Excerpt
-PROLOGUE-

Less than two days after her high school graduation, Aimee Patterson had walked her Cocker Spaniel along the pond on her parent’s farm. When Ziggy charged into the woods on the other side, Aimee was paralyzed with indecision. The forest was scary, a dark lair she had avoided since childhood. But, she was not a child anymore, and something had caught the dog’s attention. Trailing after him into that bleak stockade...Aimee disappeared from this planet.

She woke up on a spaceship so grand and so far from Earth, never imagining that her adventure in space would last five years. In that time she learned new technology, visited a foreign planet, battled aliens, encountered disease—and cured it. Most importantly, though, she fell in love.

When the adventure was over, Aimee was twenty-two years old and confronted with a monumental decision. Should she remain in the stars with Zak and start their life together, or should she return to Earth to lead a normal existence and comfort the parents who never knew the fate of their missing daughter?

Aimee’s heart yearned for one future, but the burden of responsibility argued for another. The truth was that in order for her and Zak to spend a life together without regrets, they both needed to evolve—to mature.

For half a decade, Aimee walked the routine journey of life—always waiting—always looking to the stars—knowing, hoping, that one day he would return for her.

Today was that day.

***
Five years.

Five long years.

Aimee stared through her hands at the pine needles blanketing the ground below. Beneath her loafers, the packed earth altered, transitioning from brown, to gray, to obsidian−until finally the turf was gone and her leather shoes reformed atop a marble floor.

For a moment she was afraid to look up.

Five years.

Five years ago today she had stood in this exact same spot, saying goodbye to the man she loved. It was a moment filled with anguish barely diminished over time. In that period, doubt grew into a behemoth monster that warned daily that she would never see him again. To protect her heart she had tried to move on, but no man could connect with her as he did. And, every night the pendant around her neck burned his memory into her dreams…

Five years.

Only moments ago, she stood in the woods behind her pond as her heart drilled with the fear that he would not come back for her—and yet, the beam had appeared from above. A sign of faith. A sign of love. He was back. He wanted her. She bled happiness at the thought of being with him.

Zak.

Yes, time had passed, but in space the hands of the clock grew fuzzy. Here she was, once again aboard the Guardian Ship, Horus, about to be reunited with the man of her dreams.

At last, Aimee lifted her head.