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IN THE MORNING, JADE stretched hard against Micah’s side. She always woke up sore, but moving around would give her relief.
With an idea of how to warm up her sleepy muscles, she turned over toward him. But he was asleep, which was unusual for him. Most times he was up with a fire started before she even cracked open her eyelids. He’d told her he didn’t need much sleep usually. Must’ve caught up to him. Jade stared at his chiseled face, relaxed and soft in slumber, something warm and sweet swelling behind her breastbone.
Lord help her, she’d fallen in love with Micah.
A man with a colossal body and an even bigger heart. A man that believed the earth spoke to him, that he could feel crystals under the ground, and probably all sorts of other metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.
But she wouldn’t hold it against him. Because he was also a man that protected her and held her while she cried, who sang to her in her sorrow and her grief and soothed all of it.
In reality, they still didn’t know a lot about each other. But for once, she was looking forward to the end of mining season, because then she’d get to spend more time with him. For right now, she was content with what they had, what they were doing. When she got her claim cleaned out, they could get to know each other better. Maybe talk about being partners next year.
Gently, lightly, she brushed her fingers down the dark, ornate skin on hiss bicep, heart pounding at the thoughts in her head. Lovers, mining partners...
More?
She met his eyes, open now, golden as the sunrise. It was so beautiful, how they did that sometimes. Just another reason she was head-over-hiking-boots for this guy.
“Good morning,” she said, not able to keep the smile from her lips, her voice.
“Morning,” he rumbled, his smile flashing brief and beautiful. Then he rolled over, sat up, and started getting dressed.
Jade rolled around in her disappointment for just a second, wishing he’d stayed a little longer, wishing he’d pulled her close and let her work out all her kinks on top of him. Allllll of them.
But then she sighed and sat up too, disappointment fleeting because today was the day she would get that crystal plate out. She could never stay in bed long anyway. He probably knew that by now.
In fact, the crystal plate was on her mind so much that she barely spoke as they got ready.
And then she turned around to see Micah pulling on a t-shirt, one that stopped at the bottom of his ribs. A crop-top. Not that she minded seeing the Adonis lines coming out of his waistband, but it wasn’t a good look for him.
With a laugh at his bewildered face, she asked, “What happened to your shirt?”
Red on his cheekbones, he shrugged. “It got ripped.”
“That it did,” she said, chuckling while he changed his shirt.
Once they started up the trail Micah was quiet, so she indulged her daydreams all she wanted. Thinking about how she’d transport the giant plate of crystals, how she would clean it. Where she could get it appraised. Who might buy it once she did. How many digits would be on the check. She owed him dinner. Maybe she’d take them somewhere fancy. Somehow she didn’t think he’d ever been in a nice restaurant. But she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable like he’d been at the store, so maybe they’d have a picnic instead. In the grass, with champagne and desserts and whatever he liked to eat besides those energy bars. Come to think of it, had she ever seen him eat anything else? She’d have to probe and see what his favorite foods were besides those camping rations he was always eating.
When they got to her claim, Jade stared for a full sixty seconds before everything registered, before she had processed what she was seeing. Her mine, her strike, her precious mother’s salvation... was caved in.
“It’s over.” She walked around the pile, unable to draw a deep breath. “It’s over,” she repeated, collapsing, legs too weak to hold her. She sat, crumpled, by her last hope.
Feet of fresh dirt and boulders covered it. The combined weight of it being several tons, there was no way the crystals inside survived intact, even if she could dig them out. Even if she had time, or her tools, now buried, or a posse of helpers.
“Jade—” Micah started, but she held out her hand and dropped her head between her knees. “I need a minute. Please.”
She’s known she was taking a chance with this hole, but she’d been so focused, so desperate, that she’d felt like she couldn’t take the time to make it any more stable. It had seemed like a tiny risk at the time. And luckily she hadn’t been in there when it happened, but... she’d lost everything.
She couldn’t even cry about it yet, but god, she hated herself for this. Hated the weather, and the mountain, and insurance companies, the cost of healthcare, and mining, period.
She pushed her hands into her hair and squeezed, opening her eyes.
