A/N: To Arsinoe, Vickie, Rachael, Clark Smith, Eline, Larissa, MindReadingCoconuts06, Charlotte Norrington, Jula, and anyone else I may have forgotten, thank you so much for reading and reviewing this, as well as giving me suggestions on "what to do". I couldn't have done it without you guys!

-SteeleRanger

Epilogue

(William's POV)

I was away from my family for longer than I had planned, nearly a year in India alone, and around a year and a half total. Thank God for Mary's letters. Even Braden and Brielle wrote occasionally. Much had changed since I had left, both good and bittersweet. Cristabel had given birth early to a small but healthy baby girl and as for my own children, Mary had written that I wouldn't be able to recognise them because of how fast they were growing. Mary had also written in an earlier letter I received when I first arrived in London, that Alastor had suffered a heart attack and died only a week after I left. The news was a bit disheartening, but still, I wasn't about to pretend I had much sympathy for the man.

I arrived back in New Brunswick on a rainy June day, but because I felt exhausted from traveling, I didn't start back towards home until mid-evening. Instead, I rested in a room at an inn that I had paid to spend the day in, and, shortly before I left, I read a couple of letters from Braden and Brielle that I hadn't yet gotten the chance to read. Braden wrote to say that things were doing well at home, Edward, Thomas, and Peter were helping out with things around the house, and that he was doing well in his lessons. He also asked me to teach him to shoot when I returned home. Brielle, on the other hand, had written for other matters. She still had not forgotten my agreement with her about buying her a pony when she turned five, but she wanted to say that she would wait for me to return home first.

Smiling to myself, I folded up the letters and put them away with my other belongings as I prepared to leave for home.

It was eleven in the evening and still raining when I arrived home after over a year oversees. The house was completely quiet, save for the soft ticking of a clock.

Creeping up the stairs, I opened the door to Braden's room to find him asleep in his bed, and to my mild surprise, Aric and Alexavier also shared his room, and were asleep in two smaller beds next to his. Both of them had grown much during my absence, and it pained me that I wasn't there to watch them.

Leaving my sons' room, I walked soundlessly down the hall to Brielle's room. Like the others, she was asleep, her thick black curls cascading around her pillow as she slept, looking relaxed and peaceful.

I walked over to the side of her bed, took a porcelain angel I had bought for her in England, and placed it on her nightstand; then with a soft kiss on her forehead, I left her room, finally entering the master bedchamber, where I found Mary sleeping on my side of the bed, clutching one of my letters in her hand. Shaking my head and laughing softly, I bent down and took the letter out of her hand, placing it on the nightstand, and gave her a lingering kiss.

"What's going on? Who.. William?"

"Yes.." I replied pulling her to me.

"Oh God, it is you!" She said in a choked voice, caressing the side of my face as she became overcome with emotion and began to cry.

The sound of thunder rumbled outside and a flash of lightning ripped through the window and across the floorboards.

"I'm home."

FIN