Epilogue Clear Horizons #3
All of them. Simultaneous. Swelling to full engorgement inside me, creating a seal of textured pressure that holds him deep while his orgasm hits — and through the claiming bond I feel it double, his pleasure layering over mine in cascading feedback loops until I can’t tell where my body ends and his begins.
I come again, or still, or continuously — it doesn’t matter, the sensation is a single sustained detonation that goes on for thirty, forty seconds while his biology does what it’s designed to do, pulsing release in rhythmic waves, the ridges maintaining that devastating lock until every aftershock has passed.
We stay connected. His forehead against mine, both breathing hard, his markings cycling through chaotic post-orgasm patterns I’ve privately named fireworks mode. The ridges soften slowly — each node deflating in sequence, and the slide of separation draws twin shivers.
Around us, the greenhouse is wrecked. Soil on the floor. Seedling trays scattered. Claw marks gouged into the worktable. Condensation dripping from glass panels that are now fogged opaque from two bodies generating considerably more heat than the irrigation system was designed to manage.
“We destroyed the xenobotany station,” I inform him.
“The worktable survived. The seedlings are resilient.” He surveys the damage with the expression of a man professionally assessing the aftermath of an environmental event. “The Kepler-7b hybrids appear unharmed.”
“Tavia’s going to notice the claw marks.”
“I’ll tell her it was a structural test.”
“She won’t believe that for a second.”
“No.” His thumb traces the claiming mark on my collarbone. Gentle now. Tender. The predator-to-caretaker shift that gets me every single time. “But she’ll pretend to. She’s tactful when it benefits her.”
I kiss him. Slow and thorough, tasting ozone and that faintly sweet lubrication that’s uniquely him, and underneath it — soil. Both of us taste like earth. Like the greenhouse floor. Like the ground we’re standing on and the atmosphere he’s building above it.
“You just proposed to me and then fucked me in your life’s work,” I say against his mouth. “That’s either romantic or sacrilegious.”
“In Lividian culture, consummation in a place of growth is considered auspicious.” A beat. “I may have just made that up.”
“You did NOT just make that up.”
“The cultural database is extensive. I cannot be expected to recall every entry.”
“You have perfect recall. You’re lying.”
His markings pulse warm gold. The colour of certainty. Of home. “Perhaps. But the sentiment is accurate regardless. Everything important in my life grows here. Including this.”
I press my face against his chest. Dirt on my skin. His heartbeat under my ear. The greenhouse humming around us, alive and warm and full of things we planted together.
No. I am not divorcing this man. Not before, during, or after the wedding.
Not ever.
The Golden Retriever comes in hot.
I’m watching from the docking bay observation deck — cleaned up, dressed, only slightly glowing from the greenhouse incident — when the courier ship cuts through Kepler’s upper atmosphere at an angle that’s technically within regulations and spiritually in violation of every safety protocol Mother Morrison ever wrote.
The hull is standard OOPS issue. The paint job is not. Someone has applied sparkly star decals across the port side, along with what appears to be a hand-painted motto: WILL DELIVER ANYTHING EXCEPT BAD VIBES.
“Incoming vessel: OOPS courier The Golden Retriever,” Pickles announces. “Registered pilot Florence Knight. I have... stylistic concerns about the hull ornamentation.”
Mother Morrison’s voice crackles over the station relay, already tight with the specific exasperation of a woman who has explained protocol to this person one thousand times. “Foxton. I’m sending Knight with your supply run. She is efficient, competent, and fully qualified. She is also—”
“Morrison, I can HEAR you!” A bright, warm voice cuts across the channel. “And whatever you’re about to say, remember that I delivered the Nexus Seven medical cargo two days early AND brought cookies!”
“Bringing cookies is not a professional metric, Knight.”
“It should be! Ask anyone!”
“I’ve asked. No one agrees.”
“That’s because you asked scary people, Morrison! Ask the nice ones!”
The Golden Retriever touches down with unexpected grace — the flying is actually gorgeous, smooth atmospheric entry, precise landing. Whatever else Florence Knight is, she can fly.
The docking bay pressurizes. The hatch opens.
Honey-blonde hair in a messy braid, held back by sparkly clips shaped like tiny stars.
Warm brown eyes that crinkle at the corners because she’s already smiling — has probably been smiling since she woke up.
A cardigan with embroidered flowers over a standard-issue courier tactical vest, which is a fashion choice I have never seen anyone make and yet somehow works.
She sees me and her entire face illuminates.
“You must be Dove!” She’s across the docking bay in four strides and hugging me before I can react.
Full-body, committed, the kind of hug that says I’ve decided we’re friends and this is happening.
“Mother told me everything. Well, not everything — she’s stingy about details, but enough!
You’re the one who flew through the Kepler storms and fell for the atmospheric scientist and saved the station!
You’re brILLIANT and I brought you emergency baking supplies because Morrison mentioned you bake and bakers are my FAVOURITE people! ”
“...Hi?”
“I’m Flossie!” She releases me, beaming.
“Or Flo, or Flossy, or Flo-Flo — honestly, whatever you like, lovey! Twelve years running OOPS routes and I’ve never met a stranger.
” She turns to the cargo hold. “Now, where do you want sixty kilograms of agricultural supplements and—” her voice drops conspiratorially “—an unauthorized box of vanilla extract that’s technically not on the manifest but I figured no one checks vanilla? ”
“Pickles checks everything.”
