When Arius stirred, he awoke to cold, hard reality—his least favorite way to wake up. Unlike the way that he could dream about Val being his loving soulmate, she had actually traveled a couple thousand miles southward.

Ouch. Had he done such a terrible thing to warrant such an adverse reaction?

Arius did not think so, hence he lay in bed with his feelings incredibly hurt.

Her new location could not be right. Behavior like this did not add up, because Val had promised to forgive him since he gave back Foofy. Their soulmate connection felt the same as always, though that did nothing to reassure him in this case.

“Tavras,” he growled through gritted teeth.

The only justifiable explanation that he could think of was that Tavras had been the one to overreact—not Val.

Oddly enough, Arius often thought about Tavras first thing in the morning. Per morning routine, he made the conscious choice that he would not kill Tavras and doom the rest of the world. Today he pledged the same, but he would need to hunt him down for what he had done to Val.

Always ready to blame Tavras, Arius assumed that he had kidnapped Val. While this horrified him, at the same time, it brought some hope.

He could totally save Val, and then she would forgive him! The opportunity seemed too good to be true, but Arius was too blinded by hate for Tavras to see any other possibility. Nonetheless, before jumping to action, he would check if Val had left him any message indicating that she had gone on her own free will.

“Where’s my phone?” he muttered, hand reaching to the empty spot on the nightstand where he usually put it.

The recollection of his breakdown from yesterday started to cut through the lingering headache.

He had left his phone at the spot in the kitchen where he had busted the floor. In particular, the tracker that he had placed on his cell phone helped jog his memory about this. That was one of the minor perks about being a god—never losing one’s cell phone.

Arius hurried to retrieve it, kneeling on the floor while his face fell in anger.

Not a text message had come through from Val.

In a sense, this relieved him but also enraged him to no end.

His soulmate really had been taken against her will by Tavras, as Arius felt without a doubt that she would have said something if she never wanted to see him against.

At the same time, he cringed seeing the blunt detachment of his last messages. “Fuck,” he breathed quietly. Arius had definitely sent the wrong thing to her yesterday when he should have sent an apology.

Why did he not send an apology? He had been in a terrible headspace yesterday, would have been better off if he had said nothing at all. Arius only wished that he could delete his earlier messages so that Val would never have to read that.

For now, he needed to find out if Val had made it to a new location with cell service. That was one nice thing about his soulmate being kidnapped by an old god—there was a chance that Tavras could be technologically unsavvy enough that he might forget that she had a phone all together.

Arius: Are you okay?

His eyes followed the circle trying to send the message until it ultimately failed. In that case, he would start traveling immediately.

Running back to his room, he threw on appropriate gear for traveling all day and possibly a prolonged fight with Tavras.

Really and truly, Arius really did not want to clash with Tavras because of Val’s stupidity, but his soulmate was his soulmate. He would do whatever it would take to keep her safe.

While he was on his way out, Arius tied his hair into a high ponytail and wove it into a braid. He jumped out of the window and flew towards the brazier in the plaza. His first destination when traveling long distances was to check all available teleportation beacons.

If there happened to be a wildfire burning on a savanna along the equator, Arius would be able to cut down a lot of time. Regardless, he would fly a significant distance until nightfall.

***

In the dark of night, Arius created a dim disk of aura in the sky to crouch down. Suspended in the sky like this, he peered down at the immense shadow of a turtle below.

Asleep were all of Val, Foofy, and Tavras. Even the serpent snapping turtle drifted along the ocean waters serenely in its snooze. Seeing them sleep in an appropriate arrangement as they did allowed Arius to huff a sigh of relief.

Tavras and Val both lay at the center of the turtle’s shell, yet they spanned far enough apart that the curvature of the shell formed a natural wall between them. Even though Arius had already sensed the dejected feelings of an unreciprocated crush in Val, he was a cautious, envious person who liked to witness the truth with his own eyes.

According to Val, Evalaite had just played a trick on him, but fuck him if that did not sow the seeds of insecurity. In his soulmate, he should plant a little more trust though. The bond between them meant Val would never do something like that to him.

Arius managed to smile as he gazed down to her.

The way that she slept on her side, curled into herself, lent her an appearance of vulnerability and innocence. It was the sort of position where Arius might lay behind her one day and wrap his arms around her. For just a moment, he was content in watching her sleep.

It was a curious thing, taking interest in a woman’s resting form and thinking how cuddling might not be boring for a change. Though he had slept with many women before, he did not have the patience nor trust to manage the actual sleeping part. Only Evalaite had been a peculiar exception. Otherwise, Arius had often grown weary in the stillness of a pretty but meaningless face.

Quite the contrary, Val’s face was far from meaningless. On the nights where she would fall asleep easily but rest would never come to him, he would not mind staying by her in bed, he determined.

His thoughts had wandered way ahead of himself by about five or ten years down the line, probably.

At any rate, it would be worth keeping his soulmate company. That way, her face could truly relax with any luck.

Given her current circumstances, Val’s brow pinched slightly together even in sleep. Either Tavras’s kidnapping troubled her so greatly that the scowl would not leave, or she had been trapped in a second nightmare within sleep. Hopefully her sleeping mind did not dwell on the abuse that he had enacted yesterday.

Out of concern, Arius could feel his own brow drawing together.

Right now, Arius needed to focus on looking after this demigoddess, troublesome in her youth. If he had caused turmoil within her, then that was exactly why he had come. He would rescue her, thereby winning a moment with her to apologize.

To start with, he would take her someplace safe, quietly into the night.