by Stasia Black
“You really didn’t like her?” Ana asks.
Does she doubt me? “Of course I did not like her. Do you think I could like anyone who is cruel to you? She reminds me of the cold Draci females from my planet.”
Ana goes quiet and I wish so badly I could be in her head with her. “You said the other day that the Draci women became so cruel because they couldn’t have children and it made them bitter.”
She looks over at me and there’s fear on her face. “What if I can’t have children, Ezo?”
“Don’t say that. We have only just begun and—”
“But what if I can’t?” she says louder, looking stricken. “Don’t you get it? I know why you guys are here. You need new Draci babies. But what if there’s a problem with me? What if I can’t get pregnant?”
I’m about to tell her I don’t care, that nothing will separate us, when she continues, “Shak and Juliet asked me to find you a mate. I told them I would. I even gave them names of some women.”
Women? What is she talking about?
“It wasn’t supposed to be me. I was supposed to vet these other women.” At my confusion, she hurries on, “To, you know, look into their backgrounds and make sure they weren’t crazy. To make sure they’d be suitable candidates as a mate. Part of that meant checking into their medical history.”
Ana runs her hands over the wheel even though we aren’t driving, her eyes straight ahead. “But I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted it for myself. I was selfish. I thought, for once in my life, maybe I could be something special. If I could help start a new race and be transformed like Juliet was? To grow wings? That would be the kind of difference my sister could never make even in her wildest dreams.” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “God, I’m so self-involved. It was all about me.”
Finally, she looks my way and I grasp her hand, needing to be connected to her. I feel the anguish in her words and I want to ease the telling. Because I see she is not done.
“But then I met you.”
For a long moment she doesn’t say anything else, and our gazes catch. “And you aren’t just some opportunity to make me feel better about myself. You’re a person. An amazing, smart, fucking gorgeous person, inside and out. A man I’m lucky to know, much less mate.”
I squeeze her hand, wanting so badly to pull her back into my lap.
But then she shakes her head, the sadness returning. “So I think this is karma. I’m getting what I deserve for being such a selfish bitch.” She laughs but there isn’t any humor in it. “I won’t be able to give you the one thing you were sent here to do. I won’t be able to give you a baby.”
“Do you know this for a fact?”
She shakes her head. “But it’s karmic justice, don’t you see?”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” she tosses her hands in the air, “that you reap what you sow. That if you do bad things, eventually, bad things will happen to you.”
I weigh her words. “Yes,” I say slowly. “It is logical that if you do wrong, there are consequences. But you did not do wrong.”
I see her about to argue with me and I lift up a hand. “Or at least not very much wrong. And it brought you to me, so I would not have you take it back. Do you wish you could go back and undo being my mate?”
“No,” she says immediately. “I don’t. I’d do it all again but only because I know how amazing you are. How much you mean to me. I’d be missing out on the…on the relationship of a lifetime if I hadn’t ignored what Juliet said and taken you for myself.”
Her words are passionate and her eyes bright with fire, and I want to fuck her. Right now. Maybe it’s wrong, but to have my mate claim me so vehemently, nothing has ever stirred my loins more deeply. I tremble with wanting her.
“I don’t care if we never produce offspring.”
Her face crumples. “I didn’t mean— I wasn’t trying to say all this so that you’d— I know it’s like your entire purpose to—”
“You are my purpose.” When she tries to pull her hand away from mine, I clasp it more tightly and reach for her other until I hold both of her hands captive.
“Do you doubt me, my Ana?”
“It’s not that, I just understand that you have responsibilities—”
“You are my only responsibility now.”
She breathes out hard and her eyes roll to the ceiling. “I don’t want to lose you, Ezo. Just the thought of having to give you up to some other woman—”
“Never!”
But it’s like I do not speak at all. “It guts me,” she keeps on. “I want to stab the eyes out of any bitch that even flirts with you, but we can’t always get what we want and—
“NO!” I finally shout.
Ana startles but finally stops speaking her poison words.
“There is none for me but you. I will capture you and steal another spaceship and we will leave both of our races behind if we must. No one will take you from me!”
She doesn’t say anything, only blinks. Have I scared her? I say everything wrong but I don’t know how else to communicate and I need her to understand. I cannot lose her, too. I will not. I refuse. Not when there is strength in my limbs and fight in my heart.
I take a deep breath. “I have learned of your family but you still do not know of mine.”
When she stays silent, I go on. “My family lived simply. I was born in a very small village on the outer reaches of the kingdom. It was cold then, but still many years before the Final Winter that would destroy our world. Crops still grew and our planet bubbled with life.”
I even remember a single, short summer when my sisters and I flew and raced through the high grasses and chased glow-bugs. I can’t smile though because the memory is shrouded beneath far too much pain.
“My father was of the military caste so he was rarely home. It was only me and my four sisters and my mother. Some sounded the alarm about the coming doom but most did not want to hear it. My mother shielded us and our village was so remote that if you didn’t spend time on the Global Connect, it was easier to ignore what was happening.”
