Two years of genuine peace followed Kane's sentencing — the longest uninterrupted stretch of ordinary life Wren had known since first arriving in Ashford Hollow, and she spent those years savoring every unremarkable moment with a gratitude that never quite faded into the background hum of daily routine.
Ana started kindergarten. Ray and Selena grew alongside her in the tangled, joyful chaos of children raised communally across an extended family that had, by now, forgotten most of the careful boundaries between "club family" and "blood family." Wren's illustration career expanded into a second book series, and Cruz settled comfortably into his role as elder statesman of a club that had transformed, under his and then Tommy's leadership, into something the wider county now regarded with ge
