Light Unfolding: A Reverse Harem Science Fiction Romance (Wings of Artemis Book 8)
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Light Unfolding
Wings of Artemis, Book 8
Rebecca Royce
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Light Unfolding (Wings of Artemis #8)
Copyright @ 2018 by Rebecca Royce
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-947672-55-0
Cover art by Syneca Featherstone (Original Syn Designs)
Content Editing: Heather Long
Copy/Proofread Editing: Bookends Editing
Formatting: Ripley Proserpina
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Rebecca Royce
www.rebeccaroyce.com
Created with Vellum
Contents
Note from the Author
1. Living In The Past
2. Impending Doom
3. The Black Hole
4. Percentages
5. Eventualities
6. Target Practice
7. Ships Adrift
8. My Wedding Night
9. Smoke and Mirrors
10. Garrison Sandler
11. Back Home, At Last
12. In the end, Earth
13. Duck
14. Help From Above
Afterword
Other books by Rebecca Royce…
Note from the Author
Dearest Reader,
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey with Wings of Artemis. Light Unfolding is the (gulp) eighth book in the series. I can hardly believe that number as I type it. If you are just joining us, I am going to do what authors are never supposed to do, and I am going to tell you to stop, don’t start the series here, and go buy another book before coming back to this one. You see (and please forgive me if you have read this note in all of my books in this series and are bored with it now) the way this series was designed was to have the odd numbered books in it as a fine place to start at any time but the even numbers are not. Light Unfolding picks back up a few months after the end of Dark Demise (Wings of Artemis #7). I am going to mostly assume that you know who Waverly, Ari, Jackson, Rohan, Canyon, Wade, Paloma, Keith, Quinn, Tommy, Clay, Diana, Melissa… (insert character name) are by now. The introductions or re-introductions happen in the odd numbered books. So, please don’t feel that you have to start at book one (you can!) but if you haven’t read this before please go back and read book seven. Every odd numbered book in this series introduces a new heroine, new heroes, and a new story arc. Those are the right places to start this journey. We’ll just stay here and wait. Take your time!
So if you haven’t scampered off to read book seven, then I’m going to assume you are good to stay. Great. I will quickly use this time to answer the question I get asked the most about this series. How many more will there be? For a while, the answer was I don’t know, but I can answer that now. As I don’t want to beat this series to death by extending it too long until you all don’t want to read it anymore, I will say that there are four more books after this one and one novella between books ten and eleven. Then I will put Wings of Artemis to bed (in a way that I think (hope, pray) will do justice to the way that I love it and that I hear that you do. Actually, I just teared up writing that. Four more novels and one novella. In the meantime, I hope you love Waverly’s conclusion. I am deeply moved by how she touched all of you in Dark Demise. She did that for me, too.
If you are a person who likes to read a complete series and has possibly missed some, then please take a look at the reading order (doesn’t have to be read in this order but this is the order that you can read to keep it chronological, sort of. That darn black hole does jump time…)
Melissa
Kidnapped By Her Husbands
Rescued By Their Wife
Diana
Crashing Into Destiny
Paloma
Meeting Them (novella)
Diana
Reclaiming Their Love
Paloma
Loving Them
Priscilla
Ship Called Malice (novella)
Paloma
Saving Them
Waverly
Dark Demise
Light Unfolding
Amber
Still Waters (coming soon)
Much love for reading,
Rebecca Royce
1 Living In The Past
The warm breeze hit me in the face as I ran to catch up with my friends. The streets of the city of Titan were crowded, but they always were on rest day. For everyone else, the eighth day of the week was a time to stop and celebrate life. This didn’t apply to us. The majority of the population liked to have their home repairs done and their houses cleaned while they partied in the streets.
We slipped in, took care to make sure everything was sparkling and mended, before slipping out. They’d come home and it would be like magic for the homeowner.
“Waverly,” Dawn called to me. “Hurry.”
I was trying. My knee hurt, badly. I’d jammed it pretty hard on the side of a table in the last house and now every step I took was one too many. There wasn’t anything I could do about the injury, though, because I had to earn my keep.
I was a trained nurse with some skills that rivaled even some doctors I knew, but that didn’t matter here. Trapped in a past I should never have seen, I’d blended in with a group of women escaping bad marriages on the planet Orion. I wasn’t escaping a bad relationship. By contrast, I’d lost a really good one with incredible people. But the assumption remained and I never corrected the idea. On Orion, those of us thought to be on the run got to live on our own terms, away from those who were hurting us, and in exchange, we cleaned and cooked. I shook my head. The only problem with dwelling on all of all of this, something I’d promised myself I’d quit doing the month before, was that I wasn’t escaping a bad marriage. I’d never gotten to walk down the aisle, and I’d been in the throes of beginning what promised to be amazing relationships with four guys I’d adored so much I’d have put myself out of an airlock for if they’d needed it.
