I gritted my teeth and kept moving. Hand, foot, hand, foot. Focus on the structure. Focus on the angles.
Jonah's voice slid through my concentration, unwanted.
"You won't regret this, Ker. I promise."
I shoved the memory away and hauled myself onto a horizontal surface forty feet up.
The view was worse than I'd expected.
Bone stretched to every horizon. Ribs, vertebrae, scattered skulls, all of it white and gray under that colorless sky. No vegetation. No water that I could see. Just the remains of creatures so massive I couldn't imagine what they'd looked like alive.
Movement.
I went still. On a ridge maybe half a mile away, something massive shifted against the pale landscape. My engineer's brain started calculating automatically: eight feet tall, maybe more. Broad. Built like the bones around us, meant for weight-bearing, for permanence. The coloring read wrong for bone, more ivory than white, with undertones of gray. Living tissue, then. Armor, maybe, or thick hide.
It wasn't moving toward me. It just stood there. Watching.
For a moment I thought I was going to be sick. Nausea rolled through me, sharp and disorienting, and I gripped the bone surface hard enough to scrape my palms.
Then I realized it wasn't nausea at all.
My pussy clenched so hard I gasped. A violent contraction, visible through my lower belly if I'd been looking, my internalmuscles seizing around emptiness. Wetness flooded between my legs, enough that I felt it immediately, hot and slick and spreading. My nipples tightened to painful points, the fabric of my shirt suddenly unbearable against them.
My body was responding to the sight of that thing on the ridge like it was something I wanted.
I didn't want it. I wanted to survive thirty days and never speak to my family again.
The figure didn't move. Neither did I.
My thighs were pressed together, trying to create pressure, trying to ease the ache that was building between them. It didn't help. My clit was throbbing now, swollen and insistent, and every pulse sent another wave of wet heat through my core. I felt myself opening, the lips of my pussy spreading slightly even through my pants, my body preparing itself for something I refused to accept.
Ten minutes. I counted them, forcing myself to breathe slowly, to wait out the wave, to prove that I could control this.
The figure turned and disappeared over the ridge.
I stayed where I was, shaking, my hands white-knuckled on the bone. The wetness between my legs had soaked through my underwear. I could feel it against my inner thighs, cooling slightly in the dry air, a humiliating reminder of how thoroughly my body had betrayed me.
My hunter. Had to be. The one who'd paid for the privilege of chasing me through this graveyard.
At least Jonah never made my body turn against me. All he took was money and years and the last shred of faith I had in family. This thing wanted more. This thing wanted everything.
I climbed down from my perch on shaky legs. My calves burned from the uneven surface. My lower back had started to cramp. Exhaustion settled into my muscles, my body divertingresources to the arousal it thought would attract a mate instead of to basic locomotion.
Halfway down, another wave hit me.
I clung to the rib structure with both hands, pressing my forehead against the bone while my body convulsed.
The wave passed after maybe two minutes. Two minutes of clinging to ancient calcium, shaking, trying not to fall, trying not to scream. When I could move again, I finished the descent with careful, deliberate movements. Testing each handhold. Calculating each step. Being an engineer because being a woman was too humiliating right now.
I spent the next two hours mapping what I could see from ground level, using my knife to scratch notes into the bone surface. Rough marks that served dual purpose: navigation and proof. Proof I'd been here. Proof I'd thought my way through this instead of just suffering.
Three horizontal lines at the base of the rib I'd climbed. My mark. My signature. Proof of passage.
The skull on the horizon was maybe five miles away, positioned at the center of a natural bowl formation. Water would collect there if it rained. The terrain between here and there was a maze of bone structures, some natural, some that looked almost architectural. Almost deliberate.
I walked toward the skull, picking my way through the bone field. The ground was uneven, scattered with fragments that ranged from pebble-sized to boulder-sized. Every step required attention. Every step also created friction against my swollen, sensitive flesh.
I stopped every hundred yards or so. Not from physical exhaustion, though that was building too. From the need. From the way walking made my pants drag against my clit, made my thighs rub together, made my body think it was being stimulated when it wasn't. Not really. Not in any way that would really help.
