Page 48

Zandrel - Terra Spei, Six Years Later

I’ve always had a keen sense for knowing when I’m in an enemy’s crosshairs. A prickling at the back of my neck, a heightening of my senses in anticipation of attack.

And right now, in the bright sunshine on Terra Spei, I’m certain I’m about to be ambushed.

A solid weight crashes against me just a moment after I hear a small, laughing voice call out from behind me.

“Daddy!”

A small but sturdy body wraps itself around my legs, still giggling as I pretend to be surprised by her attack.

Astrid is almost three, and has already started developing the tendency to plunge headlong into life first and ask questions later.

A gift, that she has known enough peace and safety in her short life to be able to live so boldly and fearlessly.

Turning and crouching down, I lift her and set her on top of my shoulders in one swift movement. She cries out in delight, small fingers clinging to my horns in an unnecessarily tight grasp, but I don’t correct her. Instead, I rock her a little and she burbles over with laughter again.

I hope my darling girl knows I’d never let her fall.

Like so many hybrid children birthed by humans all across the sector, Astrid is a delightful amalgamation of my mate and I. She has skin a lighter version of my own cool grey, and is just developing some protective plated ridges up and down her arms and legs, though I hope she never needs them. Her hair is dark brown like Roslyn’s, and she has green eyes flecked with my silver threads.

Her personality… well, her personality is entirely her own. A devilishly quick and spirited little girl, she both astounds and confounds Ros and I daily.

“Astrid,” Ros calls out just before she appears around the bend in the path leading back to our small home. “What did I say about running—oh.”

A grin splits her face as she sees me and our daughter, and like it has since the very first time I saw that star-bright smile, my heart aches in my chest.

“I’ve got her,” I say softly as Ros reaches me and leans up on her toes to give me a quick kiss.

Or, maybe not so quick as I place a hand on her lower back and keep her pinned against me when she would have pulled away. She laughs against my lips as she opens for me, the sound turning into a gasp when I drag my teeth over her bottom lip.

“Ew!” Astrid complains from my shoulders, tugging at my hair. “That’s gross, daddy.”

Rumbling a laugh into the kiss, I reach up and squeeze Astrid’s leg, tickling her behind the knee and grinning when she dissolves into peels of laughter.

Together, the three of us return to the little home Roslyn dreamed up here on Terra Spei. Set into the hills overlooking Haven—a small but growing village populated mainly by humans, though it becomes more diverse each year as new arrivals land on the planet to start their lives here—it’s our own little slice of paradise.

The house is a single story, with its back wall tucked into the hillside and its front skirted by a wide balcony that looks out over the valley. A few bedrooms, a cozy living space with a fireplace that keeps us warm in the winter, and easy access down the hill to the village where we’ve made countless friends over the years. It’s perfect for us.

The first couple of years we lived here still seem like a blur in my mind. I ended up spending more time off-world than on as I established the regulatory board and practices within the Aux to govern recruiting and bring those who’d abused their power to justice. And Roslyn, fates bless her, didn’t decide having a partner who was continually sent to the far corners of the sector was more hassle than I was worth. She encouraged me to pursue that dream while she tended her own here in Terra Spei. She oversaw the building of our home and the launch of her greenhouse, and we both made the most of every moment we had together.

But it wore on her, and on me, and after a few years of the whirlwind life we were living, it was time for a change.

I still oversee the board, but only leave Terra Spei a couple of times per year now. I have a team in place who I trust implicitly, and though delegating does not come naturally to me, I’ve learned to be better at it.

Roslyn’s business is thriving, she has a team of her own to help her with all the work that goes into the care and tending of the plants she grows, and we’ve carved out more time for each other, and for our growing family.

At the front door of our home, I lift Astrid off my shoulders and set her back on her feet. She darts inside, no doubt off to cause more chaos somewhere, and I place a hand on my wife’s back as she steps across the threshold.

Ros’s stomach is gently curved with our second child—and last, as she likes to loudly proclaim. I don’t disagree with her logic that if our future children are anything like Astrid, we would do well not to let ourselves be outnumbered.

Two is more than enough for me, when we were never certain we’d be compatible in that way at all. Two children and the woman who changed my entire universe, a family I’d protect at any cost.

Settling on Terra Spei was the best choice Ros and I could have made for ourselves, the perfect place to find our peace, to live our lives, to raise our daughter.

And now we’ll have a new life to make that full life even fuller, to add to the joy some part of me still can’t believe is real at times.

If he’s a boy, I hope he’s like my Ros. I hope he has her gentle soul and her bravery. I hope he’s kind and sensitive, and that he grows up in a universe that will allow him to remain that way. I hope both he and Astrid never know fear and violence, that Ros and I have done everything we need to give them the best chance in life.

As Astrid disappears into her room, I snake an arm around Roslyn’s waist and tug her back against me. She sighs and melts into me, turning her face so she can nuzzle against my chest.

“I’ve got dinner if you’re still busy with your orders,” I say, and she nods.

“I’m almost done. Just a few more custom requests to enter.”

“Go,” I say, nudging her toward her office. “And send the tiny terror my way if she decides she hasn’t wreaked enough havoc today.”

Roslyn’s laughter drifts back toward me as she goes. One more blessed sound in the joyful chaos we’ve built together.

