by Presley Hall
Fuck.
I press my lips together, glad that the bitter wind will give me an excuse as to why my cheeks are flushed red.
What I felt with Ren was incredible, but it’s also terrifying. Because even though I’m scared of it being the mate bond, I’m also scared that it’s not. I’m scared that it’s just me chasing a high, getting addicted to something else that feels good. Losing myself in it, falling in so deep that there’s no way out.
I didn’t even like Ren when I first met him. I thought he was stubborn, annoying, high-handed, and single-minded to a fault.
But now….
Even before the sex, and definitely after, I’ve felt myself growing attached to him.
I care about what happens to him in a way that I know goes beyond just wanting him to stay alive so I won’t be alone on this mountain. I care. I care about what will happen to him after we leave Nuthora. I want him to be happy, to see his mission fulfilled, to survive whatever comes next with the rebellion. I want him to have a future that isn’t just about doggedly serving Droth and fighting a war.
But that isn’t a good idea, and I know it. If anything, I should be pushing him away, not getting closer to him.
I should be thinking of him as a partner on this mission, nothing more.
We scramble up another outcropping of rocks, slipping a little on the frozen snow and icy patches, and I glance over at Ren when we’re on solid ground again. Our panted breaths are puffing out of our mouths in visible clouds, and even though I know his planet is hot and sandy, I can’t help but think that Ren fits in well here too, on this snowy, wild mountain. His blue-tinged skin makes him look like some kind of ice god that’s come to life and emerged from the snow as a flesh and blood being.
Stop it, Felicity. That’s exactly the kind of thing you shouldn’t be thinking.
I mentally chastise myself, but I know it won’t do any good. Just like the addiction I tried to fight back on Earth, I can already feel Ren overtaking my thoughts, and I don’t seem to be strong enough to push those thoughts away.
So maybe the next best thing is to let him be the one to back away.
My stomach clenches with a sudden rush of nerves. I know one way to stop whatever this is in its tracks, but I really don’t want to speak the words.
I have to, though.
“I didn’t tell you everything about my life back on Earth,” I say suddenly as we make our way up the next rocky incline.
“Oh?” Ren doesn’t glance over. His expression is tight as he focuses on the ground ahead, watching for ice and traps.
“I was a gambling addict.”
The words feel like ash on my tongue. I haven’t said that out loud in… maybe ever. It’s something I admitted to myself a long time ago, but never really spoke about it with anyone else. The less I talked about it, the easier it was to pretend that everything was fine.
Ren hasn’t said anything in response to my confession, so I keep going. I breathe in the cold air, letting it clear my head as I continue slowly.
“I’d go to the casinos after work and play there—drink and play slots or card games. Some of them have dice too. I don’t know if you have games like that on Vox, or if you’ve seen them in other places?”
“Yes.” Ren grunts, glancing over at me this time. “Dice and card games are common in the saloons and gambling dens around the universe, and on some of the tourist ships that dock at places like Hak Gavar.” He makes a noise in his throat. “Are you telling me you want to go gamble, after we’re done here?”
“No.” I shake my head, swallowing against the sudden dryness of my mouth. “I can never let myself gamble again. Because the addiction is still there. It’s still a part of me, even if it doesn’t have an outlet anymore. I’m… I fucked up my life on Earth. Badly.”
My emotions feel twisted up like a knot inside my chest, and every word takes effort to speak. Part of my mind is screaming at me to stop before I say too much. Once he knows about the worst parts of me, he’ll probably dislike me even more than he did at first. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
It will be better if Ren doesn’t want me.
So why does that thought hurt so much?
“I was trying to save up for school,” I continue. “But I just couldn’t stop gambling. I’d get a decent amount saved up, stay away from the casinos for a little while, and then I’d have a bad night at work, or a friend and I would argue, or I’d just feel shitty and need a pick-me-up. Then I’d cave and go. And I’d lose all my money, of course, because that’s how they’re set up. You win a little, but you almost always lose big in the end.”
I bite my lower lip, fighting back the burn of tears as I turn my face into the wind, focusing on the cold sting as it hits my face. Saying all of this out loud, especially to Ren, feels like flaying off a layer of skin, leaving me feeling exposed and raw.
“The next day, I would be hungover and guilty.” I swallow. “I’d lie about where I was, to my friends or boyfriend if I had one at the time, and then eventually, they’d find out and leave me. It just was this awful cycle of losing everyone and everything, getting a little back and losing it again. I could never save up enough to turn my life around, to get away from working at a bar, to have a real career, to move away from a city that just kept feeding my addictions.”
I pause, finally running out of words. There’s plenty more I could say, more painful details I could share about the ups and downs of trying to fight off an addiction that had sunk its claws into me. But I don’t think I can say any more without crying, and I really don’t want to do that.
“Anyway,” I murmur, looking away from Ren, “I guess I just thought you should know, since we’re stuck on this mountain together. You were probably right that I wasn’t a good fit for this mission. I’m not disciplined or strong like any of you warriors. But I promise, I will do my best to help you disable the surveillance systems. I don’t want to fail in that.”
