Now that I was considered “taken,” Elias said it was safe for me to explore the Haven—except for that one tantalizing forbidden tent tucked away in the furthermost reaches of the community.
“Why can’t I go there?” I’d asked.
He gave me a fond smile. “If I was able to tell you why, there’d be no reason not to let you see it. Be patient. All will be revealed in time.”
I wasn’t thrilled about him withholding information, but I was happy to be able to see my friends as much as I wanted.
As he’d promised, none of the guys bothered us as we explored the Haven over the next couple of weeks, and we enjoyed getting to know the other girls, especially those who were willing to share their own stories of how their relationships with their champions had developed.
I did find out about the “birds and the bees,” as one of the girls, Myka, termed it, and some of the details were downright shocking. None of them seemed to have any complaints, though.
Naturally, as I learned about the various private activities, my mind conjured up images of Elias and me together. It was astonishing how something could seem so embarrassing and so intriguing at the same time.
“What’s Elias like?” Jaida asked.
She’d been here at the Haven since the start, and her champion was called Keagan. We sat together among the branches with Ketta and Jolie and several of the mated girls.
“You don’t know him?” I asked, surprised.
“Well sure, all of us know him,” another one of the girls, who was name Amalie, said. “But none of us really knows him. He’s so self-controlled and aloof. What’s he like in private?”
It seemed like everyone leaned in, eager for gossip about their mysterious leader.
I had no plans to share with them any of the things he’d told me in confidence, but I didn’t mind giving them a little insight into him as a person.
From what I’d seen, you only liked Elias better the more you got to know him.
“Well… he’s very patient,” I said.
Once again, my mind returned to the night after the Trials, to the kisses we’d shared and how I’d stopped him from doing more. How he’d continued to assure me it was okay to take my time, that he’d wait as long as necessary as night after night I balked at letting it go any further.
“Titus isn’t patient,” Ketta said, wearing a sneaky grin. “And I love it. I have no interest in waiting on anything. We’ve been kept controlled our whole lives. I want to experience everything and enjoy everything—as many times as humanly possible. Or should I say, as many times as Gebbily possible.”
The girls with mates all nodded and laughed. It was good to see my friend so happy, and clearly she was content with her champion. Ecstatic, actually.
“Better watch out,” Amalie warned with a knowing smile. “You’ll end up over there.”
She hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward the forbidden tent.
“Shhh,” Jaida said to her and shot her a warning glare.
“What is over there?” I craned my neck, squinting up at the tent behind her. This was the closest I’d ever been to it, only one tree away.
Suddenly, I saw something. The tent flap parted, and two heads poked out—both girls.
“Who are they?” I asked my companions. “Why haven’t we met them?”
Elias refused to tell me, but maybe my new friends would be more forthcoming.
“No one important,” Amalie said.
“They’re shy,” Jaida said.
Then turning to Jolie, she rather obviously changed the subject. “How’s it going with Dann?”
Jolie had already told me she liked her champion and that they were getting along well but that she wasn’t sure they had enough in common to stay together long term.
“He’s nice. We’re taking it slow,” she told the others, blushing furiously.
“Don’t take it too slow,” Myka warned. “Guys hate waiting. They only have so much patience.”
Later when we got a moment alone, I encouraged Jolie—and myself—to ignore Myka’s advice.
“Just listen to yourself about all that, okay? You know whether something is right for you. Take all the time you need, and don’t worry about it.”
She hugged me. “Thanks. It’s just so different here, you know? Sometimes I think about how simple it all was back at the base.”
“Yeah, me too. But then I remember it was a lot more complicated than we knew. Are you sorry you came here?”
She looked up and around at the beautiful treetop setting, the amazing community Elias had formed.
“No. I like being free—and knowing that I’m myself instead of a study subject being lied to and manipulated by humans. I just miss being a kid, I guess. Maybe I’m not really ready to be in a serious romantic relationship like these other girls are.”
“Well you haven’t been off the red pills as long as they have—or as long as I have either. I remember when I never even thought of kissing boys—it wasn’t that long ago.”
“Do you think of it now?” she asked. “With Elias? Or with Heath?”
The mention of his name gave me a sharp twinge.
On the way here in Syd’s truck I’d told my friends what I remembered about Heath. Since then, details had continued to come back to me slowly, but it was all head-knowledge, like something I’d read in a book.
