Epilogue

NO ONE IN THE CLINIC missed Amy's midmorning sprint to the bathroom where she lost her breakfast. When she emerged, feeling better but weak and slightly lightheaded, Adria, Juna, and Ellar bombarded her with questions about missed periods, breast tenderness, and other events of morning sickness. She had all the above and admitted to dizziness and daytime drowsiness as well.

They ordered tests immediately, but Amy already knew the results. She'd suspected for a few weeks but was afraid to get her hopes up. If she and her warriors were mates in the usual sense, and by that, she didn't mean two instead of three, but highly matched and compatible, she wouldn't be at all surprised considering all the sex they'd been having. But usual they were not.

Amy paced the confines of her small reception office—only four strides in any direction before she came up against a wall—as she anxiously waited for Adria to come back with the results from her blood sample.

When her friend appeared in the doorway, she had a gentle smile on her face. Amy took that as a good sign, but, when she didn't speak right away, she prompted, "Well? Has another miracle happened? "

"Yes. You're pregnant, my friend," Adria confirmed as she moved forward to envelop her in a hug. "I'm so happy for you."

Stunned, even though she'd been almost 99.9 percent certain, Amy's head spun as tears welled in her eyes.

"I never even imagined..." she whispered, her voice barely audible. In a sudden surge of urgency, she pulled out of her friend's arms and searched her office for her communicator. "I have to tell my mates!"

Adria, understanding the significance of the moment, offered a supportive nod. "Of course. Tell them I said congratulations." She started toward the door but then paused and turned back. "Once you're done with your call, I'd like to conduct a noninvasive scan, to have a quick look."

Amy nodded distractedly, her mind consumed with the message she needed to send to Remus and Tarus.

Before she knew it, she found herself in a paper gown, lying on a cold, unforgiving table, shivering in the chilly air. She couldn't help but wonder why medical facilities, whether in this alien world or back on Earth, always had to be so frigid. As Adria was finishing up the scan, they heard a commotion in the hallway.

"That's the fathers-to-be," her friend guessed. "Warriors, especially when they're riled, aren't exactly soft-spoken and unassuming. Have you noticed?"

Tarus' commanding voice penetrated the closed door, leaving no doubt about his authority. "Where is my mate?"

Adria went to the door. "Amy is with me. Come on back."

Remus, looking wild-eyed and disheveled, his usually neat hair now a mess as if he had been running his fingers through it repeatedly, pushed past her doctor. Tarus, his face mirroring the same distress, followed closely behind.

No doubt startled to see her in a patient's gown, Remus' boots screeched on the floor as he halted. His brother, right behind him, barely avoided a collision.

Her usually lighthearted twin asked in a hushed voice filled with dread, "What's wrong? Are you feeling sick?"

"Everything is fine," Adria assured them.

"Fine doesn't result in our mate wearing an examination gown on a scanning table," Tarus replied tersely.

Adria, with a calmness honed through a lifetime of dealing with warriors, met Amy's gaze, allowing her to provide the answer.

"I'm not sick—" she began.

"Your message insisting that we come to the clinic right away led us to believe otherwise, mate," Remus all but growled.

With a grimace, Amy quickly apologized. "My choice of words was unfortunate. I'm sorry for that, but I was in a highly emotional state."

"Why?" he demanded only slightly less aggrieved. "What has you upset?"

Amy blinked, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. She still couldn't believe what she was about to tell the two men she loved more than life.

Tarus, seeing her distress, closed the distance between them in determined strides. His hand gliding over her trembling shoulder and down her back soothed her, even though he, like Remus, was clearly on edge from the scare she'd unintentionally given them.

"Never be afraid to tell us anything, dral . No matter what. "

Amy gazed up at him, her heart near to bursting with joy. A smile graced her lips as she glanced at Remus still frozen in the middle of the room. "It's not fear," she disclosed in a voice barely above a whisper, "but the most wondrous news." She took a deep breath, her hand instinctively resting on her still-flat stomach. "I'm pregnant. We're to have a baby."

"Two, actually," Adria corrected. "It's twins, Amy. As I suspected."

She heard Tarus exhale in relief then his hand covered hers over where their children rested. Remus, clearly stunned, stared at her from across the room.

Amy was still trying to make sense of it, too. "How is this possible? I matched with no one. And the tests Ellar ran showed that we were less than fifth percentile compatibility, which he said is practically nonexistent, and so low he ran the test two more times to make sure."

"I wish I knew," her friend replied. "Ellar and Juna are already trying to unravel the mystery."

"The positive pregnancy results surprised me as well, but not that it's twins," the senior physic said as he entered both the room and the conversation. He had to squeeze by a still-frozen Remus to do so. "Twins are uncommon among Primarians. Monozygotic twins, even more so. Among humans, the chance is three or four in 1000 births. With our people, it is two out of 300,000. The two are standing in this room, in fact."

