by Dylan Steel
It helped a little to know that Carnabel had really only hated her because of her own parents’ loss. Her bitterness had eaten at her for years, but despite blaming Sage for their deaths, she could never quite bring herself to out Sage as Lawless. Partly because she couldn’t be completely sure of her identity and partly because she still held Lawless sympathies of her own—though she never told a soul. But still, it counted for something.
Things were still strained between them, but there was no doubt that finding her family again had changed Carnabel. The same was true of Sage.
Mostly, they still avoided each other, but since the baby had come, Carnabel was making more of an effort, and since Sage was unwilling to be the petty one, she made polite conversation whenever they were together. Granted, she made an effort not to be alone with her very often or for very long, but still, progress was progress. Their relationship wouldn't change overnight any more than the people of Eprah would.
Sage stomped the dirt off her shoes before going inside. She headed straight for Weston's office, opening the door without bothering to knock.
“Good morning.”
Weston glanced up from his desk, pushing his work aside. “Well, hello, gorgeous.”
She waved a hand in front of her face. “I’m a mess. Riding,” she offered as a brief explanation.
One of his eyebrows shot up. “The wind-swept look just makes you more beautiful.”
Her cheeks reddened slightly, but she rolled her eyes deliberately and changed the subject. “Where is everyone?”
His lips ticked up in a smile at her deflection. “The city. Your parents wanted Alira and some of the other children to learn more about how the Council operates, so they took them to observe today’s meeting.”
Sage tapped her fingers across the top of his desk thoughtfully. The main house was almost never this quiet anymore. Not since so many other people had moved into the spare bedrooms. Mostly other Lawless, but there were some citizens like Carnabel who needed a bit more of a haven than the city provided. Besides, Weston had insisted that it was only fair to share the bounty of the estate with those who were willing to work it.
Of course, there were still spare rooms here and in the other buildings. Most people hadn’t taken him up on the offer. They preferred the familiarity of what they knew to even more change.
“So we’re alone?”
“Yes.”
“Good—” she slipped around the desk and grabbed his hand, pulling him from his chair, “—because I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“And it needs to be in private, Mrs. Bennick?”
“Yes, it does.” She shot him a severe look. He hid a smirk and let her drag him through the halls and out the back of the house. She didn’t stop until they were outside.
Before she could say anything, Weston pulled her close, covering her lips with his. As always, her body ignited under his touch, and she leaned into him, savoring the excitement that stirred in her belly and the way his sweet woodsy scent filled her senses.
“Is this private enough?” His deep voice brushed against her ear, sending pleasant tingles down her spine.
“Mmhmm,” she murmured dreamily, letting her fingers trail lazily up his chest as he held her tightly.
In the distance, water lapped at the shore, distracting her as her thoughts flashed to the hundreds of men and women who’d left from there at the same time last year. Freedom. She finally had it, and she wasn’t the only one.
Sage twisted the ring on her finger. That wasn’t what she wanted to dwell on at the moment.
“What are you thinking?” His voice pulled her back to the present, grounding her in reality.
She let out a contented sigh, resting her head against his chest. “Just that… It’s kind of wonderful.”
Weston nuzzled the top of her head. “What is?”
“Knowing I can leave anytime I want,” she said, tipping her face up to him as she snuggled deeper in his warm arms, “and knowing I’m choosing to stay.”
“I’m glad you’re choosing to stay too,” he said softly, tucking a hair behind her ear. “But is that what you wanted to talk about? In private?”
“No, not exactly.” She dropped her gaze, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. Leaning back again, she peered into his eyes. “I was wondering how you’d feel about… starting a family.”
He blinked, staring at her with an indecipherable expression on his face.
Her next words came out more rushed. “I mean, it’s not like it’s mandated anymore, and I know you never really wanted to before with the way Eprah was and how you would’ve had to—”
His mouth was on hers again, cutting her off mid-ramble, taking her breath away. He pulled back slightly, whispering against her lips, “I’d like nothing more.”
A surge of relief spread through her chest. “Good. Because I—”
His eyes widened, matching the broad grin that covered his face as he picked her up and spun her around.
“You’re pregnant?”
She flushed, nodding.
“We’re going to have a baby?”
She nodded again, unable to keep herself from smiling as he swung her through the air once more. His joy spilled over, flooding into her.
“We’re going to have a baby,” she whispered back. A fresh wave of excitement coursed through her body.
“Any thoughts for a name?”
“If it’s a girl, Penelope.”
He nodded, an understanding smile on his lips. “And if it’s a boy?”
“Kai,” she said without hesitation.
Weston kissed her again, hugging her closer, sending a message without any need for words.
He was never letting her go.
This was the life she’d always dreamed of but never dared hope for. A life with the people she loved, without the fear of losing them simply because someone else thought they were worthless.
A life of freedom, one filled with promise and love and a hope for tomorrow. And a new generation was just beginning, one that would only ever know that freedom.
The freedom to live.
***
Wow. Thank you so much for reading this book - this series. It means the world to me that you’ve braved Eprah’s cruelties right along with me and Sage. It’s been a crazy ride from start to finish... the story that’s been burning inside of me for years and had to be told.
