“Quist.”
“I love you.”
It was in her language; it was in his strong alien accent. And it was the best moment of her long, bittersweet life.
“I love you too, alien.”
Yahiro didn’t know what the future would hold for her and her valos, their empty cities that traveled the world, or for the other human survivors scattered across the vast lands of Sonhadra, but she knew that whatever lay before her was much brighter and filled with a radiance that had permeated her soul and healed her wounds.
She glanced up at the sun in the sky and knew it was the same one as yesterday and would be the same one tomorrow, because she was forever suspended in dawn, and that night would never be reached again.
Epilogue
YAHIRO
Months later, she’d suspected but hadn’t been sure. She knew Earth months had passed in her life even though they had only traveled the planet in two world spins.
She reached down and caressed her distended belly and the kicks followed her hand.
Yahiro lifted her other hand to scratch the broken translator tech behind her ear. It was her reminder of her former life while the heavy stone in her stomach served as the anchor to the life she had now. She also had her bag from Galan, but chose to keep her past... her past. The only thing she kept with her was her sister’s unicorn.
After Lusheenn had been stopped from solidifying, and she had slowly begun to heal—slower than her valos liked—the melted golden light had never left her skin. And even now, standing under the rays of the sun, she still felt the twinges of encroaching embers across her marks.
She also didn’t heal back into the human she once was. She was different now.
The weight gain had taken her by surprise. It happened gradually, in one specific area, that same place where the stone sat heavy inside her. Yahiro had never, in her long, bittersweet life, ever thought about babies, but the moment she discovered the cause of her extra weight, discovered what was growing within her, it had consumed her thoughts.
Because of her surprise and apprehension, she didn’t tell her men. Instead, using caution and secrecy like she had been trained to do, she kept it to herself, and even when her belly got bigger and bigger and Galan began to stare at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes, she kept her mouth shut.
She’d been terrified that maybe she was wrong. That if she voiced it out loud, the idea, the exhilaration of having a baby would flit away in the wind—like so much of her life. It was too precious for her to risk it.
But Galan’s eyes trailed after her, everywhere she went, and then Quist was nearly always by her side. Sundamar had refused to let her leave the city and she was no longer allowed to be taken up into the air and fly with one of her winged angels in the sun’s rays. She still kept it to herself until she felt a kick under her palm.
Since then, they had been on her like white on rice, and it grated every last nerve-ending she had. It could’ve been the pregnancy jitters, she may never know, but her senses had attuned noticeably and even during their stealthier moments, her men could no longer hide from her knowledge. There was always one keeping her within their sights.
The cravings for Earth food had intensified as well, bringing back a whole world of things she missed dearly.
