Page 25 of Beneath the Desert Bloom (Of Beasts and Bloom #1)

THE DESERT WASN’T quiet. It was listening. Like the land was waiting to see what she would do next.

Nora walked out before sunrise, her feet crunching over brittle sand, the edge of common sense, and whatever was left of hesitation. The map was folded in her pocket, but she didn’t need it. Her body knew the way now.

The obsidian pulsed warm, heavy in her palm. Like it had been waiting too.

She wanted to wait for him. To give him a chance to show up, explain, choose her.

But he hadn’t.

And maybe the journal was right.

Maybe it had to start with her.

And maybe she was tired of waiting. Tired of aching. Tired of being the one left behind.

So she walked.

Because the dream had shown her enough.

She was no longer asking.

She was answering.

By the time she reached the edge of the Hollow, the sun was bleeding gold across the ridgeline, and the wind had stopped entirely. Even the Joshua trees stood still, their crooked arms frozen mid-reach, like they were afraid to touch whatever came next.

She stopped in the stone circle, where she had found the first sign from him. Nothing remained now but a scorched mark in the dirt. Like the desert had tried to bloom and failed.

“Okay,” she whispered, kneeling. “Let’s see if you’ll listen to me alone.”

The stone was warm in her hand. Her other hand reached for her pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper she’d tucked there. The note from her grandmother.

The touch. The offering. The vow.

No clear instructions. No incantations. Just a gesture. A beginning.

Nora pressed the obsidian into the center of the ring. Her thumb traced the ridges left by time and hands not her own. She swallowed hard and said, steady as she could:

“If you remember me, take this. If I am yours, show me.”

A beat passed.

Nothing.

Then a sound. Not a response, but a recoil. The wind didn’t return. It reversed.

A single, stubborn sprout of desert bloom, white-petaled and fragile, erupted from the edge of the circle like it had been waiting for her voice.

Nora’s heart jumped.

Then, it withered.

Right in front of her, the bloom blackened. Curled. Collapsed into ash. A gust of air sucked it inward, like the ground itself was rejecting her.

The desert said no.

Nora staggered back, clutching the stone, her breath catching in her throat.

“What the hell—” Her voice cracked. “Okay. Rude.”

The pain hit a second later, sharp and wrong. Like something inside her had twisted the opposite direction. Her stomach turned. Her limbs tingled. Her mouth tasted like copper and dust.

She sat back hard, legs folding underneath her. The stone was still hot. Her skin still flushed. But now it felt… stupid. Embarrassing.

This wasn’t a ritual. It was a tantrum dressed in folklore. A woman with a rock, shouting into silence, begging for something she couldn’t name.

Nora closed her eyes and hissed out a breath through her teeth.

“Not enough, huh?”

She wanted to cry. Instead, she sat there with her chest heaving and her thighs still sticky with need. With the memory of something that never fully arrived. A slow tear leaked sideways down her cheek anyway, cooling against sunburnt skin.

“Guess that answers that,” she muttered. “Thanks for nothing, horny cryptid dimension.”

She turned to go. Her knees ached. Her pride hurt worse.

And that’s when she felt it.

The sensation of being watched dropped over her. Hot, electric, paralyzing. The way you feel when you wake up in the dark and know someone else is in the room.

She turned back. He was there.

Standing just beyond the ring of stones.

Half-shadow. Half-man. All too late.

His shoulders rose and fell like he’d run there. Like it had cost him something to arrive. The edge of his form flickered where the sun touched it, bark-rough, gold-veined, trembling faintly with restraint.

Nora’s heart stuttered, then slammed against her ribs like it wanted out.

His eyes locked on hers.

She stood slowly. One hand clenched the obsidian. The other curled into a fist at her side.

“You saw that,” she said, voice low. Rough. “You saw what happened and you just stood there.”

Nora crossed the stone circle like it was nothing. Like she hadn’t just been rejected by a sentient landscape in front of her imaginary boyfriend.

