Page 76 of Volunteer 4711

CHAPTER36

COMMANDER

I lookat her and brush some of her brown hair back from her face. “You have another new name now,” I say to my wife. “You’ve come a long way from your Water woman name to a volunteer, to my valet, to wife, and now the most prestigious name in the Silver language. “Mother,” I say.

“Mother,” she repeats back in her Water language and then adds in the Silver language, “Freedom.”

I have no words. She is correct. As a mother and citizen of a galactically recognized species, she can never be a volunteer or a slave to anyone again, despite being a Water woman.

“How long have you known?” I ask.

“Since the farm,” she replies. “I was told I would never have real freedom unless I were to become a mother.”

I let that sink in. I now question everything that has happened between us. Water people are known to be cunning. “Is the love we have together real?”

“I gave you your freedom unbeknownst to me, breaking your royal shackles to the Home Planet forever as you could not have married any lower, and you gave me my freedom with these children. We both have won,” she replies.

“But us,” I say. “Has this been real?”

“Do you believe it’s real?”

I hesitate.Have I been fooled this entire time?“Yes, I believe our relationship is real,” I say, mentally going through the years to support my statement. “Don’t you?” My heart is pounding, waiting for her response.

“There’s no one more real to me in the entire galaxy than you.”

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