Page 28 of Mindeater

All those secrets were stolen, and Saren couldn’t stop it. He was too weak. Too scared. While he could never voice it out loud, he believed his best friend. Something was irrevocably wrong with their community, and he had no idea how to fix it. The very word meant it couldn’t be fixed.

His tears finally fell, splashing down his cheeks. If he thought he could tap into the mastery, Saren would look to the future and see what would become of them. But he was scared to know—terrified to learn of a future where they didn’t spend every day together.

How would he tell Ryx? Tell him that all his reassurances, all that trust meant nothing now?

“Can you keep a secret?”

He couldn’t believe he’d ever been so naive as to think Ryx would be safe with him.

The years flashed before his closed, wet eyes. Every smile, every joke, every stolen brush of their fingers, and endless nights whispering in the dark because neither of them could sleep.

That first stretch of their studying when Ryx would get mad and insist a word didn’t exist or couldn’t possibly be spelled the way it was. All his curses and bravery.

When Ryx first had berries, and even to this day, he kept a few in his pocket to sneak when he didn’t think anyone was looking. Even the rebellious spirit that Saren both hated and admired. What would he do without him?

What sort of monster would he become?

Sliding down the edge of the bed, he pressed his forehead to his knees and held his legs.

“Can you keep a secret?”

Oh, how he wanted to take it back.

Because while he always hoped to keep that promise, he couldn’t. He broke it.

Nothing in the world could mend the fractured pieces.

Please forgive me…

10

Ryx

Ryx’s hair whipped behind him as he ran down the dark, dank underground hallway.

The sound of his shoes thumping over the dirt mirrored the beat of his heart. Every few seconds he’d crane his neck over his shoulder, certain that monsters would explode from the shadows and steal his one chance at freedom. He’d have to bring more light when it was time, too afraid of the dark to brave his escape without it.

His breath sawed out of him as he approached the shallow staircase and raced up it. Shouldering through the door, light splashed over the basement floorboards and, with its gleaming rays, he pushed back the panic.

Hunched over and holding his thighs, he took a few steadying breaths.

I found it.

After nearly three years of searching, he’d found a way out right under his fucking nose. Under everyone’s nose. He should’ve known Patryn would be hiding something like this. While it absolutely wasn’t the way New Grove was smuggling in oil, he knew Patryn was using it to smuggle in…other things. He’d waited long enough, and as it stood, Ryx didn’t think Patryn would ever tell Saren the truth. The older alpha severely underestimated him. Saren had a strength even he didn’t possess.

Saren could bear the weight of this secret.

With their way out of that fucked up place secured, all Ryx had to do was…come clean. About it all. Saren had finally opened his eyes to mostly everything. The lies spoon-fed to him since he was an infant were finally tasting sour and wrong. Ryx didn’t know how to explain how that made him feel. The way Saren would stare at him like he had all the answers and how Ryx’s heart quaked every time it happened. Inexplicably drawn to Saren, Ryx knew that these secrets could ruin it all.

He hoped it wouldn’t.

If what Patryn said was true, he couldn’t fathom how they would. Saren was his. Regardless of whether it took some time for the stubborn Telex boy to come to terms, he would eventually.

Because there was no way he was leaving without Saren.

Scratching the back of his neck, Ryx climbed out of the basement and into the estate kitchen. How many times had the pair of them gone down there for stored dried goods and completely missed it? He laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. A single discreet door covered by a fucking stack of crates. But that was the thing about power. Once you had it, people assumed you were untouchable—impenetrable. Ryx was far more determined than that.

He had to find them—his people.