Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
EDEN
“Where’s your restroom?” We’ve reached a perfect lipstick moment. Need a mirror ASAP.
The corners of the mountain man’s mouth tip down as he stands, nodding toward the hallway.
“Can I give you a warm-up on your cider?”
“Water would be great, actually. All of this has been … very sweet.”
“You’re telling me.” His look lingers a little too long before he turns back to the kitchen.
I open the first door down the hallway and gasp.
The smell hits first—metal, ozone, something burnt. My brain catalogs every Dateline episode I’ve ever watched before my feet can even move.
The small space bristles with wires and metal panels—half workshop, half crime scene.
Parts are strewn across the floor and piled on tables, every piece halfway between repair and ruin. A few mallets and hammers lie nearby like an open-ended question.
I feel his warmth behind me before he speaks. “Wrong room.”
“What is this?”
He shifts his weight, eyes grim. “The beginning of a rebellion.”
My forehead knits. “What are you, the Unabomber or something?”
“Couldn’t pay me enough to wear a hoodie,” he jokes, but I’m too busy surveying the scene to laugh.
“You stole this?”
“Stole it? Absolutely not. That would go against everything I believe in.”
“Then?”
He rubs a hand over his beard, gaze lifting to the ceiling.
“Wind and rain are dying down now. Maybe it’s time for you to get a move on.”
“Not until you explain … this.” I motion around the room.
“This is above any top-secret clearance you can imagine—better left unspoken.”
“But—”
“But it’s what happens when you stop believing in what you’ve been fighting for. These constructs,” he says, lifting the broken pieces of one, “were created by me to wage war.”
My eyes narrow; my hands plant on my hips. Does he really expect me to believe this? And yet … what else is there to believe?
“Only I started questioning who the real enemy is, which led me to this.”
He nods toward the hammer.
“Wait, you want me to believe you’re some super advanced alien being, yet you’re using a humble human hammer to get the job done?”
He shrugs. “Don’t have to explain field disturbances, energy fluctuations to my commanding officer.”
“So you’ve gone from creator to saboteur?”
“Only one true creator—not me. I just build what they tell me to.”
“So what is this for?” I can’t hide the horror in my voice.
“Hunting down Wildbloods and their mates,” he says, as if that should make sense.
Okay, he’s officially crossed from “hot weirdo” to “possible cult leader with great hair.”
“And what’s a Wildblood?” I’m about over this cosplay bullshit.
“Alien hybrid mixes. Corrupted blood. Not like us Sentinels.”
“I need to go. While this has been … interesting, I can only play DIY Comic Con for so long—especially the genetic-superiority version. Hasn’t been cool since Hitler, Space Boy.”
“Wait! So, you don’t find the concept of alien and human mixing an abomination?”
“God help me,” I whisper under my breath. “Thank you for the cider, the snacks, and the … conversation. But I should probably go.”
“Don’t, please,” he says, raw-voiced. “I can prove everything I’m telling you is real.”
And just like that, he glows. Truly, completely. Not a flicker here or there, but like a giant, human, neon sign.
Tough to blame that on a Halloween costume.
My jaw drops, my heart stops, and my temperature rises. My eyes dart past him and then my body as I sprint for the door.
Big boots hammer the wood floor behind me. Outside, he puts himself between my car and me. Doesn’t matter anyway; my purse and keys are still inside the cabin.
I eye him for a heartbeat, pulse fluttering, then bolt straight into the woods.
Behind me, strange words—like a curse in an unknown language—echo through the nightscape.
He doesn’t pursue as I slip deeper into the dark, tangled forest, breath racing and heart near bursting. I’m afraid of the dark, sure, but nothing compares to the supernatural sight of him.
The air is heavy with ozone and petrichor; the ground, muddy and slick from the downpour.
The deeper I go, the darker it becomes until I can barely see my own hands. The same hum that filled his cabin follows me out here, buried under the rain like tinnitus from another world.
Of all nights for a new moon. There isn’t a single trace of light anywhere.
I grope forward, skin crawling. All I know is I can’t go back. Not after that reveal.
Even if I wanted to, I’m not sure I could find the cabin again. I’m already hopelessly, interminably turned around.
Worse, my phone is in my purse, so I don’t have a flashlight. I bury my face in my hands, still buzzed and foggy—like I’m trapped in a fever dream. I pinch myself. Nothing.
Then, ahead in the darkness, a warm radiance blooms. Maybe it’s a ranger’s light, a cabin, anything sane—but then the orbs drift closer, and sanity packs up and leaves.
Peaceful, serene. There’s no other way to describe them. Tiny orbs of light flickering against the ebony night like fireflies.
But do they even have fireflies in the Sierra Nevada?
They drift toward a massive, glowing redwood, so broad I could never get my arms around it.
My heart aches at the sight—the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen—until Everett steps out, a body of fire and light amid the communion, flannel and jeans the only reminder of a man beneath the blaze.
“You followed me,” I accuse, panting for breath.
He looks half-born from the storm itself—too human to be lightning, too wild to be a man.
“Yes. And I will always follow you, because you’re mine now.”
“Yours? Weren’t you the guy lecturing me on alien-human abominations and killer robots?”
I pace, not waiting for his answer.
“You put something in the Star-honey, didn’t you? LSD or DMT? Because this—” I gesture to the tree, to him. “This cannot be happening.”
A hum threads the air again, coming from the man and yet vibrating through me.
“This has to be a bad dream. I need to wake up.”
“No.” Everett’s frown glows. “It’s not a dream. It’s meant to be.”
I shake my head, planting my hands on my hips. “I’ve been stressed lately. The move has been tough. Too many sleepless nights to count. Maybe I pushed myself too far.”
“Do I not please you, my little Earthling?”
His voice tugs on something behind my ribs.
“No, you’re gorgeous. Beautiful, some might say—”
“Would you?”
I squint. Of course, he’s gorgeous—in an off-planet sort of way. That’s the problem.
“Don’t lose it, Eden. You’ve got this. You’re going to wake up and—”
“If you’re going to wake up,” he interrupts softly, “then why not give in to what your body already tells me you want?”
“How?”
“Your arousal. I can smell it. Like you were somehow made for me and the resonance.”
What in the holy hell? This man’s more off his rocker than me.
He shakes his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t understand it either, but I want to. Through touch, through taste—just once. I’ve waited centuries for this. Is choosing union over loneliness really such a sin?”
You promised yourself you’d say yes to weird, my traitorous mind reminds me.
“Can you feel the humming?” he asks, voice low and sensual. “The way it passes through each of us … and Mother Tree? It is our eternity.”
I can. My veins burn; all I can think about is wrapping my arms around this strange creature and letting him have his way.
What is seriously wrong with me?
“Tomorrow, you’ll wake up in your own bed, your own home, like none of this ever happened. I promise.”
“So, this really is a dream, then?” I ask, blinking slowly, temptation coiling around me.
“A dream or a nightmare,” he murmurs. “Up to you.”
The hum swells until it’s inside me, around me, through me—terrifying and beautiful, and I don’t know which will win.