Page 20 of Rauf: Minotaur Mates

It didn’t look like the drone. This was heavier, with thick seams and a dull gray surface instead of black casing and rotors. But the pieces fit together with the same sharp precision, and it looked too new to have been forgotten here for long.

Lines of unfamiliar writing ran along the exposed edge. Rauf crouched beside me. His expression changed the moment he saw them.

“Protos,” he said.

“What does it say?” It was just lines and squiggles to me.

“Dangerous. Handle with care.”

Rauf caught my upper arm before I could lean closer. His gaze moved over the half-buried casing, searching for something I couldn’t read. “Don’t touch it.” He let go when I nodded.

“Ah. Well, that doesn’t tell us anything. Do you recognize it? Is it something from town?” I got down on my knees, on purpose this time, and tried to get a closer look. Maybe this thing was coated in something the goats had licked? Or it could have been leaking nasty chemicals into the ground around us.

The plants looked fine, but I wasn’t a botanist so I couldn’t be too sure.

I leaned until my face was less than a foot from the metal. Pressure built inside my ears. I swallowed, but they didn’t clear.

A violent brring-whizz came from beneath the soil. Panels snapped open along the exposed edge, and thin red beams cut across the clearing. One struck a stone beside my knee and burst into white sparks.

Rauf caught me beneath the arms and tore me backward. The ground vanished from under my knees. I hit his chest, and he turned with me held tight against him as more beams sliced through the space where I’d been.

We went down behind the bank of the dry watercourse. Rauf covered me from head to knees, one arm braced beside my face while the other locked around my waist. Red light flashed above the bank, but the dirt stopped the beams.

The ground dug into my back. Rauf’s chest pressed against mine while the arm beside my head kept his full weight off me. His thigh held my legs together, and I gripped the hard muscle at his side.

My skin still prickled from how close the beams had come, but Rauf was solid and warm over me. My fingers tightened at his side. I wanted him to keep holding me there for another few breaths, safe beneath him while the red light swept above the bank.

Rauf looked down at me. His breath brushed my cheek, and my gaze caught on his mouth before I forced it back to his eyes.

“Stay here,” Rauf ground out. Then he was up and charging the lasers.

“Rauf!” But he ignored me.

He lowered his head and drove forward while the beams flashed across his arms and chest. He barely flinched. Dirt tore beneath his hooves as he reached the buried device.

Rauf lifted one leg and brought his hoof down on the exposed casing. The metal collapsed with a crack. The red beams jerked toward the sky, sputtered twice, and vanished.

He ground his hoof once against the broken panels. Nothing lit up again.

I waited a beat before sitting up. If I thought I could feel the imprint of his palm before, it was nothing compared to the feel of his whole body. “Are you crazy? Are you all right?” I rushed towards him, but he was staring down at the device.

“They weren’t high-powered. That was more to scare animals away. Lights and sounds. And just a bit of a sting.” He flexed his hand. “But no one in town put that here.”

“So what does it mean?”

“Nothing good.”

8

RAUF

I could have moved faster if Teresa wasn’t at my side. I swept my gaze around, looking for threats. Whatever that device was, it was dormant now, destroyed by my rage.

Good.

If something else fired at us, I’d smash it even harder.

“What was that thing?” Teresa asked as we hurried toward the truck. She glanced back over her shoulder. “Who’s trying to scare the animals? Do you think it’s related to the drone?”