Mutable: Epilogue

Notes: OH MY GOD, WHAT?!? 89,000 words later, we have...the end? RLY?

Really. At least, this is the end for now. A sweet, sexy ending for my long-suffering readers just WAITING for the promised HEA.

Up next: whatever comes after The Tower. I don't have a title yet, but I'll put one together shortly. And yes, there will be more sex in that story--I basically wrote myself out of logical places for sex in this book. This long, looong book. Almost 90k, lord. No wonder it took so long. You all are amazing for sticking with me, and I love you.

Title: Mutable: Epilogue

***

Mutable: Epilogue

The sun never set on Axia Mara, the planet that Cas and Rone and the children had chosen to settle on. Only half of the planet was really habitable thanks to an unforgiving axis of rotation, but it had a good-sized population whose culture emphasized education and environmentalism, and more importantly, who had no reason to dislike Imperians yet. They were welcomed by the governor of the largest city as official Imperian representatives, set up with a house and staff and private lab, and expected to contribute to local society and bring new trade deals to the government.

The trade deals, at least, came easily—Amiru wasn’t happy about exiling Rone, but he knew he couldn’t send Cas away without Rone going with him, and exiling Cas was the price of keeping his kingship strong. It wasn’t fair, but Cas had never expected life to be fair, so it didn’t hurt to leave a place he hadn’t lived in long enough to know as home. The children came with them, more excited than sad over the prospect of living in a new place, and a military escort and science staff joined them as well. Fillie—now Lieutenant Fillie, the head of their escort—had been the first to volunteer.

It was good, especially now that Cas could relax in the knowledge that he’d done everything he could to avenge Beren, and the rest of his murdered people. Vengeance was a surprisingly faint comfort prepared to the pit of grief inside of him where their loss still lived, but it eased the pain a bit. His enemies were gone, and he was still alive. It was time to embrace that, as well as really settle into not cohabiting with a phage any more.

Losing the strength and speed had been inconvenient, but not too bad. Losing the ability to transform had resulted in some unexpected tears, but again, he’d gotten over it. He still had most of the physical skills he’d had before, just in a slower body. Honestly, the hardest part about learning to live without a phage was realizing that Cas didn’t have the same control over his body’s involuntary reactions that he used to.

Sweating wasn’t terrible. He could do without it, but he recognized that a normal person without a phage recycling their moisture needed it. Fine. Blushing? Yeah, all right. Same with spots, a rumbling stomach, and waking up with weird crust in the corners of his eyes. The one that he really wasn’t used to? Waking up with an erection.

He had trained himself out of it when he was younger, the phage eventually getting the idea and putting a stop to it before he could do more than stir. Now, though, it seemed like he woke up hard every single day, without any regard to what he did or didn’t do the night before. It would have been annoying, if he wasn’t so well-occupied with his husband.

“Slower,” Rone said, putting his hands on Cas’s hips and stilling him. “Take it easy. We’ve got time.”

Intellectually, Cas knew that was true. The kids were occupied, work wasn’t going to take them out of the house until that afternoon…he could relax into this. But it was hard to abolish the habit of years, hard to get over wanting to be fast and furtive and as quiet as possible. Rone was guiding him through taking sex at a more leisurely pace, and sometimes that was great.

Other times, it verged on sadistic. “I want more,” Cas groaned, shifting his hips over Rone’s. He was filled up, fully seated on Rone’s thick cock, just the right side of too big, and he wanted to move. “You can make it bigger.”

Rone chuckled, dark and wicked. “The phage isn’t a sex toy. You don’t need it to be satisfied.”

“Then I need you to let me move!”

“Go ahead.” Rone ran his fingers down Cas’s aching thighs. “But slow.”

“Slow,” Cas muttered. “Slow my ass.”

“Exactly, honey.”

It was frustrating, how well Rone knew him by now. Cas arched forward and lifted up, forcing his muscled not to clench as he let go, let Rone slide closer and closer, almost out—then down again, just as painfully slow. He felt every inch, and Rone was right—he didn’t need any more of them. Cas was gleaming with sweat, and his back and legs burned from the glacial pace, but the diffuse pain just heightened the intensity of his pleasure. He groped backward with his hands, bracing them on Rone’s lifted knees, and rolled his hips into it, over and over, a needy, trembling mess.

“Touch me,” he gasped. His cock stood out from his body, flushed and drooling. “Touch me, I’m going to come, please...”

