She looks away toward the opening. Outside, the light is too bright for her pupils. She squints anyway.
“Don’t,” she says.
Soft, but not sharp. Worse, it says, do not pity me. Do not make this tender. Do not turn me into someone who needs the thing she wants.
I understand only some of it. Enough that I stay silent.
The shelter breathes around us. Heat hisses over the fused stone outside. Somewhere deeper in the rear crack, a faint, cool draft moves in pulses too irregular to be the rhythm from the tunnels. Natural, perhaps. Old air trapped in stone.
Sera’s eyes drift closed again. This time she does not open them immediately. Her body knows what her pride refuses. I shift my tail so it does not touch her boot. Her eyes open halfway at the movement.
“If you start guarding my nap, I’m stabbing you.”
“With the quiet knife?”
“With whichever one I can reach without standing.”
“You need not stand.”
“That sounded like encouragement,” she says.
“It was tactical advice.”
Her mouth softens a little. Then sleep pulls at her harder than annoyance can hold, and she loses. I remain still.
Not because I fear waking her. Because if I move, I might touch her.
Her head tilts against the fused wall. One hand remains on her pack strap. The other lies palm-up near her thigh, fingers loose for the first time since I met her.
Her hand is small. Scarred. Capable. Not fragile.
I have seen it divide food unfairly, read death maps, point out safe shadow, test stone, curl into anger rather than ask for help. I want to cover it with mine. The wanting is not gentle. That is the part that holds me still.
It rises through me with the same old red danger as bijass, but it is not the same. Not yet. Perhaps not at all. It is quieter. Worse than that. A hunger that does not know whether it wants to claim, shield, feed, or kneel.
My claws flex against my knee.
No.
She is not mine because I want to protect her. She is not mine because my body has begun to recognize the sound of her breath. She is not mine because the thought of losing her makes the world narrow to teeth.
Choice. The word sits hard in my chest. Choice is not a gentle virtue. It is a chain I place on myself and hold.
Sera shifts in sleep. A small sound leaves her. I go still. Her fingers curl against nothing.
“No,” she whispers.
I lean closer before I can stop myself. Not touching. Only close enough to hear.
“No, I’m not…”
Her brow furrows. Heat trembles outside the shelter. The second sun climbs higher. Red light spills across the threshold, stopping short of her boot.
“I’m not hungry,” she whispers.
My chest hollows. The words are barely sound. Not defiance. Not argument. Not sharp City logic. A child’s lie from a woman’s mouth.
Her body shivers. Once. Then again. Not from cold. Not quite heat sickness. Exhaustion, hunger, stress. All of it braided too tight. I reach for the water skin, then stop. She is asleep. She cannot choose. But she is shaking.
