And the love.
This was no illusion. It was no desperate attempt to justify anything. It was pure, rock solid, and it filled every particle of his being.
He was a husband, a father, a friend. He was a man that awoke each morning to the warmth and the pleasure of the one woman who completed him as nothing ever had in his life.
As he glanced around once again, he saw that same love, that same remarkable miracle of salvation that bound the men he had once commanded with the women who had fulfilled them.
Women who had turned dead men into fully living, loving, laughing husbands and fathers who would die to protect what they held dear.
This was living, and Jordan knew life had never been so good.
“Hey, Jordan, come over here and tell Reno exactly how you managed to come up with that plan to flush Orion from his hole,” Micah called out to him, his expression much different now than it had been the night Jordan had first met him, just days after the assassin Orion had destroyed his life.
His hand stroked down his wife’s curls as he bent and kissed her temple lightly. “I’ll be back,” he promised her.
The smile that beamed up at him filled his soul.
“And we’ll be right here waiting on you,” she said, the promise in her gaze one Jordan knew he could depend on.
She would be waiting for him. In life, or in death, holding the vows they had made, close to her soul.
Always his and always loving him as she had since the day they had met.
A love to match his own.
“Thank you,” he suddenly whispered.
“For what?” Her smile was like a blessing, a warmth that would always fill him from the inside out.
“For showing me it’s not an illusion.”
With a final kiss on her sweet lips, he moved across the room to remember, to give thanks they had survived intact.
It was his daughter’s christening, but it was also his and Tehya’s. The affirmation that love existed, thrived, and that they weren’t alone.
The men and women who had followed them in battle, who had laughed with them, pushed them toward each other, and conspired to see Jordan happy and safe in the arms of the woman that loved him, were celebrating as well.
They had all found their homes, in the hearts and in the arms of the women and the children who loved them.