Because I know what war brings. What it costs.
Because this is not a battlefield, and I am no longer a soldier.
I huff through my nostrils, letting the wind take my breath. The sun’s final light paints the sky in violent reds and golds, casting long shadows across the plain. The prefab domes look even more fragile now, like toys abandoned in a desert. They won’t last the cycle.
They never do.
The red-haired one—Jillian, I hear one of them call her—sits on a crate near the outer perimeter. She leans back, watching the stars blink through the haze. Her legs dangle, scuffed boots swinging like a child’s. But her face… it’s something else. She’s not daydreaming. She’s listening.
Like me.
Like she hears the planet breathing beneath the crust.
I hate the feeling she stirs in me. It’s old and dangerous. A flicker under my breastbone, pulsing with something I thought long dead. Interest. No—recognition. That’s worse.
Odex do not bond outside our kind. The ancient songs warn against it. Our mates are chosen by fate, drawn by blood and the will of the stars. We don’t question it. We don’t fight it.
But the stars have not spoken in years.
And yet… I watch her.
The soldiers do not. They doze at their posts, one with a helmet tilted sideways, the glow of his screen lighting his slack face. The camp is exposed. It’s foolish. Sloppy. But that’s what humans are when they don’t feel immediate danger. They forget how quickly everything can burn.
I flex my claws against the stone, grinding them silently into the brittle edge. My back aches from stillness, but I don’t move. A lesser predator might stalk. Lurk. Strike.
I do not hunt them.
But I am not their guardian, either.
Let them earn the right to survive this place.
My breath comes slower now. The heat seeps from the rocks as night takes hold. Purgonis shifts beneath me—creaking, hissing. The vents to the west belch sulfur into the sky. Crystals stir beneath the sands, whispering in vibrations only my kind can hear. The dead wind carries memory with it.
I close my eyes, just for a moment. Let it wash over me.
Flashes of fire. Screams. My hands soaked in blood. A village burning because I chose vengeance over duty.
I open them again. The guilt never leaves. It just grows quieter.
Below, Jillian stands. She stretches, back arching, arms raised overhead. Her breath forms a halo in the cold. She speaks—soft words I can’t hear. Then she turns, slow and unhurried, walking back toward her bunkhouse with a steady stride.
She never once looks behind her.
Even though I’m still here. Watching.
Waiting.
And for the first time in many, many cycles…
…I wonder what would happen if I didn’t hide.
Then, the wind shifts.
Just a breath—a whisper over stone—but it carries the scent of metal and heat and something too sweet to be natural. Their food, maybe. Or their waste. The humans never quite know how to bury their stink.
I exhale through flared nostrils, muscles coiling, then uncoiling. It's time.
I turn away from the cliff, melting back into the terrain with the ease of long practice. The ledge I crouched on collapses behind me with a brittle crack, crumbling into a tumble of glassy rock. Let them find it tomorrow and wonder. Maybe it’ll make them sharper.
