I scream, high and unrestrained.I don’t care about anything except this.
The tentacles slow and hold me through the aftershocks with the same careful attention with which they’ve held me through everything.Gradually, the blaze of his form settles back to its familiar iridescence.
He lowers me gently onto the sheets and gathers me against him.His tentacles settle around us, warm and unhurried.I lie there completely wrung out, listening to the slow rhythm of his breathing as the blue light in my veins pulses gently in time with his.
A single circuit of life.The manuscript had it exactly right.
I have no idea how much time has passed.Time moves differently in this pocket realm, in the space between his world and mine, and I gave up tracking it somewhere around the third orgasm.
“So,” I say finally.“What does being your Anchor actually look like?Day to day.”
“It looks like this,” he says.“The pocket realm is yours as much as mine.You can move between worlds now, and I can follow you there without dissolving.Your life won’t disappear, Lilith.It will only get bigger.”
I think about May.
“I need to tell my best friend something eventually, or she’ll get worried,” I say.
“What will you tell her?”
I think about it.“The truth.She didn’t believe me the first time, but she will when she meets you.Fair warning, she’s going to have a lot of questions about the anatomy.”
“I can answer questions,” he says.
“Good.”I settle back against him.The light through the window is that deep, shifting blue-green that feels like being underwater, and it’s the most peaceful thing I’ve ever seen.
His tentacles tighten gently around me, possessive and warm.
“I’m never letting you go.You’re mine.My mate,” he says.
“I know.That’s why I came back.”
“I… love you, Lilith.”
I let out a contented sigh.“I love you too, Theron.”
Epilogue
Lilith
The new design is my best work yet.I lean back in my chair and study the model rotating on my screen.It’s a Minotaur, broad and towering, with the kind of anatomical detail that takes weeks to get right.The horns curve exactly the way I wanted them to.The texture of the skin where human meets something else is seamless.I’ve been working on this one for two months, and it shows.
I smile.My apartment is exactly as it’s always been, and I still work here most days.The pocket realm is home, but this place is where I run a business, where manufacturers email me, and customers find me and the human side of my life stays anchored.I like the separation.I definitely like having the best of both worlds.Whoever said you can’t have your cookie and eat it too?
The windows are open.The evening breeze moves through the apartment, salt-tinged and warm, and I know Theron is close.
I don’t look up from my screen.“You’re hovering.”
“I’m observing,” he says.
“From directly behind my chair.”
He settles on the arm of the couch beside my desk, and his tentacles drift in the evening air.After a year, I find it as natural as breathing.
“Is that the new one?”he asks.
“The Minotaur, yes.Just made the final adjustments.”I tilt the screen toward him.“What do you think of the horn curvature?”
He studies it with the same focused attention he gives to everything I create.This is what I didn’t expect about Theron before I knew him: that he would be genuinely interested in what I do.He’s not territorial or confused by the strangeness of what I do.Instead, he’s fascinated by the way I translate the seemingly impossible into something humans can hold in their hands.
