Page 38 of Uprooted
Aro
Elowen trails behind while I move strategically through the trees, carefully avoiding the sentinel bots. I pull her close a few times under the guise of avoiding detection, but it’s just an excuse to feel her against me.
She looks radiant, the early morning light reflecting gold off her dark hair.
Her eyes wide and bright, not missing a single detail around us.
I don’t like the feeling of going back to reality.
Everything else ceased to exist for a few short hours.
I’m greedy. I want more time with just us two.
When we get back to the dome, I’ll have to share her with the world again.
For tonight, she’s mine and it’s been the best night of my life.
We circle around the outside of the dome, approaching through a blind spot in the security feed.
When we get to the outer wall, we press our backs against it again and sidestep our way to the cargo bay.
The hatch is still open from when we left hours ago.
I’m surprised to see it’s still open—I had programmed it to close behind us when we left.
I step into the cargo bay first and look around. Not seeing anyone I pull Elowen in behind me. We retrace our steps through the rows of porters. Right as I reach for the door sensor, I hear someone clear their throat behind us.
I spin around and pull Elowen behind my back, blocking her from view. Maak is leaning against a container watching us. I breathe a heavy sigh of relief at the sight of him.
“You go on ahead. I’ll come find you later,” I tell Elowen and usher her out of the bay .
“You scared me. I thought for a minute that we were caught,” I tell Maak after Elowen slips through the door.
“You were,” he says, his face deadly serious.
“I’m glad it’s you. It would have been hard to explain to Rialto or Petrok,” I say.
“You’re not doing a very good job of explaining it to me.
Because what it looks like from here is that you snuck a human out, against orders and against all fucking rational thought.
Putting everyone in danger.” I’m surprised by his reaction.
He’s seething. I wouldn’t have expected him to care about this at all.
“Maak, it was a quick trip out. No one needs to know about this,” I say approaching him.
“What do you think you are doing, Aro? This ridiculous obsession you have with this human is going to blow up in your face.”
“It’s not an obsession,” I say.
“What is it then? It seems like you’ve picked this human over your own people when you do shit like this. First you blow off your responsibilities so you can fuck her, leaving Lugo out there alone to face the Atorum alone. Now you’re sneaking her out of the dome, putting us all in danger.”
“She’s important,” I tell him through clenched teeth. Maak has gone too far. I’m angry now.
“Well, go back to your human. That’s all you seem to care about anyway. Just don’t drag anyone else into your mess. Including me. I won’t say anything for now, but if shit goes sideways, I’m not covering for you.” Maak stomps out before I can try and reason with him.