A Cold Wind Blows (Forgotten series, #3)

Author's Note

This story didn't end with whispered I love yous or lovestruck sighs and kisses like you might have wanted it too. It didn't end on the notes of an intense, burning love but it did end on perhaps the beginning note of a symphony of their lives together that could lead to a deep and strong love that would stretch across time and space and forever draw these two individuals together, life after life.

Lace and Azrael were not your standard love story. Do not get me wrong, this was a story that was deeply entrenched with love. It played a main part within the entirety of it.

This story showed how love can change our lives. It can drag us down dark paths in life. It can give us hope and then dash it underneath our feet. It can twist our lives into cruel and harsh sharps. It can leave us jagged and broken, and turn us into harsh, cruel shadows of our former selves. It can blind us to the faults in our families and mates and it can drive us to do selfish things.

Lace had love take her from her family and bring her down a rabbit hole where nothing was what it seemed to be. Damascus had blinded her with his showy love to hide the falseness it contained until it was too late for her to retreat. Lace's love for her lost child had stuck with her through the years, she clung to his memory because she loved him with everything she had and it had twisted her further and further until that love became unrecognizable. Her love for her wolf is the only reason she survived the eight years of torture and suffering she had been put through and the years that followed.

Then it was the love of a group of ragtag children that Lace never could have conceived of that reminded her of what love actually meant. They pulled her out of the shadows of the love that ruined her one hug and kiss at a time. They breathed life into her. These five little lives turned into the warm sun that that Lace revolved around. They brought her into the light, reminding her of the greatness that love could be.

Lace might not love Azrael by the end of the story but she loves their children, deeply and truly. Everything she did and will do is for the children she and Azrael have and will have together. Her world revolves around them and their shining brilliance because they are the reason she grasped at the broken pieces of what used to be her life and pulled them back together. She might not quite understand love between mates or the love of a bond but if there is one thing she does understand it is the love between a parent and a child. That love was her first real and true experience with what love meant and it was one thing that was never twisted or ruined by her life.

This story showcased how the innocence of the love between a parent and a child, no matter if that child is blood or chosen, can heal even the deepest of wounds. It can soothe hurts and can make you, as a parent, want to be better for them. Lace never would have sought out to heal her wounds, feeling content in her pain, without those five little lives that chased the shadows of her past away and exposed the pain for her to finally experience.

So this story was not a romance but it was a love story. It just wasn't the love you might have thought it was in the beginning. However in the end, Azrael and Lace do have a future. It has a tentative and almost shy start but it was a start none the less.

I am going to miss these characters and this story deeply. They have progressed so much, they have grown so incredibly far. Both Azrael and Lace. This wasn't a relationship that had one person bending to the unrelenting other, it was two people shifting and changing and in the process somehow becoming just what each other needed.

That is what is needed in real life as well, two people learning to compromise and change in order to find a long and lasting love with each other, to not hold onto the little things, to communicate and let each other in. So my parting words are.

Love.

Love is a curious thing.

The entire reason for it was to bond you to others, creating a web of relationships between people but it can be used in different and dangerous ways. It can be used for revenge, for hate, for duty. Some use it for pleasure, others for sadism and punishment. It can be used to control people, to manipulate them, to destroy them.

But we must never forget that while people can use love for damaging things that its only purpose it to bring people together, to bind them tightly, and bring them joy. Love can be used to hurt but we must always remember that love is what we use to heal.

Until next time,

Cheers!

Anna Maria Lee Koski

(The song up was recommended to me by @bestmom60 she said it truly reminded her of Azrael and Lace and I have to agree. Props to her!)