Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 117336 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117336 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
It reaches out and bats at his nose with one tiny paw, and I swear, Azar melts. His expression is one of bliss. "Did you see that?"
"I saw," I agree, amused.
I'm doubly amused when Azar leans over and kisses the hell out of me, then presses his forehead to my own. "Thank you, my love. For the kitten…and the child." He touches my stomach again and then announces to the kitten, "Tell me what you would like. Are you hungry? Thirsty?" When it's silent, he gives me a worried look. "What do I do? Should I feed it? Pet it? What would a father do in this instance?"
He's so frantic. I bite my lip to keep from laughing. Something tells me that it's not going to be much of a mouser. I think Azar's going to make it the most spoiled cat ever.
And I can't wait to see him as a dad. "You're doing just fine, honey. Just fine."
Afterword
Hello there!
Aaaaah!! It has been such a journey to get here to ‘the end’ of the series. I'm so, so stoked at how this book turned out.
When I first created Azar, it was to have an ongoing 'Big Bad' in the series. Someone you could point to and say HE'S EVIL, WE MUST DEFEAT HIM. Romance readers being who they are, the moment Azar showed up on the page, people started asking for his book. At first, I said no. He's an asshole! He's no good! He's evil! But as the series went on, more and more people kept asking for Azar's book and it made me think about how it'd be possible. I had paired him with Melina, after all, someone who has selflessly devoted herself to the fort and it's people. How the hell does THAT work out?
Somewhere along the way, I decided that I'd write Azar's book. I had no idea how I'd make him heroic, but I was determined to try! I'm kinda fascinated by the morally gray hero. The one who thinks he's doing the right thing even when he's not, and has to be convinced that his strongly-held beliefs are actually the wrong ones.
PULL UP A CHAIR, MY FRIENDS, WE ARE ABOUT TO DIVE INTO REYLO TERRITORY.
(Some of you are groaning, but those of you who have read my books for a while know that it always, always, comes back to Reylo.)
So let's talk about Kylo Ren/Ben Solo and the Sequel Trilogy. The first movie sets up Kylo Ren to be the bad guy. Oh, he blew up the Hosnian system and has a red lightsaber and a mask. He's bad! Except that you find out through the course of the story that Starkiller Base was Hux's idea and not Kylo's, and that Kylo turned to the dark side after everyone he trusted betrayed him, and that he'd been groomed/mentally abused all his life by the dark side voices in his head. He 'turns' to the light for Rey at the end, only to fucking die at the end of The Rise of Skywalker (cue me hissing angrily). This is theoretically a villain's redemption.
I hated it.
Wouldn't it be a more interesting story if Ben Solo had to spend his life atoning for his sins and making up for them? Wouldn't that be a better 'redemption' for someone? To say 'yeah, I did some pretty crap stuff when I was being gaslighted, but now I'm making up for it'. To me, that was a far more interesting story and one that was completely overlooked.
So that's how we get to Azar. In a way, he's a lot like Kylo Ren. He's proud to be on the 'dark side'. He's been raised that his people are the right ones, that everyone else is just trash, and that there's nothing wrong with being awful and enslaving 'those' people for the good of 'these' people. It'd be EASY to kill him off in a dramatic moment for the love of the heroine...but that's the coward's way out. I wanted to show Azar slowly realizing that hey, all this shit I've been told all my life isn't right. I wanted him to find enjoyment in working to make the fort better, not just because Melina wanted it, but because he wanted it, too. In my head, Azar still has a rough road in the future. He's going to have drakoni that will hate his guts simply because of who he is and his past. (And for the record? Emma is not wrong in hating him. From her perspective, he’s still the biggest monster around.) He's going to have to prove himself to everyone over and over again. He's going to struggle with empathy from time to time, because it's hard to unlearn a lifetime of bullshit. But the key thing is that he's going to try.