Kain replayed that conversation over in his head a hundred times over the next few days. A thousand. They hadn’t talked about it again. He knew that pushing her right now was not a good idea.

He tried to just be elated. To be filled with the ever-growing happiness that had filled him that night. He’d felt that he’d never feel another emotion in his life. All he’d feel was happiness. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he hadn’t been fair in the way he’d asked her.

He was worried that he’d played on her loneliness. He’d offered himself up as an epic solution to her pain, but at the astronomically high cost of giving up her homeland. And now Kain had everything he’d ever wanted and she had half of everything she’d ever wanted.

It just didn’t sit well with him.

He needed to talk to someone about it. Someone who’d made that very same decision before, but on their own, with no pressure.

Kain found himself in John Alec’s kitchen a few hours later, a glass of iced tea in one hand.

Alec stared at Kain with wide, ecstatic eyes. “You’re kidding me.”

“No. She said okay.” Kain had spared the sexual details but he’d told Alec the story. “But it doesn’t quite feel right. She doesn’t want to say yes, you know? She just doesn’t want to feel lonely anymore. That’s not really a choice. It’s two things that suck and she chose between them.”

“She chose to be with you. That’s not a thing that sucks.”

“Yeah, but she’s giving up Herta to do it. She loves Herta. How can I ask her to change her life so completely? She can’t be a warrior here.”

“She’ll do what I do. We’ll cut back and forth and continue rescuing enslaved shifters.”

“You know that we need someone on the inside for that to work. If she’s not in Herta, feeding us the intel, we’re never gonna know where the hell to find the shifters in the first place.”

Alec sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Then we change the operation, Kain. We figure something else out. We’re not going to sacrifice Valentina on the altar of these missions. We can change things so that she doesn’t have to live there. Especially not if she’s alone and in danger and wasting away.”

“God, I wish I could just go live there.” He put his head in his hands and stared down at the table for a second. When he looked up, Alec was staring at him in a very odd way.

“You would do that for her? If it weren’t for the Struggles, you’d move to a different world for her?”

“Of course,” Kain answered immediately. “No question. I thought you of all people would understand moving to another world for the woman you love.”

Alec’s eyebrows went up to his hairline. The two men held one another’s eyes. Alec cleared his throat. “I knew you two were getting closer. But I didn’t realize…”

“Yeah.” Kain scratched the back of his neck and adjusted his hat. “I’m still getting used to it. It’s not new, I don’t think. But yeah. I’m not sure what to do with it yet.”

“Just give it to her. She’ll know what to do with it. Trust me. The worst place for it to be is in your clumsy hands.”

Kain had to grin at that. He was distracted, laughing, his nose in his iced tea. It might have been why he didn’t sense Valentina on the porch.             

She bounded lightly up the stairs of her brother’s house. She’d come to talk to him about the same thing that Kain had. How to make peace with her decision. Even though her heart already had, she was worried. She wanted some brotherly advice. She paused, though, when she heard Kain and Alec talking. Alec was advising Kain to give something to her. But she hadn’t heard what it was. She stretched for the doorknob to go inside.

“All those months ago,” Alec said to Kain, “when I asked you to get close to her, when I wanted you to convince her to stay here, I never thought it would work out like this.”

There was a strange buzzing sound in Valentina’s ears and she was hot all over. If Kain responded, she didn’t hear it. All at once, she was just a stupid, Hertian girl on the wrong fucking planet. Why had she ever thought she could navigate Earth? She was meant to live on Herta where the dangers were imminent and deadly, but at least she knew what they were. There was pain, she was certain there was pain in her chest. But she felt nothing but foolishness as she pushed open the door of Alec’s house and stepped through.

The two men turned to her in shock and Alec immediately rose. Kain’s face had gone white. Valentina looked down at her own hand in confusion; apparently she’d unsheathed her katana. Because she was pointing it at her brother’s chest. Her face was made of stone.

“Is it true?” she asked Alec, completely ignoring the man who’d pretended to care for her. Who’d tricked her.

Alec took a step toward her. “What did you hear? I can’t explain it unless you tell me what you heard.”

“You asked—” she couldn’t bring herself to say his name, “him to make me stay here.”

“I did, but—”

She was snatching Kain’s car keys from the kitchen table and running, sheathing her katana as she went.

“Val! Wait!”

She heard Kain screaming for her. She heard his footsteps pounding, but she was fast. And she was in the driver’s side of his car and pulling away in seconds. He threw himself in front of the car.

“Stop!”

She slammed on the brake.