Rone liked to tease him, but he never left him wanting. He reached up and stroked Cas’s cock, working his balls with the other hand, and Cas sat down on him hard and came, digging furrows into Rone’s knees in an effort to keep himself upright. Fuck, fuck—“…fuck!”

“That’s so good,” Rone said in a low voice. “So good, Cas, god—you don’t—” He got a hand behind Cas’s back and rolled them over, driving into Cas’s trembling, hypersensitive body with a few more short thrusts before coming himself. Cas tightened around him, holding him close and so satisfied but also wishing it would never end. They both shook as they finally separated, Rone plying Cas with soft, searching kisses as they caught their breath.

“Good morning,” Rone said at last.

Cas laughed. “Good morning to you too.” Pale sunlight filtered in through their window, the unit automatically programmed to provide blackout conditions while they slept and gradually lighten things as the day progressed. “How about we stay in bed for the rest of the day?” Cas suggested with a subtle stretch of his back. Now was when he missed the phage—he’d be living with sore muscles for a while.

“I’d love to, but I need to feed the beast before it eats through my stomach.”

Cas rolled his eyes. “It can go for days without food. You spoil that thing rotten.” Rone’s progress at mastering the phage was impressive, but he was inclined to give in to its cravings.

“We can afford to spoil it, and ourselves now. We’re not at war. We’re not fighting anybody anymore.”

That was true, and the novelty still hadn’t worn off. The last time Cas had even looked at a gun was the one Glynnis had held, almost three standard months ago. Her death had been ruled a suicide. He was grateful he hadn’t had to stage it. “I know that, but I still feel…a sort of background franticness. Like static in my mind, telling me I need to be doing something.”

“You’re doing plenty,” Rone assured him. “You’re parenting, you’re taking classes, you’re teaching Fillie how to fight without embarrassing herself. The noise will fade as other things start to fill you up.”

Cas quirked a smile. “Is that a suggestion? Because that was fantastic, but I’m completely spent.”

“Maybe later,” Rone said, kissing the corner of his mouth. “For now, how about breakfast with the kids?”

“Sounds perfect,” Cas replied.

And it was.

Mutable: Chapter Thirty, Part Two

Notes: More story! And this isn't quite the end, so never fear, I'm not leaving things with some half-assed HFN this time around.

Title: Mutable: Chapter Thirty, Part Two

***

Chapter Thirty, Part Two

Rone sat beside him in a dark red chair—royal red, but somewhat faded. His hand on Cas’s shoulder was firm enough to comfort without pain, while Rone’s other hand was cupped loosely over his own knee. He wore plain clothes, for a prince and commander—no insignia, nothing of rank showing at all, just a loose, dark shirt and pair of pants. He might be barefoot for all Cas knew—it was warm enough in here to warrant it. “Where are we?” His throat was surprisingly whole, not cracked and dry like it should have been after a long period of unconsciousness.

“We’re at my home.”

Cas frowned and looked around more carefully. The room they were in was lighter than Rone’s bedroom, or any of the other rooms in the living suite in his mansion. The furnishings were older, and seemed more worn-in than what Cas was used to seeing. “Are we?”

“Yes. It’s just not the one in Obsidian. This is the country home, over a thousand miles from the capitol.”

Cas squeezed his eyes shut for a second, feeling a headache coming on. He’d have to deal with it the old-fashioned way, how novel. “Why is Doctor Weiss here?”

“Because he’s got the most experience of any medical professional on the planet when it comes to the phage, not that that’s saying much. Amiru insisted he come along to keep an eye on me.”

“Mmhmm. Who else has he sent to keep an eye on you?” Cas asked sarcastically. “Or me, I guess.”

To his credit, Rone didn’t try to dissemble. “Both of us, and there’s also a detachment of the royal guard here. We’re the subject of a lot of speculation at the moment, after all. It wouldn’t do to let us wander around without supervision.”

“Oversight, you mean.”

“Yes.”

Cas sighed. “I suppose I should count myself lucky that I’m not in prison.”

Rone shook his head. “I wasn’t going to let it come to that.”

God, he was so earnest. It was endearing and frustrating all at once. “You probably should have. You need to do everything you can to shore up your relationship with your brother in the public eye after what happened, don’t you?” Actually… “How much do people know about what happened in the palace?”

