Chapter 2
STAH-BEE
SARVEN
Stah-bee.
The sound leaves her mouth like a thrown stone. Sharp. Direct. A challenge.
I do not answer.
I cannot.
I am too busy watching her lips. The way they shape each strange sound, the curve at the corner, the brief flash of white teeth. I lose track of the meaning of everything else entirely.
She holds my gaze as if she is not afraid. Her chin is tipped up, her small body braced, shoulders set. Fierce. The kind of fierceness that makes my claws itch with the urge to test it. To feel how it resists.
She waits for a response.
I remain still.
Stah-bee.
The sound lands in my mind with the weight of a thrown spear. I know all the sounds Jus-teen and Jah-kee have tried to teach us. I know all the human names.
This… is not one of them.
My thoughts tangle for a moment. Is it a warning? A command?
While I sit there, completely silent and caught, her confidence falters a little. The heat in her dark cheeks deepens. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other.
Then she lets out a breath, a small huff that makes her shoulders rise and fall. She looks away first, breaking the challenge. Shoulders stiff as she turns, grabbing a waterskin from a nearby stack, and carries it toward the storage alcove.
She does not know she has left something behind. A sound carried on her breath, now lodged in my mind.
Stah-bee.
I turn it over and over in the quiet of my thoughts, like examining the edge of a new blade. The syllables are soft but quick, her language biting them off in the front of her mouth.
A word from her mouth-speak. A word she gave only to me.
I need to understand.
I find Tharn near the cave entrance, close to the current where the desert wind presses in. Jah-kee is with him, her small hand moving over the shaft of a spear as she admires it.
“Stah-bee,” I send into the mindspace, the word itself clumsy in mind-speak.
Jah-kee’s head snaps up. “Excuse me?” she says aloud, her mouth curving in confusion.
“Mih-kay-lah,” I project, more carefully this time. “She said Stah-bee.”
Jah-kee makes a choking sound that is not quite laughter. She slides a quick look at Tharn, then back at me. Her mind-signature brightens with amusement.
“What does it mean?”
“It’s… a nickname,” she explains, voice and mind both warm.
“A neek-name,” I repeat, testing the shape of it.
“It means…” Her mouth presses together, fighting another sound. “One who is good at stabbing things.”
My ears angle forward. This is correct. I am very good at stabbing things.
I did not think she had noticed.
But there is something else in Jah-kee’s thoughts. The amusement is not mocking. There is a soft color to it. A kind of gentle heat.
“Is it…an insult?” I send, my ears flattening despite myself.
Jah-kee shakes her head quickly, head-fur—no, hair—swaying. “No. Not at all. It’s… kind of affectionate. In a Mikaela way.”
Ah-fek-shun-ate.
“Softness,” Tharn adds in the mindspace, his hand dropping to rest on his mate’s waist, claws curving around her as if he cannot help it. “Care. Approval.”
Approval?
My chest tightens and then expands. Like the steady swell of breath after a clean kill.
My female has named me.
She threw it like a challenge, but she gave it to me. She has seen my skill, my blade, my worth, and turned it into a sound she can wield.
Stah-bee.
I repeat it in the private space of my thoughts. The sound is short. Quick. It feels like a title. Not one given by a dra-dam or a clan, but by something smaller and infinitely more dangerous.
She has named me.
I am ready to answer.
I glance down without meaning to, at my bare chest. The golden skin there is the same as always. No sudden flare of light. No uncontrolled bursting of glow that would mark the dust itself rising to bless a bond.
Me and my brothers, we wait our turns. We pretend we are patient.
Meanwhile, my skin remains obedient. No flashes. No eruptions beyond my control.
The dust has not chosen me yet.
I exhale slowly and incline my head to Tharn and Jah-kee in thanks, careful to keep my mind smooth, then return to my place along the wall of the main cavern.
Guard duty, I remind myself. The dra-dam asked this of me, and I will not fail him.
Mih-kay-lah has returned from the storage alcove. She cleans now. She crouches near the worn stone that serves as her work station, wrestling the heavy stone bowl onto its side to scrub it with sand.
I watch her hands.
They are a constant impossibility. So small. No claws. Just soft, dark-brown skin stretched over delicate bones. They look as if a hard breath could bruise them.
And yet, she makes the stubborn, rough stone obey. She presses and scrubs until the grit shifts. Until the surface smooths.
I want to take the rough stone away and give her something soft to hold.
Like me.
My groin tightens at the thought. A phantom pressure pushes against the smooth seal of my skin, followed by the familiar heat that has stalked me since the day I first saw her in the dust.
I adjust my stance against the wall, shifting my weight. My brows pull tight. This has been happening often. Too often. Every time those dark eyes cut toward me and then away. I do not even know what it means.
She leans further over the pot, bracing herself with one arm. I track the line of her cheekbone, the dark lash against her skin, the stubborn pout of her lips. The dust has never created a creature this perfect. Even covered in firestone dust, scowling at a dirty pot, she shines brighter than Ain.
My member throbs painfully harder now, aching to reshape. Heat spreads from my loins outward, a molten line racing under my skin.
“You are staring again.” Haroth’s projection is amused. He has approached on silent feet, his presence brushing against my mind just before he settles against the wall beside me. “It makes the females nervous.”
“I observe,” I answer.
“You obsess.” He settles against the wall next to me, following my gaze to where Mih-kay-lah works. “You should bring her something. Prove your worth.”
I imagine laying a fresh kill at Mih-kay-lah’s feet. Glossy hide, steaming wounds, rich in blood. But I have seen my brothers try this. It does not impress the females.
“Perhaps not food, then,” Haroth muses. He flexes, as he always does, though no females are currently watching. “A stone? The shiny ones work well.”
“She rejected the shiny stones our brothers left by her mat,” I remind him.
