Ava is speechless, but I’m a little grateful. This could be worse. He could keep his rifle on us all night, but he’s letting us go. I’d say we should run, but he’s got this place locked down. He’d end up finding us.
Her father enters the motel, lobbing a few unfamiliar coins onto the table. “Two rooms,” he says.
The clerk nods and hands the keys over, cigarette nearly burning his lips. “Around the corner,” he mutters, idly staring.
Ava breaks off to enter a stark white room with a small, raised bed made with ponchos and blankets, made to hold as few guests as possible. Two linens hang across the wall, leading toward a solitary window that looks out on the town’s promenade.
I step inside, seconds behind her, but I’m so far from her heart it hurts. All I want to do is take her, hold her, and feel her one more time. But there’s so much we need to talk about. So much she has yet to learn.
She pauses near the window to look down at the drunken, howling men and women that are totally oblivious to the inevitable destruction descending on their surroundings. She turns on her heel, concealing a very distracted expression on her face.
Most people give up and run as soon as things get tough. But Ava is an original soul, and that’s why I fell in love with her in the first place.
The small, vibrato-less voices die down. Now, there is only the sound of the wind against the windowsill. The pearly stars within an aimless sky.
I look at her now, not just as someone I was programmed to love, fuck, and give everything of myself to and more. No, it was not manufactured fate that brought us together. It was something else. Divine conquest. A path toward glory, defined by a bond so deep it nearly broke me into a thousand pieces.
Shards of glass I can’t put back together.
I am a changed alpha. Someone who looks at the stars and thinks of a woman who is damn well stronger than anything I’ll ever be.
Ava found me. It was never the other way around.
The more I roam, the more that becomes clear. She picks up where I left off, witnessing my faults without judgment, eyeing the path with absolute care and calm deliberation. She sees through those cracks and loves me despite the obvious faults that make up my being.
That’s what love is and always will be. Because love never dies. Never changes, never falters.
Love is love, a flame that keeps me alpha strong.
I know what I have to do.
“You’re distant,” she mutters.
I walk toward her, legs brushing against the narrow space. I reach out and touch her hands, and a flurry of emotions nearly takes me back to the beginning.
“There’s a lot we need to talk about,” I say.
She glances down at the stained carpet. “Look, if this is about what I said earlier, I’m sorry,” she says. “Please, stay by my side. I can’t do this alone.”
I stand next to her, fingers intertwined with hers. My eyes fixate on the constellations above the town. Orion’s belt is clear tonight. I’ve been there before. There’s an enjoyable view of Praxis from there.
“It’s nothing you said or did,” I say, body turning tense with grief.
She kisses my chest, kisses right above my heart. Everything feels heavy, which is the reason for my silence. I know I should be doing everything to comfort her, but it’s hard to stare into her eyes without melting away.
“Then what is it? You demand more from me?” she asks.
She moves down toward my cock, and I almost let her go through with pleasuring me, but it wouldn’t be right in this moment.
This might be the craziest decision I’ve ever made, but I stop her.
I stand closer to her, folding my arms around her back, tenderly tickling my fingers across her shoulders. “You found me in an underground server room, and you’re not the least bit curious as to what I saw?” I as
k.
She bites her lip and rolls one shoulder back. “I figured it was another pointless storyline,” she says.
“Not everything here is for entertainment purposes,” I say. “Some things are for me to find, not your father.”