Half dreaming, she sighed. “I was so tired and sad. Now I’m not. You had a cracked rib.”

“Now I don’t.” He wanted to stay as he was, but pushed up to study her face. He felt it, as he’d known he would, simply overwhelm him again. “We’ve seen each other like this before.”

“Yes.”

“Dreams and visions.”

“Reality’s more intense.” Her gaze roamed over his face, and some of the light dimmed in her eyes. “If you’re going to regret it, we’ll just chalk it up to battle fatigue.”

She lifted a hand to shove him aside, and he took it in his, squeezed hard.

“This is it. Goddamn it, this is it for me. You. So give me a minute to deal with that. To deal with the fact it doesn’t matter why. I’ve pushed back on that all my life. We’d end up here, sure. But then … I don’t know what the hell. Now I know, this is it for me, and it doesn’t matter why.”

So frustrated, she thought as her heart melted. She lifted her free hand to his face, brushed it back through his hair. “No, it doesn’t matter. Duncan of the MacLeods,” she murmured. “Tha gaol agam ort.”

He dipped his head to brush his lips over hers. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Duncan of the MacLeods should learn a little Scots Gaelic. I love you.”

He rested his brow on hers while emotion swirled through him. “I can probably butcher it in Irish from what I learned back in school. But I’ll stick with English. I love you.”

She drew him down to seal the words, the promise of them with a kiss.

He rolled over, tucked her against his side. “I just wanted to see you. Needed to talk to you about the island, but that was mostly an excuse. I just needed to see you. I didn’t expect you to jump me.”

“I wanted a drink, a shower, sleep. Then I saw you. Bloody, bruised, broody. And I only wanted you. I think if you hadn’t come to me, I’d have taken the sad into sleep instead of remembering the good we did today.”

“I get the drink, shower, sleep. Why were you sad?”

“What they did to those people, Duncan. Listening to what they went through—”

“I know.” He rubbed his hand up and down her arm. “I talked with most of the rescues.”

“One I talked to was taken in the first sweeps, in D.C. Some of the children were born in that place. They’ve never known anything else, only the dark.”

“We’ll show them the light. There must be a way to find out if any of the women have kids we rescued. I don’t know if Rachel knows how to do that medically, but magickally.”

“Some won’t want them.”

“Others will.” He sat up, and because he saw the sad again, gray clouds in her eyes, he pulled her up with him. “Others will, Fallon. How many times have we seen it? Look at Rachel and Jonah with Gabriel—biology doesn’t mean a damn. That kid’s theirs. Look at Anne and Marla with Elijah. There are hundreds more like that. We all know them.”

“You’re right.” Those clouds whisked away. “You’re absolutely right. I’m so glad you’re here.”

A shoulder, she realized, good sense. And thank all the gods, sensibility.

“Oh, we’ve got so much to do. I think I can work with what I learned from some of the rescues who were moved around to locate other containment centers. And you and Mallick are right, we need to relocate the POWs. We need to talk about how to do all of that. How and when to—”

He pulled her to him, kissed her quiet. “We’ll do all of that, but we’re going to take a couple hours. We’ll take that shower and find out what it’s like to have sex when we’re not bloody and banged up.”

“That’s one plan.”

“It’s a good one. We can grab something to eat.”

“Eat.” She pressed a hand to her belly. “I’m starving.”

“See, good plan.” He pulled her to her feet. “Then I can take you to the islands Mallick and I have in mind. We’ll work out the rest.”

He paused, let himself take her in. Long, lean, naked. “Jesus, I was in kind of a rush. You’ve filled out really well since the last time I saw you naked.”

“You weren’t impressed at the time.”

“I lied.”

She smiled, and with his hand in hers, walked toward the bath. “I know.”

* * *

Late morning, energized—again—fed, she met with Colin in his HQ to explain the basics of the plan for POWs.

“Islands.” He pushed away from his computer. For reasons that annoyed her, he had an easy skill with technology she lacked. “Tropical islands with resources, shelters or the means to build them.”

“They’d still be supervised. We wouldn’t put guards on the islands, but there are ways for us to watch them, to maintain control.”

