Author's Note:

I'm not completely happy with this last chapter, but it'll have to do. The story, I love. I hope you liked it at least half as much as I do. Bunches of thank-yous to all reviews, great and small, negative or positive, I love them all. Reading a positive review is to a writer like myself somewhat like admiring my own reflection in a mirror. (And, let's be honest and admit it, there are few things we humans love as much as admiring ourselves.)

The answers to various questions in the beginning sort of dropped in piece by piece, didn't they? At least they should have done. This story should have, if I've been doing my homework, made you think. Made you reason and wonder. Draw hasty conclusions, like Marco was doing, and believe in his conclusions as he presented them, and then be surprised as the truth struck you, like a bucket of cold water.

Firstly, the Elŷrrics... while the idea of pregnancy and morphing was the spark to start this off, the Elŷrrics were the lit match which helped burn the idea into my mind and make me write. The basic idea was of an alien race different from the Yeerks and devoted to slave trade, as opposed to the Yeerks' dependence on slaves – a race cruel enough to make even Marco prefer the Yeerks. Consider it: the Yeerks need slaves to have any sort of meaningful life… the Elŷrrics, a conquering race capable and dangerous on their own, have them for simple convenience, and for entertainment. As cannon fodder in wars, as gladiators in arenas, as home servants, as targets to vent their anger at when their boss at work has yelled at them.

The slave camps and his service under the Elŷrrics have done much to alter Marco's character to where I needed him to be.

Marco, yes.He's different from the Marco of old. A reviewer (and thanks again to all you people who reviewed!) said that "He's changed a lot, and his frequent thoughts of revenge and mingled despair really show him in a new light. It also ties into a little bit of his ruthlessness - maybe shows what happens when he loses his humor.". I tried to portray him as very bitter, very tired of the world, and longing only for peace. He's still ready and willing to fight for it, though - perhaps too ready. As he comes home and sees it slip between his fingers he immediately leaps at the first throat that appears - Ronnie's. Being wrong, he grumbles, considers, and searches for another throat to leap at - Dr Glas. He's still Marco, though, and he does stop to think in a while. He may have lost his sense of humour in the Elŷrrian camps, but he's not lost his wits.

Cassie's changed too, obviously. Her change has a greater chance of being only temporary, though. To clarify exactly what happened, in case the story didn't:

Due to Ronnie's involvement with politics, someone wanted to eliminate him. He constantly had Cassie by his side, though, and no-one thought that attacking Ronnie would leave Cassie doing anything else than defending him. Surviving his demise, she might take his place on the political stage, which would be dire: Ronnie was quickly growing popular, and thus dangerous to his opponents, but Cassie would be immensely popular from the start. It would be a down-right coup-de-grace for Ronnie's opposition.

So the choice was made to be rid of Cassie, too. Sad, but necessary. They shot her first, so she would not try to interfere. The first shot struck her lung, the second her belly, and then they aimed at Ronnie. There were totally five attackers, three of them armed with guns and two with common baseball bats (sort of cliché, I know). As Cassie fell, and began to morph, two more shots were fired at her. As Ronnie went down, shot once and charged by one of the baseball bats, she was already up, already healed by her morphing, and in the process of wrestling the other baseball bat man. How many shots she sustained in morph isn't clear, but the two attackers still on their feet after the struggles fled – or tried to, they were all captured and turned over to justice. Cassie, a bleeding wolf, crawled back to beside Ronnie, collapsed over him, and slowly demorphed, falling into unconsciousness as she did so.

She woke up later at the hospital, and the rest is story.

The question remaining, of course, is what happens next? Can Marco recover from the treatment he suffered in the slave camps? He can never be rid of the tiara, it's like a scar he's going to bear until the end, and in never being rid of it can he ever truly be free?

Can the tiara be used against him?

There is a sparkling possibility of a sequel, here. Cassie's distress is hopefully over… Marco's isn't.