“Val, you have to listen to me—”

She swerved around him and was gone down the driveway. She’d driven a car twice before and both of those times Kain had been in the passenger seat. The experience had been fun and romantic and exhilarating. This time, the road was blurry with her tears and she knew she was going way too fast back to his house.

But she didn’t have time to waste. She knew he would follow her. And she needed the rest of her weapons, she needed the tool to cut through to Herta, and she needed to get the hell out of this world.

 

***

 

 

“Alec, you bigmouthed ASSHOLE.” Kain had never cursed out his brother-in-law before but he’d never been this furious before either. He sprinted into the wood, kicking off his shoes as he went and prayed to God that she was going where he thought she was going. Kain was shifted and sprinting in his bear form in seconds. He was too close to the road and too close to other people as well, but he didn’t care. He just needed to get to his house fast.

But he wasn’t fast enough. He shifted back the second he saw his car idling in his driveway, the door flung open. He sprinted into the house, utterly naked, and knew immediately that she wasn’t there. Some of her clothes were gone. All of her weapons. And worst of all, the portal tool was gone.

She was gone. He steadied himself in the doorway of her bedroom. She’d gone back to Herta.

 

***

 

 

Two days later, Valentina fell in a puddle of exhaustion to the ground. Her only goal had been to get as far away from Kain as possible. So she’d cut into Herta, closed the portal, picked a direction and hadn’t stopped walking for all but the three-hour break she’d taken the night before.

She was exhausted, starving, and so thirsty her tongue was expanding in her mouth. Good thing her nose had led her to this stream. She cupped water in her hand and sipped it. It tasted clear and sweet. Just like all the water on Herta. When she’d sated herself, she rolled over and eyed the night stars. Clear and glistening. She’d missed this sky. This perfect sky.

It was good to be home, she reminded herself.

She couldn’t ignore her exhaustion anymore, though she was terrified of trying to sleep. Every step she took, the pain of what had happened had followed her, but it hadn’t set up shop yet. She knew that the second she stopped, it would bloom inside of her.

So she busied herself setting up her bedroll and scouting out the area for any signs of other people, and rustling up a little food. She found a small stand of early season apple trees. They’d go well with the peanut butter she’d brought.

Though she found that she couldn’t eat it. The taste, the smell, the label on the jar, all of it was a searing reminder of Kain’s house.              

Well, time to get it over with. She had to face the music and at least try to sleep. The rest of her life was starting now. Right now.

She ate the apples, seeds and all, and curled up in her thin but warm blanket, her hood over her hair. And she’d predicted accurately. The second there was nothing else to do, nothing else to plan or take care of, the pain rolled over her like an avalanche in the mountains.

He’d betrayed her and tricked her. Convinced her to stay as a favor to her brother. Because he loved John Alec. She’d seen it for herself. And so he’d done what he had to in order to get her to say she’d stay. She didn’t think he was completely evil. He probably really did have feelings for her. But Valentina didn’t think she’d ever get over the pain of not being loved the way she loved him. She really would have given up her world for him.

And that had been the plan all along.

Tears were hot on her face and her body shook as it hadn’t since her father had died in battle alongside her. She hadn’t just lost Kain, she’d lost her brother. Her connection to Earth. She had nothing now. Nothing but her training, her wits, and her mission. To free enslaved shifters.

That would be enough, she told herself, bullied herself. In the morning, she’d wake up and that would be enough. But right now she let herself cry.

Perhaps it was because of her tears, the convulsive act of crying, that Valentina didn’t hear the man who snuck up behind her. But she’d later realize that it was the pain. Once again her pain had made her vulnerable.

But not for long.

She felt her blanket lift and then her katana was whipping around, slicing the skin of the man behind her. His wrist stopped most of it, but his neck got some too.

“Christ, Val! You’re gonna make me bleed all over your blanket!”

“Kain?” She blinked at him in the dark as he eyed the wound on his wrist, already healing. The katana clattered out of her hand and he set it away, giving it a dirty look.

“Damn, you really got me. You didn’t hit my carotid, did you? That one takes me longer to heal.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” she crab-walked away from him.

“Currently? I’m attempting not to bleed out.” The only reason he could joke at this particular moment was because he’d just realized that she was wearing his hoodie. The blue zip-up that he’d deemed theirs. She’d taken it when she’d gone and now she wore it to sleep in. It told him that not all hope was lost.

