She felt the tears hot on her face, but couldn’t have explained why she was crying. Maybe it was for the parents who were never hers, the sister who had never been a sister, her mother who had been grateful to give her away, but then, through the tears, the glorious realisation burst like a ray of white-gold sunlight. She was crying also with relief, with thankfulness, and with deep, deep gratitude that she had come home at last. Blade was her family, he always had been from the moment they had met. In him she was complete.
‘Let’s go and make a baby, Blade.’ She suddenly flung herself on him, smothering his face with kisses as she felt the hunger grow inside her. ‘This is the first day of the rest of our life, and we are going to have fat bonny babies, hundreds of them. I want to make love all day long every day.’ She began to laugh through the tears, her voice ecstatic. ‘And all night too.’
‘Sounds good to me.’ His face was ablaze with relief at her reaction, his body hard and strong as he gathered her into him. ‘But we’re not going anywhere. This first one can be conceived under the stars with the heavens open above us.’
And he was.