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I pressed a hand to the sand to shove myself up.
Sand smothered the blood peeling from the corner of my mouth and neck.
I rolled onto my back and peered up at the sky, unable to contain the giddy and crazy high-pitched laugh that issued from my lips.
It was a mad, dumb shit thing to do.
But I had done it and survived.
I grunted as I rolled onto my shoulder and immediately wish I hadn’t.
The bones crunched and shot a bolt of pain into my chest.
I rolled up onto my feet but couldn’t stand, not yet.
I closed my eyes and waited for my senses to right.
The creature continued to scream, in a higher pitch now.
Even through my eyelids, I saw the enormous explosion that must have been the fuel cells biting the dust.
And still, I could not stand.
“Egara?” the sweetest voice in the galaxy screamed—not in pain but excitement. “Egara!”
It was music to my ears.
She crashed into me with her usual lack of grace and knocked me back down.
She straddled me and kissed every inch of my face.
“Are you all right?” she said between kisses. “What do you think you’re doing? Flying a spacecraft into a monster?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” I said calmly, the pain subsiding as I reached up to tuck a length of hair behind her ear. “All I could think about was you.”
She grinned and tried to pull her laugh back but it exploded from her uncontrollably.
All of a sudden, tears were in her eyes.
I reached up and wiped them from her face.
“Don’t be sad.”
“I’m not sad.”
She leaned down and pressed her lips to mine.
She gave herself to me as I gave myself to her.
The way fated mates were always said to coexist.
Each equal in the other’s eyes as neither could survive without the other.
And I knew then I made the right decision to come back.
As the Monarch squealed its last shriek, its tendrils fluttering in pain, it finally flopped to one side and was still.
It turned out the shuttlecraft was enough to silence the beast for good.
