around my body, as he moved me away from the man who had caused so much damage.
I had finally found my own voice, fueled by a righteous rage that had been simmering for decades, and nothing, not even August, was going to stop what I needed to say.
“You,” I spat, my voice raw but steady, my words as venomous as the viper before me. “You took everything from me, but you never could break me. You watched and encouraged them as they spewed their lies. But I never gave in. I stayed silent in my cage, never giving them what they wanted. You are sick, twisted, and evil. Hell is too fucking good for you! I hate you! I fucking hate you and hope you die a slow, agonizing death!”