They parked in the shadow of the rocks, the outcropping providing cover from multiple angles. He unfolded himself from the cab with a relief he didn’t bother to hide, his wings spreading slightly to shake off the cramped tension.
“Stay behind me,” he murmured, moving towards a gap in the rocks that provided a clear sightline back towards the claim.
“Not a chance. I need to see this too.”
He wanted to argue and insist that she remain protected, but the set of her jaw told him it would be pointless.Stubborn female.He filed the observation away as yet another thing to admire about her.
They climbed the rocks together, finding a perch that offered concealment and visibility in equal measure. He pulled her close against his side, partly for warmth and partly because the urge to have her near was simply too strong to resist.
“There.” She pointed.
In the distance, approaching the tiny dot of her habitat, a convoy of vehicles moved across the ice. Even from this range, he could count the six separate craft. Two of them were about the sizeof the snow crawler, two slightly larger, and two significantly larger, all of them bristling with equipment he couldn’t identify. They moved in formation, precise and mechanical, like predators stalking prey.
“That’s a lot of equipment,” she said, her voice flat. “They’re not messing around.”
“What manner of equipment are they carrying?”
“Scanners, probably. Deep-ice sensors. Maybe seismic readers.” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “The kind of stuff that can detect anomalies from kilometers away. If there’s anything left for them to find…”
“There isn’t.” He kept his voice certain, even as doubt flickered in his own mind. “We were thorough.”
“We were rushed.”
He had no argument for that.
They watched in tense silence as the convoy reached the habitat. Small figures emerged, barely visible at this distance, and began to fan out in all directions. Some entered the habitat itself. Others moved towards the collapsed crater and the scattered debris field where the drilling rig had been destroyed.
Beside him, she made a small, wounded sound.
“That was my home,” she whispered. “Five years. Everything I built.”
He said nothing. There were no words that could ease this particular grief. Instead, he pulled her closer, letting his wing curve around her shoulders like a shield against both the cold and the sight below.
“I know it’s just… things.” Her voice cracked slightly. “Equipment and supplies. Nothing that matters, not really. But I—” She stopped, swallowing hard. “I worked so hard. I earned every piece of that claim. And now they’re just… walking through it like they own it.”
“They do not own it. They cannot own what they do not understand.”
“GenCon doesn’t need to understand things. They just need to take them.”
A flash of anger cut through his chest, something old and primal, born from instincts that predated his memory loss. These creatures below, these enemies who caused his mate such pain… in another time, he would have descended on them like a storm. He would have shown them what it meant to threaten a dragon’s territory.
But this was not another time. He was weakened and still healing. And she needed him alive more than she needed him vengeful.
“We should go,” he said reluctantly. “The longer we watch, the greater the risk.”
She nodded, but didn’t move. Her eyes remained fixed on the scene below, on the habitat that had been her entire world for half a decade.
“They won’t find anything,” she said, as if trying to convince herself. “You collapsed the crater. We cleaned up the debris. There’s nothing to connect you to…”
She trailed off, her body going rigid beside him. He followed her gaze and felt his own blood freeze.
Below, one of the vehicles had broken formation. It was moving—not towards the habitat or the crater, but away. Away in a very specific direction.
Towards them.
“They know,” she breathed. “How do they know?”
His mind raced through possibilities. Thermal imaging? Vibration sensors? Some technology he couldn’t anticipate? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that their head start had just evaporated.