“Because they are not you.” He sounds oddly satisfied about this. “She watches you when you are not looking.”
That pulls me upright inside. “She does?”
“Always.” Haroth’s grin is too wide. He has been practicing this human expression of joy. It looks wrong on his face. He does it anyway. “When you leave for hunts. When you return. Her eyes find you first, before the others.”
I test this against memory. It is true that when I enter the cavern, I often catch Mih-kay-lah’s gaze quickly averted. As if she had been watching the entrance.
Waiting?
No. That is too hopeful.
But still… she looks.
Mih-kay-lah.
When the dust is wide and empty around me, and the dunes stretch unbroken in all directions, I practice her name aloud.
It sits uneasily in my mouth, caught between my teeth and the shape of my tongue.
Drakav throats are not built for sounds, and human words are narrow, cramped. They catch. They scrape.
Mih. Kay. Lah.
One day, I tell myself, I will call her name, and she will stop.
“I think,” Haroth goes on, clearly pleased with himself, “you should stand nearer to her. Let her become used to you.”
“I already do this.”
“Closer, then. And blink sometimes. It has worked for me.”
This is news. “With which female?”
He lifts his chin. “All of them. I study them.”
Haroth has the eyes of a newling.
His advice will not help me here. What works on soft, laughing Pah-m or patient Tee-nah is not what will work on Mih-kay-lah.
She is… shaped differently. In her spirit. In her edges.
Hunting a beast is simple. Hunting a female is not.
“I will seek counsel,” I tell Haroth, pushing away from the wall.
He tilts his head. “From whom?”
“From those who have succeeded where I have not.”
I find Tharn and Rok near the weapons cache, bent over a spear shaft. They turn it carefully, looking for cracks that could turn a good throw into a lost meal.
They both straighten when they sense me. I pull my mind in tight, smoothing away the flare of envy before it can leak.
They are bonded males. Their glows came. Their females accepted. They have what I want and have not earned.
“Sarven,” Tharn sends, inclining his head. He looks larger than before, as if Jah-kee has filled spaces in him even the dust could not reach. “Is all well?”
I lower myself into a crouch beside them. The position is not one I like for conversation. It feels exposed. But these are not rivals. They are my brothers.
I force the thoughts out into the mindspace.
“My female,” I send, and even that feels too bold. “The female I wish to claim… she does not respond.”
Understanding stirs between them, and Rok makes a low sound in his chest.
“You bring her meat?” Tharn asks first, practical as always.
“Every sol,” I answer.
Rok cocks his head. “And she accepts?”
“I leave it near her sleeping mat.” I hesitate. “It is gone when I return.”
Tharn grunts, satisfied. “She does not refuse your provision. This is a clear sign.”
“But…” I hesitate again. This next admission is harder. It feels like stepping onto open ground with no cover. “My glow has not ignited.”
The frustration I have been holding tight bleeds out, darkening the pulse of my thoughts. “My glow remains under my control.”
Rok and Tharn exchange a glance, something passing between them too soft to catch fully in the mindspace.
“The glow ignites when it ignites,” Rok projects carefully. “You cannot force the claiming. You can only be… seen. As you truly are.”
“Show her your worth,” Tharn agrees. “Make her see you different.”
“How?” I lean in despite myself. “I have already tried Haroth’s methods. Standing near. Blinking.”
The amusement that sparks from both of them is impossible to ignore.
“Females like ‘thoughtfulness.’” Rok shapes the human word carefully. “Jus-teen explained it as…noticing small things. Things others miss.”
Tharn rumbles in agreement.
I process this information. Small things. Things others miss. This, at least, is something I understand. Hunters must notice everything.
I incline my head to both of them in thanks, and head back toward the main cavern. My ears swivel, tracking sounds throughout the cave system. The sound of stone work as Haroth carves another “gift”. The soft murmur of female voices from behind their sleeping partition.
And there, steady and familiar even beneath all of it: Mih-kay-lah’s breathing.
Distant, yet to my ears, it sounds close.
She is behind the hanging coverings now, where the females sleep.
Through the gap, I catch a glimpse of her.
She sits on her sleeping mat, one knee bent, arms lifted as she works with her hair.
She gathers the woven strands with both hands and pulls them back, wrapping a strip of fiber to bind them.
As she moves, the collar of her scale-tunic slides, revealing a stretch of warm brown skin along her throat. The small notch there pulses softly with the beat of her dra-kir.
I drag my gaze away with effort. I cannot push past the partition the way the females do.
So, I focus on other things. I practice.
Silently. In my mind. Words I’ve been learning for her.
“Heh-low, Mih-kay-lah,” I shape silently. The sounds feel thick. Slow. Wrong in my throat.
“Your… coo-keen… is good.”
“You… are bee-yoo-tee-ful.”
My mind stalls on the last word. Too many sounds in a row.
“I… made this… for you.”
That is easier. But it requires something to offer. Not just meat. Not just any shiny stone.
She deserves something made just for her. Sized for her fingers. Balanced for her wrist, like my blade is balanced for mine. Not something found in the dust, but something carved. Shaped.
A gift born from skill, not luck.
I settle back into my place along the wall, blade across my knees. The sharpening stone in my claw. I draw it along the edge of the bone slowly.
Scritch.
The sound matches the beat of my dra-kir. Steady. Relaxed.
Guard duty, yes. I will keep my watch. I will listen for danger. I will be the shadow between my clan and whatever moves in the dunes.
But I will also move closer. Carefully. The way a hunter approaches skittish prey.
I will make her an offering. I will practice my mouth. I will find ways to be near her that don’t involve lurking in corners like a sand-shadow.
Soon, my skin will glow, and the bond will form, and she will be mine in truth.
But first, I have work to do.