Page 54 of Elas (Mate’s Mark #2)

August

Playful kisses trail down the side of my face, and I grin, my eyes closed as I teasingly swat Elas away. “How many people know what a big softie you are?” I ask, blinking my eyes open to the early morning light. Dawn has barely broken, the sky mostly dark above us.

“Softie, huh?” The next kiss is pressed directly to my ear, and I squirm and instinctually draw away from the tickle. “Do I need to give you another reminder of how hard I can be?”

“My shorts are glued to my ass. That’s reminder enough,” I deadpan, and he barks out one of his loud, unrestrained laughs.

We get our morning routine out of the way, pissing behind the trees and brushing our teeth with water bottles. Reyes sits cross-legged on one of the shorter rock formations and eats his breakfast. “How did you guys sleep?” he asks, and there’s a certain snarky dryness to his tone.

Perhaps we weren’t as discreet as we hoped .

“I didn’t sleep at all,” Elas says after rinsing his mouth and taking a long swig of water. “But I made sure August slept very well.”

“El,” I hiss, slapping at his chest as he laughs, and Reyes sighs but doesn’t say a word.

We hit the road after we eat... and I change into shorts that aren’t stiff.

A blush burns on my cheeks as I walk out of the woods in fresh clothes, and Elas has a filthy smirk on his face.

I shove my dirty shirt and shorts into a bag and stuff it among the others.

Reyes and I continue reading our files, but my concentration wanes. The closer we get to our destination, the more the words on the pages blur. By the time Elas pulls off the main road and onto a compact dirt trail, I’ve skimmed the same page three times and haven’t absorbed a damn thing.

I put it away, watching as the lush trees in the distance grow nearer. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? This forest is thriving while the rest of the ground is so dead.”

Elas nods towards the greenery ahead. “Most of the rivers that ran through these lands dried up as the temperatures rose, but a few of them were big enough to survive. One of them runs through these woods, so the streams branch off and feed the soil here. This is one of the largest forests left in this part of the world.”

“Would the military ever move their bases?” I ask, gesturing at the blanket of color. “It would make more sense for their operations to be close to the water, wouldn’t it?”

He shakes his head. “The bases have been in place since the early days. Most people assume that when the veil lifted, it was a crash collision. But it wasn’t some major, violent event.

It just… happened. Passageways appeared and looked just like an open doorway, only instead of opening outside or to a different room, they led into a completely new realm.

Hundreds of them formed around the world, maybe more.

Most were small, but a few dozen were enormous—big enough to run our armies through standing ten, twenty wide. ”

“The bases,” I realize, and he nods.

“We built walls around them so our troops could safely pass, and they grew into bases from there. Once the portals closed, I think we were all waiting for them to open back up.” He’s quiet for a moment, and I reach over to take his hand. “Some of us are still waiting.”

“Do you think there’s a chance they will?” I ask gently, and Elas gives me a sad smile as he squeezes my hand.

“No, August. Our world is destroyed.”

I consider that, choosing my words carefully. “How can you be sure?”

Elas blinks at me, looking comically owlish for a moment before he focuses on the road again. “What do you mean?”

“Well…” I hesitate before gesturing vaguely around us. “It’s a part of your history that seems to be widely accepted. Everyone says that the Fates have communicated with your people like it’s an irrefutable truth. How are they communicating? Who are they talking to? Are they even corporeal?”

Elas frowns, chewing on the side of his mouth for a moment. “The Fates are corporeal, yes. Their plane is different from this one or ours. It…” He hesitates, getting fr ustrated as he tries to explain. “Humans once had the concept of Heaven, yes?”

“Religion largely disappeared after the veil fell, but yeah, there are still pockets of believers. I never practiced, but I’ve heard stories. When you work with others’ health, you’re exposed to a lot of belief systems.”

Elas nods. “That might be the best way to explain it. They are on a plane higher than ours, one that sees everything underneath it. The Fates are said to be the offspring of the Old Gods that created our worlds.”

“What happened to the Old Gods?” I ask, and Reyes listens, rapt, from the backseat.

“They moved on … to wherever that is,” Elas says, waving his hand towards the sky.

