Epilogue
Eighteen months later
Life was great. Alistair had come through with his bag of carrots and Joe’s acceptance as an asylum seeker had been fast-tracked.
Instead of being given refugee status, he’d been granted indefinite leave to remain, which meant there’d be no five-year wait before the decision would be taken to allow him to stay or to send him home.
Home, right. That would have made Kaden smile except that Afghanistan would have been Joe’s destination.
He and Joe would have found somewhere else to live together.
Eli Blake had been sent to prison. He’d admitted everything and there’d been no trial. Kaden was glad about that. He didn’t know whether Blake had been aware of the role he and Joe had played in his downfall. Alistair had not asked them to do anything else, which was a relief.
Kaden had received a letter from Harris, sent to his father’s address. It was an apology for his behaviour. Apparently, he’d been having therapy. Kaden hoped he really had changed.
Now Joe was safe. He had a British passport.
A driving licence. One attempt by Kaden to teach him had so freaked him out, he’d booked lessons for Joe instead.
Joe had a national insurance number. A year ago, he’d applied to do an MSc in environmental science at King’s College in London, and though Kaden had worried that with no qualifications, he might not be accepted, Joe had waltzed through the tests and the interview.
He turned out to be brilliant. What a surprise.
He didn’t yet know which job offer Joe would accept.
He’d been headhunted by several consultancy firms even before he’d handed in his dissertation, which had a heading Kaden didn’t even try to understand.
Kaden had mostly carried on with the life he’d had before Joe, a bit of stand-up, freelance journalism, ghostwriting for others, including Alistair, and writing thrillers and fantasy for himself.
The latter was turning into the most lucrative work of all.
Though nothing compared to what Joe won gambling.
They had enough to buy a house outright now, but where was the question.
It depended on which job Joe went for. Kaden still liked living in London but the idea of escaping the traffic and congestion appealed.
They’d still keep their friends who were now Joe’s friends as well. Not Ben though. He’d drifted away.
Kaden and Alistair had cowritten two thrillers that had sold well, and he and Joe still saw him and Elsie occasionally, but Kaden had never felt quite the same about Alistair after what they’d been persuaded to do.
Though he was grateful Joe had the right to remain.
Alistair still occasionally pressed them about Joe’s origins, but they’d never tell.
Alistair had settled on the belief that Joe was the son of someone important and his records had been hidden by his country of origin to keep him safe.
Kaden checked the time. Almost two. It was a Saturday afternoon, and he was currently waiting to take his seat in a large London bookshop to do a reading from his latest book, the fifth in the fantasy series, and to sign copies.
He’d been alarmed when he’d seen how many boxes of books there were to sell.
Kaden’s agent, Hugh Winn, burst into the room. “They’re queueing out of the shop. I told you!”
Kaden had done three signings and imposter syndrome still made him worry no one would show up. Having a TV series based on his first fantasy novel, which had just started to show on Netflix, should have eased that fear, but it hadn’t.
“You ready?” Hugh asked.
“Yes.”
Kaden didn’t look at the audience when he went into the part of the bookshop that had been cordoned off, but when he turned and saw how many people there were, he gave an audible gulp.
Then he saw his dad and Joe sitting there, both of them beaming at him, and Kaden relaxed.
His dad loved Joe and that made Kaden so happy.
“Good morning,” Kaden said. “Thank you so much for coming. I hope I’m not going to bore you. Feel free to heckle if I do. I have bouncers strategically positioned. They’ve promised to be gentle with me.”
Polite laughter rippled through the crowd. Kaden sat, opened the book and began.
“Breaking the wheel was punishable by death, but Anais had a plan. If it worked, no one would know he was behind it. If it didn’t, they’d blame Ptolemy…”
As he read, the nerves slipped away. The rhythm of the language, the world he’d built—it all carried him forward. Kidnap, slavery, magic and love threaded with danger. It was fast, exciting and emotional.
When he finished, there was a beat of silence. Then a loud round of applause and people began to line up with their books.
Kaden laughed when he saw his dad reach the head of the queue. “Dad! You didn’t need to buy a copy.”
“Just put your name in it and I’ll flog it on eBay.”