“You left me to try this alone,” she said. Her voice shook. “You let me bleed out on the inside while you stood in the dark and watched.”

Asher’s throat bobbed. His hands twitched at his sides.

Her anger cracked wide open, held back only by the heat still coiled between her legs. The grief. The ache.

“You want me when I’m dreaming. You want me when I’m spread open and glowing and begging for you. But when I try to claim this—claim you—you disappear.”

She stepped up to him, toe to toe. Had to tilt her head back to look at him.

“Do you want me or not?”

Asher inhaled sharply. His chest expanded. And finally, he spoke.

“I want you like the land wants its bloom. Desperate. Consuming,” he said, voice raw as wind through stone. “That’s why I hold back. Because loving you will invite the land to take you too. And I’m afraid it will devour you before you’re ready to choose.”

Nora stared at him.

Then laughed.

It was sharp. Hollow. Painful.

“Too late,” she said. “It already started.”

She pressed her palm to her chest, over the ache.

“I feel it every time you leave.”

And with that, she pressed the obsidian stone hard against his chest, right over the place his heart would be—if he even had one—and left it there.

Then she turned and walked away.

The desert didn’t stop her. It could have. But it let her go.

Nora’s boots crushed dry scrub and brittle blossoms underfoot.

Her pulse beat in her throat like a war drum.

The backs of her eyes stung. Her whole body buzzed, still keyed up from the ritual, the rejection, the way Asher had looked at her like she was already leaving and he didn’t know how to follow.

She didn’t know where she was going. Only that it wasn’t toward him.

Behind her, she could hear it.

Heavy footsteps against loose stone.

He was following her now.

Of course he was.

“Don’t,” she snapped, spinning on her heel. “Don’t come after me now.”

Asher froze mid-step, framed by slanted rays of sunlight. He looked wrecked. Wild and windblown, fists clenched like he might reach for her or tear the earth in two.

She didn’t know which terrified her more.

“You’re still blooming,” he said, voice low. “The desert isn’t done with you. If I take you now, I don’t know if either of us will survive what it makes of us.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she hissed, stepping toward him. “Don’t you dare make this about protecting me. You didn’t come to stop me. You came to watch. Like I’m some fucking myth you’re afraid to touch too hard in case I vanish.”

He flinched.

Her voice dropped to a growl. “Newsflash, Asher. I’m not a dream. I’m not your echo of someone else. I’m right here. I tried to do this alone, and the land burned me for it. And you just stood there.”

“I was afraid,” he said.

“You?” she laughed, brittle and bitter. “You’re made of stone and goddamn tree bark. What could you possibly be afraid of?”

“You.”

That stopped her.

Asher took a step closer. Close enough that she could feel the heat rolling off him in waves. His eyes glowed low and gold, wild with something ancient.

“I’m afraid of completing the bond too soon,” he said, voice cracking. “Afraid of breaking something sacred. Of turning you into a warning instead of a promise.”

Her chest heaved. She could feel her mark pulsing at the base of her throat. Could feel her skin glowing faintly.

“You already have,” she whispered. “Not with what you did. With what you didn’t.”

He reached for her then. Slowly. Gently. One massive hand curling around her waist like it had always belonged there. His other came to her cheek. She didn’t pull away. Couldn’t.

Because the second he touched her, her whole body exhaled.

Like lungs too long underwater, finally gasping air, and not caring that it burned.

Her glow brightened under his palm. Her skin flushed. Her eyes blurred.

He bent down, just enough for their lips to meet.

The kiss was desperate, like a dam breaking.

Her hands pulled him closer. His mouth was hot and slow at first, then frantic. Her hips pressed into his. His hand slid lower, cupping her ass, pulling her against him like he couldn’t get enough. She felt him slip the obsidian stone back into her pocket, where it belonged.

And she could feel him, already hard, already huge, already shaking from how badly he wanted this.

Their teeth knocked. Her lip split. She didn’t care.