Between her legs lay a scrap of familiar black fabric. She picked it up, ran it through her hands. Stiff with dirt and dark stains, it was still recognizable. It was the missing strip off Micah’s t-shirt.
Her chest squeezed. The t-shirt she’d pulled from his body last night, whole, yet was torn this morning.
She’d felt him get out of bed last night. She’d barely registered it in her sleep, thought nothing of it. He rarely slept long and got out of bed often. When she’d first asked him about it, he’d said he was protecting her, checking things out, making sure everything was safe. But last night...?
Yesterday he’d told her the mine looked like it was going to collapse, and here it was, caved in.
I could stop you...
His words from the day before echoed in her head as she held the strip up to him. “You did this?” She asked it like a question, but she knew it was the answer. He’d been trying to get her off this mountain for days, trying to get her to leave. But she wouldn’t go without her gems, so he’d collapsed her mine. She stood, shaking the fabric at him. “You did this. Why?” Why on earth had he done this? Betrayed her, broken her? Why?
“I can explain.”
Why hadn’t he said anything before this? Why did he stay quiet all morning? Couldn’t he have told her about this before they made the trek up? When she’d noticed his shirt? A hundred million times in between then and now?
And why? Son of a bitch, why?
She waited, hollow, prickles of hot and cold running down her back as she looked at him in the bright morning light.
“I took your gems—”
“You took my gems?” That was all she needed to hear. What she’d been expecting to hear, really. He hadn’t come clean before this, and now that she’d caught him, anything else he said would be a lie. Jade jolted to her feet, the cloth clenched in her fist. “You took my gems. You took my mother’s gems.”
“I can get more for you—”
“How? You, who supposedly have no mining knowledge. Who has to wait and lie and deceive to get the gemstones you want. How will you get more? Wait for another prospector to come up here to trick? No thanks.”
“It’s not like that—”
“It is,” she hissed. Once again, she’d been duped into doing all the hard work, crying over the hard work, bleeding over the hard work, just for a man to swoop in and take everything from her. Tricking her and blinding her with her own emotions.
“How could you? How could you do this?” It was so against everything she thought she knew about him. At least with her ex, there had been signs to look back on, signs she had missed. But there was nothing to look back on with Micah and say, oh, this is where he was planning to betray me. She was completely and utterly blindsided.
Worse, she was in love with him. Still in love with him. She waited for him to say something more, to say anything, to correct her. To justify this. To prove her wrong, or set things right. But he said exactly what she was going home with; nothing.
What the hell was wrong with her? How had she fallen for it again?
“I hate you.” She hated him for stealing. For making her trust, making her have feelings for him. For making her believe again, and then betraying that.
His face fell and his hand dropped to his side.
It wasn’t enough. She wanted to see him hurt, like she did. She wanted him scraped open, hollowed out. Crushed. Broken.
Jade gripped her hair in both hands and screamed, rage filling her mind and her body and her throat. Rage at herself, rage at him.
Rage that everything she’d been feeling was fake.
Rage that made her shake so hard it seemed like the ground moved beneath her feet.
Rocks trickled down the mountainside, drawing Micah’s eyes, but she didn’t care. The whole mountain could collapse now for all she cared.
But then he turned away from her, drawing his long knife and backing up toward her.
What. The. Hell?? Oh no, they were not done, not by a long shot.
Vulnerable, back turned to her, for a split second she wished she had a knife of her own. But then she saw what he saw, what prompted him to turn away from their confrontation. Not because he was ignoring her, but because he was guarding her.
People were coming down the mountain. Dozens of them, maybe a hundred.
And even that might not have distracted her from her wrath, except there was something wrong with them, with all of them. They seemed to bring with them a shadow over the sun, the stench of burning things.
And they were all staring directly at her.
––––––––
SWORD IN ONE HAND, phone in the other, Micah mashed the buttons to send out a distress call to the other Warriors. He needed help with this one. There were more Chaolt than he’d ever seen in his life. Where he could kill ten single-handedly, kill and escape maybe thirty, there were at least twice that many bearing down on them.
“Micah?” Jade asked, voice quavering.
