Suddenly, everything Zhara felt for him—lust, love, passion, obsession, tenderness, desire—seems to flow fully alive within me. Here with him in the water, I lift my legs and wrap around them around his back. He holds me tight, his chest pressing into mine, and yes, I can’t deny. My heart races. A swoon.
“Yes?” he asks in his gravelly voice.
“Yes,” I murmur.
Alex’s lips lean down to mine, and my mouth parts to meet his. The sun, the water, this moment: we have imprinted together.
Diving. Swimming. Kissing. Holding. Knowing.
The afternoon’s setting sun lets us know twilight approaches. We need to leave the atoll’s blue lagoon to make it back to Mine before sunset for Alex’s meditation time, and for me to say my proper good-bye to M-X.
Tomorrow, we have determined, we will set sail for the Rave Caves, to our new beginning.
As we return to our canoe stored on the beach, we see a small sailboat in the water, coming in to land at the beach.
“I recognize that boat,” says Alex, holding my hand as we walk toward the shore. “It belongs to the Army of Defects in the Rave Caves.”
The boat lands and is drawn up on the sand by two burly men vined in holly. Alex says, “New recruits from Haven, I see.”
The two men help a girl to climb out over the boat’s side. A human girl, not vined, looking feral and punk, her long blond hair streaked with black and blue dye, turned wild by the ocean wind. She sees us and calls out, “Xander!”
Alex’s hand drops mine. The Defects and the girl stand right in front of us.
The girl’s face regards me. It registers shock and then anguish.
Her face is mine.
The girl is Zhara.
I do have a soul. I always suspected it to be true, and now I know for sure. Because my First never died.
Table of Contents
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Rachel Cohn, Beta
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