Page 48 of Thexan

Her jaw tightened, but she did not look away.

“And is he right?”

I held her gaze.

“He is right that you matter to me,” I said. “He is wrong if he believes that makes me careless.”

For a moment, only the wind moved across the ridge.

Then Brynn drew in a slow breath.

“Then we don’t give him carelessness,” she said.

“No,” I replied. “We give him exactly what he expects to see, and then we change the outcome before he can use it.”

Her gaze returned to the lower slope.

“Then we finish it.”

This time, I did not correct her.

“Yes,” I said. “Together.”

Chapter Twelve

Brynn

The third hunter did not come after us.

That was the first thing that made my stomach tighten.

The other two had moved like men following a pattern they trusted, adapting when that pattern broke but still pushing forward because the objective demanded it. This one held position. Waiting.

Thexan stood beside me on the ridge, one of the recovered weapons secured at his side, the other in his hand. His energy blade was retracted, but I had already learned that meant very little. He didn’t need to show danger for it to be there.

“He knows,” I said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Not just that something happened. He knows it was you.”

Thexan’s gaze remained fixed on the lower slope. “Likely.”

The answer did not comfort me.

Below us, the terrain opened into a stretch of broken stone and scrub before it dropped toward the old drainage cut that ran along the back side of the settlement. If the hunter moved that way, he would have a line toward the outer buildings. Not a clean one, but clean enough.

“He’s not trying to reach you anymore,” I said.

“No.”

“He’s trying to force you to come down.”

“Yes.”

I looked at him then, at the absolute stillness in his face, the controlled focus that had returned since the bond was completed. He no longer looked like a man holding himself together through sheer will. He looked like what he must have been before the injury found him.

Dangerous.