“The general public, very little. The military, a great deal more. They provide the personal guards my brother uses, on a rotating basis. It’s considered an honor post. The one that survived had a lot to tell them.”

“He did survive, then.” That was a relief. Fast on its heels was the deluge of remembering who hadn’t managed that much. “Rone, I’m so sorry about Darven.”

Rone frowned and pulled his hand back, folding them together in his lap and staring at them. Cas’s throat tightened. “Thank you,” Rone said after a moment. “I wish there was something that could have been done for him, but at least he wasn’t a slave like Freyne at the end. He died in control of his own mind.”

Cas wasn’t sure that really made it better for anyone who was dying, but if Rone thought so he wasn’t going to argue it. “Speaking of that…”

“Yeah. The phage.” Rone glanced at him. “How much did you hear with Doctor Weiss?”

“Enough of it, I think.” Cas looked up at the ceiling. It would hurt less to tell the next part if he didn’t have to face the man he’d lost his phage to. Gifted it to, really, and gladly, but it still hurt. “You won’t be able to get rid of the phage. Extracting it is impossible if it doesn’t want to leave. It can reform itself with as little as a hundredth of a percent of it left in your body, and it can hide in bones, in teeth, even in hair.”

Rone shifted in his chair. “You described it as a fight, between you and the phage. You talked about dominating it. Why haven’t I had the same issues that you did?”

“I think you probably have,” Cas said wryly. “You just got over them a lot faster. Did it try anything with you? Any visions, any promises?”

“It…” Rone paused. “Maybe? It said that we were an us, said it could give me all sorts of power. It let me see…well, it doesn’t matter what it let me see, but I knew better than to accept any of that.”

“What did you do?”

Rone shrugged. “I told it no. When it pushed, I held it down and didn’t let go until it promised to do what I said.”

Cas let himself look at Rone now, because honestly… “And that worked?”

“It seems to have. I haven’t had any trouble from it since then. No shapeshifting, no weird visions. My dreams are a little more intense than usual, but they’re still just dreams.”

Well, then. It had all worked out for the best. It was better to lose the phage than to lose Rone, especially to Christala. Which, actually… “Christala is dead, right? I didn’t misremember that?”

“She is very much dead,” Rone assured him.

“And Amiru and his family are all right?”

“He’s been given a clean bill of health, which is good because he’s got a lot of work to do, most of it reassuring the senior staff.”

Cas raised an eyebrow. “Because they think you’re an untrustworthy security risk now?”

Rone huffed. “That’s the least of it. At least two people on the general staff wanted me put to death, preferably by throwing me into a lava flow, but they were overruled.”

Cas’s neck was getting a crick in it from twisting to look at Rone. “Either help me sit up of get in here with me,” he grumbled, and was astonished when Rone slipped into bed with him a moment later, snuggling in close against his side. He was warm, and he smelled so familiar, and there was something about the way his skin seemed to shift that reminded Cas of…

“It misses you,” Rone said quietly.

Cas shook his head. “No, it wanted you. I’ve never heard of a phage being so opinionated in my entire life, but I know what I felt. It wanted you from the moment we met you. That’s why I knew it wouldn’t kill you.” He shut his eyes, but a few traitorous tears slipped out anyway. “That’s why I could live with giving it away to you—why it left me at all. I couldn’t have forced it out, it had to want to go. And it did.” And now I have nothing left of it. But I have you, at least for the moment.

“It might want to be in me, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t miss being in you. It’s more complicated than I thought.” He sighed. “This whole damn thing is complicated.”

“Yeah.” Cas sniffed, then exhaled shakily as Rone wiped the tears off his cheeks. “So. When’s the divorce?”

Rone’s hand stilled. “Do you want a divorce?”

The sound that came out of Cas’s mouth didn’t sound even close to the laugh he’d been trying for. “I don’t think what I want really comes into it now, does it? I’m a, a spy and a saboteur, and an assassin, and you’re a prince, and I put you and your entire family in danger. Staying married to me isn’t really an option.” Rone didn’t say anything, though, and finally Cas turned his head to look at him. “Is it?”

“That’s something we have to talk about,” Rone finally said. “It’s true that Amiru thinks the best thing would be for us to make a clean break, but he’s not going to force me into anything. And the kids…honestly, the thought of you not being around makes them kind of crazy. They adore you.”

His heart, it was going to burst and even if he had the phage, it wouldn’t have been enough to fix him. “I adore them too,” he whispered.

