Tawni shakes her head at Roc’s antics and makes her way over to us. Her white-blond hair practically sings under the reflected rays of the sun. I stand and hug her, holding her longer than normal. “I missed you too,” she says, understanding me the way she always has.
Behind her is Tristan, his arm around his mother, talking and laughing, his mouth closing only when he sees me and the way I’m looking at him:
With fire and ice and water and storms in my eyes. With the red sky and the yellow-white sand and the green grass. With gray rocks and dim lighting and painted walls. With life and love and memories.
Does he stop laughing because he sees all that in my gaze?
When he smiles I know that he does.
Because I see it in his eyes too.
A million memories and the future.
He hugs me and I’m home.
He kisses me and I’m never alone.
Whether our mothers had any idea what they were really doing when they stuck those chips in our necks, we may never know, but it doesn’t matter now. Because we were always meant to be together and I can’t imagine a life apart.
I’m his rock and he’s mine.
And thus ends (and begins) the greatest adventure of my lifetime.
~*~
Keep reading for:
1) Three awesome Dwellers short stories
2) A long-awaited interview with Perry the Prickler
3) A sneak peak of Brew, the first book in David Estes’ new YA paranormal dystopian series, The Witching Hour, coming January 16, 2014!
A personal note from David…
If you enjoyed this book, please, please, please (don’t make me get down on my knees and beg!) consider leaving a positive review on the major book review sites. Without reviews on the major sites, I wouldn’t be able to write for a living, which is what I love to do! Thanks for all your incredible support and I look forward to reading your reviews.
Acknowledgments
No way! *blinking quickly while pinching my arms and slapping my cheeks* It can’t be over, can it? 7 books, more than 700,000 words, and 18 months later, and the combined Dwellers/Country Sagas are finished. I’m in shock. Complete shock. Speechless. Well, not completely, as us writers almost always have something to say. And what I have to say is mostly a whole lot of THANK YOUS.
First and foremost, to my wife, the real Adele, you have been more than just a support to me on this journey—you’ve been my partner in crime. You’ve suffered my endless babbling about plotlines and characters and promotions and rejection letters and on and on. You’ve been there for my greatest defeats and my greatest triumphs. You’ve sat with me and pored over copious amounts of beta feedback, helping me decide how to improve my early manuscripts. You’ve added your own critical feedback to my stories, never holding back, always being honest, determined to not let me be complacent in my earlier successes, to make each and every book the best that they could be. You are my best friend and the most important person in my life.
To my readers, you are the best, most wooloo people I’ve ever met and I’m so searin’ glad to know so many of you on a first name basis through the David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite group on Goodreads. You people make me laugh, cry, and throw my laptop across the room on a daily basis, and I’ll always love you for it. If you keep on reading, I’ll keep on writing. Thanks for sticking with me.
A huge HUGE HUGE thanks to my cover artist for this book and for the other three Dwellers books, Tony Wilson at Winki Pop Design. Your art and designs have been PERFECT for this series and I’m never surprised when readers tell me how much they love the covers.
To my beta readers, many of whom have been around for all seven books, you all are so AWESOME I can hardly even put it into words. This is the seventh book in the series, and yet you took your job so seriously, challenging me on the smallest of minutiae, forcing me to think about the decisions I was making and why I was making them. The improvements I made to the story based on your feedback will undoubtedly be well appreciated by my readers. So thank you Laurie Love, Alexandria Theodosopoulos, Kerri Hughes, Terri Thomas, Lolita Verroen, Rachel Schade, Brooke DelVecchio and Anthony Briggs Jr.
And last but not least, to my remarkable Street Team, I love love LOVE reading your reviews of my ARCs, they keep me going sometimes when building a writing career feels like the hardest thing in the world. Thanks for all your reviews, support, and genuine kindness. You are the definition of good people. And a special thanks to Kelly in particular, who has been the ultimate street team member and has taught me so much about how to get the word out about my books. I appreciate everything that you do.
The saga continues in other books by David Estes available through the author’s official website:
http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com
or through select online retailers including Smashwords.com.
Young Adult Novels by David Estes
The Dwellers Saga:
Book One—The Moon Dwellers
Book Two—The Star Dwellers
Book Three—The Sun Dwellers
Book Four—The Earth Dwellers
The Country Saga (A Dwellers Saga sister series):
Book One—Fire Country
Book Two—Ice Country
Book Three—Water & Storm Country
Book Four—The Earth Dwellers
The Witching Hour:
Book One—Brew (Coming January 16, 2014!)
The Evolution Trilogy:
Book One—Angel Evolution
Book Two—Demon Evolution
Book Three—Archangel Evolution
Children’s Books by David Estes
The Adventures of Nikki Powergloves:
Nikki Powergloves—A Hero Is Born
Nikki Powergloves and the Power Council
Nikki Powergloves and the Power Trappers
Nikki Powergloves and the Great Adventure
Nikki Powergloves vs. the Power Outlaws (Coming soon!)
Connect with David Estes Online
David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite
Blog/website
About the Author
David Estes was born in El Paso, Texas but moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he was very young. He grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to Penn State for college. Eventually he moved to Sydney, Australia where he met his wife and soul mate, Adele, who he’s now been happily married to for more than two years.
A reader all his life, David began writing novels for the children's and YA markets in 2010, and has completed 17 novels, 15 of which have been published. In June of 2012, David became a fulltime writer and is now travelling the world with Adele while he writes books, and she writes and takes photographs.
David gleans inspiration from all sorts of crazy places, like watching random people do entertaining things, dreams (which he jots copious notes about immediately after waking up), and even from thin air sometimes!
David’s a writer with OCD, a love of dancing and singing (but only when no one is looking or listening), a mad-skilled ping-pong player, an obsessive Goodreads group member, and prefers writing at the swimming pool to writing at a table. He loves responding to e-mails, Facebook messages, Tweets, blog comments, and Goodreads comments from his readers, all of whom he considers to be his friends.
Dwellers/Country EXTRAS!
1) Three awesome Dwellers short stories
2) A long-awaited interview with Perry the Prickler