Silence falls between us as my voice dies out, my last few words pulled away by the wind. A lump forms in my throat, and my heart is beating hard.
The Ren who captured me in the woods, the man who was so adamantly against me coming along on the mission, who’s been critical of me since the beginning, will judge me harshly for everything I just said.
How could he not?
From what I know of him, he’s a man of deep discipline and dogged determination, a man who clings to his values and principles, who would never allow himself to fall prey to addiction or desires outside of his control. I’m pretty sure that last night was probably the first time he’s ever lost control, and I could feel him fighting it right up until the point where he thrust inside me. I could feel him trying to rein himself in.
So how could he possibly understand what it feels like to spiral out of control almost constantly, to feel as if you can’t stop doing the thing that’s tearing your life apart?
I brace myself for that judgement, for him to say something hurtful, to let me know just how much of a fuck-up I really am. For him to drive a wedge between us that won’t be able to be fixed.
For last night to become just a memory that will never happen again.
But when he finally opens his mouth to respond, his words surprise me.
“Sometimes people cling to things they shouldn’t, because it makes them feel fulfilled,” Ren says quietly.
I look over at him, surprised. There’s a long beat as I try to decipher what he meant by that comment. It sounds like he’s speaking from experience, but I don’t see how that could possibly be true. There’s no way someone like him could’ve struggled with the same issues I have.
“Why?” he asks finally.
I blink at him, my brows furrowing. “What?”
“Why did you gamble? What did it fulfill for you? Why do you feel like you couldn’t stop?”
His questions remind me of something—and after a moment’s pause, I realize exactly what it is. They remind me of the kind of things I
would ask or say to patrons at the bar, the men and women who came into the bar dejected after losing, or who didn’t want to end their vacation and go home to whoever was waiting for them, the ones who worked in Vegas and were tired and burnt out. The kinds of armchair therapist questions I used to ask to get them talking, to help them feel better.
“What kind of gambling did you prefer?” he asks when I hesitate to answer, as if he’s trying out an easier question.
I chew my bottom lip, considering for a moment.
“Slots. Those are machines you put a few coins in, and they’re bright and lit up. They spin until they land on certain symbols, and that determines if you win and how much. Poker, sometimes. Blackjack. Those two are card games. I didn’t play them as much, but I lost a lot more when I did.”
“So what made it so addictive? Why did you love it so much?”
Ren’s voice is still curious and patient, not judgmental, and I can feel myself relaxing a little, some of the twisted feeling in my gut easing up.
I’ve never really talked to anyone about all of this. There’s never been anyone in my life who wanted to try to understand. I was either an idiot, a fuck-up, or a sad cautionary tale to anyone who knew.
I think about it for a minute, wanting to tell him the truth—the real reasons, maybe even things I’ve never completely admitted to myself.
“It gave me a sense of control,” I say finally. “It made me feel like my dreams could be achievable, if I kept trying. Slots are pretty cheap, so it was easy to just say one more, one more, to keep betting on the next roll when I just knew I’d win big. And poker and blackjack require some strategy and skill. So I told myself I just needed to get better. If I kept playing, I’d understand the way to beat the house.”
Pausing to take a deep breath, I let the cold air sear my lungs.
“Everything I wanted to do with my life seemed almost too big sometimes, too scary. All the years of school I would need in order to have the career I wanted, all the money it would cost, more than I could save myself. I would have had to take out loans eventually. But gambling, I understood. I lived in the middle of it, and it was easy to get caught up in the glitter and promise of it all.”
I huff a humorless laugh, shaking my head. “Gambling made me feel like I had a chance to win big. Like any night could be the night that I changed my entire life, sometimes very literally on a dime. It somehow felt more achievable sometimes, even though it really had so much lower odds of changing my life than just keeping the money and using it for what it was meant for.”
Ren glances over at me, something that looks a lot like compassion gleaming in his cat-like green eyes.
“I’ve been trying to keep the spark of rebellion alive on Vox for five years,” he says quietly. “Sometimes I think that felt like an addiction, a way to salve the grief and guilt of still being home while my brothers and my prince were banished. But that dream felt too big sometimes, too. The dream of taking our planet back, of freeing our people from corruption.”
My heart thuds heavily in my chest. We’re walking very slowly now, still careful to keep an eye on our surroundings even as we talk. Ren’s voice is low and intimate, and all the way up here on this freezing mountainside, it feels almost like we could be the only two people left in existence.
“I can understand feeling as if a goal is too hard, as if you won’t ever achieve it. And I can see why someone would seek a salve for that, the promise of an easier way.” He shrugs. “Perhaps this mission—rescuing Droth and the others and what we’re doing now—is my easier way. At least now, I don’t have to do it alone. And if I fail, I’ll take the consequences too, instead of being forced to know that others are suffering them instead. In a way, that’s easier than what I’ve done the last five years.”
