I hesitate. Last names are a sore spot with me. Mesakkah are proud of their lineage and family names are revered—the older, the better. “I don’t have a real last name,” I admit to her. “I’m station trash. I was dumped on Riis Station—at the docks—when I was a kit. Grew up in the slums there. I don’t have a good family name to share with you. My full name is Vordigar Riis-Dock.” I shrug. “And the ‘Vordigar’ comes from the name of the old dock-master’s favorite racing sled. I’m a nobody.”
She shakes her head, clasping my hands, her eyes bright. “You’re Vordigar Riis-Dock, protector and husband to Piper Riis-Dock, your wife. You’re a soldier, a good man, a farm-owner, and a father. There’s no one else I’d rather be married to.”
Her brilliant smile makes me feel as if I can take on the universe.
Epilogue
VORDIGAR
“Da Da!”
My daughter squeals as she races into the barn, her arms stretched wide as she toddles toward me.
“Whoa there,” I say, grabbing her with one arm and tucking her against my side. My other hand’s deep in the innards of a fussy drone, trying to jiggle the motor so it’ll stop sputtering when it’s out in the field. It’s not my drone, but that of a neighbor. For the last two seasons, everyone in all the neighboring farms have been bringing over their drones for me to fix, once they saw how fantastic our crops looked after I tuned ours. It brings in extra money, which is a good thing, because my little monster of a daughter is going to need new clothes if she keeps outgrowing hers. I extract my hand from the drone carefully and wipe an oily smear on Kessa’s little nose. “Did you hide from your mother again?”
“Da Da!” she cries again, thrilled. That’s the only word she knows how to say just yet, much to my Piper’s consternation.
“Your mommy’s going to be real mad when she sees you in here with Da Da’s equipment,” I tell her, hefting her onto my hip and exiting the barn.
I close the doors behind me a split second before Piper comes racing out—well, waddling out, since she’s heavily pregnant with our second child. Her face is flushed and her dark hair disheveled, but she’s never looked more beautiful to me.
“There she is.” Piper shakes her head, putting a hand to her brow. “I swear, it’s like she knows the moment I sit down at the tapestry, it’s time to run off and find her dad.” Her mouth curves into a rueful smile as she gazes up at me. “I blame you for making her such a daddy’s girl.”
“Like that’s a problem?” I lean over and kiss the top of my wife’s head and then wipe a smear on her nose, too.
She wrinkles up her face, laughing, and grabs a handful of my tunic to wipe it off. “You’re just in time for breakfast, and then I’d like to get some work in on my tapestry if that’s all right. Do you mind watching Kessa for a few hours?”
“Mind?” I bounce my daughter on my hip and she giggles, her small hands smacking against my jaw. My daughter looks every inch the mesakkah, from her blue skin right down to the tiny tail. The only callbacks to her mother are the nose—snub and adorable like Piper’s—and the fact that her horns are tiny and delicate things. It’s an oddly charming mix, and I can’t wait to see what our son will look like when he comes out. “I don’t mind at all. Kessa can help me deliver a drone back to Jutari’s farm. You want to go with Da Da and deliver a drone?”
“Da Da!” my daughter cries again, her small hands patting my scarred jaw.
“I think that’s a yes,” Piper says, beaming up at me. “I just got in some new thread and I want to finish the bottom of the tapestry.”
“The bottom?” I ask, surprised. She works on it every time she gets a chance, but between the farm and the baby—and me, demanding her attention like the shameless male I am—it sometimes sits for long periods of time without her touching it. “Isn’t it supposed to be your life story?”
“It is.” She shrugs. “But I have our family at the bottom, and I don’t think more needs to be said after ‘They lived happily ever after.’ Do you?”
She’s got a point.
I kiss my daughter’s brow, full of love for her, and then I kiss Piper, because it didn’t take me long to fall completely and utterly in love with this clever, brave, achingly sweet human. Love didn’t come first for us, but when it hit, it took my breath—and everything else—with it. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my mate…and now my kit. “Happy ever after is the perfect place to leave it,” I agree, my chest aching with the joy I feel. “Just leave plenty of room for more children if we need to add them, Little Bit.”
Piper giggles, the sound so keffing beautiful it makes my heart soar, even after all this time. “I plan on it. I know what a stud their father is.”
“Da Da!” my daughter agrees.
With them at my side, a male could conquer worlds. But for me, a quiet farm and my family is more than enough.