“Stay behind me.” Pocketing his phone, Micah held his sword in both hands, his back to the now-quiet Jade. He’d run out of time to explain things. It looked bad, he could admit, and her opinion of him might never change unless he got a chance to explain. Which meant he had dozens of enemies to kill first, because he wanted that chance.
He tightened his grip on the hilt until the leather creaked, and he had to consciously loosen his hands. If he held it too tight, he wouldn’t have the speed and responsiveness he would need.
The Chaolt were funneling toward him and he couldn’t pick out the boy among them, but he must be among them. That one hungry look he’d made before going back through... How he didn’t recognize it, he wasn’t sure, but the boy had looked back toward Jade.
This was happening because he’d let him go in his botched attempt at redemption.
He knew, now, there was no redemption for him. Only more mistakes. He had to make sure she wouldn’t be the one to pay for them.
He charged, and with a sweeping arc of his arm, took out the first few Chaolt to approach. The topography was on his side, forcing them to chose their steps carefully or tumble down the mountain.
But there were too many, and as he fought more accumulated in front of him. Punching, clawing, slicing with blades of their own as his flashed and stabbed.
One by one, they fell under his sword, filling the air with their caustic dust. But more came, and more, pushing him back as he tried to keep them from Jade.
Enemies on all sides, his sword was knocked away, and for a moment, the Chaolt piled on, attacking him.
With a surge, he stood and threw them all back. And then got to work with his hands, snapping and breaking any limbs he could reach to slow their attacks until he could reach their necks. The wrenching cracks were satisfying, but slower.
He could use a gun, practiced occasionally with them since the enemy attack on the base last year, but had been leaving his in his tent with the thought it might cause a landslide if he ever had to use it. If only he’d had the foresight to grab it this time.
But... Jade had one, in her pack.
“Jade!” he called as he punched and jabbed and cracked. “Gun!”
But she didn’t answer, and no gun fired. With a hammering spin that knocked several enemies to the ground, he turned around.
She was hanging between the arms of a Chaolt, unconscious, limp. Held up by her head between the Chaolt’s hands. It was the boy, and he’d snuck around the back to get to Jade while Micah was occupied with the others.
The ground lurched underneath Micah’s feet, and it wasn’t from him. The boy was on a suicide mission to make Jade self-destruct, use her Erratic powers to bring down the mountain.
Micah ran at them, and with one snapping, lethal move, he held Jade in one hand, black dust and harsh regret in the other.
He couldn’t save the boy, couldn’t save Tokoni, and the Chaolt wanted to make sure he couldn’t save Jade.
He’d die first.
As gently as possible, he laid Jade on the ground. She opened her clouded eyes then, but he couldn’t stop to explain. He had to find his sword. He pivoted and saw it about fifteen feet away, underfoot of the enemy.
Steps eating up the distance, he strode toward them. He would get his blade and make them all eat it. They would have to flay every inch of skin from his bones before they touched her again.
But they turned and ran. All of them, every one of the mob still alive.
Micah picked up his sword. Smart of them, but it wouldn’t save them—
And then he saw why. They weren’t running from him. Instead, they were running from a thunderous brown cloud of dirt and rock was rolling down the mountain from the top of the peak,.
They’d succeeded, they’d cracked open and released Jade’s power. The power he should have drained, weeks ago.
Micah turned and picked up Jade and ran behind the Chaolt.
But they would not make it. Without his powers to help him navigate the mountain, he couldn’t go fast enough. It would overtake them.
“Micah!”
Jade was awake, looking over his shoulder, her body tense in his arms. It would have been better if she’d stayed unconscious.
When the time came, he would have to make sure she wasn’t aware of what was happening. Wasn’t aware of the fear and pain.
The thought almost took the strength from him and he stumbled, crashing to one knee. The blinding pain was insignificant next to the pain in his heart, but he struggled to his feet and ran again.
Jade was going to die. He might also, might get too injured and not be able to recover with the Chaolt and the portal nearby sucking his powers. The thought of his own death was not anywhere near as frightening as Jade’s. He would do what he could to save her, but even with all his strength, he could not hold back an entire mountain.
Unless...
It might be another mistake, but he had to try. Because he loved Jade, and couldn’t stand to fail her again.