Light Unfolding: A Reverse Harem Science Fiction Romance (Wings of Artemis Book 8)

by Rebecca Royce

  That was interesting. “Then we would have been in this together. That would have been something for sure. But then again, you were asleep on that ship still working for them, and I was here falling in love. I like the order of how this went for me.”

  Blaze snorted. It was the closest thing to a laugh I’d ever heard him make. “When we woke up and heard her, your wife, talking about you, about Canyon, about life, it almost seemed like a dream. Not everyone wanted to listen. I think most of them were shocked that I stepped forward and said I was going off mission. But there it was.”

  “How many did you have to kill to take over the ship?”

  He sighed. “I tried not to have to kill anyone. Remember the gun to my head problem? Yeah. That. More than I’d like to have. I would have transported them if they’d given me the chance. But it was war on that ship. I never lose a battle. I won’t lose this one. You did well for yourself. Wife and family. Baby on the way. You’re almost… human.”

  “Nothing almost about it, Blaze. We are human. Someday you’ll get the chance to prove it, and more than that, you’ll get the chance to feel it.”

  Wavey laughed at something a patient said. She had reset his arm. We had refugees coming in all the time and so far no one had suggested not taking them in. The planet was going to fill up and that was fine by me.

  We had our house. It was almost built, and my son would have his life there. A life I was sure we would give him because we believed we could, because Melissa was on the airwaves inspiring people, because of three ships of Super Soldiers rotating their shifts to patrol the space outside our planet… because Wavey believed.

  Waverly

  After work, I walked—slower every day thanks to my girth—with Rohan to the transportation bay where I boarded a car we took out to our home. Soon, we’d be able to sleep there. That threw me whenever I thought about it. Jackson had led the building of the place, but we’d all worked on it. My husbands had let me until I’d become so cumbersome they’d thought it was a bad idea for me to yield power tools.

  Now I just watched, admired, and offered advice when asked for it.

  They had certainly built a lot of bedrooms. Of course I’d never told them there wasn’t any way that I was ever having ten babies. Not if this pregnancy was any indication to just how awful it was to bring life into the world. I hadn’t even gotten to labor yet.

  The house, for all intents and purposes, seemed done. It was only security we had left to install. Things to keep bombs away. Hideouts. Devices to help in an invasion. I sighed. I hated thinking about it.

  Right then, an image passed in front of my eyes. My son, the little boy I carried close to my heart, ran past me. He was ten. His brown hair was long, falling over his eyes and almost to his shoulders. It was summer, warm, and he’d been swimming. He was shirtless and shoeless, running toward the house. His olive skin, so like his father’s, had been tanned in the sun.

  I heard my own voice carrying toward him. “Did you leave your towel by the lake?”

  The lake? Yes, there was one walking distance away if we ran down the side of the cliff nearby. It would never have occurred to me to do so.

  “Emerson, did you hear me?”

  Emerson? Yes, that was his name. Of course it was. How had I not known that? We couldn’t come up with anything we liked and yet there it was, clear as day. He was Emerson.

  He stopped, spinning around. “I did, Mom. I have the towel. It’s in the yard on the ground not at the lake.” He spun around again, continuing wherever it was he was determined to go. A second pair of footsteps followed, the sound music to my ears. A second little boy, younger, dark haired but paler skinned than his brother rushed after Emerson.

  “What about you, Mason, did you leave your towel? I am not in the mood to hunt down towels today.”

  He scrunched up his nose. “Mine is at the lake. I’ll go back. Sorry.”

  He scampered backward, his plans to chase Emerson thwarted for the moment. I knew him so well. All he wanted was his brother’s attention all the time. He looked so much like his dad.

  Jackson.

  I came into view. I was older by a decade. My hair was longer, and like my children, I didn’t wear shoes as I walked through my yard. I had a toddler on my leg and a baby in my arms. Tears filled my eyes at the image. The little girl asleep on my shoulder had no idea I was getting myself into a tizzy over towels. Such small trivial things, considering the world had been trying to end a decade before. But not now. Now there were times that were… simple.

