Page 49 of Trained as His Mate

EPILOGUE

The water was warm in the morning when Quaia waded in, forgetting herself for a moment. The sun was rising over the long bar of land on the far side of the bay, backlighting the vibrant green, giant trees of the Grai’rook forest.

Quaia decided to give floating a try again, because it was the one skill she hadn’t mastered in her time here at the fishing village of Na’Sekeer, on the Vokl colony of Venefer. But she didn’t dare to wade out too far; there was a shelf of creamy white sand that fell off sharply in about ten meters, and she wasn’t a confident enough swimmer to risk that.

Avalar, whose house was a few settlements down the beach, had been teaching her to swim. The only thing she couldn’t do was float, but she suspected her size and shape had more to do with it than anything.

Well, it wasn’t the worst floating, but it wasn’t the best. Her feet touched the sand and she kicked herself along, staring up at the vast sky, now dark blue and turning lighter with each second. The star the Vokl called Alkra, around which her old home circled in a giant, elliptical orbit that no one could see, was bright in the sky.

She kind of liked being able to see the place in the vast emptiness that she had come from. The deep dark beyond it was what she had always yearned for, and now she was here, embedded in the string of stars she had never looked to, never expected to be her home.

Something dark moved in the water and sent a jolt of fear through her. She sat up, and let her feet drop to the floor of the sand. She was much further out than she’d imagined. She kicked at the sand to head back in, and saw the shadow again, stunning her for a moment.

But only a moment. The dark thing, darting in the water, was not a sea creature.

It roared up behind her, spraying water everywhere, and she gave a false shriek of fear and waved her hands, before laughing, just as Torian wrapped his arms around her, lifting her from the water.

It was amazing, she thought, that he could lift her so easily still, considering. He set her down on her feet after carrying her to where the water only lapped at her calves. And then she felt his arms wrapping around her, squeezing her tightly. She was totally safe, as safe as she ever could be, when Torian was near her.

“I thought,” he purred in her ear, one hand holding her head pressed to his lips, the other moving down her arm to her outer thigh, sending a shiver of lust through her, “that I told you not to swim alone, my love.”

She smiled. “You did.”

“And yet you disobeyed me.”

It never failed, even after all this time, to excite her when he spoke like this. She trembled in pleasure, and between her legs, she ached.

“Don’t believe for a moment that I’ll somehow lose track of these transgressions,” he told her. Because she was round with child—two, in fact—their games of discipline had been put on hold.

“I don’t,” she said, smiling. And she didn’t. In fact, she hoped he wouldn’t.

His hands moved over her full belly, and stirred something inside her. When she felt his own enthusiasm against her lower back, she leaned into his body and let its warmth penetrate her skin.

She heard a growl. And that pleased her, because it meant that Torian was going to pick her up any minute, and take her to their bedroom, where he would please her all morning, even if it meant he lost the morning light for fishing.

“What about the fish?” she asked, a giggle in her voice, as he began to slowly walk her toward the shore.

“The ocean is full of fish,” he growled. “And my Voklha needs something else to satisfy it.”

He picked her up, making her laugh as he moved his arms up and down, tossing her a bit, like a rag doll. He made this joke often, weighing his offspring, he called it. Often he said something like, “They’re very heavy.”

But today, hunger consumed him, and she could see in his eyes that he was not going to be doing much speaking with his mouth.

Which was fine by her. Just like living in the bright sun, not the deep dark, and being the wife of a fisherman, not a pilot. Some things you simply couldn’t predict about yourself. Just as Torian never expected to have a Voklha, and she never expected to love a Vokl on a planet of archipelagos and trees so large you could carve a house into them.

Life was funny, but beautiful.

The End

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