“Oh Ezo,” Ana says, rubbing her thumbs over my palms.
“But I quickly grew and started spending all my time on the Global Connect. I thought my mother was foolish for hiding her face from the truth. So even before it was required, I joined the military, thinking that I could help be part of the solution. Back then we thought that maybe if we burrowed deep enough underground towards the core of the planet we might be able to find a way to sustain life on Draci.”
I swallow hard. A young man’s foolishness, so confident I could save the world. “My last words to my mother face to face were spoken in anger. She tried to hug me goodbye but I did not embrace her back.”
My eyes sting with an unfamiliar sensation. Dust or some other irritant. I blink rapidly as I continue. “I spent eighty-five years working on grueling infrastructure projects as the planet continued to grow colder and colder. There was only winter then. But I did not truly understand that our planet would not survive until The Long Blizzard.”
“The storm began and we all hunkered down in our deep underground tunnels. We worked in nonstop shifts to keep the entrances and exits clear so that we would not be snowed in and entombed forever, but we could only just barely keep up against snow and ice. Communications broke down everywhere. We were isolated down there, for months upon months, not knowing if the storm would ever stop or if anyone else besides us was even surviving. When the rations grew thin and we no longer had the energy to warm one another with our fires, I thought for sure, it was my end. Many died around me.”
I look up at Ana and her face is devastated. I think she can guess what comes next but still I force myself to say the words.
“When the snow finally, finally stopped, we emerged from the tunnels.” My hands shake and I close my eyes, thrown back into that moment even though it’s the last place I ever want to revisit.
W
hen we came out of the tunnels, the world was white. Snow covered everything. Buildings and trees. What wasn’t covered in snow was coated in ice.
“Our commander didn’t fight us when we asked for leave to go check on loved ones.” The trek home was long and arduous. Travel systems had broken down during the storm. Usually going home meant little more than a quick shuttle ride, though I had never gone because they’d grown increasingly expensive and I saved every cent I earned to purchase passage and supplies for my family for when the Long Winter came.
“But when I got home,” my voice breaks as I continue, “it was as if the village was never there.”
Ana makes a noise of grief but I cannot look at her as I say the rest. “I used a snow digger for days and found them all buried beneath the snow fifty hezeks down. About half a mile in Earth terms. I still held out some hope that they’d escaped, that my sisters had finally convinced my mother to go to the city where it was warmer.”
My jaw locks. “But when I dug deep enough, I found them. Frozen in place. Huddled around the hearth, clutching one another as they died—”
I cannot go on. Seeing my mother’s and sisters’ frozen faces, so perfectly preserved in their last hours of life—it will be with me until my dying breath, when I finally join them among the ancients.
Before today, I had not thought to ever be truly reunited with them even in the afterlife…but now… Perhaps I can beg their forgiveness, if only so I can look upon their faces once again. I do not expect their forgiveness to be granted because I failed them so utterly.
“I was too late. I had not seen that the Long Winter had already begun. If I had, if I had gone to them— If only I had gone to them sooner—”
“Ezo,” Ana cries. “You can’t do that to yourself. You couldn’t have known. No one on your entire planet knew—”
She is wrong. “They forecasted a large storm,” I argue. “I begged my sisters to get to the city but I knew they wouldn’t leave my mother behind. I should have gone and physically removed her myself.”
Ana just keeps shaking her head, though, refusing to understand. “No, Ezo. God, have you been blaming yourself this entire time? For two centuries since? Oh my God.”
She flings her arms around my neck but I cannot accept the comfort she offers.
“I accept my guilt in this,” I whisper into her hair. “It’s the only honor I have left to give them. I swore that my penance would be to spend my life in service and save as many lives as I could, in their names.”
“Oh, Ezo,” she says, squeezing me tighter.
“I went back to my unit. I was reassigned to build the Salvation Ships. I worked day and night to help my people escape before again it was too late.”
“And you did,” Ana says, pulling back to look into my eyes. “Don’t you see that? You did save lives. So many lives. You saved an entire race.” And then she quiets. “That’s why you volunteered again, isn’t it? You volunteered to go through the dangerous transition so you could save them all over again.”
“I have never thought about it that way. I just— I could only imagine how many more million faces would be frozen in the cold, clutching one another. These last fifty years, it has been the same on the ship. We had saved as many as we could from the dying planet, but now who would save us from the endless sea of space?
“So when our destination was announced and they asked for volunteers, of course I was the first to raise my hand.”
“Oh Ezo,” Ana says, her eyes full and sad, “then we both have to do what’s right. You have to be with someone who can give you children. It’s…who you are. I won’t take that away from you.”
Is that why she thinks I’ve told her all of this?
“Stop,” I say quickly. I must stop this misunderstanding before it starts. “That is not why I told you my story. I told you because I have had no family for all these long years. It should have been about duty and honor, but really I learned everything about Earth that I could because I imagined finally having a place to belong. For the first time in almost three hundred years, I began to dream of a home again.”
