Trying.
She is on one knee near the low rock line, one arm thrown over her face, the other reaching blindly for a tipped supply basket or maybe for balance, I cannot tell. Her hair has come loose. Her wrap is half torn away and snapping behind her. She is too small against the force of it all. Too exposed. Too human. The storm keeps shoving her sideways every time she tries to rise.
Something in me goes past fear and into a cleaner, deadlier place.
Not if she is within breath of me. Not while I still stand.
I drive toward her through the wind, using the stone breaks where I can and taking the rest full on when I have to. Twice the gusts shove me off line. Once, I nearly go to one knee myself when the ground shifts under a skin of moving grit. I get up each time without thinking. Nothing exists except the female ahead and the fact that I was a fool to let myself believe she would obey when hurt pride was louder in her than survival.
I reach her just as she lifts her head enough to see me.
Her eyes are wide and red-rimmed from the grit. Her face is streaked with dirt and fine cuts. She opens her mouth, maybe to speak, maybe only because she cannot believe it is me through all this. The storm swallows whatever sound she makes.
I drop beside her and throw the heavy hide over both of us at once.
The change in the force of the storm is instant. It hammers around us from every side.
Keandra gasps under the hide, body already shaking hard enough that I can feel it through the cramped space.
I cup the back of her head with one hand and force her face into the shelter of my throat and chest. “Breathe through this.”
She clutches at me instantly.
That tells me everything I need to know about how close to panic she really is.
I wrap the hide tighter around her with my other arm, dragging as much of her body under it as possible. One edge goes over her head. The rest around her shoulders and back. I bend over her and take the worst of the storm on my own body. Grit slams into the hide and into the exposed parts of my back and neck like thrown knives.
“Can you stand?” I shout against her hair.
She nods once, then shakes her head, then grabs harder at my shirt.
I do not waste another breath asking.
I hook one arm behind her knees, one around her back, and lift her into me under the hide.
Too light.
That thought enrages me all over again. Not because she weighs little. Because the storm could have taken her so easily if I had come one minute later.
Keandra buries her face deeper against my throat the second her feet leave the ground. Her whole body folds into the only shelter I am offering without argument now. No pride. No proving. Just survival.
Good.
I turn back toward camp and start walking.
Running is impossible in this. Even for me. The storm comes too hard and too sideways. I keep my body lowered against the wind and use my own back and the hide to shield her as much as I can. Each step is chosen. Ground guessed more than seen. The world reduced to pressure, pain, weight, and direction.
Once her head lifts slightly against my chest. “Kaiven—”
“Quiet.”
Not harsh. Not now. Only because I need all my focus on getting her home alive.
She obeys instantly this time, and the obedience cuts me in a place I do not want touched because it comes from fear now, not trust.
I adjust my grip and keep moving.
A gust hits hard enough to drive me two steps sideways. My shoulder slams into a half-buried stone. Pain flashes down one arm. I do not stop. Keandra makes a small strangled sound and clutches me tighter under the hide.
