Chapter 20
MAUG
She keeps coming back.
I don’t understand it.
Each time I think it’ll be the last—that she’ll come to her senses, see me for what I am, and vanish like smoke on the wind. Each time, I tell myself it’s better that way. Safer. Cleaner. A kindness.
And each time… she returns anyway.
I watch her approach again, her silhouette framed in the storm-stained light of late afternoon. Her steps are lighter today. Not careless, but confident. Like the fear is finally gone. Like she’s not just tolerating my presence anymore—she’s seeking it.
That terrifies me more than the sting tails ever could.
She ducks beneath the low lip of the lava dome, brushing red dust from her scarf as she slips inside.
She doesn’t speak at first. Just sets down her pack and sits on the flat stone slab I once used as a weapons bench.
She pulls out her compad—smudged, half-cracked, still glowing stubbornly—and starts thumbing through data files like this is a routine visit.
Like we’re… something normal.
I stay in the shadows, at first. Old habit. Old shame. But her voice cuts through the silence, soft and sure.
“You don’t have to lurk, you know.”
I blink. My hand, still gripping the edge of the cave wall, tenses.
She glances up, smirks. “I can see your shadow. Kinda hard to miss.”
I exhale, slow. Step forward.
Her eyes track every movement, but not like the others did. There’s no recoil, no wide-eyed terror. Just interest. Curiosity. Maybe even trust. She pats the ground beside her without looking away.
“C’mon. You’re taller than the walls. You’re not fooling anyone.”
The way she says it—it’s not mocking. It’s gentle. Teasing.
I sit, careful not to let my bulk knock over her fragile-looking tech. The stone creaks beneath my weight, but she doesn’t flinch. She simply scoots over, close enough for our shoulders to nearly touch.
“Look,” she says, holding out the screen. “See this? Atmospheric particle distribution, post-storm. Something weird’s going on with the lower ozone layer. I think the vents are leaking trace amounts of—”
Her words blur, not because they don’t matter, but because I can’t focus. Not when her hand brushes mine. Not when her scent curls around me—earthy, electric, real. She smells like the wilds, like rain hitting scorched stone.
She notices me staring and stops.
“What?” she asks, quiet now.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
But it’s not nothing. It’s everything. Everything I never should’ve let myself feel.
“You don’t care about this data, do you?” she asks, folding the compad shut. “That’s okay. I can’t tell half of what you’re thinking either.”
I look at her. Really look. The way her lashes catch the light. The small scar just beneath her lip. The grit in her hair, like she doesn’t care if she’s clean so long as she’s here. With me.
“You bring it anyway,” I murmur.
She shrugs. “Makes me feel less useless. Like I’m not just… talking to a wall.”
“I’m not a wall.”
Her smile curves slow and warm. “No. You’re not.”
Silence stretches between us, but it’s not empty. It hums. It breathes. Outside, wind whips dust against the dome with a sound like static rain. Inside, the air is thick with heat and things unsaid.
She sets the compad down, then leans back on her elbows. Her boot nudges mine. “So, Maug… do you ever talk about yourself?”
I grunt. “No.”
She laughs, and the sound lights something in me. “Shocking.”
I glance sideways. “You never stop.”
“I’m making up for both of us.”
“Hm.”
She nudges me again, gentler this time. “That was a joke. You’re supposed to say, ‘Thank you, Jillian, for being endlessly fascinating and keeping the conversation going.’”
I huff. “I don’t lie.”
That makes her laugh harder, until she’s nearly breathless, and I feel it again—that warm, dangerous thing coiled low in my chest. I should crush it. Stamp it out like fire before it spreads.
But I don’t.
Because then she does something new. Something reckless.
She leans. Just a bit. Just enough.
And rests her shoulder against mine.
I freeze.
She stays there, quiet, eyes closed. Not asking anything. Not expecting. Just… being.
Her warmth seeps through my skin, into the cracks I’ve spent years sealing shut. Her scent floods every breath. My claws twitch against the stone. I could move. I should move.
But I don’t.
Because her touch doesn’t feel like pity.
It feels like choice.
I shouldn’t feel this way.
None of it makes sense. Not on paper. Not in scripture. Not under the laws carved into the oldest stones of my people.
I shouldn’t want. I shouldn’t feel. I shouldn’t linger here, in her quiet heat, listening to the soft cadence of her breath.
But here I am.
She sleeps beside me, curled under the thermal blankets I folded around her like a promise.
The storm outside thunders against the rock, wind scratching like claws in the night, but inside, it’s warm.
Too warm, too easy. Her hair, strawberry-fire beneath the pale light, fans across the blanket.
One arm drifts out, palm up like she’s still reaching for something in her dreams.
Her breathing is slow. Even. Peaceful.
I watch her for long moments before even thinking about what I’m doing.
Shouldn’t be watching.
But I am.
Her chest rises and falls, not with terror, not with tension, but with a calm that shouldn’t exist here — not after everything that’s brought us to this broken planet half-way between promise and death.
My claws flex against the stone floor, a reaction I don’t control.
The air smells like sand and heat and her — an earthy sweetness I never expected to register in my bloodstream.
My ears catch every little sound: the faint tick of the thermal blanket settling, her heartbeat singing slow under my awareness, the distant echo of sand grinding against the dome.