Roslyn

Late in the evening—after Zan has put Astrid to bed and I’ve just finished bathing—I find my husband sprawled across one of the comfortable loungers on our front terrace.

The wide, tiled balcony overlooks a sweeping valley that’s green now in the height of summer, but cycles through a breathtaking range of color and beauty and life as the seasons change here on Terra Spei.

The stories about this place being like Earth weren’t exaggerated in the slightest.

It’ll never be quite the same, but the sense of belonging I felt when Zan and I first arrived here is permanently etched into my bones. Like some molecular part of me could feel it, could recognize it as safety, it’s never faded even all these years later. With each passing day, it grows and makes me more certain that this path was the right one.

When he sees me approaching, Zan shifts to make a spot for me between his thick thighs and holds out a hand to help me settle against him. Back pressed to his chest, head resting against his shoulder, his arms wrapped around me in a steady, familiar hold, I close my eyes and breathe the fresh evening air deep into my lungs.

Zan curls a hand over my belly. “How are you feeling?”

“Good. This one’s giving me a lot less trouble than Astrid did.”

We both laugh softly. Our tiny tornado of a daughter has been running us ragged from the moment she was conceived.

Zan and I didn’t even know it would be possible. We’d hoped, and tried, and when I’d found out I was carrying her in the midst of some truly horrific early pregnancy symptoms, it was just one more surreal, incredible part of this journey we’ve been on.

And now, with another on the way, maybe I’m finally beginning to understand that I’ll never stop being surprised by it, in awe of it, forever humbled by it.

“I got a call from work today.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask, tucking myself closer against him. “What about?”

“My last trip out before this little one arrives,” Zan says softly, stroking his hand over my belly. “A short one this time, just a couple of weeks to firm up a new intake and training protocol in the Marris system, and then I’ll be back here for at least a year before they need me back out in the field.”

“I’m sure Astrid and I can hold down the fort while you’re gone.”

It never gets easier, seeing Zandrel off, but knowing how much of a difference he’s making tempers at least a little of the sting.

“Plus,” I add, glancing up with a smirk. “I know you’ve recruited at least half the village to smother me with kindness while you’re gone.”

“Guilty as charged,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to my temple.

The community here on Terra Spei is incredible. Tight-knit, and a little stifling at times—especially when they’ve got a former Aux mercenary asking favors—but I know I’ll be in good hands here while he’s away. The friends we’ve made and the vibrant tapestry of community growing larger each day are the second family I never knew I needed.

Savvie and Arrik even came to visit once, just after Astrid was born, with their own son in tow. I speak to my sister at least once a week, and while I know I’ll never be able to convince them to make the move permanently, just having her in my life at all is a gift.

Other friends, too, have come to stay with us and enjoy the temperate Terra Spei climate. Friends from Zan’s years in the Aux, members of my old Sol Alliance squadron, Juni and her three spouses.

We even agreed to let the crew from Mate Match come and film a follow-up segment a few months after we landed here, with Marva herself leading the production.

All for a pretty penny, of course, some literal and metaphorical seed money to help get my greenhouse off the ground.

That brief brush with fame has mostly died down after all this time, and I can’t say I’ll miss it in the slightest.

I run a small greenhouse and plant nursery in the center of town. It’s mostly stocked with species of plants found here on Terra Spei, but also a handful of specimens from Earth—carefully vetted to ensure they wouldn’t interfere with the native ecosystem, and painstakingly cultivated over the last few years. They’re flowers, mostly—peonies and marigolds and lilies and other bright blooms—but also a few varieties of fruit-producing trees and bushes.

And even with all the time that’s passed, there’s still something miraculous about biting into a sweet, fresh honeycrisp apple on an autumn day on Terra Spei. The weight of the distance those seeds had to travel, all the light-years between me and the homeworld I’ll never see again, sits on my shoulders as both grief and blessing, with a bittersweetness I suspect will never lose its bite.

It’s a balancing act, living with the good and the bad. With the grief of the past and our hopes for the future.

But here, now, wrapped in my husband’s arms with the Terra Spei stars just starting to show in the evening sky, I’ll never doubt for a moment that it’s worth it.

Right before we head to bed, Zan and I stop by Astrid’s room.

Cracking the door, I find her curled up in the bed we only just converted from her crib a few short weeks ago. Her dark curls spill across the pillow and her breathing is deep and even. Just before I close the door, my eyes catch on the gentle glow from the ceiling.

Four worlds’ worth of stars shine down from that ceiling.

Another of my husband’s hidden talents, though maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, given his meticulous nature. The softly luminescent paint he so painstakingly applied just a few weeks before Astrid’s birth never fails to bring a smile to my lips.

On one quarter of the ceiling, the stars as they looked from the spot I was born on Earth. On another, the night sky view from Zan’s childhood home on Revexor. The third is the swirling, fantastic galactic tapestry over Eritin II, and the last is the same brightly glowing constellations we can see from our home here on Terra Spei.

Beneath all those stars, Astrid sleeps peacefully.

A wonder, our daughter.

A miracle of fate and happenstance, the child of so many improbabilities that it sometimes still makes my head spin.

It’s enough to put a familiar ache in my chest, enough to have me reach for Zan’s hand and pull him close as I click Astrid’s door shut behind me.

Enough to fill me with gratitude, overflowing, until it might fill the whole damn universe.

***

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