Twice Tempted: Between Two Alphas (Mia and Cameron)

Chapter 85

Chapter Eighty-Five

I take the steps down. At the darkest point, the faintest crack shows from beneath the door in the

kitchen. It’s like a shard of light. Below, as I keep descending, it gradually lightens. The flicker of

torches casts a golden orange glow against the stone walls. I smell the torches first.

At the bottom of the tunnel is a giant open room. It’s domed and stalactites and stalagmites dot the

ceilings and floor. The room is awash with a minerally scent. It isn’t pungent like sulfur or briny like the

ocean, although there is a touch of each. It’s something older. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered

this scent before.

Torches ring the walls and at least a dozen ‘sisters’ are spaced around a bubbling pool. The water has

rings of different colors, like you might see in a hot spring.

Valaria smiles.

Something in her expression makes me leery.

I want to cross my arms but instead I stand still.

“Well,” she says bemusedly, “in you go. What are you waiting for?”

The water is murky in the middle. There are no stairs or ladder. I don’t know how deep this pool goes or

what else might be living or lurking in it.

And it’s bubbling. I’m not real keen on being boiled alive.

I hike up my white gown and dip a toe into the pool.

It’s hot, but not uncomfortably.

I step one foot in– This belongs © NôvelDra/ma.Org.

“Lose the gown,” she says.

Of course.

I peel it over my head and one of the sisters accepts it. She drapes it over her arm.

The women watch me. I’m not terribly self-conscious about my body, but I can’t say I’m comfortable

with their attention either. There is something in the way they study me that makes tendrils of

foreboding dance along my skin.

I move quicker, thinking it’s better to just get this over with.

Once I step off the ledge, I don’t feel a ‘bottom’. I float. I actually feel extra buoyant. It must be whatever

salts or minerals are in this water.

“Get comfortable,” she tells me.

The pool is probably thirty feet across. Around the room, I see tunnels, presumably leading upward into

different homes or parts of the island. There are no other markings, none that I can see at least. With

only torchlight and my wolf eyes to go by, I can make out shapes and depth and movement, but I’m not

entirely sure what else I should be looking for.

If this is a sacred space–and I sense that it is–it seems like there should be more elaborate markings.

One by one, the women come and extinguish their torches in the pool before turning and walking back

out one of the many tunnels. As the room gets darker, I feel my anxiousness ratcheting up.

“How long will I be here?” I ask.

Valaria shrugs. “As long as it takes.”

She extinguishes her torch and I count the sounds of her footsteps as they retreat.

After a time, the darkness is absolute.

There is no light. Not from above or below.

The water is hot, but almost a match for my body temperature, so I can’t even feel the difference. I

float, my ears are submerged, so that masks any sound. The only scents come from this watery cave

and after a while, I’m immune to those too.

I understand what this is.

A sensory deprivation chamber.

Having spent time in California, I know people pay good money for these types of experiences. They

use them to decompress, to stimulate their senses and creativity. To relax.

Nothing about this is relaxing to me.

I can’t judge time or my surroundings. I’m alone. In the dark. In a weightless, suspended state.

I try to clear my mind.

But as I drift, I’m barraged with memories and worries. Images of my kids. Of Cam and Eric. Even

Ashley. I replay Corinne dying.

I think of my mother, maybe doing the same thing I am right now when she first came to this island. Did

she embrace this ceremony with fear–the way I am? Or excitement?

I’ll never know.

I cry for a while, I think.

I touch my stomach and think of my baby.

Then I drift. Letting my thoughts ebb away like the water.

Time ceases to have meaning.

It may be minutes or hours.

I might sleep, I’m not sure.

Something is supposed to happen, but I’m not sure what that is or how to control it or provoke it.

My heartbeat speeds up. I can’t feel the water or even the air. I force my limbs to move but even

swimming doesn’t seem to have any sensation. I take deep breaths and try to relax.

More time passes–I think.

Gradually it’s like tiny stars appear above me. I blink and blink, thinking I’m hallucinating. Then they

start to converge. I watch them, like a show, only I think what I’m seeing is space and time and a

glimpse into a universe that is too infinite to even conceive.

The colors are faint. Blues and purples. Reds and shades of white.

Always white.

The colors condense on themselves, accumulating into a ball of energy that is black and endless and

teeming with … everything.

I blink rapidly, but see nothing.

Feel nothing.

But when I try to breathe, it’s water that fills my lungs.

The darkness is the pool–and I’ve sunk into its inky depths.