They continued talking as they walked. It was a longer route to the City, and even though Sasha could feel the weight of responsibility—she should have been with the females by now. They’d be awake and probably scared—she didn’t hurry. There was something necessary about being close to Zev and alone, talking at a time they didn’t have to worry about being overheard.

”Maybe we need to start doing this every day,” she said a few minutes later. “Like, just go for a walk. By ourselves. Because I feel saner now than I have in weeks, Zev.”

”It’s not a bad idea,” he said. “And on a practical level, it will give us time to talk about things that have to be done and make plans. I mean… we’re going to do that right? Get everyone out of here. What you’re saying is that it worked, right?”

His brows pinched together and that dark cloud passed behind his eyes again, but he pushed past it.

”Yes,” Sasha said when she was sure he could hear it without being angry. “I’m saying that we can start planning and… we’ll get them all out. And then we’ll go through the Gateway for the last time.”

”Wait, what do you mean?”

Sasha sucked in a deep breath. “I didn’t have time to tell you, we got distracted. At the end, before I came back, I…. I asked the Gateway to take me to a place where the humans could never reach us. And… Zev… it did.”

”Wait, what?!”

Sasha nodded quickly, biting her lip to stop herself from beaming. “It opened in the air again—another place that there isn’t an exit, obviously. But the point is… there’s a place. I asked for a place we could be safe and never have interference from humans ever again, and there’s a place, Zev. And what little I saw of it was beautiful.”

Zev shook his head. She could see his hope and awe doing battle with his fear, so she hugged his arm again.

”This is really good news, Zev. Seriously. We’re going to do this! But we have to be organized about it. We have to send any of the creatures through that want to go. I mean, the humans aren’t really interested in them, right? So they can start going today if they want to! But to get the females out of the compound… we’re going to have to be really organized. Collect them all and take them directly to this place. We can’t afford to risk bringing them back here and having something happen to them before we can get them through. I know it’ll be scary for them—especially going by how these females have behaved. But… I mean… it’s worth it, right? If we get organized and take stuff with us and… Zev, I really think we can do this.”

Zev shook his head. “You’re amazing, Sash,” he said quietly.

”No, Zev. I’m just looking at this from a different angle, that’s all. Or maybe God’s whispering in my ear. Who knows? The point is, we can do this. But we have to plan. We have to convince the humans nothing is going on—Nick can’t get a whiff of this!—and then when the time is right… boom. We take all of them and we get out of here and then we’re free!”

She did a little hop and clapped a hand on his bicep. “I can’t wait, Zev. It’s going to be amazing.”

”I hope so,” he said, less certain that she was. But that was understandable. He hadn’t seen the gateway open and seen that beautiful place.

She wondered where it was? Somewhere there were no humans, anyway. She was sure of that much.

“Okay,” Zev said a minute later. “What’s the next step, then, Sasha-don?” He said it with a smile, but she could feel that he was still a little shaky.

”The first thing is to get the Creatures gathered together and tell them all what’s going on, and how to get through. Let any of them go that want to… do you think Yhet would want to go with them, or with us?”

”Definitely with you,” Zev chuckled. “He’s completely obsessed with you, Sasha. When I came through to make sure the bond wasn’t broken, he wanted to come with me.”

Sasha gasped, then clapped a hand to her mouth. “I’m so glad he didn’t—that would have been awkward!” she giggled.

Zev laughed. “Not for a Chimera, but maybe for you!”

”Oh, gross!”

Zev kept laughing, and it was the most beautiful sound. When they settled down, Sasha sighed. “So, how do we get them together? I really want to tell them myself. Make sure I can answer any questions, and… well, make sure the word isn’t going to get out. Can we trust them? From what Minos said, it sounded like a lot of them don’t really want to be close to the rest of us.”

”I promise, they have even less desire to be close to the humans. But yeah, we are going to have to think about how to get them all together and where. I think you’re going to have to leave the city for that one. Most of them won’t even come within miles of anywhere the humans know about.”

Sasha grimaced. “Where would it be safe to do it?”

Zev thought about it for a moment, then suddenly smiled. “You know, I think that valley, where we met Minos, would work. There’s a river there for the water creatures, plenty of forest cover, and the mountains… the humans never venture that deeply into Thana that I’m aware of. And we could set guards.”

Sasha’s heart beat a little faster. “Do you think we could visit Yhet’s cave again?” she asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

”I think if we give it a week or so, so everyone’s settled… yeah. I mean, we’d probably need that long to make sure we’ve gotten in touch with everyone anyway. And once we left we’d only be a few hours away. They could send an Owl if anything happened. And frankly, I think you’d be safer out there with me than here with Nick,” he grumbled.

Sasha rubbed his arm. “Then let’s do it. Please, Zev. I’d love to go back there—if you think it won’t upset Yhet.”

”It won’t,” he said with a gentle smile. “I’ll tell Skhal and the hunters to start spreading the word today. The Alpha wants to have a meeting with the creatures, to establish some lines of communication and provide some very important… er… insight into the humans. We’ll make it sound very official.”

Sasha clapped her hands. “Now, if only we could take Nick there without him hearing a damn thing, but seeing everyone so he can ** himself this time,” she said with a gleeful giggle.

Zev’s laughter bounces off the forest around them. “Too risky, but you’re right, that would be awesome.”

”Gosh, Zev… I feel so much hope now!” Sasha said, dancing along the trail, holding onto his arm. “We’re going to do this. We’re really going to do it!”

”I hope so, Sash. And if we do… it’s all you, babe. You’re amazing.” He leaned down and kissed her as they walked.

Sasha’s heart soared.