Page 47 of Thexan

Behind me, Brynn exhaled sharply.

“That one was harder,” she said.

“He adapted faster than the first,” I said. “His caution made him more difficult to isolate.”

“And the third?”

I shifted my attention outward, filtering through the terrain, the disturbed air, the absence of movement where movement should have been.

“He has not advanced.”

Brynn stepped closer, her position aligning with mine again as she looked down toward the lower slope.

“Waiting?”

“Assessing,” I said. “He will have noticed the loss of contact with the others. He will not assume an accident.”

“So he knows something’s wrong now.”

“He knows enough to stop trusting the pattern.”

Her gaze moved over the slope below us, following the route we had expected him to take.

“He’s not going to walk into it.”

“No,” I said. “He will change strategy. The first two pursued because they believed I was still injured, unstable, and attempting to evade. The third now understands that the engagement is being controlled.”

“By you.”

“By us.”

Her attention flicked to me at that, but she didn’t argue.

I looked toward the final approach vector, recalculating based on the absence of movement. While the enemy was motionless, he was not inactive. He was choosing his next advantage.

“He will not pursue,” I said. “He will attempt to force movement from us.”

“How?”

“By threatening what I cannot ignore.”

Brynn’s expression tightened. “The settlement.”

“Yes,” I said. “Or you.”

The words altered the space between us. The possibility had existed before. Naming it made the next decision unavoidable.

“Then we go to him,” she said.

“We do,” I replied. “But not directly. If we descend on the obvious line, he controls our movement before we reach him.”

“No more dividing,” she said.

“No. He will expect separation now. If we split, he will target the weaker point to draw me out of position.”

“Me.”

“Yes,” I said, allowing no softness to obscure the truth. “He will assume you are the most effective way to compromise my judgment.”