She and Tarus looked to Adria to decipher Ellar's words.

"Monozygotic means one egg divides, resulting in identical twins rather than the more common dizygotic twins, which is when two eggs become fertilized and attach at the same time. The latter, of more than one egg releasing during ovulation, appears to run in families and passes through the maternal line. We don't know what causes division in MZ twins."

"Isn't that essentially what I said?" Ellar asked, appearing perplexed they hadn't understood him. "It makes sense that whatever phenomenon is present to make it occur would pass to the twins themselves. And, if mating with another twin, increases the likelihood of reoccurrence in their offspring."

Amy frowned at the physic. "That isn't right. I'm an only child."

Ellar, who was typically unfazed by most things, looked at her with a mix of surprise and regret, before he uttered, "I have said too much."

This broke Remus out of his trance. "You haven't said enough. And most of what you have said has been medical gibberish. Speak English."

"I speak Primarian," the older man replied with a puffed-up chest.

"Explain in lay terms," Tarus insisted with growing impatience.

"While under my care after her encounter with the Dohkarian invader, it was necessary to access Amy's Earth records to obtain a detailed medical history. I had to dig to find childhood data..." There was compassion in the usually reserved physic's eyes when they met hers. "You had a twin sister. I'm sorry to say she died at birth. I'm not sure why your mother wouldn't have told you."

"To spare her the pain, maybe?" Juna who had joined them suggested. "Parents sometimes do this to protect the surviving child. It's often misguided, especially when the truth eventually comes out. "

"Why didn't the testing show Amy as compatible with us when obviously we are?" Tarus inquired his arm slipping around her shoulders and pulling her in to his side. "Accuracy would have saved all of us a lot of time, frustration, and pain. Are twins so different from non-twins?"

"These are things that remain unexplained," Adria answered. "As you know, the twin connection and their physiological dependence on one other are almost as intense as the one between fated mates. That's why you and Remus have always been inseparable. And, according to my theory, why you can share a mate without the usual jealousy and complications that arise when a mated partner is involved with someone else."

"We will have to conduct additional tests to address these unanswered questions," Ellar declared, eliciting disgruntled grunts from the would-be test subjects.

Amy fixated on something different as the dreams that haunted her in her youth came rushing back. "I always thought I was watching myself, but it was her."

Her upset spurred Remus into action. He strode across the room, sat on the exam table next to her, and deposited her in his lap. "Her as in..."

"I told you about my dreams when I was young. The girl in all of them looked like me. I thought I was on the outside looking in, watching myself as in a holo-vid movie, but it must have been her all along. Subconsciously, I knew." Tarus gently wiped away the tear rolling down her cheek with his thumb. "I had a sister, but I don't know her name, if she even had one."

"I can research and find out," Dr. Juna suggested. "There must be a record in the archives. "

Amy nodded, sniffling, as she leaned into Remus. "Thank you. I'd like to know, if possible."

"It is. I'll find out," Juna promised.

She reached for Tarus' hand, looking from him to Remus who held her tight. "You've always said you were a part of each other, two halves of a whole. It must've been the same for us. I was searching for the missing part of me and found her in my dreams."

When she ended on a shuddering breath close to a sob, Tarus rubbed her back, and murmured, "I'm so sorry, mate."

"Me, too. I'm heartbroken that I never knew her. But I'm relieved the missing piece of my puzzle has been found." She gripped Tarus harder as she reached up and laid a hand on Remus' cheek. "At the same time, I'm over the moon—rather moons, all three of them—with happiness that my twin warriors and I will have twins of our own."

She glanced at Adria. "Is it too soon to know if they will be twin warriors?"

"It's highly possible. Anything is these days, but they will have to get approval from my brother and cousin first, and their fathers, of course. We've never had warrior females in our army before."

"Twin girls?" she breathed as Adria nodded. Remus and Tarus sat there, holding her, their breath caught in their throats, in complete wonder.

Until humans integrated into Primarian society, they had gone two decades with few babies born—all male. Girls were a special blessing, especially two at a time.

With his face buried in her hair, Remus murmured, "We have been doubly blessed. "

Amy's heart clenched at the catch in his voice, a clear sign he tried to hide the intense emotions consuming him.

"Indeed. The Maker has truly smiled upon us," the other father-to-be declared. "But they will not become warriors. My nervous system couldn't take it."

Adria, the first ever female Primarian physic, exchanged a knowing smile with Amy. It conveyed a shared sense of indulgence, as they both recognized that times were changing. She could imagine a world where her baby girls, when they grew up, could pursue any life they desired—physic, warrior, battleship captain. The possibilities seemed endless, and the sky, much to their daddies' dismay, truly without limits.