Page 54 of Victoria's Embrace

With them, she was no longer the odd one out, the involuntary loner looking in, desperate to be included and accepted, to be loved for both who she was and who she would become.

With them, she fit perfectly.

For the first time in her life, Victoria belonged. She was exactly where she was meant to be.

She was home.

Epilogue

It took a while, but life at the complex was starting to get back to normal after the Salesh fiasco, or as normal as life could get on an alien slave planet amid an uprising.

Now, a little over a month later, they’d successfully sent three batches of people back to their homeworlds and had dropped off a large group of bad guys in Federation territory.

Tensions had been high for a couple weeks after that, everyone on edge to see if the Fed would manage to track the ship back to them despite them wiping the flight log, but so far, it looked like they were in the clear.

A couple of weeks after Victoria and her guys had taken over the slave market, Braxton and his team showed up at the complex with a host of ragged, malnourished slaves they’d freed on their missions, along with news they’d successfully seized two pleasure lounges and had shut down a caravan moving from town to town holding pop-up tournaments.

Apparently, that was this planet's version of a traveling circus, only instead of tightrope walkers and acrobats, they had slaves battle each other for the entertainment of the locals.

Despite Lilac’s best efforts, Braxton had been right. It was too late to split him and Ti’vek. Surprising Victoria, they were okay with that. At some point during their travels, they’d figured out a way to share control of their body.

Seeing two different people with different speech patterns, accents, and mannerisms coming from the same body was… weird, to say the least. But, after living on an alien planet for months, Victoria was used to weird.

Under Braxton’s leadership, his team was no longer a motley crew of newly freed slaves, but a battle-tested squad of lethal, experienced soldiers.

They didn’t stay long, heading back into the city with marching orders from Aria after only a couple of days, itching to get back to the fight and eager to further Aria’s take-over-the-world mission.

* * *

Victoria pulledout her comm as she shut the door to a pregnant Misheria’s room to call Aria and let her know they had another one. Unforeseen side effect of cloning everyone? They were now reproductively compatible.

Misheria—leader of the skittish, feathered Tuullimierians—was the twelfth being that week to display the telltale ‘Rudolph nose.’

The base genetic material used to create the clones exhibited the hormonal shift signaling pregnancy by turning the tip of the person’s nose purple. The color started as a barely noticeable tinge. According to Lilac, that would deepen to an eggplant color when the bun was finished baking, a length of time that varied slightly from person to person, depending on their species genetics layered into their clone.

“Hey, kid. What’s up?” Aria asked, the comm making her sound like she was standing right in front of Victoria.

Which, now that she and most everyone who did any fighting or guarding had gotten an ‘upgraded’ clone with the ability to become invisible, that wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Hell, it wouldn’t even be the first time Aria had snuck up on her only to scare the life out of her.

The fearsome, intimidating woman was more mischievous than one would expect, only her playful side ended up being terrifying more often than not, for her prey.

“We’ve got another one to add to the knocked up list. Misheria.”

Aria groaned. “Goddamn. We’re going to be full up with kids before too much longer if this keeps up.”

“I know it’s dangerous, but I’m excited,” she confessed.

“Of course you are,” Aria snorted. “You probably love kids, you big softie.”

“Yeah,” she grinned. “Think of all the hybrids! And being able to watch all those cute little munchkins learn how to walk and fly and slither and swim! Ugh, I can’t wait to squish their adorable little faces!”

“Weirdo. Alright, you and Thegan are in charge. I’m off to scout the market to the south.”

“Still planning to fly on Thrasin?”

“Yep. These invisibility powers damn sure come in handy when soaring through the air on the back of a giant fucking dragon.”

“Good luck and safe travels!”

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