Chapter 21 #2
She nodded, her expression sobering. “I know. My claim is gone. Most of my equipment was destroyed. GenCon is probably still watching the area. And we can’t exactly set up a homestead when we’re supposed to be helping track down emergence sites and building a resistance network.”
“All true.” He tilted his head, considering.
“But not insurmountable. The polar regions are vast—far larger than your original claim. There are places GenCon cannot easily monitor, let alone reach. And if we are meant to help others who emerge…” A slow smile spread across his face.
“Many of the preservation chambers are in the deep polar ice. If anyone is equipped to find them and reach them before GenCon does, it is someone who knows that territory intimately.”
Her eyes widened as she followed his logic. “You’re saying we could be more useful up there than down here.”
“I’m saying that our preferences and our purpose might not be as incompatible as we feared.”
She was quiet for a long moment, turning the idea over in her mind. He could almost see the gears working—the practical engineer calculating logistics and weighing risks.
“We’d need supplies,” she said finally. “Equipment. Some kind of base of operations. My crawler survived, but it’s not designed for long-term habitation.”
“What about the ranger station where we sheltered? R-339 said there are others like it—emergency outposts scattered throughout the polar territory. Unmanned, but maintained. We could use them as staging points while we search for something more permanent.”
“And we’d need to stay in contact with Alina and Rhyx. Share information, coordinate efforts.” She frowned. “The communication equipment in my crawler has limited range. We’d need relay access.”
“The cyborg network extends throughout Mars. R-339 can provide access.”
“And GenCon. They’ll still be looking for us. For you.”
“Let them look.” His voice hardened. “The polar ice is my territory. They do not know it as I do. We can evade them indefinitely if we’re careful. And if they find us…” He shrugged. “The ice can take them.”
She nodded eagerly. “It could work. It won’t be easy, but…
” She looked at him, and he saw something in her eyes that made his heart stutter.
“I want to try. Even if it’s hard. Even if we fail.
I want to try to have a life, Adjar. A real life, not just survival.
And I want that life to be in the place that feels like home. ”
“The polar ice.”
“Our polar ice.”
He pulled her close, wrapping his wings around them both. The room was still too warm, the settlement still too close, but here, in this moment, with her in his arms, none of that seemed to matter quite as much.
“We should talk to Alina and Rhyx in the morning,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “Explain what we want to do. Make sure they understand we’re not abandoning the alliance—we’re just contributing to it in a different way.”
“They will understand. She and Rhyx chose to make their home in this settlement, but it was a choice. She will respect ours.”
“I hope so. I like her.” She paused. “I don’t make friends easily. But I think… I think she could be a friend. If we let her.”
“Then we will let her.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “We will maintain the connection even as we return to our territory. It is possible to be part of something larger while still honoring who we are.”
“Found family,” she murmured.
“What?”
“Something I read once. About people who build their own families by choice rather than blood. Found family.” She shifted to look up at him.
“That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? Not just you and me, but…
all of us. The dragons who are waking up.
The mates we find. The allies we make. We’re building something new because the old structures are gone. ”
He considered this. His memories of old Mars were still fragmentary, but he remembered structured hierarchies and duties and roles carved in stone over millennia. That world was gone. It had been gone for longer than he could comprehend.
But perhaps that wasn’t entirely a loss.
“My people believed in bloodlines,” he said slowly.
“In the importance of heritage and lineage. Warriors were bred to fight. Keepers were trained to remember. Everyone had a place and a purpose, a role they were expected to fulfill.” He paused.
“But when everything fell apart—when the world died and we chose preservation over extinction—we did so together. Warriors and Keepers, scholars and soldiers, all of us equal in the face of annihilation. The old structures didn’t matter anymore. Only survival.”
“And now?”
“Now…” He stroked her hair, marveling at the softness of it. “Now we build again. But perhaps we build something different. Something that allows for choice. For connections that are earned rather than inherited.” He smiled slightly. “Found family. Yes. I think I like that concept.”
They lay in comfortable silence for a while, the earlier tension gradually easing from both of them. The room was still too warm, and somewhere in the settlement Rhyx’s presence still prickled at his territorial instincts, but it was easier to bear now that they had a plan. A direction.
“I should be scared,” she said eventually. “We’re planning to return to a hostile wilderness while being hunted by the most powerful corporation on Mars. We have almost no resources, no backup plan, and no guarantee that any of this will work.”
“And yet?”
“And yet I feel… hopeful.” She sounded almost surprised by her own admission. “I haven’t felt hopeful in a long time. Not real hope—the kind that actually believes good things might happen. I’d forgotten what it felt like.”
“Hope is a choice,” he said. “My people believed that. When we entered preservation, we didn’t know if we would ever wake. We didn’t know if Mars would recover, if there would be anything to return to. We chose hope anyway. Because the alternative was despair, and despair served no purpose.”
“Pragmatic hope.”
“Survival hope.” He tightened his arms around her. “The hope of beings who refuse to give up simply because the odds are against them.”
She laughed softly. “That sounds like stubbornness dressed up in fancy words.”
“Stubbornness is an underrated virtue.”
“Says the ancient dragon who refused to die even when his entire civilization collapsed.”
“Says the lone miner who refused to leave a wounded stranger in the snow even when it would have been safer to walk away.”
She was quiet for a moment. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”
“We are.” He pressed another kiss to her forehead. “We are exactly what each other needs.”
The words settled between them like a promise. A vow. Something more binding than any formal acknowledgment could be.
They were mates. They had chosen each other, against all logic and reason, in the midst of chaos and danger. And now they were choosing to build a life together—not the easy life, not the safe life, but the life that felt right.
“Sleep,” he said gently. “Tomorrow we’ll talk to Alina. Tonight, rest.”
“I don’t know if I can sleep. My mind is still spinning.”
“Then let it spin. But do so with your eyes closed, wrapped in my wings, safe from everything except your own thoughts.”
She made a sound that was half protest, half acquiescence, but she settled against him more comfortably, her body relaxing by degrees.
“Adjar?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For understanding. For wanting the same things I want.” She paused. “For being willing to leave all of this to come back to the ice with me.”
“I’m not leaving anything,” he said. “I’m going home.”
Home.
The word resonated through him, awakening memories he hadn’t known he possessed.
Images of the polar Vaults—not the cold storage chamber where he’d slept for millennia, but the living spaces that had existed before.
Halls carved from living ice. Libraries that preserved the accumulated knowledge of generations.
Gathering places where Keepers shared their wisdom and debated the future.
All gone now. All lost to time.
But perhaps… perhaps something new could grow in their place. Something smaller and simpler, but no less meaningful.
A home built for two. A sanctuary in the ice where a dragon and his mate could find peace.
Her breathing slowly evened out, her body growing heavy against his as sleep finally claimed her. he held her close, his wings wrapped around them both, and for the first time since arriving in this too-warm, too-crowded settlement, felt something approaching contentment.
The night stretched on around them. Somewhere, Rhyx stood guard over his own mate. Somewhere, GenCon plotted their capture. Somewhere, beneath the Martian soil, others waited to emerge—dragons who didn’t know what they would wake to, who would need guidance and protection and hope.
But for now, in this moment, there was only this.
A male and his mate, planning their future together.