EPILOGUE
Cleo
Six months after returning to the valley, I stood in the observation lounge of Maya and Rykar’s Sola, watching Rezor hold a baby. He didn’t even need arms. The entire infant fit in his two hands, and Maya’s baby wasnottiny by baby standards. The two-month-old blinked up at the huge male, whose eyes were a soft blue as they gazed down on the half Destran, half human child. It was the most adorable thing I’d ever seen in my entire life.
“He’s so gentle,” Maya said from beside me, her own smile soft as she watched my mate and her daughter. “For someone so large, that is.”
Rezor cradled little Jesi with the careful reverence of someone handling something both precious and slightly terrifying. The infant was making those random baby sounds that had no meaning but somehow communicated entire paragraphs. Rezor responded to each one with utter seriousness,nodding along like they were having a profound conversation.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile like that,” Zara observed, leaning against the viewport. “I didn’t think he could look like that.”
“He does when he’s around things that fascinate him,” I said. “He was the same way the first time we visited the Destran Council chambers and he saw the historical archives.”
“Comparing my daughter to a dusty library,” Maya said dryly. “Every mother’s dream.”
“A very important library,” Zara added with a nod. “One with irreplaceable artifacts and—okay, that’s not helping, is it?”
Maya laughed and shook her head. Motherhood suited her. She looked tired—the kind of exhaustion that came with a newborn who didn’t understand that nighttime was for sleeping—but happy. Deeply, contentedly happy in a way I’d never seen before.
“How are you holding up?” I asked. “Really?”
“Exhausted. Terrified. Completely in love.” She watched Rykar move closer to Rezor, the two males now engaged in what appeared to be a serious discussion about the proper way to support an infant’s head. “I never thought I’d have this. A family. A daughter. But now that she’s here, I can’t imagine my life any other way.”
“She’s beautiful,” I said, meaning it. Jesi had her mother’s delicate features and her father’s shifting-tone coloring. She was currently trying to shove her tiny fist inside her mouth, and he looked absolutely transfixed.
“She is,” Maya agreed. “And she’s going to see so much of the galaxy. We’re planning a trip to Destra when she’s a year old, and we’ll be visiting whenever we can. I want her to see where her father’s people came from. The planet they’re rebuilding.” She glanced around at the living walls around us. “The Sola has calmed down and become so balanced, she can take a little time with us not here. Or we might convince her to travel there, if the residents here approve.”
“Destra,” I repeated, still getting used to the official name for what we’d all been calling “the D’tran planet” for months. The Destran Council had proposed it, and since both the Destran and D’tran species shared the same letters, both peoples had accepted it enthusiastically. A name that honored both species, both histories. “The power grid project should be mostly finished by then. We’ll have power bases over most of the planet.”
“How’s that going?” Zara asked. “Last I heard, you were dealing with some supply chain issues.”
“Resolved. Mostly.” I grimaced at the memory of the journey to the nearest, and most sketchy, supply station. “Turns out, it’s not easy to set up conduits at scale. We had to completely build it from scratch.”
“Sounds thrilling,” Zara said dreamily, with no irony whatsoever. Huge, impossible projects were the stuff of Zara’s dreams.
“It was, actually.” I grinned at her expression. “There’s something satisfying about revamping old systems and making them work better. Plus, the valley’s engineers are incredible. Good help is eighty percent of the project. Ancient knowledge combined with new technology—it’s fascinating.”
“You’re glowing,” Maya observed. “You know that, right? You get this look when you talk about the work you’re doing. Like you’ve found exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
Had I? Six months ago, I’d been terrified that choosing Rezor meant losing myself. That staying in the valley would feel like being caged. But instead, I’d found something unexpected. Balance.
“It helps that I’m not stuck in one place,” I admitted. “We’ve been traveling a bit. Rezor is more of an explorer than I thought he’d be. He’s like a kid in a candy store every time we visit somewhere new.”
“Really?” Zara’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t peg him as the adventurous type. He seemed pretty attached to his valley.”
“He is. But he’s also curious about everything.” I watched him carefully pass the baby to her father, then listen intently to something Torven was explaining. “Last month, we visited Calisto Prime’s capital city. He spent three hours in their transportation museum examining ground transport designs.Three hours, Zara. I had to physically drag him out.”
“In my defense,” Rezor called—apparently we weren’t being as quiet as I’d thought—“I didn’t know we had dinner reservations.”
“The museum was about to close anyway,” I added. “And the meal was excellent.”
Zara grinned. “So he’s a nerd. I approve. Torven is the same way with ship hull designs.”
“They each serve different purposes,” Torven protested. “Depending on the purpose of the ship and the conditions they’re required to fly in.”
“See?” Zara gestured at him. “Nerds. I’m surrounded by nerds.”
“You’rea nerd,” Maya said, stating the obvious.