I swallowed my tears. I’d touched a time scanner, been thrown back in time, and for some reason, gotten stuck on a planet on the other side of the galaxy, decades before I’d ever been born.
Better than dead, but not much better.
Ignoring my discomfort, I’d caught up to Dawn and entered the home we were to straighten next. It wasn’t a bad one. The owners were a childless couple. With so few women around—which was true in every timeline I’d lived in—it was unusual for them to not have bred. Maybe they were having trouble. It was none of my business except that part of me would always be dedicated to treating the sick and injured. House cleaning didn’t quite measure up to work in med treatment. So I looked for medical problems everywhere I
went.
And didn’t find any I could fix.
Dawn was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, but strong and capable. She was our team leader. The sad truth was, when I’d been found wandering the streets, lost and lone after arriving here so unexpectedly, I’d have starved to death if not for Dawn and her friends. They assumed I was like them, and I’d never corrected them.
How else to explain the unexplainable? How else to tell these people that in the not so distant future we were all going to be nuked to death by a crazy mad woman named Olivia who happened to be the sister of a man, Cooper, whose arm, when broken, I’d helped to reset years in the future. The exact date eluded me, since I’d never cared to pay that much attention to it in the past, er, future.
They’d all think I was crazy. Half the time I wondered if I was.
Dawn put a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear. I’d never asked her to tell me her exact age, but I guessed it was around forty. It was hard to tell. She might have been younger or older. The stress she’d endured at the hands of her husbands—who had beaten her regularly—could age a person beyond their years.
She reached out to touch my arm. “We’ll get your knee looked at later. I’m sorry you can’t rest it.”
I shook my head. “It’s nothing. Trust me, just a bruise.” I’d cataloged my symptoms. I wasn’t seriously injured, just jarred, which would be uncomfortable for the rest of the day, but I would survive. “I’ve got this. I promise.”
There were fifty women who lived in Dawn’s care. Not one of us ever wanted to let her down. Between all of us in teams, the city sparkled every eighth day.
She nodded at me. “You’re a gem, Waverly. Amazing your guys didn’t do better by you.”
I grimaced. They had been amazing, actually. My four loves.
Ari—he thought himself broken, but he saw the world for what it was with an open heart and a brilliant mind. The finest doctor I’d ever seen. He could heal better than any med machine out there. Kind to a fault. I’d completely misjudged him when I’d first met him. I’d thought he was a flirt, who was merely uninterested in me. It turned out we understood each other in a way I’d never imagined. Ari saw me as a better version of myself than I’d ever been able to see when I looked inside. I wanted to be the person he saw. I wanted to show him he wasn’t broken. He’d introduced me to pleasure on a cold winter morning, but we’d yet to truly make love when I’d been taken away. Was he okay? Would he someday find someone else? I pushed away that question. It did no good, it made me sad, and in my heart, I truly wanted him happy. Even if that meant without me.
Canyon—a Super Soldier created by a corporation on this side of the galaxy to be the perfect killing machine. They’d altered his eyes. He couldn’t see human faces or color. Just light signatures. They’d hurt his body, but not changed his soul. He’d told me I had a light all my own. I held that thought close to my heart. I remembered how he held me like he could see me, how his brilliant mind never stopped moving, how he could speak to machines. How they answered him. I’d lost my virginity with Canyon. Someone had to understand him, even if it couldn’t be me. Someone had to take care of the heart inside the man Evander had tried to destroy.
Jackson—he’d been born on this side of the galaxy. His parents had been traitors, and he’d spent much of his mysterious past trying to prove himself a different kind of a man. He ran security on The Farm, but he could also fix anything that was broken. Covered in tattoos, he scared people into thinking he was some kind of badass so they never got to know the quiet, considerate man underneath. Truth was, he preferred it that way. He’d been so straightforward, so honest with me from day one. He wanted me in his life, thought we’d have a future together in a home he would build us. He’d left an uninked spot on his skin, right over his heart, where he meant to have placed something that represented me. He took responsibility for everything, even those he had no control over. Blamed himself for everything. I worried about him endlessly, because he’d been swept away by a broken scanner, shot through time seconds before I was. Had he made it back safely? I was never going to know. Had someone else eventually earned the spot over his heart?
