Chapter 138: Pour Into Me.
I lay on my back in the tent, hands laced behind my head, fingers digging into the thin mattress. The night had settled heavy and warm over the canvas, but my mind refused to follow. Eleanor’s voice kept slicing back through the dark.
Do you know why they can be used this way?
Because they don’t know they’re people anymore.
I had meant the infected. I wasn’t sure that was all I meant.
I sat up fast, sand shifting under the mattress, and pushed through the tent flap. Cool night air hit my face, thick with smoke and the sharp scent of burning wood.
The camp was alive. Voices shouted between tents, laughter cracking sharp and sudden. Fires flickered in clusters, orange light dancing across white canvas and bare skin. Bodies moved everywhere, people passing bowls, children darting between shadows, the raw, unfiltered noise of a community that had nothing to fear from the dark.
The team sat in a loose circle around one fire, Hod’s massive frame taking up half the space. Mercury spotted me first. She shifted sideways in the sand, opening a gap between herself and Sherry. I dropped into it, boots digging twin trenches.
Harmione rolled a glass bottle across the sand with a flick of her wrist. It spun, catching firelight in spinning glints.
"Bram." Sherry turned toward me, her shoulder brushing mine. "You slept a full day. I came by twice and called. You didn’t answer."
"I’m good," I said.
The circle had already moved on. The bottle slowed, neck pointing straight at Hod.
"Hod. Hod. Hod." The chant started low, then built.
Sherry leaned in close, breath warm against my ear. "Enjoy this moment. Tomorrow morning we head back. Eleanor confirmed."
Tomorrow morning.
"I dare you to kiss Mercury," Harmione announced, grinning wide, flames flickering at her fingertips.
Hod let out a deep sigh that rumbled from somewhere in his chest. Mercury shook her head, laughing, but her shoulders stayed tense, the exact posture of someone who already knew how this was going to play out.
The whole circle erupted. Even Sinn barked a short laugh. Code sat motionless, blades resting across his knees, silent as stone.
"Anything," Hod rumbled, voice like grinding boulders, "except touching a woman who isn’t my wife."
"Then Mercury gives you a task," May said smoothly.
Sherry’s fingers found mine in the dark, squeezing once.
"You’re going to stand on your head," Mercury shouted across the fire.
Hod rose with enormous dignity. He walked to the center, knelt in the sand, planted his huge hands, and flipped his massive body upward. For two heartbeats his boots pointed at the stars. Then gravity won. He toppled sideways, crashing straight into the fire.
Sparks exploded upward in a wild orange shower. Burning logs scattered, rolling across the sand. Hod landed flat on his back in the dark beside the ruined pit, sand puffing around him.
The circle lost it.
Mercury doubled over, legs kicking, dark hair whipping. May clapped hard, shoulders shaking. Sherry’s laugh burst out real and unguarded beside me, head thrown back, throat exposed to the firelight. Even Hod started laughing from where he lay, deep chest rumbling.
Sherry’s hand tightened around mine.
Everyone was happy. I could feel it around me the way you feel warmth from a fire you’re sitting just outside the reach of. I was there and I wasn’t there. My body in the circle and my mind already somewhere else.
"Sherry," I said, voice low. "I’ll be back."
She looked at me. One slow nod. The kind that said she already understood everything I wasn’t saying. I stood.
"Bram," Mercury called from across the fire, still catching her breath. "Where are you going when we’re actually having fun?"
"He’s coming back," Sherry answered for me.
I turned and walked away from the circle. The laughter faded behind me with every step, first loud, then smaller, then just a warm glow I could feel against my back without hearing it anymore.
Eleanor was waiting. I was certain of that.
The camp moved around me as I walked toward Eleanor’s tent, fires crackling, voices rising and falling, the thick, living pulse of a place that had carved home out of nothing.
"Abram."
I turned. Guen and her friend emerged from between two tents, moving fast, sand kicking up around their ankles. Both slightly out of breath, chests rising quick under their clothes.
"You’re going to Eleanor?" Guen asked the moment they reached me.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[Guen: Enhanced regeneration, Level 5.]
[Telepathy.]
"Yes," I said.
"Can I ask a favor?" Guen said, eyes locked on mine. "Before you go in."
"Go ahead."
"Pour into me," she said, voice dropping low. "Please. Just before you leave."
"Please," her friend added, stepping closer, both of them watching me with that familiar hunger sharpening their expressions. "Just a single drop."
I looked at them, one married to a man built like a small building, both breathing faster now.
"I don’t know what that means," I said, which was only half true, and kept walking.
"Please," Guen called after me, the word trailing into the night.
I didn’t stop.
Eleanor’s tent stood open at the front. I stepped into the outer chamber. Empty except for the table, two chairs, and a bottle of red wine already open between two glasses. She had been expecting this. Quietly. Completely.
I didn’t sit.
From the inner chamber came the soft sound of water, liquid shifting, hands moving through it, slow and deliberate.
"Eleanor," I called.
A pause. Then her voice, calm and close.
"Abram. Come in."
I pushed through the hanging fabric.
Warm air wrapped around me. Golden stones covered the floor, catching lantern light and throwing it in soft, shifting patterns across the canvas walls. A large bed dominated the space, light sheets rumpled slightly. The room felt alive with heat and quiet expectation.
Another layer of fabric hung at the far end, water sounds coming from beyond it.
"Eleanor."
"Come inside," she said.
I moved toward the sound, boots quiet on the warm stones, the air growing thicker, heavier with steam and something sweeter underneath. My hand brushed the final curtain aside.
