I blinked tears out of my eyes, staring at her. "You... you knew."

Nessy's smile faded, replaced by an expression of raw sadness. She didn't let go of me, just held me tighter as if afraid I might pull away. "Yes, Alec. I knew. My 'read me' note wasn't a goodbye. It was a strategy guide. A set of instructions."

"You… you manipulated me. You died... on purpose, ran ahead of me. You knew what would happen, knew what I'd have to become! You knew that I would… reach the end of line, find the Leviathan… and slay her?!"

"There was no other path," Nessy said, her voice cracking. "I sniffed them all while I worked my ass off as the Superstore manager, Alec. A thousand different futures. In every single one, we lost. Ferguson was doomed the moment the Strands started bringing back food from the Superstore. Number Two tagged all Ferguson grocery shoppers as thieves for her hunters to eventually exterminate. The store was a one-way trip... Insurance never truly lets anyone leave her domain, feeds on souls, eventually add all shoppers to her dead shell."

"Vivianne," I let out, blinking tears from my eyes.

"Viv... was always going to die from the store's corruption, become subsumed by it one way or another. But you… I knew that you would be able to go on. I knew that you wouldn't give up on us."

Her hands moved to cup my face, her thumbs gently brushing away the tears on my cheeks.

"I saw only one tenebrous way forward where we all had a chance," she said, her blue eyes pleading for me to understand. "One narrow, mad path. You had to become my Slayer. You had to reach the end of time and... restart the entropy-afflicted, doomed Pradavarian Earth."

"By cutting you up into pieces," I finished, staring at her.

"By giving me a chance to come back," she corrected gently. "For us all to return back here, find each other in a world where everyone is still alive, where we have a chance to do it right. Where time and space is still mostly alright, where we can have a future." She leaned her forehead against mine. "I'm sorry I had to die. But look at us now, Alec."

Her eyes flickered from me to Kristi, then to Adelle.

"Look at our pack," Nessy whispered. "Kristi is breaking free from her family. Adelle is learning to be more than just a fist. Candace... Well, she's basically me now. A part of me, one who's fighting her demons, struggling not to drown in the Astral Ocean… and this time, she's not alone. And you..." She smiled, a sad, beautiful, hopeful expression. "You're not just a boy running alone anymore. You're an Alpha. Our human. Our anchor. Our tree."

She pulled me into another hug, this one softer, deeper. "It wasn't manipulation, Alec. It was a sacrifice. The only one I could make to give us a real beginning." She pulled back just enough to look me in the eyes. "I know it's a lot to process. And I know I broke your trust, manipulated you. But I'm here now. All of me. Sheared apart by your blade, but also brought together, now capable of being four times as strong, four times as clever, four times as... understanding, protecting, caring and loving! I am your Syn-pack, Alec! I always have been and always will be, no matter what... no matter if I'm just Nessy or four divided souls! And I'm not going anywhere. Never again. Promise."

'Thank you for being my tree. For giving me your shade to rest under in a doomed world gone mad. Whatever happens next, remember I chose this path.' Her words from the note came back to me. 'I chose you so that you can save me, save us, save everything.'

I choked as I stared at Nessy. "Never again?"

"Never again," she affirmed. "This pack of five. This is it. This us is enough to shear any Gordian knot of a problem or to bind entropy-afflicted things to fix them. When you died in that bathtub, you bloomed back to life with a liminal soul. When I died, you reached a liminal end of everything between space and time and sliced my soul, allowing me to bloom into four distinctive prads."

I nodded.

"So?" She elbowed me.

"Bulwichu is in the Superstore," I said. "I followed your damned instructions."

"Then we have much to do," Nessy declared. "We have to get our domain back. We have to help Terry. We have to deal with the Lynx and Highway 69. We have to go to Omnithornia and punch some Omnids for abducting capable Prads from Ferguson using blood contracts for some dastardly extradimensional work." A grin touched her lips. "And I still owe you and Kristi a proper date. In the Atomic Cafe. Like I promised."

"I have no idea what you two are ravin' 'bout," Adelle commented.

"Neither do I," Kristi said. "Although I am feeling an unnerving sense of déjà vu and... I do like the sound of a properly planned date."

"Do you want to know everything?" Nessy spun to Kristi and Addie. "We can all fuse tonight. You can all remember what happened, understand it all."

"Fuse all of us together? Hell no," Adelle huffed. "I already told you knobs that one soul per body is my policy."

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"But explaining… all of these feels, all of these things will take ages," Nessy huffed. "Literally ages!"

"That's what words are for," Adelle said. "Use them and take your time to tell me whatever you wanna."

"But you ain't gonna listen," Nessy whined, now sounding almost like Candace.

"You're right, I probably won't," the cheetah said.

"I'll listen," Kristi said. "A four soul-meld sounds like a recipe for a psychic catastrophe though. No offense."

"It could just be three way," Nessy suggested, wiggling her eyebrows at the raptor. "Ads doesn't have to get in on this."

"Couldn't you, I dunno, do whatever you did to Alec?" Kristi asked.

"You're not a tree," Nessy said. "Binding memory links to you won't work well."

"And fusing with you will?" The raptor girl asked.

"Maybe!" Nessy said.

"Not very convincing there, dog," Kristi huffed.

"Whatever, ya big chicken," Nessy rolled her eyes at the raptor. "It was just an offer! A very generous offer, I might add. You're missing out on some premium, high-quality, soul-entwined snugglage."

She gave me a pointed squeeze, and I couldn't help but shake my head at her.

My attention shifted to the trio of adults. They weren't paying attention to our pack drama, talking amongst themselves in the parking lot. It sounded like they were discussing the fate of the now monk-free temple.

