Rhyx tightened his arms around his mate and let the questions drift away, peaceful in the knowledge that whatever tomorrow brought, they would face it together. The dream would keep. The presence beneath the ice—if it even existed—wasn’t going anywhere.
For now, there was only this. Only her. Only the quiet perfection of belonging.
He closed his eyes and slept again, dreamlessly this time.
He was content.
EPILOGUE
Two months later…
The troubled furrowbetween Rhyx’s brows was the first thing Alina noticed when she stepped out of the monitoring station’s main habitat.
He stood at the edge of the plateau, his golden form silhouetted against the pale Martian dawn. His wings were folded beneath his skin—they always were during daylight hours, a precaution against discovery—but even without them, he cut an imposing figure. Tall, powerful, utterly still. Like a statue carved from living metal and ancient memory.
But statues didn’t dream.
She crossed the dusty ground between them, her boots crunching on the thin layer of frost that still clung to shadows where the weak sun hadn’t yet reached. Two months they had lived here, in this isolated outpost several days north of Border Town, and she had learned to read him. Every tilt of his head, every subtle shift in the pattern of his scales—she knew what they meant.
Right now, they meant he was troubled.
“You’ve been dreaming again.”
It wasn’t a question. She came to stand beside him, close enough that their shoulders brushed, and followed his gaze across the landscape. Red rock and rust-colored sand stretched to the horizon, broken only by the distant shimmer of the mountains they had fled two months ago.
“Yes.” His voice was rough, as if sleep had failed to smooth its edges. “The dreams are coming more frequently now.”
She studied his profile—the strong jaw, the high cheekbones, the bright blue eyes with their vertical pupils that never quite looked human no matter how accustomed to them she became. He was beautiful in a way that still caught her off guard sometimes. Alien and familiar all at once.
“The same dream? The one about the ice?”
He nodded slowly. “I fly over vast glaciers, frozen plains that stretch beyond seeing. And beneath them…” His hand clenched at his side. “Something waits. Something old. Something that has been sleeping even longer than I was.”
“Another like you?”
“I don’t know.” The admission seemed to cost him. “The presence is… muted. Distant. As if they are only beginning to stir, not yet fully aware.” He turned to look at her, and she saw the conflict in his eyes. “But I think they are waking, Alina. I think whatever process brought me back is reaching them too.”
She reached for his hand, lacing her fingers through his. His grip was warm despite the morning chill, his scales smooth against her palm. “Do you want to go looking for them?”
It was a question she had asked before, each time the dreams troubled him. And each time, his answer had been the same.
“No.” He shook his head, a gesture he had learned from her. “It’s not time.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know. I simply… feel it.” His thumb traced circles on her wrist, a soothing rhythm that belied his tension. “The connection is too fragile. If I went now, if I tried to find them before they’re ready, I might damage something that cannot be repaired. They need to wake on their own terms, as I did.”
She accepted his judgment, as she always did. In matters of his own nature, of the ancient mysteries that had shaped his existence, she had learned to trust his instincts over her scientific impulses. It wasn’t easy—the researcher in her wanted to investigate, to document, to understand. But she had also seen what happened when humans tried to force their understanding onto things they weren’t ready to comprehend.
GenCon was still out there, still searching. Still dangerous.
“Then we wait,” she said simply.
“We wait.” He raised her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “And in the meantime, we have other matters to attend to.”
The shift in his tone—from troubled to something lighter—made her smile. “You mean the visit?”
“Cass and Zach arrive tomorrow, do they not?”
