Lily closed her eyes and held on to me.
I saw Schultz’s body fall to the ground and couldn’t help thinking about the blood staining his carpet anyway, and the irony that it was his own. Suddenly, Eric, Johnson, and Aiden were in the room but I never saw them enter. Noises swirled around me, a bustling of activity, but my mind was only on one person.
Somewhere, like a faint whispering, I sensed an emptiness, something leaving this world yet again. And as Aiden ran to my side to help me, I thought I heard him tell me one last time, I’ll always love you, Bella.
So I whispered back, “I’ll always love you, too.”
Epilogue
After being rescued from Schultz’s mansion, Lily and I were immediately taken to a nearby hospital where my arm was set, and Lily was brought into surgery to remove a device from her eardrum no larger than the tubes so many kids needed to prevent recurrent infections. Eric had immediately confiscated it and brought it back to Dietrich in Houston, and not surprisingly, it wasn’t technology anyone they worked with recognized.
We never found those files Dietrich had been looking for, the reason he’d originally sent Aiden after me. But after Mason’s return and Lily’s discovery, they didn’t seem important at all. They’d been an afterthought once the insurrection ended, one I remembered and asked about and we’d gone through his house and his offices at the warehouse, and aside from getting some of his business associates in trouble with the FBI, we’d come up with little else.
When we returned to Houston with Aiden, I told him I planned on adopting Lily, and he never questioned me or his role in our lives. He only told me if I wanted him, then he wanted us both. And God, did I want him.
Three months later, Aiden came home and told us we were moving to California. We’d enrolled Lily in one of the best private schools in Houston, but she hadn’t made any friends and hadn’t taken any interest in any of the activities we suggested like gymnastics or dance or soccer. At home, she seemed happy enough, but bringing her to school each morning brought out that catatonic child I’d first met at the daycare, the one who had learned to shut down because it was the only way she could handle the fear. I’d been on the verge of pulling her out of school and homeschooling her when he told me about his transfer.
And once we moved to San Diego, everything changed.
The distance from her old life transformed Lily and allowed her to finally accept that the demons of her past had been permanently purged. We found a new school for her and she finally made friends and took an interest in softball. And two years later, we gave her a little sister whom she’s doted on and offered all the love and attention she never got before coming into our lives.
In the years since then, I’ve often asked Aiden if he was behind his sudden transfer across the country. He would just kiss me and tell me that occasionally, fairy tales did come true.
I’ll give my husband that one. Sometimes, they do.
This probably isn’t the love story you expected. It’s probably not even the story you expected. I never dreamed about Mason again – not in any real way – and I never heard his voice again either. The man who turned out to be my Prince Charming wasn’t the man I traveled across the universe for… and yet, he was.
I knew the night I met Aiden that he ignited something extraordinary within me, and there is a love and passion between us that never existed with Mason and me. But even after all these years, Mason is still the most beautiful spirit I’ve ever known. He was the kind of person who lights up your world simply by being in it.
And he lit up mine.
Shortly before moving, I had the chance to meet Lottie Kliewer. It was the first and only time I’ve met her. And she’s every bit as exceptional as I expected her to be. We spent hours talking about our old lives and our new ones, about her resurrection and Mason’s, about what she’d learned during her insurrection and what it might mean for both her and my best friend. At the time, I didn’t know what to make of what she was telling me, but over the years, Aiden and I have come to the same conclusion.
People like Mason and Lottie are exceptional because they are exceptionally rare souls bound together in this bizarre event. They are the kind of people who sacrifice everything for the ones they love and are filled with compassion and beauty. They’re the kind of people who light up the world.
And that’s why they were Chosen.
Also by S.M. Schmitz
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Start at the beginning of Lottie’s journey with The Complete Resurrected Trilogy.
Dietrich thought death was final. But he was wrong.
When Dietrich buried his fiancée, Lottie, he descended into his own personal Hell – until he runs into her in a café in Houston two years later. Except this couldn’t be her. Not after two years. She speaks the same, shares the same memories, yet something is different.
Determined to unravel this mystery, Dietrich finds she has been resurrected by a mysterious force. But for Lottie, something went wrong, and her existence threatens to undermine the lucrative business that made her resurrection possible. As Dietrich becomes locked in a deadly struggle with those who want to destroy her, he will discover just how much he’s willing to sacrifice for the woman he once loved.
Other Books by S.M. Schmitz
The Unbreakable Sword Series, a fantasy & mythology series
As a powerful demigod, Selena has been running from the gods who control the government agency, the New Pantheon, for the past three years, but now, they’ve caught up to her.
When they trap Selena in an alleyway in New Orleans, she is ready to admit defeat. But an unfamiliar demigod rescues her, and the more she learns about Cameron, the more she discovers their common bonds may be the key to unraveling her own mysterious history.
In the first book of The Unbreakable Sword series, Selena and Cameron must not only evade the New Pantheon, which is ruthlessly hunting the remaining gods and their descendants, but an angry Aztec god that wants Selena’s power to himself. And they will discover in the impending final battle of the gods, no one can be trusted.
The Immortals series, a fantasy & mythology series (also available as The Complete Immortals Series Box Set)
When demons refuse to play by the rules, all Hell will break loose.
Colin and Anna have been hunting demons for a long time. But something is different in Baton Rouge. The rules are being broken and they're powerless against some of the greatest forces Hell can assemble. If they can't stop these demons from manipulating every rule of this war, then Heaven may lose the only battle that's ever really mattered.
The Golden Eagle, a romantic suspense
After a vicious second civil war in the U.S., the states that seceded are occupied, and the people there live by different rules.
Jon is the highest-ranking officer in an elite Task Force whose purpose is shrouded in mystery. Ava is just trying to survive the occupation after two years of brutal war. After meeting unexpectedly, they discover they are both willing to risk everything for the chance to love one another. But what those risks entail may be far greater than anything either could have imagined.
Dreamwalkers, a paranormal psychological suspense
My father used to tell me our pasts shaped our presents and our presents shaped our futures and that we could never really get rid of our pasts. The deeds of our fathers and grandfathers and their fathers before them lived on forever, and we would have to live with the choices they made as well as our own so he would warn me to choose wisely. But I never understood my father. Not until my thirtieth birthday. And then everything changed.
After losing his father to suicide, Gavyn Cooper becomes convinced that his dad’s o
dd ramblings were nothing more than the product of mental illness. But on his thirtieth birthday, Gavyn begins having vivid dreams that transport him into the world of Caleb Ellis, a young man who lived on a sugar plantation in 1835, and he is forced to question not only his own experiences but his father’s as well. Now, Gavyn will have to make a choice between following in his father’s footsteps or writing his own future.
The Cambria Code series, a science-fiction romance
When a mysterious spaceship appears above Cambria, Zoe remains skeptical that it’s anything but an elaborate hoax. By the time the first spaceship is joined by two others, Zoe reluctantly admits that Earth has been invaded, even though it’s a pretty lame invasion: the aliens look remarkably human and keep to themselves. From what humans are able to learn about them, they seem incredibly arrogant and boring anyway.
After meeting Peyton, one of Earth’s newest residents, Zoe feels an immediate attraction to him although she is reluctant to become involved with someone who isn’t even human. But she soon discovers that these aliens are far more dangerous than they’ve led everyone to believe, and the secrets they are hiding may signal the destruction of her entire planet.
The Chosen: A Resurrected Series Novel Page 19