If you liked this story, please share it with your friends and consider leaving a review. These are not only some of the best compliments an author can receive, but they help immensely with the less glamorous side of being an indie author (aka marketing, aka justifying the absurd amount of time I spend imagining horrible situations and different worlds).
Thanks so much for all your support!
-Dylan
P.S. Sage’s story may be over, but I’m just getting started. Join my Insiders Club to be the first to know when my next book comes out. You’ll also get a couple FREE prequel scenes that are exclusively available to Insiders Club members - The Prodigy, which holds a shocking secret about Kai’s past - and Sleeper, a prequel to the Third Earth series. Trust me, you won’t want to miss them.
Sign up for Dylan’s Insiders Club at: www.DylanSteel.com
And keep reading for a sneak peek at Alone, the first installment in the Third Earth series...
ALONE: Third Earth Volume I - Excerpt
1. GOOD MORNING
It was the eighth time I’d woken up in four hundred years.
Ok, it was technically more like the twenty-fourth time, but I really only counted the first morning, and there had been eight of them since I’d boarded the Seeker VI.
The first morning was always brutal.
Hearing was usually the first sense to return. Or maybe touch. Either way, I never remembered much before an unearthly hiss washed over my body as the seal released, depressurizing my Cryogenic Onboard Fleet Functional Intermittent Napper. My COFFIN.
Someone mu
st have thought that acronym was hilarious, but it would be hours before my throat would be ready to laugh about it. Not that I would. It was an old joke by now. And not four hundred years old—more like I’ve-made-myself-sick-of-this-dumb-joke old.
So no, I wouldn’t be laughing.
I’d be running diagnostics and taking a dozen vid courses if things were running smoothly. If things weren’t running smoothly, I’d make a couple quick repairs and skip the vid courses.
Things always ran smoothly. The Seeker line of ships were built to outlast my COFFIN. Seeker VI shouldn’t have any problems for at least ten thousand years, easy.
I sat up slowly, blinking my vision back into some form of normalcy. My mouth was unbearably dry. They’d warned me that my tongue would feel like sandpaper, but then, none of them ever spent any real time in a Napper, so they really wouldn’t know. In reality, it felt like someone had coated every surface in my mouth with two inches of space dust. It was really hard not to choke on my own tongue.
It would probably help to tweak the settings for my next waking period. Maybe bump up the fluids. Couldn’t hurt.
In the meantime, I settled for holding a small bubble of water in my mouth—enough to relieve the worst of the dryness but not enough to drown myself in.
Once my muscles were firing, getting out of the COFFIN was pretty straightforward. I gripped its edges and pushed off, shooting toward the center of the ship. My ship. I was the only one on board, unless you counted the professors on my vid courses or Taki. And I didn’t count Taki. Not because he was an AI but because he had a pathetic sense of humor. His jokes were more painful than stretching after a Nap.
I headed straight for the command center. Taki wasn’t yelling at me, but that didn’t mean I could skip the preliminary diagnostics. That was kind of the whole point of waking up—making sure nothing catastrophic had happened. The Seeker VI’s manmade tech made all the calls for fifty years before being double checked by the more fallible yet industrious human element. Me.
Even after spending thousands of years developing and perfecting artificial intelligence, there was something irreplaceable about the human element.
And on this ship, I was the human element. No pressure there.
Maybe machines made better decisions than we did, but they weren’t always the right decisions. Probably because machines couldn’t feel. Sure, they could be coded to have certain reactions—even to learn which reactions were most appropriate, most human—but they didn’t always get it right. They couldn’t really understand what it meant to feel.
Some people thought it was because humans had souls and machines didn’t. Others insisted souls could be coded too, and they’d spent their lifetimes trying to prove it. They’d come pretty close, too. But not close enough.
Me? Not a clue in the stars. I just knew it didn’t work for AIs.
If I could’ve figured out a way to get AI to feel, I’d probably still be on Proximacent hiding out in some lab bunker working on tech advances. As it was, I had enough trouble figuring out my own feelings. I wasn’t about to inflict that mess on some poor unsuspecting AI like Taki.
I was nearly to the command center when I made the mistake of glancing at one of the polished wall panels. How classically human of me.
Ugh.
My eighteen-year-old face looked closer to thirty. The eyes staring back at me were still blue, but they were much, much duller than I remembered, and my skin was dry and caving in around my cheekbones from years of intravenous meals. Basically, I looked like death.
Beauty sleep obviously didn’t apply to Nappers. Though, to be fair, I thought I looked pretty good for a four-hundred-and-eighteen-year-old.
I ran my fingers through my hair and cringed. Not much better there. Dirty blond was an understatement.
Tearing my gaze from the makeshift mirror, I pushed myself forward again until I was staring down the main computer.
“Good morning, Jade.” Taki’s voice echoed through the cabin.
A garbled grunt left my throat as I waved a dismissive hand in the air.
“It’s good to see you too.”
“Liar,” I rasped, punching through a set of commands as I pulled up the preliminary diagnostics. Good, good, good… Everything looked in order. I’d give it another run-through after I got cleaned up.
