Varken Rise (22 page)

Brant rested his hand on her shoulder.

She wound her arms around his neck in reaction and buried her face against his chest. Her sobs were muffled yet distinct. Brant pulled her into his lap and cradled her. His eyes closed and he pressed his cheek against her hair.

Catherine wiped at her eyes quickly. She was smiling as she watched them. So was Kemp. Connell wore a dazed expression.

Bedivere picked up the champagne bottle and filled Catherine’s glass and Kemp’s too. He didn’t want any more himself. He wanted to remember this day clearly. It was the happiest he had ever been outside Cat’s arms.

* * * * *

“Are you going to do what Brant suggests?” Cat asked him later, in their bedroom, as they prepared for sleep.

Bedivere looked up from pulling back the covers. “I’m embarrassed I didn’t think of it myself,” he confessed. “Yes, I think I will. It will help the Varkan emerge among humans faster than anything else I could do.”

“That’s going to be your new mission in life, isn’t it?” She wore a small smile that told him she was trying to say something important and was teasing him because she didn’t want to be confrontational.

“Do you mind?” he asked.

She turned on the stool to face him squarely. “You’ve changed, since you got back. I’ve been trying to figure it out for the last week and I think that’s what it is. You’ve found a purpose in life, something to work toward.”

Bedivere shook his head. “No, that’s not it. Well, not all of it. Yes, I want to help the Varkan. Of course I do. Only…” He hesitated, then made himself say it. Cat would dig it out of him if he didn’t finish now. “For the last…since the Federation died, so let’s just say forever.” He tried to smile and couldn’t. “I’ve never felt as though I’ve deserved having you in my life. I’ve never felt…worthy.” He let his breath out in a rush.

“And now you do?” she asked softly.

“No! Not at all. After all this, though…I feel as if I am a few meters closer.”

“A few meters, huh?” She got to her feet and moved slowly across the room. “A few meters more and….” She put her arms around his neck and looked up at him, her eyes filled with the warm glow of love.

His heart squeezed.

“Don’t ever do that to me again, okay?” she whispered.

“Not in a million years,” he breathed.

“Really? Planning on sticking around that long?”

“Absolutely.” He kissed her because now he
could
kiss her, when for a while he had thought he never would again.

The third book in the Interspace Origins series, Cat and Company, will be released in mid-2016. In the meantime, here is more SFR:

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Tracy Cooper-Posey is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author. She writes romantic suspense, paranormal, urban fantasy, futuristic and science fiction romances. She has published over 55 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.
She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year and
Byzantine Heartbreak
was a 2012 winner.
Faring Soul
won a SFR Galaxy Award in 2015 for “Most Intriguing Philosophical/Social Science Questions in Galaxybuilding” She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.
She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.

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This is an original publication of Tracy Cooper-Posey
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2016 by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Cover design by Dar Albert
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Edited by Helen Woodall
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FIRST EDITION: March 2016

Cooper-Posey, Tracy
Varkan Rise/Tracy Cooper-Posey—1st Ed.
Romance—Fiction
Science Fiction—Fiction