It goes on for what feels like an eternity. The room shakes as the storm intensifies, the rain gets icy cold, the wind matches.
But then like outside in the real world, you can feel the smallest shift in the atmosphere as the pressure of the room changes. The lightning starts to stagger further outward, moving towards the outer edges of the room. The thunder follows it, making it sound like it’s drifting away too. The rain changes. It goes from torrential to pouring, then to drizzling. The last thing to change is the light; it doesn’t happen like flicking a switch. It’s gradual, taking us from a deep indigo to a burnished violet, like the first glow of the morning sun.
And then it stops when the real lights flicker, bringing us out of the simulator and back to reality.
Everyone looks at each other, and without a mirror it’s hard to confirm but all the other people here look like I feel. Raw. Energised. Grateful to have experienced whatever the hell that was.
No one talks, no one hurries away, everyone lounges back in the water looking up at the roof of the storm simulator room completely at peace at what we all survived.
And yeah, I don’t rush to scramble off the comfortable body I end up lying back on. I’m exhausted but strangely renewed. Darius’s arms are loose, and I know he’s leaving everything to me. If I was to move, he’d let me go.
I twist around, his irises are huge, dilated from the lack of light but also because of what we just experienced together. This thing between us is tangible and instinctual, which makes what they did worse. My fingers brush the drips of water off his face. “Thank you, that was amazing.”
And it was. It somehow feels like I survived the worst Mother Nature could throw at me. I wonder if it’s going to be symbiotic for this connection between Darius and me too.
My hand goes to move away, but he holds his over mine, keeping us tethered. “You were never a job, Heidi. And we never got a dollar from Verdune. Your dad approached us a few months ago. He’s worried you’re being set up by someone on the inside, and I’m starting to understand his concerns more now. We didn’t take the job on because of you being Ramses’ scent-match. Loving you happened because we wanted it to, not because we got paid to.”
All I can do is search his face for his truth, and he lets me without offering another word. I shake my head, letting the last of the rain drops on my face hide the couple of tears of relief. I really want to believe him, I honestly do. But I can’t yet. And he knows it, but he wears it too, without lumping me in guilt. “Come on, little moon, you’ve had your rest. You’ve got a few hours of work left in you.”
He stands up with me in his arms. Those arms that feel like they could take on all the storms of the world. I just need to figure out if they should be in my world or not.
ChapterThirty-Eight
HEIDI
As soon as I open the door to my suite, my mind is made up. The kittens are staying.
“Hello,” I whisper getting down to their level, as they do the cutest little stretches and meow-yawns.
Everything feels different, which makes hardly any sense given the size of them and how long they’ve been here. But the change they bring feels huge, and irreversible.
The black one has no fear and he does a better job pinning me still than most Alphas I know. His crystal blue eyes radiate power but he also keeps checking over his shoulder to make sure his sister is safe.
He stops in front of me. So close his nose nearly touches mine but at the last minute he looks past me, and I realise I’m not alone.
A figure steps out of the room down the end of the corridor, but I’m not spooked, if anything, I’m a little miffed my kittens didn’t tell me Ramses was here. Or maybe they did.
“Did you fall?” he asks, concern in his voice.
But he doesn’t take a step towards me.
I can feel how much he wants to, but he stays down there.
“No, just saying hello to these guys,” I say, returning my attention to my furless babies. “Why are you here, Ramses?”
He’s quiet for a long time. I don’t push, I’m more than content to tickle the fat bellies of the two kittens and wait his silence out.
“You haven’t opened the drive yet,” he says eventually.
“You’re right, I haven’t,” I say, climbing up to my feet.
The kittens decide to race ahead of me, all the way down to Ramses.
Maybe I will return them.
“They’ve sat waiting at the door for you since I got here. Kind of pissed me off how good they were ignoring me,” he admits.
I’m keeping them.
