“Safe,” forms in her mind.
The simplicity shatters me.
I curl around her, holding her like something never to be taken. “Safe,” I answer, pulling her deeper into my awareness.
I stare at the stone wall, realizing my body feels wrongly sized for this space now. Too full of rage, relief, and devotion to fit inside mere rock.
Home is not the mountain anymore.
Home is the narrow, bright band inside my skull where her mind touches mine.
Wherever that signal exists, I will follow.
Epilogue 1
HE WILL DO THE DISHES. THIS IS BINDING.
MIKAELA
The mountain hums like a living thing.
Not in an “oh no, you’re having a psychotic break, congratulations” way, but with a background vibration, like a cat purring somewhere behind the walls.
It’s become the sound of a normal day.
If you had told me back on Earth that my definition of “normal” would eventually include eating alien lizards, murder springs, and a communal butchering schedule, I would have suggested you see a neurologist. And yet, here we are.
Normal looks like this.
In the main cavern, two fires are going full-tilt. Over one corner, Haroth and another Drakav are working on a fresh kill. Something big and six-legged with too many teeth and not enough brain cells. They move like pro butchers, claws and knives flashing, thick ropes of muscle in their forearms shifting as they separate meat from bone.
By the other fire, three Drakav are arguing over the best way to skewer strips of meat so they cook evenly without fallinginto the firestones. Mindspace mutters crackle like background radio.
Near the drinking pool, Kol is overseeing the water rotation. Two males haul full skins from where the water is freshly filtered and boiled, moving them to the storage alcoves. Another group ferries empties back.
It’s loud. It’s busy. It’s…comfortable.
Another Drakav stomps past me carrying a basket of firebloom, his mental presence bristling with outrage.
“Who,” he demands of the universe at large, “forgot to remind Vorn to shield his mind? He projected his hunting dreams all dark. I could taste the sand-serpent blood.”
A ripple of laughter moves through the mindspace.
“At least he caught it this time,”someone points out dryly. “Last cycle, we had to feel him run untilmylegs cramped.”
I bite back a smile and pretend to be very focused on the gourd in my hand.
Because that’s my task at the moment: sitting cross-legged near one of the side fires on a pile of woven mats, husking gourds.
Across from me, Sarven is doing the same, huge hands ridiculously careful as he scores the tough skin with a claw and peels it back.
We got roped into this by Erika, who has apparently adopted the authority of a Drakav matriarch. She walked over, slapped two gourds and a carving knife down in front of us, and said, “If you have time to snoodle, you have time to work,” and wandered off before either of us could protest.
Sarven did not even attempt to protest. He just picked up a gourd and got to it like she’d handed him a sacred duty.
My big, scary mountain warrior, drafted into vegetable prep.
He looks up at me now, a stray string of fiber stuck to one of his knuckles, his eyes lit with quiet amusement.
