Page 116 of The Viking in the Vault
She nods quickly. “Just for a while. I want you to see where I come from. I want you to understand why this matters to me. I want you beside me—not just here in this new life, but in the parts of mine I left behind.”
I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss her fingers.
“Then I will go,” I say. “For your ocean. For your storms. For your sky.”
She exhales shakily, smiling with wet eyes. “You’ll love the stars there,” she whispers. “They’re different from M’mir…but just as bright.”
EPILOGUE
ELENA
Even with all the terraforming tech I could possibly provide, Earth remains messy.
I’m starting to think that’s just Santa Rosa: messy, loud, humid, and salt-drenched. The waves crash against the beach in a steady rhythm, gulls cry overhead, and someone’s blasting Mer-human music from a speaker farther down the shoreline. Aliens of every Pact species walk on the beach together, enjoying our new coast.
But this particular stretch of sand?
This one belongs to my family.
I sit with my sisters and my mom on an old quilt that lives in Marcy’s minivan, our feet buried in the warm sand. Marcy’s hair is tied up in a scarf, sunglasses perched on her head, and she’s sipping a margarita from a can while Lisette paints her toenails neon green. I lean back on my hands and just…watch.
The view is pretty great.
Farther down the beach, Ragnar is getting mobbed by my niece and nephew—both of them shrieking with joy as they pelt him with wet handfuls of sand. He’s shirtless, tattoos gleaming turquoise with salt and sun, laughing so hard he can barely dodge. Fenrik is barking and dodging around with them, boltinginto the ocean every so often and emerging to shake and spray the whole group with water.
Lisette squints down the shoreline, pausing mid-stroke with the brush dripping neon green onto the quilt.
“Not to be weird,” she says, tilting her head slightly, “but your man isinsanelyhot.”
“Lisette!” Mom chides.
“No, like—objectively,” Lisette insists. “I mean, look at him. The antlers, the shoulders, the laugh? It’s giving ‘immortal warrior-dad at beach day’ and I am very much not immune.”
Marcy chimes in without missing a beat. “Elena brought home a mythical creature and he still somehow knows how to fold a fitted sheet better than you do.”
Lisette flicks her paintbrush at Marcy, making Marcy squeal and flinch.
I snort. “You might not be so complimentary if you realized how terrified he is of microwaves.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Lisette says. “And honestly…a man like that doesn’t have to be useful. He could just lounge around naked all day and I’d be happy?—”
“Lisette Draycott!”Mom hisses. “My goodness…”
I shrug, biting back a grin as I look at him again—kneeling in the sand as Ava climbs on his back and Leo starts a dramatic death scene after being lightly tapped with a plastic shovel. Ragnar plays along with grave seriousness, declaring, “No, young warrior, your clan needs you!” before Fenrik races over to lick Leo’s face.
Leo bursts into giggles, rolling in the sand as Fenrik’s tail wags a mile a minute. Ava is trying to braid seaweed into Ragnar’s beard, and from the look on his face, he’s enjoying every second of it.
My heart clenches in the best possible way.
“I still can’t believe he left his entire crew for you,” Lisette murmurs. She caps off the nail polish and sets it aside, her expression uncharacteristically earnest. “Like…I know that’s the point of love and everything, but that’s a pretty serious flex. Does he have a cousin or something who might want to relocate to Earth? Or maybe he could recommend me for a sick job on Kanin?—”
Marcy snorts into her margarita. “Lisette, you can’t even handle winter in Florida. You’d turn into a popsicle on Kanin.”
“Not if I’m in a hot alien lodge with a seven-foot viking.”
“You want to be the main character in a soap opera,” Marcy cackles.
“No,” Lisette says. “I want to be the main character inElena’s life. Which is now canonically a sci-fi beach romance with family healing and a very well-endowed extraterrestrial husband.”
