chocolateluvr – Aww, don't cry! I'm glad you love them. Over time, I've gotten to love them, too. And never fear, I've got another Significance fanfiction lined up. It's a spinoff of my other fanfic, Words of the Heart, so hopefully you like it (:

*This chapter contains extreme spoilers for Independence. I mean, extreme. You will regret reading this if you haven't read the book.*

The Significance Series belongs to Shelly Crane.

Epilogue: Revelations

One Year Later

A lot can change in the year. Not all of it is good, and not all of it is bad. It happens, whether or not you want it. I know that first hand, because I've wanted for so many things that actually happened, and I've wished that things wouldn't happen that did. I've realized that things are planned for us, and that the bad and the good lead us to our end goal.

I still remember the night Nick asked me to marry him. It was one of the best days of my life. I said yes, and he picked me up off my feet, spun me around in a circle, and we rode home, excited to tell his parents that we were finally getting married after so long of me telling him that I got to decide what went on in my life. We were married a week before the reunification. I wore a red dress and stood barefoot on the warm ground, and Nick and I promised to always be there for each other. He slipped a ring on my finger, and I slipped a ring on his, and we'd partied with my new family into the late hours of the night. Afterward, he took me to the home he'd bought for me – a ranch, complete with its own barn waiting to be filled with horses and mouse-hunting cats.

I hadn't invited Royce and Nolan to the wedding. They wouldn't have understood. So instead, I told them that he'd proposed properly, and we just went to the justice of the peace with Nick's family for witnesses. Royce was understandably mad, and even tried to talk me into having a real wedding ceremony, where I could invite my friends from school. I still refused, and so he was just trying to talk me into "renewing my vows," though it hadn't been that long. He got over it soon enough, though, when he realized that Nolan was just ecstatic about it. If I didn't know any better, I'd assume that he and Nick had some sort of bromance going on.

Hanna was a little mad that she hadn't gotten to play maid of honor, but she got over it soon enough when she got to fawn over my wedding ring, a beautiful princess-cut diamond with a small cluster around the base. Hanna had set out to make Rodney fall in love with her, but despite her obvious advances, he remained stoic.

Maggie called the reunification early. She said that it needed to be, because there were problems in the Ace world that we needed to address if we wanted to move on. It was a week of tension, with people staring at us funny as we played games that should've been fun. There was even a grand dance. But I never realized how cruel the Aces could be. For a group of people that lived their lives on the idea of soul mates and true love, they certainly did their fair share of keeping it apart. They tried to lock Caleb in jail for killing a man to protect his significant, which any man in the room would've done. Maggie and Caleb undid the lies that had been holding the Ace world together.

I met my biological family – the Martinezes, from Prague. Apparently, my adoption was accidental. My parents were an imprinted couple, but one night my father had business to attend to and my mother stayed home with me. That night, someone broke into the house and she died during the robbery, without her significant to save her. The authorities took a hold of me, who had somehow managed to stay safe, and in the mess of the situation I was sent to an orphanage, and within days, was adopted by my parents here in the states. I spent a lot of time at reunification getting to know my father, who was still living, although he looked haggard compared to his other family members. I didn't talk to them often, because I was Jacobson at that point, and in the Ace culture, once a woman finds her significant she rarely talks to her biological family. But I did talk to them some, because they were my family.

Maggie stripped the Watsons of their abilities, making them a lesser threat. But still, Marcus got away.

Rodney died. I'd never seen Nick so broken, not even on our wedding night, when he'd cried tears of joy. I remembered crumpling into his side, looking down at the man that had become my brother. I still remembered the way he'd walk into the house after a day of work, or how he'd smirk at me when Nick did something embarrassing, reminding me that he was who the universe had stuck me with. I remembered the day that Rodney walked in and told us to get up and stop being scared. Because of him, I'd moved on with my life. One moment he was there, and the next he was gone. I wrote a song for his funeral, but hadn't managed to play it. It was just too hard.

Maggie and Caleb got married, and so did Kyle and Lynn, and Bish and Jen, and Maggie's father. The Aces were growing again, becoming what they used to be. They went away on a honeymoon. And when they came back, they informed us that Marcus wouldn't cause us any more trouble.

It was the most freeing thing I could remember ever feeling.

Nick taught me something that I don't think I would've learned any other way. He taught me what life really was. He showed me what it was like to love someone, wholly and unconditionally, and he taught me how to work together to make decisions. He reminded me every day of the life I'd won merely by accident. Together, we moved forward and carved our place in the world. We reveled in our joy and faced our fears. Every day, I was thankful for my life as it was. I'd found my soul mate, my one true love.

And to think, it all started with a broken purse strap.

The End.

This is the end! It's kind of sad, but I'm honestly a little glad to be done with it. It was… an adventure.

I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as did. Thank you all so much for continuing to read all the way through. If you're looking for more, check out my other fanfic, Words of the Heart, and have no fear, I have another Significance FF on the backburner to be published after a finish a few others that I've already started, so check back often.

If you have anything else that you want to add, leave me a review. Since I won't be answering this last chapter's reviews, if you really, really want an answer, PM me your comments/questions. Thank you again! You guys are wonderful! PEACE (: