Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ELIAS
I wake slowly, the way you do after a day that has wrung you out so thoroughly your body decides rest is nonnegotiable.
For a few blessed seconds, there’s only warmth and weight and the steady presence of Boone beside me.
His arm is heavy across my middle, anchoring me in place, his breathing deep and even.
The warded shelter is quiet in that early-morning way—no drums, no laughter, just the low, content hum of Yellowstone holding itself together.
Then memory creeps back in.
Three feet of charged air. Pale skin that swallowed light. Eyes that looked at me like I was impossibly rare and unreachable.
You carry a resonance.
My chest tightens.
I’d slept better than I had any right to, dreamless and deep, but waking brings the thoughts flooding back in. The Shade’s voice hadn’t been cruel. Not hungry. Just… tired. Lonely in a way that sat heavy and vast, like a traveler who had been wandering too long without a place to stop.
I feel sorry for it.
The realization lands with a complicated mix of guilt and compassion. It terrified me, yes—but underneath that fear had been grief. Loss. Searching. A being so cut off from land and echo and connection that it had followed power across oceans, hoping something might answer back.
And then there was what it had said.
You walk between thresholds without knowing their names.
My stomach flips.
“I can hear you thinking,” Boone murmurs.
I startle, twisting slightly to look at him. His eyes are open now, dark and steady, a small curve to his mouth that says he’d been awake longer than he let on.
“I didn’t realize you were awake,” I admit.
“I was enjoying listening,” he says. “But you’re loud this morning.”
I huff a quiet laugh. Then, sobering, I turn more fully toward him. “I keep thinking about the Shade.”
His arm tightens fractionally. Not possessive—protective. “I figured.”
“It was so… lost,” I say softly. “And what it said about me—about calling to it. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” Boone says immediately. “You didn’t summon it. You are just… noticeable.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“No,” he agrees. “But it’s true.”
I hesitate, then press on. “And then there was the whole… bound thing. Mates.”
I watch his face carefully as I say it. Boone doesn’t look away. If anything, he goes very still.
“You already explained what mates mean for your people,” I continue. “Compatibility. Choice. Resonance, not fate. I just—it said it so confidently. Like it was obvious.”
Boone exhales slowly. “To it, it probably was.”
“And to you?” I ask.
The answer comes without hesitation. “I would love nothing more than for that to be true.”
My throat tightens.
“But,” he adds gently, “I’m not blind to the complications. I know what it would mean for you. Your family. Your work. The life you built before me.”
“That’s exactly it,” I admit. “I understand the biology. The longevity. I could live as long as you. That part doesn’t scare me.” I swallow. “What scares me is… choosing a future that pulls me away from everything else I love.”
Boone’s gaze softens with a tenderness so fierce it steals my breath. He lifts a hand, brushing his thumb along my jaw.
“I’m not asking you to choose anything today,” he says quietly. “Or tomorrow. Or ever, if it comes to that.”
I search his eyes. “Your gut still says yes, though.”
A small smile tugs at his mouth. “My gut has been screaming yes since the moment you walked into my territory two summers ago and started cataloging my footprints.”
I snort despite myself.
He leans in, forehead resting against mine. “Elias. I love you. And for as long as you will allow it, I will be with you. At your side. Loving you. No ultimatums. No deadlines.”
The simplicity of it undoes me far more than any declaration of destiny could have. “I love you too,” I say, voice rough. “Thank you.”
We lie together a while longer, the weight of everything unsaid pressing gently but not unbearably between us. Eventually, hunger wins out.
“I’m going to find breakfast,” I say, stretching carefully. “You’re meeting Bob?”
“Yes,” Boone replies. “And the Shade. We’ll talk terms.”
I nod, hope flickering. “I hope… I hope you can help it.”
“So do I,” Boone says honestly.
As I pull on my clothes and step outside, another thought hits me so hard I stop mid-step. “Oh no.”
Boone looks up. “What?”
“My brother.”
He blinks. “Your—what?”
“I saw him yesterday,” I say quickly. “Milo. I thought I was imagining it at first, but I followed him—well, tried to—and that’s when the Shade confronted me.
” I shake my head, still not 100 percent sure, but still confident it was.
I’ve tried his cell numerous times, but the damn thing’s been switched off.
Boone’s expression shifts immediately to alert concern. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I know,” I wince. “Everything happened so fast.”
He studies me for a moment, then nods. “Find him. Stay inside the wards.”
“I will,” I promise, even as excitement and disbelief war inside my chest. Maybe I simply imagined seeing Milo. It makes no sense for him to be here.
Then again, I suppose the same is true of me.
As I walk away, weaving through the quiet morning remnants of the festival, my thoughts drift back—unwillingly—to the Shade. To the sorrow in its eyes. To the way its presence had softened when it saw Boone with me.
Walkers without roots.
I don’t know what the future holds for it. Or for Boone and me, for that matter. But as I scan the crowd for a familiar shock of hair and a camera slung over a shoulder, one thing settles firmly in my chest.
Whatever happens next, I’m not walking it alone. And somehow, that makes all the difference.