The male pulled up immediately, rejoining the others at a much greater distance.
I watched her return to setting traps like nothing had happened, and pride mixed uncomfortably with frustration in my chest. She was handling defense without me. While I stood here useless.
"Stop watching and rest," she called up without looking in my direction. "You're not helping by hovering like that."
"I'm not hovering."
"You're absolutely hovering. Go breed yourself or something useful." She disappeared into a passage. "I've got this handled."
She did have it handled, which was somehow the worst part. I wasn't needed for this. She was managing defense alone while pregnant and injured, doing my job while I healed.
Partners, she'd said. Right.
Day nineteen arrived with dawn and screaming.
Not Hallie screaming. Male voice, angry and pained in equal measure.
I ran to the entrance as fast as my injuries allowed and found her at the base of the cliff, standing over a male who was tangled thoroughly in vine rope. One wing bent at an angle that made my stomach turn.
"He landed to scout our defenses," Hallie said when she saw me looking down. "Triggered the snare trap I set yesterday. Wing broke when he fell and the rope caught him."
The male was young—maybe twenty-five seasons at most. Wing membranes already showing the first signs of thinning from unbonded sickness in its early stages. He'd be dead in weeks regardless of this injury. But the broken wing would ground him permanently, which was effectively a death sentence that would come much faster.
"Please," the male said, looking up at Hallie with desperation clear in his voice. "Just let me go. I wasn't attacking. Just scouting."
"You entered claimed territory," Hallie said, her voice cold in ways I hadn't heard before. "That's aggression regardless of your intentions."
"I was desperate?—"
"Everyone's desperate. That doesn't give you rights to what's mine."
She looked at me, waiting for direction on what to do next.
"Release him," I said after considering the situation. "But make it absolutely clear. Next time we kill without hesitation."
Hallie cut the vines efficiently. The male stumbled upright, tried to extend his wings for flight. The broken one wouldn't deploy at all. He stared at it for several long seconds, understanding exactly what it meant for his survival.
"Go," Hallie said without sympathy. "Tell the others what happens here. This territory is defended. Approach again and you die."
The male half-climbed, half-fell down the cliff face, heading away from our territory as fast as his injuries allowed. Grounded permanently. Vulnerable to every predator. Dead within days from starvation or something worse.
"That was brutal," I said when he was gone from sight.
"That was necessary." She climbed back up to the entrance, moving carefully around her cracked ribs. "The others needed to see what happens when they test us. Now they know exactly what to expect."
She was right, but watching her be that cold, that tactical, that ruthlessly practical—it was different from watching her fight in pure self-defense. This was calculated message-sending. Strategic violence designed to deter future threats.
She'd adapted to this world completely and become something more than what she'd been. Dangerous, lethal in a manner distinct from physical strength.
Day nineteen progressed into evening.
The circling males left our territory one by one throughout the afternoon.
I felt them depart through shifts in air currents, through changes in territorial pressure that came from having fewer males nearby. They'd calculated the odds carefully and decided we were too dangerous to challenge even with my obvious injury.
Hallie had done that. Alone. While wounded. While I healed uselessly.
"They're gone," I said when she returned from her last patrol of the boundaries.
