Epilogue
Noel
I had no urge to board the scavenger ship I’d arrived on, nor an urge to travel the stars again.
Space belonged somewhere else, besides near me.
Space bugs, space scorpions, space rocks, and space titty crabs could stay where they belonged, in the stars, where other people who cared for that sort of thing could enjoy.
Nexus sat on Vil’s shoulders, his bright eyes full of joy as they loaded down Roan’s ship full of goods for trade—things that would make the church happy.
And a promise that the Naleucians were nearly extinct, as they’d feared, but they would recover into an era that knew nothing of their wars.
An era of Colthraxian-born Naleucians that would never spread the genes of their ilk and restore the very species they’d sought to destroy.
In my arms cuddled a little omega, as pale as I ever thought of being, but instead of the blue of his sibling, he was violet, a color that reminded me very much of Raziel in a way, especially with his dark hair and fierce blue eyes.
He smiled up at me, having never known a moment of pain or separation.
He loved me, as much as Vil and Nexus did, and I had to do nothing to earn that love but be there.
Wallace approached us, standing tall and smiling wide. “Come, give Uncle Wallace a hug before we head out, little bastards.”
Nexus needed no prompting. He leaped from Vil’s shoulders for a spin, flicking his little wings as if they longed for air already. “I come with, please!”
“Not until you’re older and understand what’s out there, lil man.” Wallace handed him back and took the little omega from me with a gentle squeeze as he pawed at his uncle with the expectation of food.
“Ack!” Wallace turned his head away as the little one reached into his mouth. “Raze! Come on!”
Raze, a broken tradition, fire that burned to the ground to bring about something new.
Named for a pater that I would never see again.
One that allowed me to survive and had saved their species from certain doom.
And in their language, it meant the light of dawn, and I saw it as fitting. Vil liked it, too.
“Bye bye, Uncle Asshole!” Nexus waved at Roan as he approached, their little one cradled in his arms, a sweet little spectral-sheened child with warmly hued skin. The little one waved at us, probably because it saw Nexus doing it.
Roan ignored the moniker and leaned into Vil to kiss Nexus on the head. “Do be sure to cause as much trouble as possible for your Affa.”
Nexus beamed, tail flicking with joy.
“I’ll be back in a few months. I promise.” Wallace patted Raze on the head and tilted him back into my arms with a wistful sigh, as if he didn’t want to leave. “Someone needs to feed them.”
“And F—eel me.” Roan stumbled over his words and choked before I offered him what I hoped was a pleasant smile.
It was good to see people change, because I had to hope they could.
I had to hope that the people who did what they did to me would learn better, would change and never do it again.
I had to hope the world changed, because Terrans had done much to me, and Roan’s threat of bringing more increased the risk every time of me being locked away and experimented on.
Gorm gave a lingering hug to one of Roan’s crewmates, an alpha I had little interaction with, whom he had formed some sort of attachment with. They at least loved lavishing a certain little yellow omega with mostly monogamous attention.
“Noel?” Roan caught my drifting attention before he leaned in to give me a hug. With quiet words, he whispered to my ear, “I’ll never be able to apologize enough for what I did, and for what everyone else did to you.”
I froze, tense and uncertain. Unless it was fucking or fighting, I had no idea what to do with physical contact. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you. And nobody that I bring back to Paradise will ever do that to you again. I’m the last person that will ever get a piece of you like that.” Roan squeezed me tight and hugged my ankle with his tail with a gentle flick that made my body settle in a way I didn’t think possible.
They turned and left, boarding the ship as engines engaged, Leticia and Merriel arguing over the speakers, much to their crew’s snickers of delight.
The two made a good pair, and while they would be gone, we’d be working with a whole new operating system, something Leticia reverently referred to as her and Merriel’s baby.
They’d reprogrammed the Naleucian universal AI to be sentient, given it pieces of themselves that thought and acted.
They’d named her Lizardbeth. I’d assumed it was Merriel’s doing, but everyone called her Liz. I smiled as they closed the doors and hit the alarm to signal people to back away.
“Noel, your heartbeats are increasing and cortisol levels rising.” Liz’s piping voice earned a shrug from me.
“I don’t like seeing people I love leave.” I smiled and bit back the sting in my eyes as Vil’s tail coiled with mine.
“They’ll be back.” She added a little Austrian accent to comfort me, a reference to some twentieth-century Earth robot-man-cyborg movie.
I glanced up and watched the cockpit windows as Wallace waved.
As my gaze met his, he lowered his hand and made the circle on his thigh with index finger and thumb.
I had been playing the game longer than most people had been alive. So many people had forgotten the game existed, I’d become the universe’s champion of the game. My hundreds of years-long streak ended with one flippant gesture from an uppity robot, and a whole new world had learned the rules.
Did it make me less special?
Probably not.
But did it bother me?
Absolutely.
But as I glanced around at the surrounding community, the plentiful food and love, the bright smiles and expressive tails, my heart swelled.
And as for all the burdens I carried?
I’d run out of space.