The whole church broke into laughter and applause. And for the first time in a long while, everything we'd risked felt worth it. Garrick Vane offered me work running his ranch, and I took it without a second thought. It felt good, building something instead of tearing it down. Putting roots into the ground didn't feel like a trap anymore.
It felt like home. Rook Vatcher stayed, too. Working as Garrick's foreman, slowly building the quiet life he'd once thought was out of reach. The three of us became close. Bound by danger, by trust, and by the knowledge that we'd done something that mattered.
The Ash Trail Caravan crossed the pass without trouble, and made it all the way to California. The Ash Trail family sent a letter from their new home, thanking us for the lives and freedom they still had. It was the kind of letter that reminds a man his time in this world meant something. As for Holt's operation, the Iron Veil deputies, armed with the information we gathered, rounded up what was left and tore the whole network apart. The kidnappings, the trafficking, the years of suffering that had scarred this land.
They were finally over. "Do you ever regret it?" Sihaya asked one evening as we sat out on the porch of our new home, watching the sunset spill gold and crimson across the mountains. "Leaving the life you had for this?" I pulled her closer, still amazed every single day at how perfectly she fit in my arms, despite the difference in our size. "The only thing I regret," I said quietly, "is all the years I wasted before I found you."
She smiled. That same strong, breathtaking smile that had caught hold of me the first time I saw her, tied to that tree in the canyon, unbroken. "My people have a saying," she said softly, "the heart recognizes its home long before the mind understands the path." "What does that mean?" "It means some people are meant to find each other, no matter how long or how strange the road between them is."
As the first stars began to rise in the darkening sky, I thought about everything that had brought us here. A hardened drifter and a woman who stood taller than anyone else in the world, set apart by fate, by strength, brought together by violence, and bound by something far stronger. "I love you, Sihaya," I said, speaking her name as mine for the first time. "I love you, too, Dax," she answered. "Always will."
When we kissed beneath the open sky, it felt like something more than a moment. It felt like a promise, the kind that lasts a lifetime. We had found our home in each other, and nothing in this world or any other was ever going to take that away. Behind us, through the open door, came the sound of laughter and music as friends and neighbors carried on the celebration. But out there, beneath the endless Montana sky, it was just the two of us and the future we were building together.