  The toddler jumped and down. I bent over and lifted him into my arms. “Yes, I’ve got you, Nathaniel. This time next year you’ll be chasing Mason.” There were four years between him and Mason. Maybe we’d waited on purpose, maybe something had happened. He had red hair, like mine, and even though he resembled me, when he stared up at me I could see his father, Canyon’s, eyes staring back at mine.

  The little girl stirred but then stilled. Ari’s baby. The only girl we’d had so far, very close in age to Nathaniel. We called him Nate sometimes and it was starting to stick. She was… Megan. She was Ari’s. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, she was every bit the beauty I’d wished I could be when not being so had seemed so important. She wasn’t going to grow up to value herself that way, not when there were so many important things for her to do.

  Mason shrieked with laughter, coming back into view, thrown over Ro’s shoulder. “I’ve got the towel, and I found this little person down there by the lake. Do we know who he belongs to? I wasn’t sure. Could he be a puppy? Is there a puppy here now?”

  The window in the house opened and Emerson leapt out of it, jumping down in front of his father, who quit laughing. We both stared at him. “I’m not a puppy. But I could be kangaroo, like they have on Earth. I can jump like that.”

  Rohan sighed. “Please don’t do that. I know you can. It scares the heck out of your mother. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Save it.”

  Well, I guessed that answered the question about whether or not Emerson was going to have Super Soldier abilities.

  He absolutely was.

  Just then Canyon rounded a corner. He looked the same, except that he had a visible tattoo on his arm that looked like the letter W. The same one Jackson told me he was going to put over his heart. As if I’d conjured him by just thinking, Jackson appeared, followed by Ari.

  I sighed. “Is it done?”

  “Yes. You’re coded into the machine, and the signal should be sent back to just the right time.” Canyon grimaced as the other two nodded. “We hated doing it, but you were right. Too much goes wrong if you don’t spend that year on Orion.”

  Ari patted him on the back. “It gets us all here. From that moment on time, the shifts in time get us to where the Dark Planets save us all.”

  Time wasn’t linear. How could I forget when somehow I’d always known? How much did this happen to the others based on all the trips through time they made? Did they even know?

  “Waverly?” The Rohan of now caught my attention, drawing me from my daydream. I blinked, and the image passed like a wave of time I couldn’t quite remember. “You okay?”

  I nodded, patting my stomach. “Never better.”

  “You were lost there for a second.”

  What had I been thinking about? “I don’t know. My mind wanders. Pregnancy brain, I guess. What do you think of the name Emerson?”

  He blinked. “I love it.”

  “Yes, me too.” That was his name. Our son.

  Ari

  It was my night with my love, and I was late getting to her. Rounding the corner into the secret area of the compound where we still lived—even though the scanner was broken—I found her asleep in my bed, right where I’d known she would be.

  I threw off my shoes and crawled in next to her, ignoring the demonic clowns who wanted my attention. They weren’t real. This was.

  She was warm, and for a second, I just basked in getting to hold her before
her eyes opened slowly. “Was there an emergency?”

  “Another ship full of Earth refugees are here. This ends soon. They’re working on a plan.”

  She nodded at me. “I know. If I wasn’t pregnant, I’d say we should go.”

  “We’re needed here. But I understand the inclination.” I yawned. “You feeling okay?”

  She leaned over to kiss me, and my body woke up through the exhaustion. There was never a time I didn’t want her. She was my whole world. I placed my hand on her stomach. “You didn’t answer me.”

  “I feel fine. Big. But fine.”

  She really wasn’t large at all. “I love you.”

  Her smile was pure female satisfaction, and I loved seeing it on her. Whatever had ridden Waverly for so many years, whatever had kept her feeling less than the incredible woman she was, it was gone now. Her father didn’t haunt her steps nearly as much, her insecurity had been replaced with a tenderness that came with knowing her own worth. When she looked at me, it wasn’t with a question in her eyes about whether or not I was going to change my mind.

