Chapter 33 #3
“Wilma sought me out, telling me Kaleo was up to something. Giving us information. She agreed to help. The four of us made a plan. Rumi confirmed she had information that Burdon might be busy with Kaleo, and we could get out. She told me at the twentieth bell it was a go. I didn’t know when we’d get the window again.
So I asked the impossible of you all. With what I did on patrol I knew it was now or never.
We had to get out before I had a hearing.
” Tristian cleared his throat. I knew he was talking about the men he’d killed for attacking that woman. “Lyssa agreed to let me off.”
“If you do what?” I asked, figuring out how the woman worked.
“If I come back to where I belong—be her second. That together we could turn the tides of Haven,” Tristian told the empty room. My stomach twisted viciously, as empty as the room. He faced me fully. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t hear the words.
“I said no,” Tristian admitted quietly. My eyes found his. “I couldn’t do it. She told me I would be on trial before all Command once the illness died down. There’s a silver lining; I can avoid a trial if she keeps her word and kills me.”
“You dying is the silver lining?” I demanded.
The look in Levi’s eyes as he called out We go out as one struck me.
Tristian had turned away. “You didn’t say We come back as one.
” My eyes found his; the beast slunk low at the look there.
He was comfortable not making it back. He’d give his life for Haven.
My heart grew cold as my throat closed. I shouldn’t be surprised; I knew what happened to the people I cared about.
“I told you time was running out.”
“I didn’t realize you meant the end of your life.”
“It’s not the planned outcome, but we are running out of time. Last night”—Tristian began, his hand reaching toward mine. I couldn’t meet it. He was okay with his death.
“Hayes.” A warning. I couldn’t, not with what he was willing to accept and certainly not after everything he had told me.
Tristian’s hand fell. “Right, in the morning, I’ll be whatever you want. I’m an idiot for thinking that wouldn’t be the case. So what am I, Sasha? I’d like to know if this is the end.”
“Y-you’re…” I reached for the lie, but couldn’t find it. Even as I willed it to be true. My body couldn’t say it. I couldn’t call Tristian something he had never been.
“I’m what, Sasha?” Tristian demanded. Calluses scraped against my hand as Tristian grabbed me, keeping me with him. “Look at me, Sasha, and tell me what I am. Tell me this is nothing.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t face the truth as I stood before him.
He held my hand like a lifeline, but his grip was gentle.
I could pull away. He’d let me. He’d let me walk away.
Give me an option. Even as I screamed at my body to go.
Raging at the beast that refused to answer the threat as my feet stayed before him.
“You’re just a distraction.”
“Lie,” he bit out, stepping toward me.
“This is nothing.”
“Lie.” Another step.
My pulse slammed against my skin. “You do not want this, Tristian. The humanity you saw in your unit—it’s not in here”—my hand flattening against my chest. “It’s gone. You do not understand.”
“What if I want to?” Tristian said quietly.
His other hand cupped my face gently, hesitantly.
I trembled against the touch. “What if I want to understand every horrible thing that happened to you and every horrible thing you had to do? What if I want to see the sides of you that you think you have to hide? I’m not scared of what you did or who you had to become to survive. ”
“I am.” It came out shattered and feeble.
“Why? What are you afraid of, Sasha?”
My eyes finally found him, my restraints hollowing out, leaving me exposed and broken in his hands.
He held my gaze, the look in his eyes unyielding.
I couldn’t run; my body wouldn’t do it. I found I couldn’t send him away either, as that thing I held buried under years of anger, hatred, and grief quaked, jarring my soul. He didn’t move, didn’t run. He stayed.
In that shift, a truth slipped out as a whisper. “Everything.”
A truth I couldn’t hide anymore.
My eyes burned, but the walls that usually slammed down didn’t come. Our race across the earth had stripped me of them. The beast curled up, exhausted, as a tear fell. Tristian’s gaze fractured as he tracked the tear’s path down my cheek until it met his hand, only for another to follow.
Tristian’s thumb wiped the tears. “I am too.” I could see it there in his eyes. Fear, heavy and ancient, as if he had carried it his whole life.
I shook my head.
“I am. I’m afraid for everyone in my unit, for what will happen to them after this. I’m afraid for every person in Haven if we fail. I’m afraid.” He swallowed thickly. “It’s okay to be afraid.”
“No, it’s not,” I uttered frantically.
“It is. As long as you don’t take it on alone. I’m right here,” Tristian told me, holding my shattered gaze.
“Why?” I demanded, pained, as every horrible thing I had ever said to him lay waste to my soul. “You shouldn’t be. I have been cruel to you.”
“I know.”
My body trembled. “I have said unforgivable things.”
“I have already forgiven them.”
My shoulders shook. “I have done horrible things.”
“We all have.” Each of my horrid confessions brought him closer.
“You deserve more. Someone good. Someone who can give you peace. I can’t give you that.”
Tristian tilted my face toward him. “You are good, even when the world gave you every reason not to be. You were good when you took care of your family. You were good when you sat by Lily’s bedside.
You refused to leave her, refused to leave me and all the others.
You were good when you saved Levi. When you helped my unit behind Command’s back.
When you saw injustice and took a stance, lying on forms. You aren’t good in the obvious way.
You’re good in the ways most will never be.
You stay when others run. Accept things people can’t.
You show up for everyone else even when it destroys you.
You give without wanting anything in return. You are good, Sasha.”
“Tristian—I’m not.” I sucked in a breath that rattled against my ribs. “Even if I was, there’s nothing left of me to give you. It’s all ruined in here.” My hand clutched my chest—at the ache there, as tears fell faster.