He stops walking, pausing on a flat outcropping of rock as he turns to look down at me. The clouds of our breath in the cold air rise around us, but with him so close to me, I’m not feeling the cold anymore. All I feel is him, his warmth, the power and strength of his body, and the emotion that I swear I can almost sense flowing through him.
“Sometimes there is no quick fix, though, Felicity.” His eyes meet mine, something nameless gleaming in their jade depths. “There’s only waking up every day, putting your feet on the floor, and forcing yourself to get through it. Putting in the effort, because the only other option is giving up, and that’s not an option at all.”
The sincerity and simple truth in his voice draws me to him like a magnet, making me want to step into his embrace and rest my cheek on his chest just so I can listen to that voice rumble under my ear.
I meant to push him away by telling him all of that stuff about my past—to drive us apart, to show him that I’m not good enough. That I’m just a fucked-up girl from Earth who screwed up so badly that I don’t have any reason to go back. Someone who wants to join another planet’s rebellion to give herself a purpose, because she destroyed any chance of one in her old life.
But somehow, Ren doesn’t seem to see any of that.
He doesn’t feel that way about me, though I’ve told him my worst secret. And now he’s looking down at me with more care and compassion than anyone in my entire life ever has. It makes my heart ache, makes my chest burn with something I’ve never felt before, something I don’t even have a name for.
“You’re not at all like I thought you were when we first met,” I whisper, looking up at him.
He smiles, the first real, broad smile I’ve ever seen from him. It changes his whole face, softening the sharp edges of his features and the roughness of his scars, making him somehow even more handsome.
“What did you think of me back then?” he asks, amusement coloring his words.
The grin on his face is so contagious that an answering smile curves my lips before I realize it. I chuckle, something in my chest lightening as I arch a brow at him. “You really want to know?”
“Of course.” He says the words like a challenge, but there’s no hardness to them. Instead, it sounds almost like he’s… teasing me. As if he already knows what my answer will be and is daring me to say it.
Okay. Challenge accepted, mister.
“I thought you were stubborn and hard-nosed,” I tell him, still grinning. “What did you think of me?”
“I thought you were headstrong and brash.” He cocks his head a little, his full lips pursing. “And now? Do you still think those things about me?”
“Oh, definitely.” I take a half step closer to him, my voice dropping a little lower as my gaze locks with his. “Stubborn. Hard-nosed. And brave. Dedicated. Protective. Strong.”
He takes a step forward too, meeting me so that we’re standing nearly chest to chest. “I like how headstrong you are. I like how brash. And I see why so many people shared their stories with you at that saloon you worked at on Earth. You care. You’re one of the most passionate, caring people I’ve ever known, I’m certain they must have sensed that.”
My breath hitches. Our exchanges has been partly teasing banter and partly… something else. It’s as if we’re finally allowing ourselves to say things that we’ve both been holding back, and hearing Ren describe how he sees me makes me want to be that person.
It makes me want to be someone worthy of the kind of respect and admiration that gleam in his eyes as he gazes at me.
I open my mouth, not even quite certain what I’m going to say in response to his words. But before I can figure it out, I catch a glimpse of something behind him—a flickering movement that makes my attention shift over his shoulder.
My eyes widen, my throat closing over with fear in the same moment that Ren catches the expression on my face and turns his head to follow my gaze.
Before either of us can move, the largest creature I’ve ever seen on Nuthora springs out of the snowdrifts. It has an almost feline look, like some kind of snow leopard, except much, much bigger.
And it’s headed straight toward us.
17
Ren
I catch a glimpse of the creature launching itself at us—massive, heavily furred, white with dark patches and claws and teeth as long as my hand—before I grab Felicity, dragging her down to the ground with me as the animal pounces.
The snarl it makes fills the air around us, shaking the frail trees that still grow this high up and making me fear that not only will we have the creature to contend with, but the possibility of an avalanche as well.
The animal misses us on the first leap, but as it lands just past Felicity and me, snow spraying in its wake, it regains its footing almost immediately. Still snarling, it pivots and lunges, and I only have a moment to draw my two long daggers before it’s almost on us both.
I lunge forward, swinging one of my blades toward the snarling creature, holding it off long enough for Felicity to scramble backward toward the small stand of barren trees. The creature backs off for a moment, pawing at the snow, its large white and black furred ears pinned against its head as it snarls again.
The curved front teeth are massive, and I feel myself gritting my own teeth, bracing myself for a battle unlike any I’ve ever fought. I’ve faced armies before—but not precariously on the side of a snow-covered mountain peak.
For a moment, I hope the beast is going to turn tail and run. It backs off another step, still growling, its long tail switching around its hind legs. But then, as the wind picks up and it gets another whiff of our scent, it swings its massive head back and forth, and charges again.
Fear fills me, as cold as the snow around my feet—but it’s for Felicity, not for myself.
A primal rage washes over me, searing my veins red hot and replacing the fear as the feline creature charges. No matter what happens, I can’t allow any harm to come to her.