It is gone.
Silence hits like a slap to the face—shocking in its suddenness.
My knees nearly give out. My lungs struggle to remember how to work. Tomas wheezes, bent in half, hands on his thighs. Travnyk mutters something in Urr’ki. I do not speak the language, but it sounds like it might be a prayer. Rakkh turns toward me.
Ichor drips from his claws, streaking his forearm in black. Sand clings to his scales. His chest rises and falls hard, breaths sharp and ragged. But his eyes go straight to me. Not Tomas. Not Travnyk. Me.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, voice low and rough like scraped stone.
I shake my head. “No. You?”
“You told me where to strike,” he says softly. “I am alive because of that.”
Heat floods my face. I cannot look at him. Not when my whole body feels scorched from the inside out.
“You would have figured it out,” I mumble.
“No.” His voice does not rise, but something inside it does. Something fierce. “You saw what I did not. You saved us.”
Us.
It echoes in my head like it is bouncing off everything I have ever known.
“He is right. You saw the vulnerability,” Travnyk says, nodding solemnly, tusks gleaming.
Tomas lifts his head, pale and shaken.
“Yeah. I mean—yes. Lia… that was…”
I barely hear them over the sound of Rakkh’s hearts. Twin, steady, like pounding drums lying beneath the heat of battle. He looks at me as if something has changed. And I think… I think it has.
The burrower might have vanished, but the danger has not passed. Not the danger outside—nor the danger between us. Rakkh wipes the ichor from his claws, scans the dune crest, and says in a voice that leaves no room for argument:
“We keep moving. But from now on—” His gaze locks onto mine, molten in the moonlight. “—Lia does not leave my side.”
My pulse surges so hard I feel dizzy. Rakkh’s declaration vibrates, heavy as the double beat of his hearts. Tomas stares like someone just announced the moons are falling out of the sky. Travnyk only nods once, as if Rakkh’s command was expected. Normal.
It is not normal. Nothing about this feels normal.
I take a breath and hold it, trying to steady myself. Beyond us, the dunes are quiet. Too quiet. Rakkh stays angled toward me, his body a wall of muscle between me and the shifting sands.
“Stay behind me,” he says, voice still raw from the fight. “If it returns, I want you where I can reach you.”
“I can fight,” I whisper, but even I hear the tremor in my voice, and there is no doubt he hears it too. His gaze softens, barely.
“I know,” he murmurs. “That is why you stay close.”
Heat spikes low in my belly. Dangerous. Unhelpful. I look toward the ridge to break the moment before I melt into the sand.
“We should move,” Travnyk says, tusks catching the moonlight. “Creatures like that rarely hunt alone.”
A cold chill crawls across the back of my neck. Rakkh’s tail snaps once behind him—sharp as punctuation—and he motions us forward. We walk. Not far, but enough that my legs stop shaking and my breath stops catching. The silence hangs thick, stretched between us like a rope pulled tight at both ends. Tomas clears his throat. The sound is too loud, too human, and very nervous.
“So, uh… what now?” he asks. “Because I would like to vote we turn back. Maybe warn the others. Maybe… uh… live to see tomorrow?”
Rakkh turns so sharply Tomas stumbles backward, raising his hands in front of himself.
“We do not retreat,” Rakkh says, his voice a rumble.