“I know you do.” Rone was silent for a long moment, then said, “How do you feel about me?”

Cas’s heart felt like it wanted to shrivel in his chest. Why, why did truthfulness have to feel like being flayed alive? “You can’t want me, not really.”

“Please don’t tell me what I want. I know what I want. I need to know how you feel about all this, Cas.”

“You don’t love me.” More tears leaked out, this time trickling down into his hairline. “If you loved anyone, it was Beren, not me. That’s understandable, that’s reasonable, and the fact that I love you shouldn’t enter into any decision you make about me. I knew what I was getting into when I lied to you. I used you, and I’ll be sorry about that for as long as I live, but I can’t regret it.”

“So you do love me,” Rone murmured. “I thought so, but you’re such a good actor I couldn’t be sure.”

Best to spell it out, then. Cas turned and looked Rone in the eyes. “I love you. But I don’t deserve you, or any part of your life.”

Rone touched his face again, smoothing a fingertip over the arch of his eyebrows, then down his nose. “When I married you, I knew exactly what I was getting into.”

“You couldn’t possibly have—”

“Complicated,” Rone interjected. “I knew I was getting complicated. We were always going to be complicated, whether you were Beren or Cas, phage-carrier or simple refugee. As far as I’m concerned, nothing has changed. We’re still complicated, and I still want you in my life more than I’ve ever wanted another person, apart from the kids.”

Cas felt light-headed, aching and empty and yet somehow, welling up with shivery, frightening hope. “How can it even be possible?” he asked. “Us, I mean? Now?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Rone said. “But I know I’m not going to give you up without a fight, not unless you’re done with me.”

Cas smiled. “You better get ready for the fight of your life, then.”

Rone leaned in and kissed him, soft and sweet, a promise more than anything else. “I’m ready.”

Mutable: Chapter Thirty, Part One

Notes: OMG, we're almost at the end! Three more posts total after this, I'm thinking. For now, enjoy Cas getting some well-earned R&R...while under constant surveillance.

Title: Mutable: Chapter Thirty, Part One

***

Chapter Thirty, Part One

Overwhelming pain, for Cas, was usually like a flood, the water risen so high within him that the only thing to do was find a distant corner of the cavern of his mind and either hope the air held out, or drown there. The phage was poor at pain management—healing was fast, but it entailed enduring a lot of suffering over the duration. Mental discipline had been the best way to handle it, and that had been a brutal learning curve. Cas was used to it, though. He knew how to handle that kind of pain.

It was different this time. There was no ticking clock in the back of his head counting down the seconds he’d need to endure, no gritted teeth or forced calm. If pain was a flood, then Cas was definitely underwater, but this time…breathing didn’t seem to matter. His whole body felt cool and relaxed, his mind pleasantly empty of anything that might disturb him. He was probably on some really excellent painkillers, then.

He understood that there were sounds around him—whispering noises, people or machines, but rather than try to rise and face them, he let himself go deeper. Eventually he touched down in a place he barely remembered. It looked like his childhood home—two rooms, one for cooking and company and one for all of them to sleep in, with stone floors and walls and a slate ceiling. It was cold, but in a comfortingly familiar way. There was the rug his grandmother had hand-knotted, there was his mother’s favorite cup sitting beside the kettle, and there was—Beren.

He seemed like just a baby, barely old enough to play with the other kids outside. His big, dark eyes were full of wisdom when he looked up, though. “Is it better?” he asked in his sweet, childish voice.

Cas sat down next to him. “Is what better?”

“How you feel now.”

This isn’t a conversation you need to have, Cas argued with himself momentarily. Much less with your mind tricking you into seeing Beren. That’s playing dirty. But surprisingly, he didn’t mind it so much. Maybe because he knew Christala was dead. It was a sick comfort, but nevertheless a solid one to rest on. “It’s better,” Cas said after a moment’s reflection. “Because it means that the hardest part is over.”

“But you’re not done.”

“No,” Cas agreed. “But I also might not get the chance to finish any of the rest of it. I went after the most important person first, and she’s dead now. If that’s what I have to be satisfied with, then I can be.”

“Do you wanna be?”

“What, satisfied? With just her?” Beren nodded, and Cas looked at the floor between them for a moment, following a familiar white vein of quartz to its inevitable end at the wall. “It would be a comfort in some ways,” he confessed. “To just be done with it all. To forget about the others and be happy with the havoc I managed to wreak here on Imperia.”

