Page 44

Amaia

“ D id you really pack a book?” Alexiares held up my camo bag, the middle zipper undone.

We were all packed and ready to go. The simulations would take about a month. Milking every spare second it would take for the bulk of Ronan’s troops to organize and attack. Three weeks, three phases of training, and one delusional mind that I could make this all work.

I snatched it from his hands. “Give me that.” I tossed a small flame his way, catching the edge of his shirt. He doused it immediately with an unimpressed flick of his water magic as he grumbled a series curse words.

“It’s my emotional support book.” I clutched it tight against my chest. He’d have to pry this from my cold, dead arms, if he thought for even a second I would leave it behind for the sake of saving space for something else.

He swiped through his hair, grown out enough to barely follow the rules of the gel he used to force it back and out of his face. “Weren’t you crying over this exact book two nights ago?”

“Is there a point there, Bloodhound ?” I shot back with a glare, not appreciating the thick mockery in his tone.

Alexiares stepped closer to me, peering down at me with lowered lids. “Got you something for the journey.”

It was a drawing—a sketch of the two of us. He was so cynical I expected there to be some semblance of a joke within the gesture. Caught in the pose or funny faces, but no, we looked almost … normal. Alexiares and I stood hand in hand, our gazes caught in each other, the gentle tug of his lips lifelike. I ran my finger along the raised lines, then held it over my heart, meeting his eyes. He watched me for a moment, then leaned forward to grab the book I’d easily discarded upon seeing his gift. Alexiares flipped open the front cover and motioned for me to place the drawing inside.

I shook my head, a quiet ache pressed against my chest. Hold your composure . I smoothed my expression before he had a chance to notice the shift. With the toss of my head, I lured him into our bedroom and walked toward the nightstand. It took courage to look at the faces that sat there every night. Carefully, I laid the drawing against a row of photos—faded, worn, but always cherished. Back from when our group had been whole. Back when there had still been film to capture moments, before things had begun to fall apart a year ago in three days.

I traced the edge of the drawing with my thumb. We wouldn’t be here to mourn the losses properly, to sit with the grief or reflect on what had been. There wasn’t time for that anymore. Which made the drawing all the more precious.

“I want to leave it here,” I said quietly. “Have something to come home to.”

I turned to face him fully, letting myself look at him. Really look at him. God, he was ethereally beautiful. The sharp lines of his face, those piercing eyes, the harsh bridge of his nose. Having forever to stare at him would not nearly be enough.

It always made him squirm when I did this—when I let the silence stretch and refused to fill it with meaningless words. He wasn’t used to being seen for more than the stone-cold persona he always tried to be.

“What?” he asked, shifting under the weight of my gaze.

“I never would have guessed you a romantic,” I mocked, hanging my jaw in faux shock, covering it with the tips of my fingers and showing off my ring. “It’s alarming … yet, oddly endearing.”

“Shut up,” Alexiares muttered, the faint twitch in his jaw letting me know I’d hit a nerve.

“You like, love me love me,” I pressed, stepping closer. He instinctively took a step back, which only fed the smirk spreading across my face.

He crossed his arms, unamused. “So.”

“You cleaned guts out of my curls last night,” I reminded him, shaking my curls out.

“Two hours I got to watch you in the bath. If you’re trying to make a point, get there faster.”

I backed him into the wall, feeding off the slight flare of his nostrils. “Already did.”

He grabbed me by the waist before I could get another word out, flipping us in one fluid motion. My back hit the wall with a soft thud. Alexiares braced an arm over my head, his eyes pinned me, sending a jolt of intensity through me.

“Tell me something,” he said, his voice low, head tilted enough to meet my eye.

“Something,” I shot back and bit the inside of my cheek in a poor attempt to keep the smug grin slipping into place in check.

A flicker of a smile danced across his lips but it didn’t stick. I frowned at the softening in his expression, my hand falling to the base of his neck.

“If we met in The Before,” he murmured, only but a breath away. “Would you still find me?”

The Before.