  She believed.

  And if there was one thing Jackson, Canyon, Rohan, and I could agree on, it was that we could hold onto faith in anything—space, time, wars, outcomes, right, wrong, love—as long as Waverly believed in us.

  Lucky for us, she did.

  Afterword

  Dearest Reader,

  Thank you so much for picking up Light Unfolding (Wings of Artemis 8). I hope you’ll consider leaving it a review. Reviews help Indie authors so much! Don’t worry, the Wings of Artemis series isn’t over yet. There are four more novels (That’s two more heroines) and a novella that will take us back to Priscilla coming through before it’s over. Next up will be Still Water (Wings of Artemis #9). That will be Amber’s story. It could be that she doesn’t understand or know her husbands at all, and it could be they will all be integral to saving Earth… if there can be a second chance at love.

  Please visit my website at www.rebeccaroyce.com and sign up for my newsletter so we can stay in touch. Please join me at Rebecca’s Randomness on Facebook where we hang out and talk about books. I’d love to see you there: https://www.facebook.com/groups/458490741256283/?ref=br_rs

  Please turn the page for a complete list of my books.

  Hugs

  Rebecca Royce

  Other books by Rebecca Royce…

  Wings of Artemis

  Kidnapped By Her Husbands

  Rescued by Their Wife

  Crashing Into Destiny

  Meeting Them

  Reclaiming Their Love

  Loving Them

  Ship Called Malice

  Saving Them

  Dark Demise

  Light Unfolding

  Still Waters (coming soon)

  Last Hope

  Tradition Be Damned

  Past Be Damned

  Destiny Be Damned

  Compassion Be Damned

  Future Be Damned (coming soon)

  Dragon Wars

  Forever

  Eternal

  Always

  Evermore

  Endless

  Wards and Wands

  Hexed and Vexed

  Curse Reversed

  Tragic Magic (Coming Soon)

  Safe Haven

  Everywhere and Nowhere

  Dimension X (coming soon)

  More coming soon….

  Soul Bound

  Prisoner of the Dragons

  More coming soon….

  Shadow Promised

  Strange Days

  Weird Nights

  Bizarre Years

  More coming soon…

  The Warrior

  Initiation

  Driven

  Subversive

  Redemption

  Justice

  Warrior World (spin off of The Warrior)

  Deacon

  Micah

  Jason

  The Westervelt Wolves

  Her Wolf

  Summer’s Wolf

  Wolf Reborn

  Wolf’s Valentine

  Wolf’s Magic

  Alpha Wolf

  Angel’s Wolf

  Darkest Wolf

  Lone Wolf

  Fallen Alpha

  Alpha Rising

  Alpha’s Strength

  Alpha’s Sacrifice

  Alpha’s Truth

  Alpha Enticing

  Hidden Alpha (coming soon)

  The Capes

  Seductive Powers

  Adrenaline Rush

  Last Ascension

  The Conditioned

  Eye Contact

  Embraced

  Unlawful (coming soon…)

  The Outsiders

  Love Beyond Time

  Love Beyond Sanity

  Love Beyond Loyalty

  Love Beyond Sight

  Love Beyond Expectations

  Love Beyond Oceans

  Love Beyond Flames

  Love Beyond Lies (coming soon)

  Cascade

  Haunted Redemption

  Phoenix Everlasting

  Fragility Unearthed

  Persuasion Enraptured

  Reverse Harem Story

  Unconventional

  Unexpected

  Undeniable (Coming Soon)

  Stand Alone Titles

  Planet Bear

  Under The Lights

  No Quitting Allowed

  Mr. Wrong

  Bite Marks

  Bitten Surrender

  The Vampire and The Virgin

  Demon Within

  Crimson Lust

  Call Me Crazy (coming soon)