When his hand brushed the curve of her breast, her glow flared like a struck match. His fingers found her nipple through the thin fabric of her shirt. She gasped into his mouth, moaned as he grazed it again.

Her body was molten. Her thighs pressed together, seeking friction. Her core throbbed like it had never been touched.

He pulled back, panting. His forehead dropped against hers.

“No,” he whispered. “Not like this. Not yet.”

Her breath stilled.

“What?”

“You’re too close to the threshold. I can feel it in your skin. If I go further, I don’t know what I’ll unleash.”

She stepped back. Slowly.

And slapped him. The sound rang out in the stillness.

Her hand shook.

“You think I don’t know that?” she said, her voice shaking with something halfway between grief and fury. “You think I don’t feel it every second I’m out here? That I haven’t looked in the mirror and wondered if I even recognize myself anymore?”

She dug into her pocket, pulled out the obsidian again, and slapped it against his chest.

Hard.

It stuck to his skin for a second. Clung. Glowed faintly.

“You gave me this like a guidepost. Like a gift. But you didn’t come when I called.”

She stepped back.

“So take it. I don’t need a map if I’m the one writing it.”

Asher stood there silently in the wind, obsidian in his palm, chest rising and falling like he’d been gutted and didn’t know how to hold himself together.

“You can’t protect the land and abandon what it wants.”

Nora turned.

And walked away.

The wind rose around her like applause.

Or like warning.

She didn’t look back. The desert wouldn’t want her to.

The house felt wrong when she returned.

Like it didn’t know she was different now.

Nora slammed the door behind her. It didn’t help. The quiet clung to her, tighter than sweat, tighter than the ache still smoldering low and deep in her body.

She dropped the bag, the knife, the empty bottle. The obsidian was gone. Still with him.

Good. Let him feel it burn.

She stalked through the kitchen, not hungry. Not even angry anymore. The rage had dulled into something quieter. She felt stripped bare, every nerve left raw.

At the sink, she splashed her face. The water was cold, but not cold enough to bite. She stared at her reflection in the dull metal of the faucet. Sunburnt, glowing faintly, bare-throated and hollow-eyed.

“Great,” she muttered. “I look like I just got dumped by a god.”

She turned toward the hallway and stopped short.

A sound, low and distant, moved through the walls. Not a creak, or the plumbing. Something deeper. Like the earth had cleared its throat.

A crack shattered the silence.

She bolted to the porch, throwing the door open wide. The wind hit her hard. Hot. Wild. It dragged her hair sideways as she scanned the horizon.

And then she saw it.

At the far edge of the yard, just beyond the last fence post, the earth had split.

A thin, black wound in the dust. Still. Seething.

It hadn’t been there before.

She stepped down, the wood of the porch hot against her soles. She walked slowly, the wind lifting in tremendous gusts around her.

When she reached the edge of the crack, she knelt.

She pressed her palm into the dirt. Into the split. Into the heat that rose from the depths like a warning. Or a hunger.

And then she knew.

Not from a voice. Not from a sign. From inside.

She hadn’t done it right.

She’d walked into the wash, yes.

But not unshod. Not truly.

She hadn’t bled. Not willingly. Not yet.

She’d asked the land to choose her, but she hadn’t offered what it demanded in return.

She hadn’t given everything.

But she would.

She stood, dust streaking her knees, and turned back toward the house.

This time, she wouldn’t go in hoping.

This time, she would go in knowing.

Not for a hike. Not for a rite she half-understood.

But for a reckoning.

She braided her hair back tight, tying it with a strand of her grandfather’s red thread. She lit a bundle of desert herbs, sharp and dry, and let the smoke curl around her. She found the mezcal, took a swig, and threw it into her bag, next to the knife.

She undressed.

Every layer felt like it weighed something. Memory. Hesitation. Grief.

She smeared ash across her cheekbones and down her chest, streaking her skin like war paint.

Like permission. Like a beginning.

She opened the door.

The wind roared.

She didn’t flinch.

Her voice was steady.

“I’m ready now.”

And the desert heard her.