The two words hit harder than a punch to the gut. Before the bombs, before death, before we became who we are now. Before the fucking world demanded everything we had and then pulled, threatened for us to give more. But under all the wreckage, all the pain, all the never-ending loss, I knew who we were at our core—who he was, who I was. And we were the same. Soulmates.

But it was hard to answer his question. Because in this lifetime, there had been love before him—and they were as real as he was, even though the love was not the same.

I held his gaze and stared into his eyes, in a world that wouldn’t stop spinning. “I think there is a part of me that would love you in every lifetime.”

Of that I was sure.

His lips brushed mine as he whispered, “All of me would love you in every lifetime—but damn, this one’s my favorite.”

Love. Fucking love . A word that had been poisonous to me for years and now … all I wanted to do was shout it over and over again. To spend every second I had left with him, every breath until my last. Hate had been strong in my heart when we’d first met and slowly but surely my Bloodhound had melted it away. Torn down the wall and destroyed the idea of being satisfied of just surviving until my time ran out. I’d lost so much, but fuck, did I gain a once and a lifetime type of love.

A Sunday kind of love.

His lips found mine, and the world narrowed to the two of us. I opened my mouth, letting him in with a moan. He groaned, nibbling on my bottom lip with a whimper of desperation. I smiled, the power I held over him more than a turn on. The knowledge that I was the only one who could unravel him both here and out there in front of the world was a thrill I didn’t bother hiding.

His rough, calloused hands skimmed my lower back, digging beneath the thin fabric of my shirt and ripping it over my head. Alexiares gave me no time to process the movement. Fingers thread through my curls, finding root at my crown as he lowered his mouth back to my lips, the intensity leaving us both gasping for air. For more.

We stumbled back toward the bed and he trailed lingering kisses down my neck. His breath was hot against my skin as he drifted lower. Intoxicating electricity slithered through my body at the warm tracing of his tongue. I let out a low sigh the moment he reached the curve of my hip.

His name was there—carved into me. He paused. The tips of his fingers traced the scar then he pressed a kiss to the mark. Our eyes met, communicating the rest. Our decision to mark each other wasn’t about pain or what came before. It was about us, the only language either of us had left to say I’m still here .

That gave me pause. Because we were still here. But for how long?

The weight of everything rushed back in, drowning out the warmth of the moment. Two days until the simulations. Two days until I had to lead us all into the unknown. And I couldn’t stop thinking about what Lola said. Her words had been circling me like vultures, ready to pick apart my resolve.

“What’s wrong?” Alexiares asked, picking up on the subtle change of energy.

I pressed against his chest to create the slightest amount of space in order to organize the storm inside me. “Lola was right.”

His brow furrowed, and he pushed himself up right moving back to lean against the wall. “Say that three times and you might summon her.”

“I’m serious,” I said, pulling my shirt back on and tucking it into the waistband of my training cargos. “We need a plan.”

He knew exactly what I meant, and he wasn’t happy about it. His face reddened, eyes darkening in his quiet rage that always burned hotter than him shouting ever could. “That’s not our responsibility. We are only obligated to care for the people of Monterey once this is done.”

I took a step closer, lifting my chin to meet his gaze head-on, warring with being a general or his … his future wife. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t think about washing my hands of all of this and focusing on the people I love? Focusing on what I know I can control? But that’s not who I am, Alexiares. I won’t look the other way and pretend it’s not my problem to solve when I know I can make a difference.”

“They do not deserve you,” he said with weighted conviction.

“I don’t care,” my voice broke at the premature visage of loss staring back at me. “What we’re doing here—four territories filled with settlements—it’s not sustainable. Like, fuck, it hasn’t even been a decade and these people, they can’t just sit still and relax. Humans are such stupid creatures.”

“We are,” he agreed, his voice quieter now. “And I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

“But it has to.” I couldn’t hide the crack in my demeanor any longer. Tears of hopeless rage welled, threatening to pour down my face to show how weak my resolve had become. The laugh I released was harsh and humorless, and you can’t even have a drink to silence the thoughts. “God, it’s the same story every fucking time. People settle and they get bored and then they fight. We are constantly clawing for something to make ourselves feel bigger, better, more important than the next person, and it’s all just bullshit .”