Kaden chuckled and wrote To the best dad in the world. Love Kaden. XX
His dad rolled his eyes. “Pest! I can’t sell it now.”
“Exactly. See you back at the flat.”
“Sixish,” his dad said. “I’m off to the Royal Naval College in Greenwich to see the display about Nelson.”
Kaden watched him walk away, warmth settling in his chest, before he turned back to the queue.
His hand ached as he signed, but he didn’t rush. Each person had chosen his story to read, had already spent or would spend hours inside Kaden’s world. The least he could do was give them a few moments of his time.
By the end, though, his signature had started to look less clear and his wrist was protesting.
Finally, the last person stepped forward. Joe. Looking gorgeous. Kaden still felt it every time he looked at him, that quiet, breath-catching jolt. Still lean, unfairly handsome. And mine, his brain supplied, as if he needed reminding.
Joe set a book down. Not the one Kaden had been signing. “Hugh gave me this. The proof for your next one. I read almost all of it while I was waiting.”
“Almost all?” Joe still read at lightning speed.
“I thought I’d finish it in bed,” Joe said, “unless there’s something better to do. Is there?”
That earned a proper laugh from Kaden. “Did you like it?”
“What do you think? It’s brilliant. Of course I read all of it. I had to know what happened.”
“Well done!” Hugh bounced up. “It went well. The owner of the bookshop is delighted.”
“I can go now?”
“Make your escape.”
As they left the shop, Kaden stretched his aching hand and fingers. “I want to walk.”
Joe grinned. “Thought you might.”
Walking with Joe was one of his favourite things.
No destination, no pressure. Just drifting through London.
Along canals, on crooked cobbled streets, through sun-drenched squares, along the side of the Thames, through parks and gardens, past old warehouses turned into flats, past ancient buildings and past incredible new ones.
Joe was an expert on the London most people didn’t know about. Now Kaden was too.
“What are we cooking tonight?” Joe asked.
“Salmon and salad. Chocolate mousse. Dad loves chocolate mousse.”
Joe whined.
“And so do you.” Kaden laughed.
“You’ll have to give Bobby some salmon.”
Kaden huffed. “The cat that hates me?”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“He does. He tolerates me because I feed him. He loves you.” Kaden glanced at him. “That’s what I don’t understand. He loathed you on sight. Now he pines when you leave the room to go to the toilet.”
Joe shrugged. “It was the last vet visit. Trauma bonding.”
“Unbelievable,” Kaden muttered, though Joe had leaked, as he called it, when Bobby got distressed at the vets.
They walked in comfortable silence for a while, shoulders brushing now and then, the rhythm of their steps falling into sync as it always seemed to do.
“Hey,” Joe said after a moment.
“Yeah?”
Joe slowed, turning slightly. “You know they were all there for you, right?”
Kaden blinked. “What?”
“The crowd. The queue. The applause.” Joe’s voice softened. “That wasn’t luck. That’s yours now.”
Kaden looked ahead, at the people moving past them, at the ordinary street that suddenly didn’t feel quite so ordinary.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I think I’m starting to believe that.”
Joe smiled, reaching out to hook their fingers together.
The sun came out as they walked and Kaden knew that in one way, Joe was wrong, he was lucky.
If he hadn’t touched when he’d been supposed not to, he’d never have met Joe.
Love might have started with explosions and drama and lust, but it had settled down into a feeling that had crept around his body, just as Joe had.
Love had whispered in his ear, brushed fingers across his cheeks, stroked his back and told him this was what he’d been looking for.
Whenever Kaden did anything, there was always that feeling at the back of his mind that he wanted to tell Joe something, share something with him, hear what he thought.
Love was still lust, still finding joy in each other’s bodies but it was much more than that.
He glanced at Joe who immediately looked back at him and smiled.
The city stretched out around them, full of stories, full of lives, and Kaden had stopped feeling as if he was chasing a dream.
He’d already found him.
Several years later
The message arrived the way Joe always suspected it would, but had hoped it wouldn’t. Not with sound, nor light, but with recognition.
He was standing at the sink, washing a mug, when his world tilted.
Not really the world tilting, but him. The internal jolt hadn’t been violent, just enough to remind him that there were still links to a reality he once inhabited.
His former kind had to be somewhere in the vicinity of the Earth, which was worrying.