Rohan—he was a Super Soldier like Canyon, but completely different in how he behaved. Rohan terrified everyone just by entering a room. He’d been trained to be the perfect killer and never hesitated to use those skills to keep all around him safe. Rohan so wanted to be a better man without understanding he was already incredible. Those few who knew him cherished him. He used to show up every morning with coffee for me. I could see others hurt him and how he never said a word. He was needy for love in a way I understood completely. He had seen me for who I was—at my lowest moment—when I’d felt lost in the universe. I would never get to be there for him as I should have been; I’d never get to know how he would change if he was supported by people who saw him as he really was.
They were my Time Warriors. That’s how I thought of them. They traveled through time, gathering information for our side of the war against my father, the Sandler Cartel, and the somehow scarier Evander Corporation. Those two entities battled each other, and it was the little people caught in the middle that we tried to help.
Or that’s what I’d been doing before I was whisked away. With the scanners both damaged, the older one broken and with me, I had no expectation they’d find me. This was my life now.
I put my head down and started scrubbing. The celebrations outside had gotten louder, as they always did while the alcohol consumption increased. Every eighth day the population did this. I sighed. I might have been interested in the way the culture here behaved if I wasn’t constantly having to hide the fact I was in mourning.
I was supposed to be joyful, and if not that, at least relieved to be away from abuse. This celebrating planet was the one place on this side of the universe where women could escape horrible marriages.
With Dawn staying downstairs, I headed upstairs to change the bedding and put the used linens in the wash. I was a Sandler daughter, but I’d not been raised that way. Technically, somewhere in the universe were two beautiful little girls I shared DNA with who were likely being spoiled more than I had been, but no one knew what had happened to them. I hoped they were safe. I shook my head. No, I was wrong. Nowhere in this universe did they exist yet. I was living, and I was going to die, in a time before I’d even been born.
That was hard for my brain to grasp, but it was true.
I threw the sheets in the washer, listened to the sloshing of the water turning on, and ran to make the bed. My knee throbbed. I was going to have to spend the night icing it. Catching a glance of myself in the mirror, I looked away. I’d lost twenty pounds since I’d arrived on Orion. I’d always thought I wanted that, but the look wasn’t good on me. My face had become wan. I was pale. There were dark circles under my eyes. Of course, that all had to do with not sleeping. How could I, when night was the only time of day I could silently let into my pillow what I was feeling?
Every day I struggled—could I tell someone? And every day the answer was no. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to think I was crazy. I knew what happened to people in my day when they seemed mentally unwell. Psychiatry had been dismissed as a waste of time when all we could do was focus on survival. Ari had been a psychiatrist until it was eliminated as a legitimate medical practice. I couldn’t imagine what they did to people here.
I shook my head. The ultimate question lay in front of me. I knew this planet was about to be destroyed. I had to get off of it. Every day I struggled. I’d come to care for Dawn and some of the others. How could I get them to come with me? How could I save enough currency to get off the planet? Where would I even go? Should I find a ship going through the black hole and…
“Waverly,” Dawn called upstairs. “Almost done?”
I blinked. “Yes,” I answered. It was time to move on again. I just had to air out the rugs. I grabbed one and took it out onto the balcony. This was one of the few things I like
d doing during the day. I banged the heck out of the rugs in the fresh air. There was something cathartic about it.
I took the broom handle, and I banged away. In the distance, something caught my attention. I stopped banging. There was a ship landing in the center of town. This wasn’t unusual. Traders came day and night. Why had it caught my attention?
“Oh,” I spoke the word aloud to prove I wasn’t dreaming. I knew that ship. I was deeply familiar with the grayish-green siding—its name scrolled on the side. It was Artemis. The last time I’d seen it had been when they rescued me from the wife auction block. I’d had no idea, but I’d met all my future guys that day.
I shook. The side wasn’t peeling anymore. This was an earlier Artemis. This was the Artemis of now. Was it possible? Could my life be intersecting with people I knew—just well after the events of here—now?
I dropped the broom and the rug. My knee pounded, but I didn’t care. I ran. Artemis made it through space and time. Somehow she was here, and if she was the only proof I wasn’t crazy and that my other life had existed, then I had to see her up close.
“Waverly?” Dawn called after me.
“I’m sorry,” I yelled back at her. “I can’t explain. I’ll meet you at the next house. Forgive me.”
I didn’t wait to hear what she said. Like a person on a life or death mission, I tore through the drunken crowds until I reached Artemis. Out of breath by the time, I reached her I didn’t even care that there were tears streaming down my cheeks.
In the time it had taken me to get there, the door had opened.
“Waverly?” I jumped, a panting Dawn stood behind me. “What is wrong? You took off like that. I couldn’t leave you.”