Something warm.
Somethingterrifying.
Hope.
I shift back into the shadows before she can glance up. The urge to run hits hard—flee into the deeper caves, bury myself in silence where no one can touch this... this thing inside me. But I stay. I watch the light linger on her hair. Watch the way she presses her hand to the pocket like the fang is somethingprecious.
Why?
Why did I answer her?
Why didn’t I ignore the whisper in the night, like I have every other time?
Because sheasked.
And not with anger. Not with fear.
With belief.
I’ve seen that look before. In another life, in the eyes of a dying soldier who still trusted me with his last breath. But this is different. More fragile. More dangerous.
Because this isn’t about duty.
It’s abouther.
And I don’t know what that means.
Not yet.
All I know is, she does feel a connection. She waits.
Every night, she comes to the edge of the light. Doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t run. Just… looks. Out into the dark, into the wilds where things move with teeth and hunger and fury. Where even the planet itself shifts beneath your feet.
She waits, and I watch.
No one else does this.
The others turn their backs to the wilderness, pretend the fences are enough. Pretend the world ends at the flickering boundary line. But not her.
She looks.
And because she does—because she sees—I can’t keep pretending I don’t care.
So I start leaving signs.
Not big ones. Not obvious. Just… enough. A scrape in the dirt, angled like an arrow, pointing toward a ridge trail that won’t collapse under shifting pressure. A stone, black-veined and stacked beside another, warning of a vent below that will boil the bones out of you if you get too close. I leave them in places I know she’ll wander, quiet breadcrumbs meant only for her.
I don’t want her to see me.
I don’t wantanyoneto see me.
But I want hersafe.
Isn’t that the same thing?
It’s not much, this ritual of watching and marking. But it keeps my hands from shaking when the wind carries the wrong kind of scent. When I hear the crunch of boots somewhere too close. When the earth murmurs beneath my claws and I know another faultline has shifted.
I’ve seen what this place does to arrogance.
