Chapter 21 Aftermath
My eyes lifted slowly, each blink weighted as the memories of what had just happened replayed in my mind. My heart raced as I lived it all over again.
I had opened the Rift.
I had caused all of this.
Every single death, every heartbreak, every desperate act of survival since the Rift opened was because of me.
That family torn apart by the Manticore, dead because of me.
The bodies I had found with bullet holes in their skulls, their guns still clutched in their hands, their own lives taken… because of me.
When I thought of the cruelty I had seen, the endless death. The scavenging, the brutality, the way humanity had splintered under the pressure of survival, I could no longer tell who terrified me more. The man with the gun looting the stores, or the reason he carried it… the Myths that hunted us.
But what was worse was that I think, deep down, a part of me had always known.
I had always questioned what I was doing there that day, how I had even gotten there.
Because the truth was, my reluctance to revisit the Rift in his office that day had never just been about fear.
It was because some part of me already knew the horrifying truth.
In the memories locked away at the back of my mind, the realization had been waiting. I was the cause. The key. The one who had unlocked it all, just as Atlas had suspected.
The reason he had hunted me. The reason he needed me.
My thoughts spiraled, my chest tightening as new emotions mixed with the heartbreak and guilt. Doubt crept in, cold and sharp.
Had Atlas’s tenderness, his teasing, his gentle touch, all of it… had it been nothing more than manipulation? A way to make me compliant? To make me trust him?
Had his reluctance to kiss me, despite all the times he could have, been a line he refused to cross for the sake of his mission?
I knew there were bigger things to worry about, yet my heart still ached at the thought. Because if all of it had been an act, if every smile and every soft word had been a calculated move, then I had fallen for a lie.
Every emotion crashed down at once, threatening to crush me beneath the weight of them all.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to believe.
I didn’t know what to think, other than the suffocating guilt.
The knowledge that, had I never existed, countless lives would have been spared.
The apocalypse itself might never have come.
The sound that left my throat was broken and raw, alerting Atlas to the fact that I was awake.
“Alexandra?” he said softly, my name leaving his lips like a gentle caress I didn’t deserve. One that only made it hurt more. The tenderness in his tone cut deeper than any blade, twisting the knife of doubt further into my chest.
I opened my eyes fully, finding myself cradled in his arms. He was sitting with me, held close, his expression tight with concern, his warmth wrapped around me like I was something precious. And I suppose, in a way, I was. Because we both knew now that I was the key to getting him home.
A hundred realizations hit at once, and I tore myself from his arms. My name left his lips again, sharper this time, confused, maybe even hurt. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.
Because it wasn’t just the people of my world I had doomed. It was his as well.
I stumbled away, managing only a few steps before the weight of a thousand dead bodies pressed down on me, forcing me to my knees. A guttural sob tore from my throat, opening the floodgates. Tears poured freely, hot and unrelenting, my breath hitching as I gasped for air between cries.
The ground crunched behind me. Then strong, steady hands came to my shoulders, trying to pull me up. I shook him off, choosing instead to fall apart where I belonged, on the dirt, surrounded by the ruin I had created.
Eventually, the tears slowed, though my heart remained shattered into pieces I knew would never mend. Atlas pulled me up again, firmer this time, and I didn’t fight him. My hands covered my face as I turned into his chest, more tears escaping as my body shook against him.
He held me close, one hand stroking my hair, the other rubbing soothing circles along my back.
“Why are you consoling me?” I choked out through the sobs. “You should hate me.”
His hands shifted to my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length. He ducked his head to meet my eyes, but I covered them with my palms, closing my fingers tight so he couldn’t see the wreck I had become.
“Hate you?” he said, voice full of disbelief. “Alexandra, why would I ever hate you?”
“Because I brought you here,” I cried, my voice breaking. “I took you away from your kingdom. And I blamed you for everything since the moment I met you, when it was all my fault.”
He took my hands in his, pulling at my fingers gently until I had no choice but to lower them from my face. His palms replaced mine, warm and steady, and his thumbs brushed across my cheeks, wiping away the tears.
“I could never hate you… I…” He stopped himself, cutting the words short as if afraid to say too much. Our eyes locked, and I sniffed, a small sob escaping as I tried to steady the emotions tearing through me.
His gaze was intense, but there was no anger there, no hatred. Instead, it held sorrow and something else, something achingly familiar. I had seen it before in Riley’s eyes, and I had thought I’d glimpsed it in Atlas’s too. Whatever it was, it made me shiver, and heat crept into my cheeks.
Despite the doubts twisting through me about whether he was sincere, I forced myself to cling to the hope that he cared. I needed it, like an ancient elixir that could heal the wreckage inside me. And somehow, he seemed to know. The moment he drew me into his arms, my body began to tremble.
His voice was low, rough with emotion when he asked, “Why do you get nervous whenever I touch you?”
I wanted to deny it, but that would have been a lie.
He had seen it for himself, and he could see it now.
It felt as if I had been stripped bare, my soul raw and exposed.
My feelings for him were no longer something I could hide, not from him, not from myself.
Every thought of doubt quickly unraveled in the face of such raw desire.