“Or that’s how the story is told, at least. The Gods grew tired of living after an eternity of watching life go by, and passed their powers to their children before they departed.

Some say they were reborn into new bodies—mortal bodies—so they could experience life the way it was meant to be lived.

Forget the responsibilities of their infinite existence. ”

“That’s kind of beautiful,” I say, and he flashes me a somber smile.

“Once we crossed over and overthrew the humans, everything changed. One of the Fates appeared to our leaders. They were furious … made them kneel with their foreheads to the ground. They trapped them there for two days, forcing the leaders to repeat their message to our people so they didn’t get it wrong.

That is what we refer to as the Prophecy. ”

“What was the message, exactly?” Reyes asks, and Elas glances at him in the rearview mirror .

“They said the passage between the worlds was a gift, and we’d insulted them with our violence.

Our punishment was to be stuck in the world we broke.

An eye for an eye—we destroyed this world, so they destroyed ours.

” I squeeze his hand, knowing the family he left behind.

“The only way to undo the damage was to learn to live in peace, and the fate of each monster was tied to their human mate. Together, they could restore the world.”

“That’s when the weather changed, wasn’t it?” I ask, and Elas nods.

“Over the next few years it started getting hotter, and natural disasters struck all over the planet. Hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes. Nature killed just as many as the war.”

“Wait, back up,” Reyes says. “What happened after the Fate person spoke to them? They were locked up for two days… then what?”

“They were very shaken, naturally, and passed the message along to every base and outpost. We hadn’t learned any human technology yet, and I still remember the messengers rushing through the gates.

Everyone was scared, and tensions were high.

But the years went on and no mates were found, and we all started to believe it was just a tale.

Something to calm us down, to settle the conflicts enough to where we could get past it and coexist peacefully. ”

“What if they didn’t reveal everything?” I ask, and he glances at me in question, so I hesitantly continue. “It wouldn’t be the first time in history that leaders cherry-picked what to share with their subjects. Even a simple medic from a rebel camp knows that much. ”

“Simple,” he chuffs, pulling the back of my hand to his mouth and planting a kiss on it. “I guess it’s possible. But how would that benefit our people?”

“Maybe it wouldn’t,” I say, biting my cheek as I stare out the window again. “Maybe it would only benefit them.”

Elas shakes his head, his brows bunching. “If they didn’t pass the message along, the Fates would’ve intervened.”

“Not if they were sick of your shit,” Reyes says, and Elas’s brow lifts as he glances at him.

“I mean, I would be, right? You come over and make a mess of the world, and then you take their message and fuck that up, too? I’d consider it a lost cause at that point and leave you to figure it out on your own. ”

Heavy quiet descends in the vehicle, and I can almost feel the gears turning in Elas’s mind. Just when I’m about to break the silence with something— anything to take away the tension—he clears his throat and sighs.

“There’s no way for us to know. I wasn’t in that room, and the Fates have been quiet since that day. It’s pointless to stress about things outside of our control.”

This is the second time he’s made a comment about letting go of what you can’t change.

I give him an understanding smile, though the compression on my heart is painful.

It recognizes how much he’s always shoved aside.

How he has chosen to smile and focus on what’s in front of him instead of the horrors of his past.

Elas lives in the now, not in the nightmares, and that’s a beautiful thing .

“I love you,” I whisper. He’s heard it before. I’ve said it plenty, but right now, I need him to understand it. To know it, and to never question it.

His brows bunch, almost like he’s in pain as his fingers tighten around mine.

“You are the piece of me that has always been missing, August.” He doesn’t hide his affection, even with Reyes in the backseat pointedly trying to ignore us.

He’s proud of our love. Unapologetic. “Prophecy be damned. You are the light in my darkness,” he says, and my eyes sting as my throat gets tight, because I know how much the darkness haunts him.

I’ll do anything to keep chasing it away.

The afternoon sun is sweltering, and pulling under the dense canopy of trees is a relief.

Sweat dews on my forehead and builds in my armpits, the tickle of the droplets making me squirm.

Elas is a confident tracker, observing every landmark we pass with a nod to himself and occasionally muttering under his breath.