“No. I mean why did you come here?” She didn’t need to ask how he found her. He’d probably been on her trail for a while, maybe the whole time she was gone. The thought both warmed and chilled her. Because even though she asked, she knew why he’d come. To ask her to come back to Earth with him. And as she stared at his perfect silvery scar, his black cap tipped back, she wasn’t sure she had the strength to say no.

And then her eyes flicked to the camping backpack he’d shucked off next to her bedroll.

Kain got up, strode over to the creek and washed the blood off his wrist and neck. He came back, wiping the water on his jeans.

“Kain.”

“What? Oh, why did I come? Because I need someone to show me how to survive in Herta.” He nodded his head toward the backpack.

She stared at the bag then back at him, her expression completely blank. “You want to learn to live in Herta.”

“Yeah. Well, no. Not actually. But yeah, because that’s where you want to live. So that’s where we’re gonna live.”

She didn’t understand. She rose and stepped suspiciously around the blankets, picking up her katana and re-sheathing it. “We as in…”

“You and me. And hopefully a kid or two. I really want kids.”

She frowned. Still deeply suspicious. “You want to have kids and live in Herta?”

He sighed and sat down on her bedroll, patting the space beside him. She didn’t sit and he wasn’t a tiny bit surprised.

“Val, Alec didn’t lie to you. He did ask me to do that. It was right after we first slept together. I went there to come clean to him about us but he started talking first and that’s what he asked me to do.”

She closed her eyes against the pain.

“But I said no.”

Her eyes opened.

“You can ask Alec, you can ask Milla, she was there, too. I told him how bad that idea was. That we shouldn’t try to control you. And that if you wanted to live in Herta then he and I would figure out a way to trade back and forth so that one of us was always with you.”

He paused, dropped his head and pressed his fingers into the back of his neck. She realized, with a sick little jolt, that if he’d been in Herta for two days already, then the Struggles would be loud and clear, hurting him badly.

“But then I realized that wouldn’t be good enough for me,” he continued. “To leave you every few days and just hope you were going to be okay.”

He rose. “You didn’t hear what I said to Alec right before all that mess, did you?”

She didn’t move an inch, not even to acknowledge his words. Kain stepped forward but didn’t touch her. “I said how much I wished I could live here with you.”

“You wished to live in Herta.”

“Yes.”

“Where the pain is so bright for you that on the fourth day it’s hard to breathe.”

“Yes.”

“Where you can never be your bear. Your true self. And you must always fight against the urge to fall slave.”

“Yes.”

She still stood just a few feet away from him, moonlight and leaf shadows dancing over her face. “Because you love me.”

“Yes.” His voice was low and had a little husk to it.

“Because you love me very badly. And you want to make a baby with me.”

“Yes and yes.” Neither of them moved.

“And because if you didn’t come to Herta to live with me you would be a pathetic shell of a man who couldn’t go on without me. Or smile or laugh or ever make love again.”

He cracked a smile, a little light finding its way into his voice. “Sure.”

And then his arms were full of her. Her soft, sweet self. All faint mint and fresh earth. His hand automatically wrapped around her braid, his fingers tracing its smoothness. They went instantly to their knees and she pushed him right down onto the bedroll. She rolled over top of him and pinned his arms down.

“Don’t argue with me about something,” she demanded.

“Okay…” He agreed tentatively although he knew he wouldn’t be able to think straight with her straddling him like that, much less form an argument.

“We’re not going to live on Herta.”

“Val—”

“Listen. Sometimes we’ll live on Herta and sometimes we’ll live on Earth. Sometimes John Alec and I will come here together. And in those times you and Milla will be very sad and lonely.”

He couldn’t help but smile at her confidence.

“My favorite times will be when you’re here with me,” she continued. “But I won’t be selfish and make you do it forever. And we’ll start cutting back and forth much more often,” she decided. “We’ll spend our days hiking through Herta and our nights camping on Earth.”

“But the hunters, they’ll find us if we’re cutting through.”

“You think I can’t handle hunters? Didn’t you see what I did to your family?”

“Right, but before—”

“Before, I was sad and sick and without you.”

A slow, lazy smile worked its way over Kain’s face. “So I’m kind of your secret weapon, huh?”

“Yes,” she nodded, extremely solemnly. “My love for you is my greatest weapon.”

“Your love for me,” he repeated and then leaned up to nip at her mouth. “I like the sound of that.”

She let his hands free then. “How’s your neck?”

He smiled against her lips. “Just fine. Come here.”

“I am here.”

“No,” he whispered, tugging her all the way down so every bit of them touched. He swirled the blanket over them. “I mean stay here.”