His hands fell still, water dripping from his fingers. Inside his chest, his heart raced in panic.
294
Now came sound. Hearing that number in his head lit up an old ache in his body.
Status unresolved. Report.
The words were in the language of his old planet. He wished he couldn’t remember it, but the memory was still there. He remembered everything.
Joe closed his eyes. Fuck! Fuck!
If he didn’t reply, would they leave him alone? No, they won’t.
Kaden was in the other room, half-asleep on the sofa, a book sliding toward the floor, Bobby snoozing beside him. Joe touched Kaden’s shoulder.
“Hey,” Kaden murmured and opened his eyes.
“I need to tell you something.”
They knew each other well enough for Kaden to understand this was something serious. He pulled Joe down next to him.
“Before I left my planet, along with the rest of the crew, I had a signal embedded in me. I hoped that when I transformed, that signal would be lost or malfunction or stay dormant. But a small part of me suspected that…” He chewed his lip.
“Oh God.” Kaden’s face was white. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Joe!” He took hold of Joe’s hand. “Now they’ve contacted you?”
“Yes. A few moments ago. They’d have been aware the craft was lost here, that we’d crash-landed, but they wouldn’t have known anyone survived until they were closer and detected me.”
Kaden squeezed his fingers. “They’re not coming here, are they? This is…a query. A check. A question. Right?”
“I need to talk to them.”
“Tell them you had your wings eaten. You were trapped in a tank. This was a hostile place. You’ve barely survived.”
“You weren’t hostile.”
“Maybe almost everyone but me would have been.”
“The thing is, I didn’t bond with my other.”
“You can say you tried.”
“I’m alive and I didn’t complete my directive. To fail is unacceptable. I was supposed to obey and protect. At all cost.”
Kaden released a shaky breath. “Has this ship come for you?”
“No. They’ll be doing the same as we were, looking for planets to provide resources, checking out this planet because the readings we sent back were favourable. Gash liked the look of it. Checking for survivors would have been automatic.”
“Okay, so they know you’re alive but they don’t know what the Earth is like. You said that if you went back, you’d tell them not to touch this world. Can you lie? Tell them they’d have no chance here?”
“Keep holding my hand.”
“Always.”
Joe opened himself to the signal and sent memory. Slightly adjusted.
How three thousand had died. How ten of them had been trapped due to the Captain’s mistake—easily made.
That was a lie. How his wings had been eaten to give Lanu a chance.
How he’d been taken from the tank against his will.
How unsuitable the planet was. How the people would react to an invasion with extreme violence.
They had weapons of mass destruction. Chemical and biological warfare.
He described the incineration of seven. The death of the Captain and chief engineer when they went into a human.
How only he had survived, but in a restricted way.
He advised against coming here. He accepted his fate.
Joe hoped that wasn’t piling it on a bit too thickly.
He didn’t say that this was his home. That he’d warn this planet of how to resist. That he would protect it and protect his human because that was his role. That’s what they’d engineered him to do. He was still performing that role. But now he was doing it with love.
Kaden put his hand on Joe’s heart, worry written all over his face.
294 came the message. Planet unsuitable. Rescue will not be attempted.
Then they were gone.
Joe felt them leave and exhaled shakily.
“What did they say?” Kaden asked.
“That the planet was unsuitable and they weren’t going to rescue me.”
“So we’re safe?”
Joe nodded.
Kaden pulled him into his arms. In the quiet that followed, Joe’s heart finally calmed. Safe at last. Finally, I can believe it.
“Did they understand how you’d survived?” Kaden stroked Joe’s cheek, still so smooth.
“I didn’t specify. I thought that was safer. They know Gash and Lanu perished because they were others. I did all I could to make it appear this planet was incompatible with our species. I’m confident this world is in no danger from them.”
“Make Bobby leave the room,” Kaden growled.
“You make him.”
Kaden rolled his eyes. “He’ll scratch me.”
Joe laughed. He got to his feet, picked up the purring cat, put him in the kitchen and closed the door. By the time he turned round, Kaden was half-undressed. Then completely undressed.
“Are we celebrating?” Joe asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Will there be cake?”
“Get your clothes off, ET.”
Joe beamed.
The End