Heart Fortune

him.

“I love you. I will forever,” he said.

She slid against him, wrapped her arms around his neck and their tongues played together. He closed his eyes and simply enjoyed her taste, having her in his arms. Again he felt the beginning of desire and welcomed that.

I love you, too, FamWoman and FamMan. I have said that OFTEN. Lepid lifted his muzzle and opened his mouth to smile and let his tongue loll in a grin.

Zem snicked his beak. I love you both, too.

When she pulled away, her face was rosy and she was smiling with a spark in her eyes he’d missed. He shook his head.

“What?” she asked. “I’m getting mixed feelings from you.”

“You should be getting all my love, HeartMate.”

Now she just beamed and leaned against him, slipping her arms down around his waist. She let out a breath. “I love you, HeartMate.”

“You know I’m phenomenally lucky.”

“Pretty much,” she agreed. “Pretty lucky, especially when it counts.”

“You said phenomenally lucky in the ship.”

“I wanted to get out. Go, team! We all needed to believe to our depths or we wouldn’t make it.” She leaned back, meeting his eyes, serious once more. “We almost didn’t make it.”

“Almost.”

We knew it would be scary, Lepid said, the tip of his tail giving a twitch. But we knew we would WIN!

Zem whuffed a tiny sigh, tilted his head to look at the fox. The optimism of young ones. We had no choice. The bird shuddered. It was terrible in the ship, no open air at all.

“Sshhh.” Jace went over and gave his Fam a soothing stroke, then returned to Glyssa.

“I’d like you to test your Flair with T’Ash and his Testing Stones,” she said.

“No.” He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, I’m phenomenally lucky.”

She smiled up at him.

He put his arms around her and squeezed. “Because I’m a risk taker. But, let me tell you, Glyssa Licorice, FirstLevel Librarian, you are the greatest risk I ever took, with all my heart, all of me.”

“Nah,” she said. “I was your sure thing.”

Shaking his head, he said, “But I didn’t believe that. I was always afraid to believe that.”

She felt incredibly good in his arms, fit there like no other. “I didn’t believe in love or HeartMates . . . in a healthy love.”

She didn’t loosen her grasp, and he reveled in the closeness, knowing she’d always be there with him, for him.

Smiling up at him, she said, “But you believe now.”

“Yes.” He stroked her hair. “I can feel it now. But I still say you were my greatest risk and I’ve been phenomenally lucky.”

“We’ve been phenomenally lucky.”

He stared into her brown eyes. “And we’ll be lucky for the rest of our lives.”

“Yes.”

Yes, said Lepid and Zem together.

“We’ll see through the excavation—a lifetime of work. And we’ll be founders of a new town.” She patted his chest. “In twenty years, you’ll be very respectable.”

“I hope not.”

She turned away from the view and took his hand. “We have the time and the resources to craft our future and a Family.”

“Very true, and will spend all our lives together and loving each other.”

“A future of discovery.”

They turned away from the view and that past and moved on to the future together, proving their love in bed.