Page 54 of Thexan

The walk back felt longer than it should have.

Not because the terrain had changed, but because I was no longer moving through it the way I had before. Every step carried more awareness than it should have—of him beside me, of the way his movement had shifted since the fight, of the steady presence of the bond that no longer needed contact to make itself known.

I could feel him.

Not as a thought. Not as something separate.

As something constant.

It should have been distracting.

It wasn’t.

It was… grounding.

Thexan kept pace beside me without asking for assistance, but I didn’t miss the way his stride shortened slightly when the ground shifted underfoot, or the controlled way he managed the strain along his side. The wound hadn’t destabilized him, not the way it had before, but it hadn’t disappeared either.

“You’re compensating,” I said.

“Yes.”

“That’s not the same as healed.”

“No.”

“Then don’t pretend it is.”

“I am not pretending.”

I glanced at him, catching the brief shift in his expression that told me he knew exactly what I meant anyway.

“Good,” I said. “Because you’re going to sit down the second we get back, whether you think you need to or not.”

“I will comply.”

“You’re getting better at that.”

“It is efficient.”

I let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh if the weight of everything hadn’t been sitting just beneath it.

The settlement came into view gradually, the first of the outer structures visible through the trees, then the rest following as we descended the final stretch of the ridge. From here, everything looked the same as it had when I’d left—people moving between buildings, smoke rising from cook fires, the low, steady rhythm of a place that had learned how to survive after everything else had fallen apart.

No one was running.

No one was alarmed.

They had no idea how close it had come.

“That’s going to be a problem,” I said quietly.

Thexan’s gaze moved over the settlement below us, tracking the people between the buildings, the thin smoke rising from cook fires, the ordinary movement of a place that had almost become a battlefield without knowing it.

“Yes,” he said. “They survived a threat they did not see. That will make the truth more difficult to accept.”

“They’re going to ask questions.”

“They should,” he replied. “A settlement that does not question danger will not survive long.”