It is so warm.
I groan, rolling onto my side and blindly digging my freezing toes deeper into the searing heat. I feel completely buried. Weighed down by something incredibly heavy and ridiculously soft.
My stiff fingers lock into a thick, luxurious pelt. I drag the thick edge right over my freezing nose, letting out a long, ragged exhale of pure relief.
Then the scent floods my lungs, and my eyes snap open.
It smells exactly like hot, sun-baked stone and the dark, spiced heat of the dra-dam.
I stare straight up at the dark, rocky ceiling. My memory is completely blank after I collapsed onto my freezing sleeping mat last night, but I definitely did not have this fur when I fell asleep.
A sharp spike of adrenaline hits my chest, shattering the exhaustion.
The weight of the dra-dam’s scent is wrapped around my body and my body immediately recognizes it. A thick, aching flush of pure heat surges straight down my spine, demanding I burrow deeper into the nest he built for me while I slept.
I kick the heavy furs off my body.
The freezing morning cavern air bites into my skin, but I scramble up from the mat, rubbing my hands roughly over my arms to scrub the chill and the terrifying arousal away. I cannot think about this. If I think about the fact that the terrifying warlord stood over me in the dark and wrapped me in his scent, I will lose my grip on reality.
I have to survive today.
I turn my back on the pile of furs and stalk toward the water basins, forcing the terror down.
I am washing my face when Sorn walks directly into the main cavern.
He moves like a ghost, keeping the ruined side of his face turned toward the dark wall. He bypasses the central fire, walking in a wide, silent arc around the outer edge of the cavern until he reaches the flat stone ledge near the main entrance.
When the Drakav first brought us to these tunnels, I thought the stone was an altar. It took me three full days of watching the warriors to understand it was a survival ledge. Like a communal sharing stone. Take what you need. Leave what you can.
Warriors drop excess meat there. If someone has an extra waterskin, they leave it on the stone for the clan.
Sorn stops at the edge of the stone.
He reaches into the small pouch on his belt and carefully pulls out a tiny object.
He sets it down on the dark rock gently and holds his huge fingers over it for a second before pulling his hand away. Then he turns, bowing his head so the shadows swallow his ruined face, and vanishes silently into the deep back tunnels.
I step away from the basin, water dripping down my wrists, and cross the cavern to see what Sorn left.
It’s a bone needle.
It’s blindingly white, polished perfectly smooth, and carved so incredibly thin it looks like it could splinter in the harsh wind.
My throat immediately goes tight.
Sorn tracked Hannah through the brutal dust for months and came back with nothing but a torn, sun-bleached scrap of her cotton shirt. I reach out, my freezing finger hovering directly over the perfectly smooth eye carved into the top of the bone.
It takes an impossible amount of control for hands his size to carve something this small. Sorn sat alone in the freezing dark of the wastes, working his scarred claws over a tiny sliver of bone to make a tool delicate enough to mend Hannah’s clothes.
Mira slowly approaches the stone ledge from the opposite side. Her dark eyes are wide. She stops two feet away from the stone and stares silently down at the delicate bone needle.
When her eyes finally lift to meet mine, they are completely red.
I swallow hard, my chest physically aching.
Neither of us touches the needle. It is untouchable now. We just stand there on opposite sides of the ledge, staring down at the tiny, perfect tool he made for a human female who will never use it.
After a long, suffocating moment, Mira presses her lips together, nods her head once, and turns completely back toward the sick bay.