I strode across the room toward our dresser and picked up a book off the top, waving it in the air then letting it drop to the floor with a hollow thud. “All of it is right here! Documented. Thousands of years of warnings, lessons, obvious fucking patterns—wasting trees, ink, people’s time. And for what? For us to keep repeating the same goddamn mistakes.”

The silence in the room was broken only by the harsh rhythm of my breathing. I pulled at my curls, twisting them in large chunks, willing myself to keep it together. “This has to be it. No more. It ends here, with this war. Because if it doesn’t, we’re going to destroy ourselves all over again. And next time, I can’t guarantee there will be anything left worth saving.”

“Your desire is to fix something that’s broken on purpose.”

I nodded, swallowing down a lump in my throat. “When this is over, we need something bigger. A system that doesn’t fall apart at the first sign of greed or flat our delusion. If we don’t build something better, then we’re leaving the fight for the next guy. And I can’t—I won’t—force someone else to spend the rest of their life cleaning up another person’s mess.”

Alexiares leaned back against the wall, the lean muscle of his arms folded taut, veins popping as he studied me, his expression unreadable. “Okay.”

“That’s it?” I asked incredulously, admittedly looking for a bigger fight. “I tell you I’m planning on tossing a treaty we just signed in the trash and betraying the very people we swore we were there to help?”

“ You swore you were there to help.” His tone was dry. Unbothered. “I made no such promise.”

“Maybe Moore is right,” I muttered, suddenly hit with the urge to second guess myself. “Maybe we have more in common than I thought.”

“You are nothing like that man,” Alexiares’s voice sharpened to a dangerous edge.

“No, I’m worse. Judge, jury, and executioner. That’s what I’ve become.”

I paced the room, tripping over a pair of sweatpants and kicking them out the way in frustration and borderline embarrassment. Alexiares stuck his hand out, stopping me from making my third lap.

“Decisions were made that were necessary to push this movement forward. To keep Monterey Compound on its feet. And more will come,” he said, as though it were simple as that. It pissed me off that it was, truly that fucking simple. It was inevitable. “You cannot let the consequences of other people’s lack of critical thinking fill you with guilt. Actions have consequences, Amaia. They chose wrong.”

“Did they actually choose wrong?” I snapped. “Or did they just choose their own path that didn’t align with our goals?”

His jaw clenched. I knew he didn’t like when people questioned me, I hadn’t realized that included myself. “Don’t go there. You’re a volatile little thing,” he added, smirking as he reached out and pinched my hip. “But you aren’t evil. We are going to put that motherfucker in the ground and anyone like him if that’s what it takes. I told you I’d burn this world for you—so let’s burn it. Then I’ll watch as you help what remains rise from the ashes.”

“Like Monterey.”

“Like Monterey,” he agreed with zero hesitation.

My little patriot. I sighed, shaking my head. “Well, I don’t know what the plan is from here but I do know a lot of them won’t be happy with me.”

“They don’t need to be happy, they just need to survive.”

“No,” I said softly, peering out through the window that opened toward The Compound. “That’s not how I want to lead. I … I don’t know, okay? It was a stupid thought that’s been bothering me all day. I don’t have the authority to do any of that and I don’t want to take that from anyone. The best I can do is come up with a plan, ask for their support, and hope for the best of humanity to show up when I do.”

He lingered for a moment, his gaze steady and expectant, like he was waiting to see what I’d do next. His eyes warmed as if he could sense the spark of an idea taking hold. Now or never . If I was going to do this, then I wanted to make sure there would be zero regrets I left behind.

“What now?” Alexiares asked.

“Wanna do something kind of crazy?”

“With you, I’m always doing something crazy.”

“Fair point.” I grabbed his hand. “Pack something nice. Let’s go find Riley.”