My heart recalled nothing of the “love” Heath had mentioned in his secret video message to me. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever felt that way about him or if it had always been a one-sided thing.
“I do. I really like kissing Elias,” I told Jolie. “I’m pretty sure I liked kissing Heath, too? But I had just gone off the red pills, so my nanos had only stopped controlling my hormones. I don’t know what it would be like to kiss him now.”
And I’d never find out. I would never see him again. Meanwhile, I was growing closer and closer to Elias with every passing day.
And in spite of my advice to Jolie, Myka’s words had shaken me a bit.
Was Elias running out of patience? I suspected that he, as she’d said, hated waiting just like any other guy would.
And unlike me and my friends, he hadn’t taken the red pills in a long time. All the teens we saw here looked more like adults than children.
The Haven girls who’d been here longer than us had described how amazing it had been to watch as the boys changed, growing body and facial hair, shooting up in height, developing muscles and deeper voices.
Elias displayed all the evidence of full physical development. He wouldn’t want to wait forever.
So far, he’d been really sweet, bringing me flowers nearly every day. One night he came home with a perfect pinecone he’d found, and I proudly hung it inside our tent.
My favorite gift was a necklace he’d made by stringing pretty white quartz stones from a length of hyper weave cord.
He spent time with me, too, taking time away from his job as leader of the Haven to show me the wonders of the national park. One evening it was a perfect sunset at the perfect vantage point with the valley below us and mountains glowing orange and red in the distance.
Another time we climbed a tree together so he could show me a nest filled with hatching baby birds. He said he’d been checking on the eggs every day so we wouldn’t miss the big moment.
Yep, my resistance was definitely melting. But I still didn’t feel like I knew Elias extremely well.
As Amalie had noted, he was supremely self-controlled, and I knew there was a lot he kept to himself. I wasn’t sure if it was out of habit or if he feared I wouldn’t like what I saw if he let me inside.
Either way, it created a distance between us that I longed to overcome.
One day a month or so after the Trials, he invited me on a hike. We stayed off the populated pathways, cutting through the backcountry and eventually arriving at a beautiful waterfall.
Wait. I know this place. I’d been here before… with Heath and Daniel.
Surrounded by lush greenery, the waterfall cascaded down a tall rock face, creating a misty spray that caught the sunlight and made the air sparkle.
Tall trees towered above the falls, their branches reaching out to create a natural canopy over us. The air here smelled especially fresh and clean, and the rushing water created the most soothing sound as it flowed down into the sparkling pool before us.
“Want to go in?” Elias asked. “Not that you need a shower. I worked up a sweat on the hike, though.”
“Sure, that would be fun.”
As always when Elias pulled his shirt over his head, my face grew hot, and I felt a little light-headed. I was also staring—which he noticed.
He flashed me a dazzling grin.
“I’m guessing you never saw guys back at the base shirtless. Either that or they weren’t built like me.”
“Um… sometimes. And no. They weren’t,” I answered honestly.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Not too shabby, huh?”
“No, not shabby at all. But you know that already. I mean, you must realize your muscular development is superior—”
Elias’ laughter cut me off, the happy sound echoing across the water.
“I wasn’t asking what you thought of me, dingbat. Of the waterfall.”
He twisted side to side gesturing around us, clearly proud of himself. Of course that caused the aforementioned muscles to shift and bunch and basically put on a show that put the natural beauty around us to shame.
“Have you ever seen anything like it in your life?” he asked.
No. That’s what my one-track mind said. But, as he’d said, he wasn’t referring to himself but the waterfall.
“Well… actually yes. I’ve been here before,” I told him. “When I came to the park with…”
“With him,” Elias finished my sentence sourly. “You saw it with Heath. So then you actually did see him without a shirt on—assuming he took it off to swim.”
“Yes. It was very warm that day.”
Studying his face and weighing his tone, I realized Elias was jealous.
That knowledge caused a pleasant tickle in my chest. Though we hadn’t consummated our physical relationship, it was clear he already thought of me as his mate. I was beginning to like the idea myself.
“But I didn’t really notice,” I added. “It was so long ago, I can’t really remember how he looked exactly.”
A lie, but an innocent one. What was the point of telling Elias that Heath had been just as well-developed and attractive as he was?
Though he seemed somewhat mollified, Elias got out of the water and pulled his shirt back on. Turning back to face me, he shot the beautiful waterfall a dirty look, as if the landmark was somehow at fault.
