Chapter 10
LEENA
The sky is empty, but I don’t trust it.
He steps out of the crevasse first. Then I follow. The heat and the light are too bright after the shadowed crevasse. I narrow my eyes, shielding them with one hand, and scan the horizon.
I don’t see a thing. No movement. No shadow. No hum. But I am painfully aware that it doesn’t mean anything.
I shift my attention to Kaelreth, cataloging everything I can. The threats have grown exponentially. I thought I had a handle on this whole situation. Being kidnapped, figuring him out, and working my way back to safety and normal, but that certainty is gone. Blown apart by this new revelation.
After all we’ve been through. All my fellow humans who crashed onto this hellhole. The Zmaj who’ve, no matter how you look at it, saved us. The Urr’ki we met after setting off a planetary-level bomb that forced us underground. The expulsion from there to the valley and our makeshift camp.
All of those events have led me to this moment. To him.
Logic has always been my refuge. Analyzing systems, recognizing patterns—that makes sense. It makes more sense than people do by far. And I’ve been treating this like any other problem. Analyze. Break it down. Find the pattern. That’s how problems get solved.
I thought I had a handle on it. I understood he’d been captured, on an intellectual level, and that he’d been tortured. Psychological damage fits a pattern. One I can understand and navigate. But the thing I didn’t factor in was whoever had him wanting him back.
He’s ahead of me, angling across the dunes without hesitation, like the direction has already been decided. I fall in beside him, not behind anymore. Tajss was a great enough threat in itself, but now the danger is at an all-new level.
The sand gives under my first step, then steadies. I adjust my weight, matching his pace instead of fighting it. The rhythm comes easier, not natural, but not impossible either.
We move faster than before. There is less hesitation and less space between us. Every few seconds, my gaze flicks upward, checking and listening. Waiting for that sound to come back.
It doesn’t, and I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.
What if it’s there and I just don’t know it?
He was aware of it and tracking it long before I was, but what if he misses it?
What if it slides up on us and that’s it?
We’re gone in a single, almost silent ray.
I drag in a slow breath, forcing my focus back down to the terrain ahead.
“You changed direction,” I say.
“Yes,” he says, not looking at me.
“Because of the drone.”
“Yes.”
“We can’t stay out here like this,” I continue. “If it circles back—”
“It will,” he says with that same flat tone and absolute certainty.
“You’re very reassuring,” I mutter, glancing over and shaking my head.
No response. Of course not. Why respond to the obvious?
“The city is this way,” I say, angling my chin toward a distant line of darker terrain barely visible through the heat distortion.
“We were moving supplies toward it before—” I stop myself from saying the word kidnap, even though that’s what happened.
I shift my words to be less provocative.
“There’s structure, cover, underground sections. If we can reach it—”
“Cover,” he says, cutting me off with his agreement.
Relief flickers, small and quick, but gone just as fast.
“Yes. Real cover. Not sand.”
He shifts direction, adjusting to what I said. That makes me pause. I thought it would be harder to get his agreement to return to my people. That’s probably the most important thing I can think of right now, besides surviving this experience. They need to know about the new threat.
“You’re listening now?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says after a beat.
“Good,” I say, exhaling sharply.
We continue in silence for a stretch, but it’s not the brittle silence from before. No longer a tense standoff. Something closer to functional. Extreme threats will do that, if nothing else.
The dunes roll beneath us, the terrain shifting constantly, forcing small adjustments with every step. My footing slips once, then again, but I recover fast, learning the way the sand falls. It’s like he said—not speed or moving fast. Staying alive is the most important thing.
The wind picks up, dragging sand across the surface in thin, whispering lines. My eyes track the movement automatically, scanning for anything that doesn’t fit. Anything that moves wrong. Anything that—
A flicker cuts across the sky. Faint. Fast.
“There—”
I don’t finish before he moves faster than before. His hand closes around my arm, pulling me off my line and down the side of the dune before I react, forcing me into motion I didn’t choose.
“Hey—”
“Down.”
The word is sharp. I drop on instinct.
We hit the lower slope hard, sand sliding under us as he drives us into the shallow trough between dunes. My balance goes for a second, then recovers as I dig my boots in and follow his lead instead of fighting him.
The hum doesn’t come, but I don’t know if that means anything. He doesn’t stop moving until we reach a dip deep enough to break line of sight from above. Then he pulls me in. Close. Too close. It takes my breath. My heart races.
My back hits his chest as he shifts, angling his body over mine—shielding, blocking, cutting off every angle of exposure with his own. My skin warms at the contact of his cool scales.
“Too much,” I start, pushing lightly against his arm. “You don’t need to—”
He tightens his grip, and my pulse spikes.
“This is getting old,” I say, sharper now. “You keep grabbing me like—”
“Stay.”
The word is not just command. He’s straining, and I feel it, and I stop because of that. His hold doesn’t ease. Doesn’t shift back to that controlled, measured contact from before. It stays locked too tight.
I twist, trying to create space, and for a second—he doesn’t let me. My breath catches again, sharper this time.
“Hey,” I say, lower. “That’s—”
I don’t finish because something changes. Subtle, but there. His grip shifts—not releasing, not pulling away—but… recalibrating. Like something inside him catches and adjusts, but doesn’t fully let go.
The space between us stays closed. Closer than it should be. Closer than it’s been. I go still. Not because I want to. Because I’m not sure what happens if I don’t.
My pulse is too loud. Too fast. I don’t know what part of this is about the threat above us… and what part of it is him acting on some primal instinct.