Chapter 12

Idon't need her kiss to know. I knew the moment she quite literally fell into my arms. I didn't need to see her face or anything else. The way she fit into my arms, the electric jolt, the instant connection and I knew. She is the one. My one. My treasure.

I didn't tell Riley then because I wasn't positive, but certainty came quickly. I know from the other humans that it doesn't work the same for them. They are slow to realize at times. Reluctant to trust in something more than themselves. Hesitant to give themselves over to Tajss and let fate take the lead.

Knowing that I have been patient. I would wait an eternity if that is what is required. As long as she is here, safe, and I can provide what I can for her, then nothing else matters. Of course I want more. Her kiss is… I am no poet and do not have the words to describe it or her for that matter.

My treasure.

Warmth suffuses my core and spreads into my limbs. She is everything. The suns in the sky, the air that I breathe, the reason and purpose for my existence. My duty to the Order comes secondary to her but includes her. Guiding Tajss through these dark times I do and did for her, though I did not know it at the time, now I do.

Her sadness fills the air between us. The pain she carries is so much more than the scars on her face. As she breaks our kiss I pull her into me and wrap myself around her. I hold her until her pain breaks free of the barriers she has built in her soul.

I am familiar with what the humans call tears. A strange and alien reaction. A dangerous thing on Tajss, to waste water in such a way, but then the humans are not designed for survival here. They are, in truth, alien.

Alien. I turn the idea over. How strange that my treasure is an alien. From some far, far distant planet, come here to Tajss by accident or by the hand of fate itself? Such questions are for philosophers. What I believed before has been thrown into doubt by the betrayal of the Eye. Now I do not know what is truth and what is fiction, but this I know. She is mine. And I am hers. In the end, nothing else matters.

She sobs, her tears running down my chest. I wrap my tail around us to pull her even tighter then I close my wings around us. They shield us from the outside world and inside them there is only the two of us. Together.

I know little of fate, or aliens, or anything besides war and preparing for war as that was my duty in the Order. To fight and be ready to fight, but though she may be an alien it doesn't matter. Her soul and mine are one. We are two halves of the same and that idea fills my head as she lets out her grief.

At last her sobs ease and then she clings to me and I to her. No words are necessary and while my body wants her very much, now is not the time for such. There is, after all, all the time in the world for us. If fate can bring her across the vast emptiness of galaxies to be in my arms, I am certain it will not jerk her away so easily.

Leaning down I kiss the top of her head and hold tight, letting the darkness outside engulf us.