Like the planet itself made room for it.
I wonder what it sees when it looks at us. Weakness? Arrogance? Maybe both.
But I don’t feel afraid. Not like I should.
I just feel… seen.
CHAPTER 6
MAUG
The girl speaks to me.
Not with bravado. Not with the shrieking bluster her kind so often employ when they’re afraid and trying not to look it. No, she whispers into the night, voice barely raised above the hush of shifting sands. Like she believes the wind is her ally. Like she believes it will carry her words to me.
It does.
She doesn't know it, but I hear every syllable, clear as if she were standing at my shoulder. Enhanced hearing has its uses. A curse most days, but now… now I find myself holding still, straining toward that fragile voice with a hunger I haven't felt in cycles.
“I know you’re there,” she says.
I crouch along the high cliff edge, my weight balanced in the crook of an eroded basalt arch. Below, the human camp pulses with shield light, humming like a wounded creature caught in a trap. The storm has half-buried their outer beacon in ash already, and still, she stands near it like some red-haired sentinel, her back straight, her helmet off.
Fool.
Brave.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I just… watch.
She stares into the dark like it owes her answers. “I saw you,” she adds, softer now. “I’m not stupid.”
I tense. My claws dig into the stone. Shedidsee me, then. Even in the chaos, even with her species’ pathetic night vision and their reliance on augmented optics, she stillsawme.
And she’s not scared.
What is she, then?
When she finally leaves—reluctant steps, shoulders squared against the shriek of the wind—I stay where I am. Long after her shadow vanishes into the dome’s flickering light, I remain in the cold, waiting for the spell to break.
It doesn’t.
Instead, it intensifies.
Something gleams near the beacon.
I narrow my eyes. A small object, half-buried in the dust, nestled against the stone like an offering. It wasn't there before.
I drop soundlessly from the ledge. Gravel doesn’t even have time to scatter. My body lands heavy and silent in the lee of a thermal outcrop, where the sensors won’t see.
The item is wrapped in soft foil. A seal I don’t recognize. Human writing across it in their odd block script. I crouch, sniff. The scent that hits me is… absurd.
Sweet. Yeasty. Rich.
My mouth waters before I can stop it.
I slice the wrapper open with a claw, half expecting a trap. It isn’t. Just a disk, browned around the edges, studded with—what are those? Bits of something darker, soft, melted from heat.
I bring it to my nose. Breathe in again.