“I get that.” He stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets. “Some of them don’t deserve any kind of freedom.”

“We’ll determine that. We can’t keep them all locked up indefinitely. Not only because it’s just not who we are, but we can’t spare the men or the supplies. I have to see the locations first, so Duncan’s going to take me. But it seems like a good solution.”

“Not Hargrove or Carter.” He sent her one fierce look. “Not those two. I’m laying down a line there.”

“You don’t need to. They’ll live out their lives in prison. I’m going to look, then when we all meet in New Hope, Duncan and I will present the plan to all the commanders. We need to look ahead, Colin. Not just to the next battle, but to the world we want at the end of it.”

“You worry about the world. I’ll worry about the next battle.” He shrugged, paced.

Moved like a solider, she thought, looked like one with the tough build, the straight back, the warrior’s braid. The soldier had always been in there, in the annoying and beloved brother who collected odd treasures and loved basketball.

She started to say just that when he glanced back at her over his shoulder.

“So, you and Duncan.”

“He’s already been to the islands, and Mallick’s on R and R so he’ll give me the tour, and we’ll see.”

“Yeah, yeah, I mean you and Duncan finally did the deed. Got, you know, down to it.”

“What?” Shock came first, then the bone-deep embarrassment only a sister can feel when faced with a grinning brother. “How do you know?”

“Shit, Fallon, everybody knows. It was like the freaking sun exploded. And did you look out here?” He jerked a thumb to the window. “That tree behind the memorial stone.”

“What do you mean everybody knows? What does a tree have to do with—” She looked now. “A tree of life,” she murmured.

It bloomed, like the one at Mallick’s cottage, full of flower and fruit.

“I’d’ve been cool with it anyway. He’s a good guy. But it’s hard to argue with shit like that. Dad now.”

“Let’s not go there. I need to see the islands and get back to New Hope. Don’t let Travis take on too much. It’s harder on him. He feels … everything.”

“I’ve got him.” He added a smug smile. “He’d have felt it when I short-sheeted his bed last night, and that’ll have him working out how to pay me back.”

Brothers, she thought. They were what they were.

“Safe trip and all that,” Colin added. “Oh, wait.”

He went back to his desk, opened a drawer. He took out her knife and the sheath Travis had made for her thirteenth birthday. “Kid said you lent him this, and asked if I’d get it back to you. Marichu brought him in. She handled herself,” he said in a way that told Fallon he did, indeed, have a little thing there.

“Thanks. The boy’s okay?”

“In the barracks. One of our new recruits.”

Nodding, she clipped the knife to her belt. “Train him strong. I’ll see you in New Hope.”

“Hey, Fallon,” he said as she walked to the door. “We’ve got them on the run.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

* * *

She got home at dusk to find her mother stirring something that smelled like heaven on the stove. So normal, she thought, after the blood and the battle, after a day of wonders.

Grateful, she rushed over to wrap her arms around Lana, press hard against her back.

“There’s my girl.”

“Here’s my mom.”

Lana turned, hugged just as hard before drawing back with a smile. The smile changed as she studied Fallon’s face, a face she cupped in her hands as she said, “Your first time.”

“What—”

“Duncan. Of course Duncan.”

“I—you— How do you know?”

“I had a first time, too. You’ve got knowledge in your eyes, along with the stars. He made you happy.”

“Yes.” The initial awkwardness dropped away. “I love him. He loves me.”

“I know.”

“It was wonderful.” As it rushed into her again, Fallon spun in a circle. “I didn’t know I could feel so much. You can read stories, or listen to soldiers’ sex talk, I could even see the way you and Dad look at each other, but I couldn’t know. I couldn’t know until he touched me.”

With a sigh, she laid a hand on her heart. “And then he did. When we’re together like that, I’m not the Savior or The One, or anything but … I’m just me.”

“I know,” Lana said again.

“It’s like that with Dad, for you?”

On a sigh of her own, Lana put a kettle on, chose teas. “All the months we were together, the time before you were born, and after, he never touched me, never asked. He wanted me, and I knew. Just as he knew I needed my grieving time for Max. And through that time, I fell in love, slowly and completely.”