“I have already catalogued the contraband vanilla,” Pickles confirms. “I am choosing to classify it as ‘essential morale supplies’ for administrative purposes.”
Flossie gasps. “Oh, I LIKE him. Is he always this accommodating?”
“He is never accommodating,” I say. “He just likes vanilla.”
“I like efficiency,” Pickles corrects. “The vanilla happens to correlate with a seventeen percent improvement in station-wide satisfaction metrics, which I attribute entirely to the Captain’s baking output.”
Her cargo, despite the flashy entrance, is immaculate. Every crate organized, manifests filed in triplicate, hazardous materials properly sealed. Mother Morrison trained her well — there’s that bone-deep competence underneath the sunshine, the kind you can’t fake.
Over tea in the mess hall — she carries her own supply, six varieties, insists on sharing — Flossie talks with her hands, her whole body, her sparkly hair clips catching the station lights.
She learns every colonist’s name within an hour.
Produces small gifts from her cargo bag like a magician — a shawl from Nexus Seven, dried fruit from the Veridian markets, and a stuffed xenobotany plant for Tavia that makes my daughter shriek with delight.
But underneath the warmth, something catches my attention.
“Three shipments stolen on the outer rim this quarter,” Flossie says, stirring her tea.
Her voice stays light but her eyes go sharp — just for a second.
A different woman looking out through the sunshine.
“Medical supplies, mostly. The colonies that needed them just went without for months. OOPS filed the reports, insurance covered the costs, but the people, lovey.” She shakes her head.
“Someone should track those thieves down. Get it back.”
“That’s not really OOPS’s job,” I say carefully.
“No.” She sips her tea. “It isn’t.”
Silence. Not awkward — weighted. The silence of someone whose job doesn’t quite fit the shape of who they’re becoming. I recognize it the way you recognize your own handwriting.
Then the sunshine snaps back. “Anyway! More tea? I’ve got chamomile — it’s my post-delivery blend. Morrison hates chamomile, which is why I send her three boxes every month. It’s my personal mission to make that woman relax.”
“Knight.” Mother Morrison’s voice, still on the relay. “I heard that.”
“Then DRINK THE CHAMOMILE, Morrison!”
“Hang up and finish your delivery.”
“I’ll finish my delivery when I’m done making friends! Friends are IMPORTANT, Morrison! You should try it sometime!”
“I have friends.”
“Luzrak doesn’t count! He’s contractually obligated to tolerate you!”
“Goodbye, Knight.” The channel clicks off with the particular firmness of a woman who has ended this exact conversation hundreds of times.
Flossie grins at me. “She loves me.”
“That is not the word I’d use.”
“She loves me and she won’t admit it. It’s fine. I’m patient.” She lifts her tea cup. “To Kepler Station. And to people who build homes in impossible places.”
I clink my mug against hers and think: watch this one There’s something under the cardigans and the nicknames and the star-shaped clips. Something fierce and calculating and hungry for more than deliveries.
I know that hunger. I had it once, before a storm grounded me in the right place at the right time.
Evening. The greenhouse. Full circle.
Tavia insists on showing Flossie her xenobotany experiments, which means all of us are crammed between growing stations while an eight-year-old delivers a lecture on fungal networks with the confidence of a tenured professor.
Flossie listens with genuine fascination, asking questions that make Tavia’s markings blaze, and somehow she’s teaching my daughter to thread sparkly clips into her black-and-teal hair while discussing mycelial communication patterns.
Cetus stands behind me. His hand rests on the small of my back — the spot that’s become our default point of contact, the place where his heat bleeds into me like a promise.
Through the greenhouse windows, Kepler-7b’s sky stretches vast and slowly changing.
Less orange. More green at the edges. Three years.
Three years and we walk under open sky. Three years and he claims me under the atmosphere he built. Three years and the girl who never stayed anywhere becomes the woman who helped a planet learn to breathe.
“Fondness levels across all monitored personnel,” Pickles says from the greenhouse speakers, his tone carrying the particular precision he uses when he’s about to say something that matters, “have reached one hundred percent.” A pause.
Not processing — something else. Something that shouldn’t be possible for a military-grade AI core but seems to be happening anyway.
“Cross-referencing with historical data, this represents an unprecedented measurement. I am... complete.”
The word sits in the air like a seedling finding soil.
“Pickles.” My voice is rough. “Are you having feelings?”
“I am having data, Captain. The data happens to be warm.” Another pause. “I am choosing not to analyze this further. Some variables are better experienced than solved.”
Cetus’s arm tightens around me. Tavia laughs at something Flossie says, her markings blazing, star clips glinting in her hair. The planet turns slowly toward breathable outside the glass.
I used to think staying still was the thing that killed you. That roots were ropes and home was a trap and the only safe direction was away.
Famous last words.
The safest place I’ve ever been is right here — in a greenhouse on a terraforming station, with soil under my fingernails and a claiming mark on my collarbone and a family I built out of stubbornness and cinnamon rolls and a really good crash landing.
Clear skies ahead. For the first time in my life, I’m not flying away from them.
I’m walking toward them.
Dove and Cetus got their HEA. But the OOPS crew isn't done delivering chaos.
Turn the page for Chapter 1 of Lost in Transit