“I do not lie.”
“Right.” I rolled my eyes. No, Taki didn’t lie. Just occasionally embellished details about non-life-threatening situations. His programming wouldn’t permit him to lie during actual emergencies.
“Taki?”
“Yes, Jade?”
“Run secondaries.”
“Already in process.”
“Thanks.” I winced, rubbing my throat gingerly. Time to stop talking.
Lifting my arm, I buried my nose in my pit and took a whiff. I choked. Smaller inhale next time.
I might have been one of humanity’s last hopes, but that didn’t mean I had to look like the guys from my training unit. Or smell like them.
Normally, I’d conserve resources and make do with a sponge bath, but I hadn’t had a proper shower in two hundred years. This called for drastic measures. I floated over to the control center and flipped on the artificial gravity.
Time for a real shower.
Shooting a final glance at the reports, I turned and kicked off the wall, launching myself toward the bathroom.
Ah, stars.
The shower was on the opposite side of the ship. I’d have to walk.
My face twisted in annoyance as my limbs gradually grew heavier and my feet connected firmly with the ground. Yes, I should’ve been expecting it. No, it didn’t matter.
Thanks to fifty years of muscle stim, my muscles hadn’t atrophied, but they were sore from minimal stretching. Straight muscle stim had always been more effective than simulated stretching.
So yeah, I’d be fine. But it was way more fun to float around the ship. Oh, well.
Note to self: Next cycle, ask Taki to turn on the gravity automatically. After I get to the bathroom.
The bathroom had a real mirror, and the sight that greeted me here wasn’t any better than the one I’d glimpsed earlier. I turned away from my reflection and headed straight for the shower.
Peeling off my suit, I stepped into the stream of water, moaning contentedly as its warmth washed over me. Conserving water was the last thing on my mind—besides, it would all get recycled anyways. No harm in enjoying it.
My limbs felt lighter. Free. I closed my eyes. Water ran down my face and tickled the inside of my nose. I snorted and swept a hand over my mouth, brushing it away.
It didn’t work.
My eyes jerked back open, and I realized I was peering through watery lenses. My arms floated up at my sides as my feet left the ground. Water still poured from the faucet, but it was no longer heading toward the floor—it was billowing toward me, racing to join the water already on my skin, encasing me in a growing bubble.
My heart pounded in my chest while my lungs screamed curses at me for the last shallow breath I’d taken—it wasn’t like I’d known how important it would be.
I ran my hands over my face over and over, but trying to wipe off the layer of water quickly proved to be a wasted effort. It stuck to me like glue—if glue was some sort of demented psychopath that wouldn’t let go and let me take in any oxygen.
I stretched my arms out desperately, kicking toward the wall. If I could just reach—
My fist broke through the edge of the water, and I punched the button on the side of the shower wall. My body slammed against the wall as water slipped over and around me, disappearing behind me into the wall. The vac was doing its job, but the water was still coming straight for my face. I still couldn’t breathe.
Stupid, stupid… Should’ve turned the water off first.
Fighting the vac and the current it had created, I reached the shower panel before my lungs completely gave out. The water stopped flowing, and I spluttered and inha
led deep as soon as it cleared my face.
I turned off the vac with a groan and slumped against the wall.
Then I felt it.
At first, I thought it was just fatigue. After all, my muscles hadn’t worked that hard in years. But I could’ve sworn my entire body was growing heavier—and it wasn’t getting any better. My eyes widened as I realized that the crushing feeling in my bones wasn’t imaginary.
“Taki!”
“Yes, Jade?”
“Turn off…” I swallowed, forcing air into my lungs “…artificial gravity. Now.”
“Of course, Jade.” A groan sounded from deep within the ship as its frantic whirring wound down. “Artificial gravity has been turned off.”
The crippling weight across my chest seemed to reverse instantly. After a few moments, my body lifted into the air, which was a much more pleasant experience without the full-body waterfall trying to kill me.
“Stars.” I let out an irritated breath.
It seemed my ship wasn’t so perfect after all.
***
Continue reading Alone: Third Earth Volume I.
READ MORE BY DYLAN STEEL
Sacrisvita
THE PRODIGY: A Sacrisvita Prequel
(FREE and only available HERE.)
THE INSTITUTION: Sacrisvita Book I
THE ARCHIVES: Sacrisvita Book II
THE RELIC: Sacrisvita Book III
THE ESTATE: Sacrisvita Book IV
THE VANISHED: Sacrisvita Book V
THE CAPTIVE: Sacrisvita Book VI
THE OUTCAST: Sacrisvita Book VII
THE TRIALS: Sacrisvita Book VIII
THE ROGUE: Sacrisvita Book IX
THE CITIZEN: Sacrisvita Book X
THE SURVIVOR: Sacrisvita Book XI
THE BENEFACTOR: Sacrisvita Book XII
THE FOUNDERS: Sacrisvita Book XIII
THE LAWLESS: Sacrisvita Book XIV
***
Third Earth
SLEEPER: A Third Earth Prequel
(FREE and only available HERE.)
