Page 24 of Thexan

Not my way.

Ours.

I did not say that.

I did not need to.

The bond between us had already begun to define the difference.

Chapter Seven

Brynn

By the time we finished going over the map the first time, I knew two things with absolute certainty.

The first was that hiding him here wasn’t going to work.

The second was that if we moved forward with what he was proposing, there was no version of it that didn’t end with someone getting hurt.

Possibly both of us.

I rested my hands on the edge of the table and looked down at the worn lines of the terrain, tracing the ridge path again without really seeing it this time. I knew the land well enough that I didn’t need the map to picture it. Narrow in places. Unstable in others. Enough breaks in elevation to limit visibility if you knew where to stand and when to move.

It was defensible.

It was also unforgiving.

“Are you certain they’ll follow the most efficient path?” I asked.

“They will follow the path that leads to the objective with the least deviation,” Thexan said.

“That’s not always the same thing.”

“It is when the objective is time-sensitive.”

I nodded once, because that tracked with everything else he had told me. They weren’t searching anymore. They were closing.

Which meant we didn’t have the luxury of waiting for them to make a mistake.

I pushed away from the table and crossed back to where he sat, lowering myself into the chair beside the cot without thinking about it. The moment I settled within reach, I felt the shift in him, subtle but immediate, the tension along his shoulders easing gradually as if my proximity removed something his body had been bracing against.

I didn’t comment on it.

I didn’t need to.

“You’re talking about drawing them out before they reach the settlement,” I said, keeping my voice steady as I worked through the problem out loud. “You want to control where the fight happens, limit how they approach, and take them out before they can regroup.”

“That is the highest-probability path to survival,” he said.

“For you?”

“For the settlement.”

That answer made me pause.

His gaze did not shift away from mine.

“If they reach your people before I engage them, the terrain advantage is lost,” he continued. “They will use structures, civilians, and confusion to divide response. Your people are brave, but they are not trained for this kind of assault. Courage will not compensate for exposure.”