No answer. His hand comes up, not touching me, just there. A signal. Stay still. I follow his gaze, scanning the dunes ahead, but I don’t see a thing. Only sand, wind, and heat. I take a careful step forward. Testing.
His hand snaps out, not grabbing or pulling, but stopping me with a single, precise movement before I complete the step.
“Don’t.”
My pulse climbs again, faster and irregular.
“What are you?—”
He shifts, positioning himself to block my forward line without fully stepping in front of me. He’s protecting again, but from what?
I look past, then around him. Still nothing. The silence stretches. Long enough that my muscles ache from holding still.
“You’re seeing something,” I say.
He doesn’t respond, but the answer is in the way he holds himself. I swallow, forcing myself to stay where I am. To trust—no—not trust. To listen.
The wind drags across the dunes, lifting sand in thin, shifting veils. The ground beneath my feet feels solid. Stable. Normal. And that’s the problem. Because he wouldn’t stop for nothing.
I look at him, studying his face, every aspect of him as I try to understand. The scars. The tension. The absolute certainty in the way he’s reading something I can’t even detect.
I don’t move, not because I can’t, but because I shouldn’t. Something is out there and I don’t know what it is.
The wind dies. Not completely. Just enough that the sound of it fades into something thinner, less constant. The dunes settle into a strange, heavy quiet that presses in from all sides. He doesn’t move. I don’t either. Time stretches too long.
My legs tense, spasming from holding still on unstable ground. Sand shifts under my weight in small, quiet slides. Every instinct I have is screaming to adjust, to step, to do something.
He doesn’t and that’s what stops me. It’s not trust, but a pattern. He hasn’t been wrong yet. I draw in a slow breath, trying to steady it, to match the stillness he’s holding like it’s nothing.
It isn’t nothing. It’s effort. A lot of effort, which I see now.
The way his body locks into place, every muscle engaged but controlled. The way his attention doesn’t drift, doesn’t flicker. Waiting for something.
“What are we?—”
His hand closes over my mouth fast. Not rough, just suddenly there.
My words cut off against his palm as he pulls me back a fraction, positioning me against him without forcing me down or trapping me. Shielding. The shift is immediate.
My pulse spikes as adrenaline floods through. I twist, instinctively trying to pull away. He doesn’t tighten his grip, but holds me where I am. Still. His other arm moves, angling his body so he’s between me and the open slope ahead. Between me and whatever he’s seeing.
I go rigid because suddenly, on some level, I understand and don’t want to make a sound.
The ground moves. Not like the collapse from before. It’s a ripple. Subtle. A shifting line beneath the surface, cutting across the dune at an angle that shouldn’t exist. The sand lifts slightly. Something moves under it, displacing it from below.
My breath stops. The line moves closer. Slow. Deliberate. Tracking.
My fingers tighten against his arm without thinking. The ripple passes within a few feet of where we’re standing.
Close enough that I track the faint distortion. The unnatural movement just beneath the surface. Something large. Very large. My stomach drops. It doesn’t surface. Doesn’t break through. It just moves.
Circling once. Then again. Testing. Hunting.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I don’t even think.
His hand stays over my mouth. Not pressing. Not forcing. A reminder.
The thing beneath the sand shifts direction and moves past us. Not fast, but it isn’t chasing us. It’s continuing.