I tell myself I’m listening because of danger. Because storms can break in an instant. Because the world here is older than logic and twice as cruel.
But that’s not it.
It’s her heartbeat.
It thrum-thrum-thrums in the space between us, and I can feel it like a pulse against my own — ancient, instinctive, and pulling at something deep beneath the scars, beneath the claws, beneath the hollow core I thought I’d locked away.
That word creeps unbidden into my mind — a whisper on bone:
Jalshagar.
I’ve not spoken it in years. Not since before exile. Not since the last time I lost something I swore I would protect.
Jalshagar.
It is more than desire. More than connection. It is a bond deeper than blood, older than rites, older than names.
I didn’t mean to feel it again.
But I do.
I can’t not feel it.
Her breath shifts — just the slightest hitch — and I lean forward without realizing I’ve moved. It’s not predatory. Not hunting. Not fear. It’s… instinct. The same force that once drove warriors to stand side by side in ancient halls, sharing blood, stories, and fates.
I should not want this.
I should deny it. Reject it. Stamp it into the deepest crevice of myself and bury it under hardship and silence and solitude.
I am not meant to be bound to another.
Not like this.
Not to her.
Not to a human.
But this night — this one night — she leans, unwittingly, against me.
Just a faint brush of her thigh against my side. Barely there. And yet the moment her warmth meets my armor — even through the thermal blanket — it feels like the first breath after a long winter. A spark beneath stone.
I don’t flinch. I don’t recoil. I don’t break the fragile silence.
Instead… I stay.
Too still. Too close. Too aware.
Because she doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t shrink into herself. She doesn’t do what every other being has ever done in my presence: fear, retreat, scream, or fight.
She just rests.
Quiet.
Soft.
And her trust — unguarded and unashamed — feels sharper than any blade I’ve ever carried.
I should leave. I should flee. I should recall every lesson ever taught to me in the war camps, every command drilled into my ribcage like fire: Distance keeps you alive. Isolation keeps you whole. Trust no one.
But her presence blooms inside me like heat beneath frost. Like a storm waiting to break.
I turn my head just slightly — slow, careful, almost afraid to disturb the fragile peace — and I watch her sleep.
Her eyelids flutter once, like she’s on the brink of waking, but she stays unconscious. Safe. Unaware of the tempest she stirs within me.
My throat feels thick — weirdly so. Not tight with anger, not hollow with fear.
Just full.
Full of a feeling I can’t name without invoking that ancient syllable buried deep in my memory.
Jalshagar.
I whisper it under my breath.
A word born in a tongue I rarely access. A concept older than my exile. A calling I never thought I’d hear again.
And yet it rises in my chest like a fire trying to break free.
“Jalshagar…”
The word is a tremor in the dark. Not loud. Not even clear. But real.
I hold my breath as I speak it. Not toward her. Not meant to wake her. But as if saying it aloud anchors it in me — like a spell, or a confession.
Her lashes flutter again, and her hand creeps outward, brushing the blanket near where I’m crouched. Just a finger. Just a whisper of motion.
My body reacts before my mind does.
My claws curl — not in violence, but in tension. A tightening of muscle deeper than thought. A resonance in bone and nerve I thought I buried long ago.
I shouldn’t want this.
Not from her.
Not from anyone.
But I do.
I want to know what she dreams of. What makes her laugh when no one’s around. What lines crinkle beside her eyes when she smiles in daylight. I want to hear the timbre of her voice when she’s frustrated. And when she’s happy. And when she’s afraid.
I want to hear it all.
I want her.
And that terrifies me more than any blade, any enemy, any storm this world can throw at us.
She shifts again — more awake this time — and breathes out softly, eyes half-opening. For a heartbeat, she doesn’t see me. Then her gaze slides over my form, confusion blinking behind sleepy amber eyes.
“Maug?” she whispers.
That single word — my name — slips from her lips before her brain fully engages. It rolls across the silence like an invocation I never expected to hear again from her.
Her eyes search my face — carefully, quietly, without fear.
I should say something. I should tell her to go back. To sleep. To leave this place. To not bind herself to a creature like me.
But her eyes are too honest.
Too unguarded.
Too real.
She watches me with a kind of curiosity that isn’t afraid.
“Are you awake?” she asks, voice soft and warm and still brushing sleep from its edges.
I nod slowly. Carefully. Not wanting to overshadow her with my presence, but also not wanting to leave her side.
“Good,” she murmurs, a small smile lifting at the corners of her mouth. “You didn’t sneak away last night. That’s… impressive.”
Her humor is tentative — like she’s unsure if jokes are still allowed in a world this broken — but it’s there nonetheless.
I shift, lowering myself a little closer — never too close — but enough so that the warmth between us doesn’t feel like an accident.
“You stayed,” she says simply. No accusation. No questioning. Just a fact.
I nod again.
That’s all I can manage.
There’s something in her eyes — acceptance, maybe — that loosens the weight in my chest. Something unguarded and unafraid.
But I still do not speak.
Not with words.
Not yet.
Instead, I let the silence between us do the talking — a quiet language older than fear, older than words, older than the vows of solitude I once swore to uphold.
In that silence, I feel it:
The first roots of something ancient.
Something fierce.
Something that whispers through my bones and settles there like an old scar finally healing.
Something I’m no longer sure I want to resist.