82. Scotlind
EIGHTY-TWO
SCOTLIND
I woke up to warmth surrounding me. I smiled before I even opened my eyes, knowing the cause behind it.
Tezya.
We’d been in The Miles —the name given to the spacecraft—for a month now. I could understand why our ancestors agreed to the Peace Treaty all those centuries ago—being in space sucked.
Without Tezya warming the air around me, I was pretty sure I would have been freezing twenty-four-seven. But I couldn’t believe it—we actually did it. We were both alive and heading to Allium together. Everything felt so surreal.
“Good morning,” he murmured onto the top of my hair. His hand wrapped around my back, pulling me closer to him.
“Morning.” I kissed down his chest, something I hadn’t been able to stop doing since we’d been in space. Every day felt like a dream, and I was too scared to wake up from it.
He’s real, I kept telling myself. He’s alive. He’s here with me.
I felt guilty being this happy. Anytime I saw Kallon or Vallie, my heart sank a little .
Kallon was doing better than my best friend, or at least that’s what she wanted everyone to think. She put a mask on her emotions and pretended like everything was okay, but I knew it wasn’t—she wasn’t okay. Whenever Tezya and I weren’t in our shared pod, we tried to spend all our free time with her. Rainer was by her side whenever we couldn’t be, but she tried to brush us off.
I had no idea how Vallie was managing. Peter said she’d been distancing herself more and more, and I knew it had to do with being in space. Miles should have been with us.
“I know what I want to do when we get to Allium,” Tezya said after a moment. I opened my eyes and adjusted to the darkness. Neither of us had turned on the lights yet, and although our pod had a large window overlooking the stars, it only cast a slight glow over us.
“Hmmm,” I mumbled, still trailing kisses down his belly. When he asked me the question two weeks ago, I told him that I wanted him to train me with his abilities. Since all I had were my water powers now, I wanted to explore our bond—something we couldn’t do on the spacecraft because if I burned it down—well, we all agreed not to use our powers for the next six months. Air, electric, and Alluse users were the only ones that were allowed to. And although Tezya snuck some of his fire abilities when we were alone in our pod, he technically wasn’t supposed to.
Air users helped with the pressure stabilization, electric users supplied the lights and mechanics, and Alluse users rotated watching over the prisoners in the belly of the craft. But that was it. No one else was allowed to use their abilities.
I tried to avoid thinking about it—how many Advenians were kept in cages down below. We decided to empty the prison, and that included everyone inside it—the prisoners in the cages and the ones thrown into the pit. Athler was also somewhere below us too… It made me uneasy, but we couldn’t leave anyone on Ea rth. It wasn’t fair to the humans. They needed a fresh start, just like we did.
We planned to have a trial for everyone, knowing that some of the prisoners were probably wrongly convicted just like Sie had been—but it was something else we were pushing off until we got to Allium, something we’d worry about later.
So for right now, I decided I just wanted to soak up these next six months—well five now. Five more months of no responsibilities. Five more months of recovery, of just enjoying Tezya. When we reached Allium, then we’d figure everything else out.
Tezya had kissed me and agreed to train me as long as I trained him with my water. The idea of training him felt weird, but I knew I was going to enjoy every second of it.
When I had asked Tezya the same question, what he wanted to do when we got to Allium, he said he needed time to think about it.
He pulled me up to his face, his hands instantly cupping my cheeks. “I want to get married.”
I was speechless for a moment. One whole moment and then, “What?”
“Marry me, Scotlind.” He was smiling down at me, his scar rising slightly across his face, and his hair was tousled from sleep.
“I thought you didn’t want marriage—” I kept thinking about one of the first conversations we had at the hut, how he told me he didn’t believe in them.
“With you, I want it. I want it all. I want you to be mine in every way.” He kissed my lips softly, barely a touch. “I want you as my best friend, my bond mate, the love of my fucking life, and my wife.” He kissed me again. “So will you marry me?”
“Yes.” I smiled, tears rolling down my face because apparently I even cried when I was happy. My hands intertwined in his hair as my legs locked around his hips, and I rolled on top of him. “Yes.” I grinned into his mouth, consuming his as I kissed him. “I want to be yours.” I kissed him again, my tears falling onto his face. “I love you, Tezya.”
“I love you, Scotlind.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. “Scotlind Xandrin, I could get used to the sound of that.”
“I was thinking…” He pulled back just enough to look at me. “What if we changed our last name together? Xandrin was the King’s name. It never belonged to me.”
“What do you want to change it to?”
“What about Sirena?”
I gasped, thinking it over as more tears fell from my eyes.
“Only if you want to,” he added quickly.
I shook my head, not able to form the words of how much I wanted to. Sirena —my real last name. I finally felt happy enough to deserve it. Scotlind Sirena seemed like the perfect mix of both—the perfect name to start over with.
“Yes,” I finally managed to get out. “I would love that.”
I was so happy, and I realized that it didn’t matter where I was—abandoned in Tennebris, a prisoner in Lux, a refugee in a camp, or a girl on a spacecraft—because as long as I was with him, I would always be home.
Tezya Anthony Sirena was my home, and I finally found where I belonged.