“But none of it was real until you. Do you understand me?” I grip her hands, begging her to understand. “I cannot lose my family again. Not now that I have found you. So you cannot leave me. You cannot—”
“I won’t. Ezo, look at me, I won’t. I swear. I’ll never leave you nor forsake you. In sickness and in health. In good times and in bad. Till death do us part.”
Her words are beautiful and by the fierceness in her eyes, I know she means them.
I began my story so that I might comfort her. How did this get twisted around so that she is the one comforting me?
She is beautiful, her brown eyes bright, her pink hair wild and her grip strong. “Till death do us part,” I vow in return.
Chapter Fifteen
Ana
After our emotional confessions earlier in the car, I managed to drive us home. Ezo’s eyes sizzled on me the entire time and I gripped his leg in return, needing the contact after being scraped raw emotionally.
I can’t imagine what he went through. The strength it must have taken to endure all that and then the space trip that followed, hurdling through the darkness, God—
We made love with a furious passion as soon as we got through the door. We barely made it to the couch before he was inside me. And I felt everything. His anguish and grief still so fresh even two centuries later. His astonishment at the joy he has found in me.
His determination to never let me go.
It’s why I’ve sat him down now, steaming mugs of coffee in hand as we sit on the balcony of my apartment watching the sunset.
He watches it with the wonder of a little boy. “Your Earth is so beautiful. And your sun…” He stares even though I’ve told him not to look directly at it, even while it sets. “Your scientists say it will last many, many more years?”
“At least five billion.”
“They are sure?”
“They’re sure,” I smile. “We can Google it together later. You can see for yourself.” Duh, he probably doesn’t know what Google is but he nods absently, eyes still on the horizon.
“So I was thinking,” I say and he finally looks my direction. “The doctors and scientists on your ship. They’re probably way more advanced than here on Earth, huh? Since your technology is so kick ass.”
He nods slowly as if not seeing where I’m going with this.
“Well maybe we could have the doctor that looks after Juliet, like, I don’t know, do a checkup on me. To make sure all my parts are in order and working.”
I eye Ezo over the top of my coffee mug, intently watching his reaction.
He looks surprised by the idea. “You wouldn’t mind having an alien doctor…how do you say, probe you?”
“Oh my God, I’m going to regret ever introducing you to Mercury in Retro, aren’t I?” The past week, in between sexcapades, I turned Ezo on to my favorite TV show about time traveling aliens who get stuck in the 1990s and can’t get back home. They make a lot of jokes about probing on the show.
But he doesn’t laugh and he’s right, this is serious. I sit up straighter. “I mean it. I want to get checked out and not just by some Earth doctor who doesn’t know what we’re up against. We’re a team now and your mission is my mission. If there’s something we could be doing that might help, then—”
“I have told you that I don’t care whether or not you can bear offspring. I meant it. All I need is you and—”
I roll my eyes. “That’s nice and all, but we can’t ignore the bigger picture. Maybe there’s nothing to worry about and I’ve just been overreacting for nothing. It might take several months or a year to get pregnant and everything is normal but I just want to make sure that I’m not starting out with defective machinery.”
I should have gone to a doctor before I ever showed up at that air hangar. But I was so afraid of this very thing. And I didn’t have insurance and— It was just a
lot easier to turn a blind eye to all the reasons I shouldn’t have done what I did and blunder ahead like an idiot.
But there are real consequences. Real stakes. And I can’t just fuck around with Ezo’s future. I won’t. I’ll fight to stay in it, but I will fight just as hard to help him achieve his goals.
Alien probes be damned.
Chapter Sixteen
Ana
Of course, when the next morning rolls around and it’s actually time to see the doctor?
I admit, I’m nervous. More than nervous. I’m freaking the fuck out, actually, but Ezo doesn’t need to see or deal with that.
We have to go to Shak and Juliet’s mansion/compound for the scan. That’s what Ezo keeps calling it. Just a scan.
I remind myself of that for the thousandth time as the gates to their compound open and we drive inside and park.
“Ana, what is wrong? You are breathing at an accelerated rate.”
Dammit, Ezo’s too observant. I blow out a long, steady breath, then turn to him with a smile. “I’m fine.
“Fine. You keep using this word.” He glowers at me.
“It means I’m okay. That you don’t have to worry—”
“How can I not worry when my mate is so anxious she can barely breathe?”
I roll my eyes. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration. I’m breathing just fine.”
And before he can say anything else, I push open my door and head for the house.
Shak comes out of the door to greet us and I crane my neck to look behind him, but Juliet is nowhere in sight. And Shak looks ragged. “Is she okay?” I rush up to him. “How’s the baby?”
Shak runs a hand through his hair. “The doctor says her time is very near. Tomorrow or the next day.”
“Oh my God.” Juliet must be so scared and excited and—
