Epilogue
The sun was warm on her skin, and for once in her life her head was completely empty.
Delliah sat on the white sand with her legs stretched out and her hands braced behind her as she listened to the lap of the waves against the beach. Her lips curved as she watched her little robot, her drakeen core, down at the waterline losing a war against the local birdlife.
It had been chasing them for ten minutes.
It had caught none of the birds, but it didn’t care.
The happy buzz through the link she had with it told her that.
It waved its forelimbs in big, excited arcs as it skittered across the wet sand.
The birds had stopped flying away and started circling it instead, the way kids circled the weird new kid once they’d decided he was harmless.
Then one of them landed on its head, and she snorted, covering her mouth quickly.
The core went absolutely still, every leg frozen mid-skitter as its optics swiveled upward to find the thing now preening on top of it.
A second bird landed on the core’s shoulder, then a third on an outstretched forelimb.
The core made a low, wondering chirp, its delight through the link so bright and so simple that she got the warm and fuzzies right there in the center of her chest.
“Don’t move,” she called. “You’re bird furniture now. That’s your life.”
The core held very, very still. Another bird landed.
Behind her, up the beach, a little house sat with its doors open. Kellat was inside, reading reports from the Vorrtan delegation and scowling at his dataflex. She’d realized he scowled at everything that wasn’t her.
Dropping her head back, she let the sun play over her face and smiled. A week. That was all it had been, one week of waking up in his arms and eating breakfast with sand in unlikely places and falling asleep to the sound of the sea. It was perfect.
She opened her eyes at the sound of footsteps. Kellat lowered himself to the sand beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. She’d had to get used to seeing him without his leathers, and the loose flowing pants that served as latharian casual dress.
“Amaelii sends her regards,” he said.
“Her regards.” Delilah’s eyebrow shot up. “That’s new.”
His lips quirked. “She has decided I am not entirely useless.”
“High praise from a warlady.”
“The highest.” He held out his dataflex, the screen angled toward her. “She also sent this. Medical notes from her own healer. Her sister is pregnant.”
Delilah blinked. “Her sister.” She tried to picture Amaelii having a sister and failed completely. “I didn’t know she had a sister.”
“Neither did I.” He was already scrolling, expression rapt. “No Latharian healer has ever documented a vorrtan pregnancy. Look at these readings. Remarkable.”
“You are such a nerd.”
He slid her a sideways look.
“I am not a nerd. I am a Lead Healer of the Latharian Empire.”
“Yeah. Which means you’re a giant, deadly nerd.” She leaned her shoulder into his arm. “Which Amaelii knew, admit it. She knew you’d dive into that right away, even though we’re supposed to be on honeymoon.”
He paused, a guilty look passing over his face. “She may have said something to that effect in the accompanying message. And forbade me to look at the files until I’m back at work.”
Delilah laughed, and then her gaze drifted back to the water.
“Harper commed me this morning,” she said instead. “They’re delayed. Kirr got pulled into something on the way back from their honeymoon, so the visit’s pushed back.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“Yeah, a bit.” And she was, but not as much as she would have been before. “But she’s coming. She’s actually coming here, and I get to show her all of it. The house. The beach. The little robot covered in birds.” She grinned. “She’s going to lose her mind.”
Kellat followed her gaze. “Kirr will be interested in the drakeen. You do realize that, don’t you? He might try some command codes on it.”
She shrugged. That wouldn’t work. Her little drakeen was hers now. They were buddies. It would never leave her, and she would never abandon it.
“He can try. Besides,” she nudged him. “It has six birds now. It’s very powerful.”
Right on cue, the core chirped smugly, and another bird landed on its back.
“Indeed,” Kellat chuckled, his fingers sliding between hers and holding on.
Letting her head fall against his shoulder, she closed her eyes and savored the feel of the sun on her face and the sound of the sea in her ears.
She didn’t need to do anything at all at the moment, and it was its own kind of perfection.
Thank you so much for reading Alien Healer’s Mate!
The next book in the Latharian Mate series will be Alien Duke’s Mate!