"Now that the property has been... sanitized, it officially reverts to town ownership. Which, for all intents and purposes, means it falls under the Omnid administrative domain," Kerberos said.

"I could make use of the space," Professor Fern mused. "The catacombs and the maze-like structure of the old citadel would be an excellent training ground for young delvers. A bit more realistic than our gym simulations."

"A fair proposal," Kerberos considered.

"I can have my Elementals handle the repairs," she added.

"Oh, that's a marvelous idea, Igni!" Marlena clapped. "We could add a proper aquatic training facility in the sub-levels facing the lake! The grotto connected to the Ferguson Quarry lake is already perfectly suited for it! Oh! Oh! What about the upstairs temple and dormitories?"

"The school could use a dormitory space for the upper grades," Kerberos considered. "Perhaps we can offer… our most promising students rooms within after the renovations."

He eyed us.

"Arf!" Marlena clapped even harder. "Yeah, I do like the sound of that. It's a bit austere there now from what I saw, but we can let the students decorate rooms and add nicer beds and computer desks."

"We'll discuss the specifics later," Kerberos said, his attention returning to us. "Team Foster, you are free to head home."

"Do we have to go back to school tomorrow?" I asked. "I mean… our practical's done and Fern will be testing other teams tomorrow."

"Hrm." Kerberos mulled. "Very well. Take a day off tomorrow if you so desire. You've earned it."

"Right," I said, turning to my pack. "Back to the hotel?"

A chorus of affirmative grunts and nods was my answer. I opened the extradimensional bag, and Adelle and Nessy climbed inside. The raptor put the bag on and I sat in front of Kristi, letting her pilot us home.

The Nemesis glider cut through the night sky, its engines humming, Kristi's left hand wrapped around me, her head resting on my shoulder.

"You gonna be in trouble for... all this?" I asked.

"Eh. Don't give a fuck," she said defiantly. "Let dad ground me, cut off my allowance, whatever. What's more important, two dumb hunks of metal that'd been sitting in the garage and on the wall, or our pack?"

The flight was short. Soon, we dismounted and the two girls tumbled out of the bag, flooding into our hotel suite.

The door clicked shut behind us, and for a moment, we all just stood there, floored with mutual exhaustion and a surreal sense of accomplishment.

Then, Adelle broke the spell. With a loud groan, she flopped face-first onto the nearest plush couch.

"I'm not moving from here," she declared. "Someone order food and wine. And maybe gimme a foot rub."

Nessy simply smiled.

"Best. Heist. Ever," she murmured, her tail giving a happy thump against my side.

Adelle reached out a hand and tugged on my torn jacket until I sat down beside her. Nessy-Candace, still attached to me, simply adjusted her position, half-sprawling across both of us. She began kneading Adelle's feet who started to purr. The pile grew as Kristi, seeing the tangled heap of packmates, let out a soft sigh and came to join us, settling on my other side and once again resting her head on my shoulder, feathers tickling my cheek.

The adrenaline of the fight gradually faded, leaving behind a deep, bone-deep weariness and an equally profound sense of connection. Nessy's tail thumped a steady rhythm as she licked me. Then Adelle helped Kristi pull off her armor, unbinding the belts and loops.

"Are you going to split?" I asked Nessy-Candace, eyeing the passed out fox on the bed.

"Nah," she said softly. "Not yet. I'm hoping if I stay longer in this body, maybe the Topaz cravings haunting my fox bod will lessen."

The quiet comfort slowly, inevitably, shifted. A hand moved from a shoulder to stroke through hair. A head nuzzled from a chest to a neck. A soft, questioning kiss was pressed to a jawline.

There was no plan, no grand seduction. It was a natural, gravitational pull, the culmination of days of shared danger, emotional breakthroughs, and the undeniable, magnetic force of our pack bond.

Nessy was the first to kiss me properly, her lips soft and warm, a silent question that I answered by tilting my head, deepening the kiss. Then Kristi was there, her touch gentle, her kiss hesitant at first, then growing in confidence. Before I knew it, I was at the center of a slow, tender storm of affection. Adelle's kisses were fierce and demanding, while Nessy's were sweet and exploratory, full of wonder and rediscovered love. Kristi's were a revelation, full of passion and intense longing, a silent outpouring of all the emotions she'd kept locked away.

"Fooood pleazzzzz," Adelle murmured between kisses, "All this... pack bonding... is great but I'm... starving."

"Seconded," Kristi breathed, her lips brushing against my ear, claws sliding across my chest.

Nessy fumbled for her phone, navigating to the Pawber Eats app while enthusiastically giving each of us nuzzles, licks and kisses.

"What does everyone want?" she asked.

"Everything," was the unanimous, breathless reply.

Nessy quickly ordered two of everything from the nearest 24-hour diner: more pizza, burgers, fries, milkshakes, a whole rotisserie chicken, and an entire white chocolate cake and a crate of mana wine from the Inn's catacombs.

Mana replenishment was a serious business.

When the food arrived, we descended on it with a ferocious appetite. We fed each other bites between kisses, laughed with our mouths full, and made a glorious mess of the hotel room.

Sated and sticky, we collapsed back into a single, sprawling pile on the bed. The frantic energy had mellowed into a warm, pure contentment awash in mana wine. I lay in the middle, an anchor in a sea of soft fur and warm feathers, their bodies a comforting weight around me. Adelle's head was on my stomach, Kristi's arm was thrown across my chest, and Nessy-Candace was curled into my side, her rhythmic heartbeat and breath against me exceptionally soothing.

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