Page 31 of Captured By the Monsters
SERA
Rowen stared at me as if he couldn’t believe my audacity—even I was surprised at my boldness, but I was quickly realizing that the Serafina Adler from The Above was not the real Sera. Who I was down here in The Below with these monsters was my true identity. I finally felt safe enough to explore who I wanted to be, and maybe that was why I was so scared of this new world.
They made it feel like my heart was home.
We all had our secrets, and I wasn’t demanding that Rowen had to tell me all of his, but a relationship was give and take. The longer we were together here, the more confused he made me. His reactions to me varied so much, ranging from treating me like I was this precious treasure to him to treating me like my presence was a nuisance. The whiplash was driving me mad, on top of my own conflicting emotions about everything going on.
“Do you not want me as your mate?” I asked quietly, staring up at him, trying to get a read on him but failing epically.
Heaving out a deep sigh, he hedged, “It’s not that…” making my stomach twist in knots.
“Then what is it?” I pleaded, tired of this game between us. “I know something’s wrong.”
Rowen’s lips twisted into a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re not ready to hear my secrets, gem. Besides, just like you’re not ready to spill yours, I’m not ready to tell mine.”
I looked away in irritation. “I don’t have any secrets,” I muttered unconvincingly.
“How about you both just talk to one another,” Sylan intervened, playing the peacemaker. I heard him mumble under his breath at the end, “So similarly stubborn.”
Rowen and I both glared at him, proving his claim correct, but I knew Sylan was right deep down. If I wanted Rowen to talk, I needed to do the same.
“I’ll go first,” I offered to Rowen, clearing my throat and looking up at him once more. “I think you hide behind your jokes and put up a wall any time you see Axton and Sylan growing closer to me.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sylan’s silverish eyes rolling upwards and guessed this wasn’t what he had in mind. Maybe he thought I would talk about my feelings first, but I was still feeling a little vulnerable. I wanted to test the waters of how he would respond before I opened up.
Rowen narrowed his bronze eyes at me in challenge. “And I think you hide behind a false bravado and are scared deep down about our connection.”
I pursed my lips, looking away for a moment. This would be a deciding moment for us, and finally I gave in and tore down my own walls. Flicking my eyes back to him, I confessed, “You’re right. I am afraid. I didn’t know what to expect here—still don’t know what to expect. I was thrown out of my world into one I’d never been taught about, and granted, you’re not the monsters that we’ve been trained to fear, but you’re still strangers.”
Rowen’s eyes softened, making my hackles deflate at the kind expression. I had been prepared for an argument, so it was a welcomed surprise. “We’re all afraid, Sera, especially me. Axton, Sylan, and I have so much to lose. I don’t want to fall in love with you and then something happens to take you away from us. What would we do then? We would be broken.”
My heart fluttered his candidness, but my eyes widened at the veiled meaning I sensed in it. “What do you mean? Is something going to happen…to me?”
“It’s possible something could happen to us all.” Rowen looked over at the others, seemingly looking for help as to how best to answer my question further.
Axton’s golden eyes stared into mine, assessing me for a moment before he answered, “Without the true ruling Trifecta to fuel the main crystal, our land is unstable and unpredictable. It sustains the land and us. So, it is hard to say if something will happen in that regard.”
It still felt like he was beating around the bush a bit, so I raised a brow and pointedly asked, “What is the life expectancy of a human in this climate?”
“Our mates live as long as we do, a perk of receiving our seed. We cannot stay Specters forever, though. Eventually we fade out of existence if we don’t find our mate. Our kind lives much longer than humans in our full form.”
“Furthermore,” Sylan cut in, “without the crystal to sustain our lands, we will perish with the failing climate, according to the elders. Be us Specters or not.”
The way he just dropped that bomb without an ounce of emotion was beyond me.
“So…we’re all going to die?” I half screeched, eyes bulging out of their sockets.
Shadowy tendrils danced about my three monsters, making me question if they were nervous or agitated with me.
“Not any time soon, I hope,” Rowen finally answered. “Truly none of us have any idea how much longer we can survive in Paratiisi. It is a dire situation.”
“Our leaders have been demanding more women recently in the hopes that we find our True Queen soon,” Sylan added, understanding of the increased frequency of Selections finally dawning on me.
Shit. This further cemented in my mind that I needed to go back home and explain what was really happening down here and that these creatures weren’t truly monsters the way they had been depicted. We needed to mend the rift between our kinds before we perished down here.
The truth was, the more I learned about their kind and their history, the more I wanted to help them.
“Who were you before you became Specters?” I wondered out loud, surprised I hadn’t asked this earlier.
