Chapter 6 Leena
LEENA
The sand looks the same in every direction, but I know it isn’t.
I adjust my footing as the dune shifts, the surface gives just enough to force me to compensate with every step.
Heat presses, relentless, turning the air thick and dry in my lungs.
Behind me, the wind erases everything. Every step.
Every mark. Every sign we were ever here.
Erasing any hope of being found by those I know must be looking.
In front of me, nothing changes. Same rise. Same fall. Same endless stretch of gold and red that makes distance impossible to judge. I hate it. Hate that we’re going further and further from my people. From home.
“We’re going the wrong way.”
The words are sharp, but he doesn’t slow or even look back.
“Safe.”
I exhale hard through my nose.
“That’s not an answer.”
He shifts, adjusting his path by a few degrees. Not toward anything I can see. Just… different even though to me it looks the same.
“It’s not faster,” I press. “If we’re trying to get distance from the camp, we should be moving—”
“Not fast.”
“What?” I blink.
He glances back briefly.
“Alive.”
He turns forward and keeps moving. I stare at his back for a second, irritation flaring toward anger before I force it down. He’s not arguing. He’s not explaining. He’s just deciding. I pick up my pace to keep up with him, adjusting my stride to match the uneven ground.
“This isn’t how you travel,” I mutter. “You don’t just—wander until something works.”
He changes direction again. Subtle, barely noticeable, but I see it. A slight angle off the ridge we were climbing. I look around but can’t see if he’s avoiding a drop or correcting for slope. Whatever it is, he’s choosing something else.
“Why did you just change direction?” I ask. No answer. Of course. I push forward, stepping up beside him instead of following him. “If there’s something out here I need to know about, you don’t get to just keep it to yourself.”
He stops so suddenly that I almost walk into him. My foot sinks into the sand as I catch myself, breath hitching from the abrupt halt.
“What—”
He tilts his head slightly, looking not at me, but past me. He’s listening. I freeze. Every line of his body tightens, not in panic, not in fear, but in focus so complete it’s almost visible. His attention narrows, locking onto something I can’t see, can’t hear, can’t feel.
The air doesn’t change. The ground doesn’t move. Everything looks exactly the same. And yet he’s not moving. At all.
“What is it?” I ask, quieter.
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.
The ripple slowly fades, the surface settling back into place like nothing was ever there, and the silence returns. Thicker.
He doesn’t move right away. Doesn’t release me. He waits. Counts something I can’t see. Measures something I don’t understand. Then—slowly—his hand drops away.
Air rushes back into my lungs in a sharp inhale. I don’t speak, still afraid to move. I stare at the place where the sand moved. Where something almost did.
“That—” My voice comes out rough, thinner than I want it to be. I swallow hard and try again. “That was—”
“Hunt.”
I look at him then back at the sand. Then back at him again.
“You knew it was there.”
“Yes.”
I let out a shaky breath, dragging a hand through my hair.
“I didn’t even—”
I stop, because that’s the point. I didn’t see it. Didn’t feel it. Didn’t know it was there until it was almost on top of us. I look back at the dune. Empty and silent, like nothing ever passed beneath it, but I know better.
I look at him again. At the way he’s still scanning the ground, still listening, still tracking something I’m not seeing. One step ahead of something I didn’t even know existed.
The realization settles, heavy and unavoidable. Out here I’m not the one in control. And if he hadn’t stopped me I wouldn’t be standing here right now.
He moves without further discussion, angling across the dune at a sharper line than before, and faster. I follow because it’s clear what happens if I don’t.
The sand drags at my steps as I push to keep up. The slope is uneven and shifts under every stride. He doesn’t look back to check if I’m there. He doesn’t need to. He knows.
“That thing—” I say, breath not fully steady. “How many are out here?”
“Enough.”
That’s unhelpful, even if it’s probably accurate. I push forward another few steps, closing the gap between us.
“You could have told me.”
No response. I bite back the frustration before it turns into something louder.
“You knew it was there before it got close,” I press. “You knew exactly when to stop.”
He adjusts direction again. Sharper this time. Cutting across the face of the dune instead of following its natural line. Avoiding.
“Why that way?” I ask.
“Track.”
“What track?” I ask, frowning. No answer. Of course. I exhale hard, wiping sweat and sand from my face as the heat presses harder with every step. “This would go a lot faster if you actually explained things.”
“Not fast.”
“I know,” I snap. “Alive.”
He glances back for a fraction of a second, confirming that I remembered, then forward again. I hate that that works. I push forward, matching his pace as best I can.
The terrain shifts, becoming firmer in places, but looser in others. The wind picks up, dragging sand across the surface in thin, whispering lines that erase anything behind us. No trail. No markers. No way back.
I glance over my shoulder, and there’s nothing. Just dunes. Endless. Indistinguishable. Gone. I turn back quickly, a tight feeling settling low in my chest.
No one will ever find me.
“They won’t be able to track us,” I say, more to myself than to him.
“They will.”
I look at him sharply.
“What?”
“They track.”
Same word, but said with a different weight. Enough that I understand he doesn’t mean the predator; he’s referring to something else, but the way he says it, I don’t think he means my people.
“Who tracks?” I ask.
His attention shifts downward, then outward, then up, scanning in a pattern I’m starting to recognize.
“They do.”
Cold and certain. It’s not a guess or a possibility. It’s a fact. A chill slides down my spine despite the heat.
“Your people?” I ask.
“No,” he says firmly.
“Then who?” Silence. He doesn’t look at me and it’s clear that the answer isn’t coming, but I push anyway. “They’re looking for you.”
I make it a statement this time, testing his reactions. His shoulders tighten. It’s subtle, but there.
“Yes,” he says softly.
I slow a fraction, my mind catching up to the shift.
“Not just me,” I say, not a question. He doesn’t change the pace or visibly react.
“No.”
Two searches. My people and whoever he… what? Escaped from? The scars, the tension, the blank stare in his eyes… it would make sense. I glance out over the dunes again, the emptiness suddenly feeling less empty.
“They’ll find us,” I say.
He doesn’t slow or turn. He doesn’t even hesitate.
“Bad.”
“What?” I blink.
“Find.”
I stare at him.
“That’s not—” I stop, frustration flaring. “They’re trying to help.”
“No.”
Flat and certain, like everything else he says. I shake my head, pushing forward to keep up with him as he crests another rise.
“You don’t know them.”
“I know.”
The words come out quiet, not loud or sharp, but heavy. I look at the damage and the way his body never fully relaxes even when he’s moving. At the way he listens to things I can’t hear. At the way he avoided something I didn’t even know existed.
And I don’t dismiss it. I don’t agree, but I don’t ignore it either. I glance back over my shoulder then forward.
“My people are looking for me,” I say slowly.
“Yes.”
“Something else is looking for you.”
“Yes.”
I let out a slow breath.
“And we’re trying to avoid both.”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. Because I understand exactly what that means. And the dunes don’t feel empty at all.