“I wish I could take you to places you’ve never seen and show you new things,” he said. “You’re probably bored as hell here, living in a tree, never leaving the park.”
I made my way to the shore as well, shaking the water from my arms and hands. I stepped close to Elias and rubbed his shoulder.
“That’s not true. I love it here.”
Mentally I added, with you, but I didn’t say it out loud. I wasn’t quite ready to utter the words “love,” and “with you,” in the same sentence.
“I do, too, but we can’t stay here forever,” he said. “Besides, I want to explore the world with you. Unfortunately it’s not safe out there for us yet. Not until we get older and can blend in.”
He turned and faced me, wrapping his hands around my upper arms and locking his gaze with mine. In the pool’s reflected light, his warm, honey-brown eyes sparkled with passion and promise.
“We’ll do it someday, Miri, I promise,” he said. “For right now, though, I can’t leave my people, and we can’t all leave together. We’d be too obvious as a group. Besides, not all of us are in traveling condition.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded, suddenly alarmed. “Are some of the Haven residents sick? Is it Zika Two? Is that what the secret tent is? Where the sick people go to quarantine?”
Now that my friends and I had stopped taking the red pills and purged our nanos, we were theoretically susceptible to diseases. None of us had built up any immunity to whatever pathogens might be passed around within our new community.
“No. You don’t have to worry. Everyone at the Haven is healthy and thriving—without the benefit of nanos in our bodies.”
He put sarcastic emphasis on the word “benefit.”
“Which is a hell of a lot more than I could say for us when we were kept locked up on the bases as guinea pigs for the humans.”
“Do you hate all humans?” I asked him.
He responded sensibly, “I guess I don’t know all humans, but the ones I’ve met haven’t been too great. And some of them are monsters.”
Then it got a little less sensible. “It stands to reason the rest are, too.”
I thought about that for a minute. I didn’t like it. Thinking like that was no better than the humans who judged all Gebbies and hated them as a group without actually knowing any individuals.
“Not all of them. Not Heath,” I said, clearly irritating him.
“Him again,” Elias growled, picking up a rock and hurling it at the cliff the waterfall poured over.
“He may be thousands of miles away, but his shadow is always here hanging over us. I could beat almost any guy here in the Trials, but it’s impossible to compete with a ghost.”
“You’re not in competition with Heath,” I assured him.
And it was true. The time I’d spent with Heath seemed like it had happened in an entirely different world or at least a different lifetime.
“I hardly even think of him anymore.”
That was also true, though I doubted I’d ever forget him entirely. Heath had supposedly been my first love, and if the songwriters and poets of old could be trusted, you never forgot that person.
However, I’d recently remembered some not-so-great things about Heath. He hadn’t told me right away about his true identity, that his last name was Gideon—and that his father had created me.
He’d also neglected to tell me that his mission with me initially was to observe me and collect data, to see if I was capable of falling in love. Needless to say, I had some residual bad feelings about that.
“He was kind to me, but he kept a lot of secrets,” I said.
Playfully, I poked one finger into Elias’ belly, spotting his tee shirt with water.
“Which I hate.”
“What kind of secrets?” he asked, greatly interested in any information that painted Heath in an unfavorable light.
“We were together almost a whole day before he told me I was a Gebby. He didn’t tell me at all that his father Apollo Gideon was also Dr. Rex. I had to find that out the hard way.”
I didn’t feel like telling Elias about the love experiment part. It was too humiliating.
“He didn’t tell me about the changes that would happen when we were no longer medicated,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t know.”
Elias snarled. “Of course he knew. He didn’t tell you because it wasn’t convenient for him. Because he’s on their side. He’s a human. But you and I are alike. I won’t ever keep secrets from you, Miri.”
“Oh really?” I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed the front of my body against his. “What’s in that tent we’re not allowed to visit?”
Busted, Elias dropped his head and bit back a smile. “Not gonna drop it, are you?”
“Nope.”
“I will tell you,” he promised with a quick kiss on my lips. “Soon.”
“See, you keep secrets, too.”
“Just one.” He smiled and kissed me again.
I pulled my head back, studying his face. “Why though? Why can’t I know?”
“You can know. Just not yet.”
I stomped and threw my head back and let out a strangled sound of exasperation.
“You are infuriating. Besides, how can you be jealous of Heath when you have a whole harem of girls hidden away?”