Tristian didn’t bother to wipe the tears away as he held my gaze. “I don’t need you whole. I’m comfortable with ruins. I’ll take whatever broken pieces you can spare.” His forehead met mine. “You can have whatever is left of me. It’s all yours. It has been since you asked me to stay in the Ward.”
His words settled in my chest, another truth slipped free, clinging to a sob. “I can’t lose someone else. I can’t.” I shook my head. His hand stayed as more tears hit my face. “I can’t lose you. I won’t—I can’t lose you.”
“I can’t guarantee anything. I’ve seen too much to even try.
I might be a dead man if we make it back,” Tristian said, his other hand cupping my other cheek, holding me like I was the most precious thing in the world.
I glanced up to find it was his tears joining mine.
“I don’t know what’s in store for us, but if you let me stay, I’ll meet that fate by your side.
I’ll keep going for you, with you. With my last breath, whenever that may be, it’ll be your name on my lips. ”
I trembled in Tristian’s arm. His lips brushed mine, hesitant and tender. My hand found his chest, his beating heart, which wanted me as I was. “Let me stay, Sasha.”
His lips met mine again gently. Something stirred in my chest as the beast inside me finally found relief. Its hold on me dissipated. I sucked in breath as the weight lifted.
We had committed mutiny, our future uncertain, but he’d be by my side.
The resources were running out; we still needed to find them, but I’d find them with him.
I couldn’t offer him peace, and he couldn’t provide a safe outcome.
But he offered safety in his arms. He offered more.
I saw it in those green eyes. Always had. It was enough.
It had always been enough.
I pressed my lips to his desperately. The world around us lay in shambles, containing more questions than answers—but it didn’t matter as my heart ran toward the only answer for me.
We were buried beneath but this thing between us was born there.
New tears flowed as my hands gripped onto the entire world as our kiss morphed into something new, something with a home.
There were no scraping claws or howls. There was something different as that ache in my chest filled me. I parted my lips for him. His tongue swept in, thorough and slow in its exploration. It wasn’t enough. I needed him. I wanted us.
Weapons found the floor as we disarmed each other. My hands found his belt as his hands tugged his sweater off, tossing it to the ground. I tossed his belt aside, reaching for my own sweater, but his hands covered mine.
“You’ll freeze. Keep it on,” Tristian urged against my mouth, making quick work of my belt.
He tugged on my pants, his gentle touches giving way to his urgency.
Later. Later we would be skin against skin.
We would have time—find time. The time to say with my mouth and my body what I harbored in my heart.
For now—as Tristian broke the kiss, my hands undoing the fly of his pants. For now, there was only one want.
Tristian pulled his pants off before taking us to the ground, laying me on his sweater.
His arms tucked under my shoulders and under my waist as he fell into the cradle of my thighs.
I reached down, lining him up. He shuddered against just the touch of my hand.
His eyes found mine as he thrust in deeply, sheathing himself completely.
A moan ripped from me. Tristian’s mouth found mine as he drank in the sound as he moved.
His arms flexed beneath my body as he held me, protecting me from the stone ground. Taking the pain. I couldn’t stand it.
I rolled us onto discarded pants, sinking down on the length of him.
Tristian groaned my name, low and longingly.
My hand grabbed his shirt, bringing him to me, my mouth giving him the truth.
With him seated, each roll of my hips, the pressure—I began to come undone as release fluttered in the distance.
I held it at bay, unwilling to go without him.
His arms wrapped around me once more, bringing me down, chest to chest. Even with the clothes I felt his wild heart, mates to my unrelenting beats.
I ground down on him, needing him deeper.
More. Until he filled every broken part of me.
My hand wove into his hair, the other on his shoulder as my mouth claimed his.
“Sasha,” Tristian begged against my lips.
My name echoed off the stone walls. Close, he was close.
His arms trembled around me, pulling me down hard enough to bring down the tunnels.
A gasp found me as I met the need. I didn’t stop my release as I sank down once more, my body shaking and clenching as his release chased mine.
His name on my lips. Tumbling into the unknown, together.
Breaths and heartbeats untamed as we held on to each other.
His lips kissed away any lingering tears as my hand ran through his hair unhurried.
I remained straddling him, unwilling to move as I let my heart follow his beats until they both settled.
A repeated benediction woven into each steady beat—I love you.
I couldn’t say it, but there was no denying anymore what I had harbored.
I stared at the stone wall ahead of me, as Tristian’s lips moved, making their way to my jaw, trailing to my neck, and his hands ran up the length of my spine through my sweater.
I stared at the wall, somehow unconcerned with the future.
“Sasha, I—” Tristian began. My eyes snagged on a strange shape on the wall.
“Tristian”—I cut him off—“there’s a box on that stone wall.”
“What?” Tristian mumbled as he twisted to look.
“There is a gray box by that door over there.”
We had dusted off, pulling up our pants and grabbing our bags and weapons as we ran toward the wall. The box was unremarkable, the same color as the stone. There were no buttons, no display. It was plain, but it was the first thing we had seen besides stone.
“I think this is it,” Tristian whispered, his hands running along the gray box that blended into the stone. “Right here, feel this. We need a key or something.”
I reached out, running my hand along the box. A small indent, barely bigger than my thumb, sat directly in the middle of it. I removed my hand, tugging at my neckline, pulling the chip free. The key.
“Kumar gave me this as he died. He told me to keep hope alive,” I uttered, my heart beating painfully.
“He said to keep hope alive?” Tristian asked, his eyes wide. I nodded. “Try it,” Tristian urged.
I brought the chip toward the box.
Warmth engulfed my other hand as Tristian grabbed hold. Together. We would do this together.
I touched the chip to the cutout. A perfect fit. Loud grinding and clicking sounded. I gripped Tristian’s hand tighter.
I couldn’t breathe as the door opened.