I didn’t know how it had happened or when exactly, only that I had fallen in love with the man I once considered my enemy. And now, faced with the truth that I had been the real enemy all along, I couldn’t understand how he could even stand being this close to me.
Because, despite my fears, I knew now that none of this had been an act.
No man could look at me the way he was looking at me and still be pretending.
The thought was almost laughable, considering he could have simply taken me by force if that was what he wanted.
He could have shackled me, made me his prisoner, and dragged me here without question.
But he hadn’t.
Instead, I was here of my own free will, helping him because I wanted to. Because I trusted him, even when I no longer trusted myself.
His hand rose slowly, his fingers brushing the length of my cheek in a tender, almost reverent caress as he reminded me, “I asked you a question.”
I swallowed hard, thinking over my answer. Then, before I could stop myself, I whispered, “Why do you always make excuses to touch me?”
His reply came after a heartbeat, deep and husky, and I knew I would never forget it.
“Maybe because I like the way it makes my heart race. It reminds me I’m alive, even in a world that isn’t mine.
” His hand moved again, tracing along my jaw as he stepped closer.
“Or maybe…” he said, his voice dropping lower, “…it’s because you’re the only thing I’ve ever touched that I felt was made for me. ”
The words rooted me to the spot. I rose slightly onto my toes as he leaned down, closing my eyes in anticipation of the kiss that had felt inevitable for so long. But it never came.
Even after his confession, his lips did not meet mine, and the kiss I had longed for remained a fragile dream.
Feeling foolish, I pulled myself away from his arms. He let me go, whether it was because he thought it was best or because my reaction had caught him off guard, I couldn’t tell. My steps faltered, uneven and unsteady.
“Alexandra.”
My name left his lips in a voice that sounded like a prayer, but I ignored it this time. I refused to let myself fall under his spell again, to be lured back by the false hope of something that could never be.
“What happened back there?” I asked, hating the way my voice trembled, hating how easily he could unravel me.
He sighed, the sound heavy with restraint.
“This isn’t your fault.”
I scoffed through the remnants of my tears and argued, “Of course, it is! You saw it for yourself. I opened the Rift, Atlas. I caused this. There’s no other way to twist it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, reaching for me again. His grip tightened, firm enough that I couldn’t pull away, like he feared I might run and vanish into the forest. And maybe, deep down, I wanted to.
“I saw your memories, Alexandra,” he said, his voice low but steady.
“You were lured away. Yes, you may have been the key to opening the Rift, but you didn’t do this. You were forced to.”
I stared at him, disbelief clouding my every thought.
“The Rift wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t existed,” I pointed out, making him shake his head.
“How can you say that?” he demanded. “Look at it any other way, Alexandra. If it hadn’t been you, if someone else had been dragged up there in chains and forced to bleed for an evil cause, would you blame them? Or would you blame the one holding the key to those chains?”
I looked away, hating that part of me that knew he was right.
“I don’t know how you can even stand to be around me.”
“Gods, Alex,” he said, his voice breaking through the air. “I can barely stand to be away from you!” he confessed, his voice achingly raw. My head snapped up, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it echo inside my chest.
“What?” I whispered, disbelief trembling in my voice. “I don’t understand,” I admitted when the words refused to settle, and he groaned, dragging a hand through his hair in pure frustration.
“Can’t you see what you’re doing to me?” he said, the rough edge in his tone both pained and untamed. “I’m trying so hard to respect your boundaries, so hard not to cross a line.”
“What line is that?” I asked softly, my voice fragile, unsteady with fearful hope.
“A line that has been crumbling for days,” he declared with honesty I could practically touch.
“Piece by piece, it’s fallen away with every soft laugh, with every witty comment, with every touch, every time you look at me.
You’re right, I’ve made every excuse under the suns, both yours and mine, just to touch you, to hold you, to be near. ”
He exhaled slowly, the sound rough and intimate.
“I thought my will was ironclad, but you’ve undone it without even trying. You’re perfect, Alexandra. And you may not believe this after what you discovered today, but it’s me who doesn’t deserve you, not the other way around. I could never hate you. How could I? How could I hate someone I’m…”
My breath caught when he stopped short on what I knew was another confession. This the most important one yet.
“You’re what?” I breathed when he faltered, and his head bowed as if the words themselves were too heavy to carry.
But then his gaze lifted, eyes burning with a reverence that stole my breath.
“How could I hate you…When I’m falling in love with you?”
The words hit me like a spark to dry tinder.
I gasped, air catching in my throat, and before I could even speak, he was already moving.
Two long strides and he was standing before me, his hands rising to frame my face.
He tilted my chin upward, his breath brushing across my lips as he whispered, “You’re mine. ”
And then he kissed me.
The world stilled. The air vanished. My knees went weak as his lips met mine in a rush of heat and hunger that tasted like something both forbidden and fated. I gasped into him, feeling everything I’d been denying come alive in that single, impossible moment.
But before the kiss could deepen, before the world could completely fall away, a sound shattered it. One sharp, deliberate, and far too close.
We froze.
And this time, it was unmistakable.
Someone was watching us.