Beren reached over and took his hand. “You saved them.”

“I know.” Cas squeezed reassuringly. “I know I did. They know it too, but that doesn’t mean anyone is going to admit it, and I did a lot of highly illegal stuff to get here in the first place, so…we’ll have to see how it all balanced out. I don’t think I can rely on anything.”

“Rone,” Beren said very simply.

“You think I can rely on him?” Cas considered it. “Maybe. Absolutely in some ways, almost certainly not in others. Again, it will be a balancing act. If I’m lucky, he’ll order me sent off to join a group of Delacoeurian refugees, with a new identity. I’m sure he won’t let his brother do anything permanent to me.” Almost sure. Nearly sure.

Beren patted his hand. “He won’t.”

“Okay.” Cas opened his arm, and his little brother climbed over and into his lap. He hugged him close and nestled his face against the smooth, glossy black hair and decided it was all right to remember how to breathe.

Gradually he became more and more aware of his actual surroundings—there was a blanket on top of him, just a wisp of weight that nevertheless did a good job of keeping him warm from the chest down. One of his arms was free—or not free, exactly, but not confined by the blanket. It was warm too, and so was the left side of his chest…

Ah. He’d been turned into a pillow. Hell, the children had to be exhausted, what was Rone thinking letting them lie with Cas here when he was little better than a lump?

“…soon as possible.”

“That’s not going to happen.” That was Rone’s voice, and the other one was…Doctor Weiss, maybe?

“Wishing it isn’t so isn’t going to change things.”

“Wishing doesn’t factor into it. And keep your voice down, the kids are asleep.”

There was a long sigh. “I don’t know if you understand how precarious Beren’s position here is. He knowingly carried a virulent alien parasite within reach of our royal family. Not just you and your children, but Amiru’s as well.”

“He was hunting down another carrier.”

“That doesn’t matter! He should have reported her instead of—”

“How successful would a report from a refugee from a distant planet have been? What kind of impact would that have made with the admiralty? Would Amiru ever have even seen it cross his desk? No. Cas did the only thing he could, which was follow her himself.”

“While deceiving you and everyone else around him.” Weiss sounded tired. “Cas, yes, not Beren. That’s a great deal of the problem, right there. How can you be so blind to it?”

“He saved Amiru’s life.” Rone’s voice was firm. “And he saved mine.”

“He infected you with his own parasite, which then did its level best to kill you, from the look of things. Without your genetic modifications bolstering your immune system, the results could very easily have proven fatal.”

“But they weren’t. I’m fine.”

“You’re nowhere near fine!” Doctor Weiss spoke in a furious whisper. “I can’t extract it, do you understand that? It consciously evades detection in your blood and tissues! And your body is viral-resistant, so to engineer a virus that could successfully hunt it down would have to be so strong it would almost certainly kill you! And we’ve seen what these things are capable of now, thank to the vids from your brother’s home. Do you honestly think there’s any chance of you salvaging your military career after this? You’ll be lucky if the king doesn’t stick you on an island in the middle of a sea of lava.”

“I didn’t know you cared.”

“I care about the strength of the empire. I care about Imperia’s future. With you and Amiru working together, I was…optimistic.”

It was Rone’s turn to sigh. “Optimistic about what? That we could continue our conquest of the other settled worlds unmolested? That I’d go back to doing my brother’s dirty work without a qualm? Believe it or not, I think the phage is a good thing for us to know about. It proves that there are things out there that we don’t have a handle on and can’t control. Maybe it’ll make Amiru think twice about exerting the control of the crown over planets that have nothing to do with us.”

“You used to think that way too,” Doctor Weiss said thoughtfully. “Did the children change you so thoroughly?”

“They did,” Rone said. After a moment, he added, “Not just the children.”

“I can see that. Well, I can’t—” The doctor paused. “Ah. I think he’s waking up.”

“Good. Let’s move the kids. I want to talk to him alone.” There were sleepy grumbled, and the sudden absence of comfortable warmth, and then…silence. If Cas had still had his enhanced hearing, maybe he would have been able to detect Rone’s heartbeat or breathing, but to him it sounded like…nothing. Had Rone left him too? When was he coming back?

“Cas.” A big, broad hand covered his bare shoulder, and Cas shuddered with relief. “Look at me.”

With a grunt of effort, Cas opened his eyes.