“Rok,” I say. The sound is rough, clumsy, but it is the closest I can come to sharing my true name with her.

Her eyes widen, her mouth opening slightly in surprise. “You spoke again! You…was that your name? Are you telling me your name?” She touches her ear. Not the one with the strange creature trapped in crystal on it. But the other. The one with a stone lodged in it. “I swear I heard it in English. Is this translator thing working? Please, please be working.”

I touch my chest, mimicking her gesture. “Rok.”

“Rock?” she repeats, the sound slightly different from mine. “Your name is Rock?”

Something must shift in my expression, because she laughs—a bright, unexpected sound that sends a strange warmth through my chest. I am not even worried about the shadowmaws hearing. I will fight them all if she would make that sound again.

“I mean, it fits,” she says, gesturing at me. “You’re certainly built like a—wait, no. That can’t be your name. Rock? Seriously? Like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson?”

I do not understand her words, but I understand that she has misheard my name. I touch my chest again.

“Rok,” I say, letting the sound fall short, sharper than the noise she created.

She blinks, tilting her head at me. “Rok,” she repeats, slower this time. Her brows furrow, and I can see her turning the word over in her mind. It is strange. I cannot sense her thoughts, but…I can almost see them through her eyes. “Not Rock. Rok. Same sound, I guess, but…sharper. It feels different.”

Her brows furrow and I tilt my head, watching as she taps her fingers against her thigh. “Yeah, okay. I’ll spell it without the ‘C.’ That’s better. Cleaner. It suits you.”

Her words settle over me like a weight, and something deep inside shifts. She has taken my name—my true name, or as close as her kind can come to it—and made it her own. To hear it in her voice, to see her shape it into something she understands, feels strangely…good. As if she has reached into a part of me that no one else has ever touched.

“Rok,” she says again, softer this time, as if testing it.

The glow beneath my skin flares faintly, betraying me. I have no words for what I feel, but it is enough to know that she has claimed my name in her own way.

She bares her teeth in that strange way I believe is non-threatening, and the sight of it does something to my insides. Her teeth are small, flat, nothing like the fangs of the Drakav, and yet there is something oddly appealing about the expression. I find myself mimicking it, baring my teeth in what I hope is a similar gesture.

Her teeth-baring falters for a moment, as if caught off guard, and then returns, wider than before. She shifts on her feet, a slight hesitation, that strange redness growing in her cheeks again. “Are you…smiling at me? Oh my god, you are. That’s adorable. In a terrifying, wolfish way.”

I wish I knew what her words mean, but the warmth in her voice suggests they are no insult. I continue the teeth-baring, and she laughs again.

“Okay, Rok,” she says, and hearing my name in her voice sends another pulse of that strange warmth through me. “So we’ve established who we are. Now we just need to figure out where we’re going.”

She turns again, scanning the horizon, and I am struck by how small she seems against the vastness of the dust. So fragile. So alone.

Except she is not alone. She has me.

The thought comes uninvited, and with it, a fierce protectiveness that surprises me with its intensity. I found her in the dust. By the laws of Xiraxis, that makes her mine. Mine to protect. Mine to keep safe.

Mine.

The word settles into me with a weight that should be alarming, but instead feels right. Inevitable, even. There is no undoing this. It simply is. Like the sky. Like the dust. She does not know it yet, but she is no longer alone. She will never be alone again.

I move to her side, studying the terrain as she is. The dust offers little in the way of landmarks, but I know these lands well. I have hunted them since I was barely out of the Giving Stone.

She will need water soon. Food. Shelter from Ain, who is already climbing higher, its heat intensifying with each passing moment. The cave was safe, but she will not return there willingly. Not when she is so determined to head to the rival clan’s territory.

I make a decision. If I cannot convince her to stay where it is safe, then I will go with her. I will guide her through the dust, keep her from the dangers she cannot see, cannot understand.

I will keep her alive, this strange, soft creature who has somehow spoken my name aloud and made it sound like something precious.

“Rok,” she says, and I turn to find her watching me, her head tilted slightly to one side. There is something in her expression—uncertainty, perhaps, or vulnerability—that makes me want to reach for her, to draw her against me as I did when I held her all through the dark. To press my face to her and breathe in her scent. To taste the salt on her skin.

But I do not. I stand, unyielding as my name, and wait for her to show me where she wishes to go.

She points toward a distant ridge, the pale spire of stone barely visible against the hazy horizon. “I think that’s where we need to go. That looks like the place where…” She hesitates, then waves her hand dismissively. “Well, it doesn’t matter what I think it looks like. It’s the only landmark I can see, so it’s our best bet.”

I follow her gaze, recognizing the formation. The Ridge of Shrieking Winds, we Drakav call it in our thoughts. A place where no living creature lingers long…and the last place I would take one I intend to keep alive.

It is a dangerous place, where the sand whips sharp enough to flay skin from bone, where the narrow passages between the stones amplify the howling of the wind until it can drive even the hardiest hunter to madness.

She starts walking toward it without hesitation, her stride determined despite the way her feet sink awkwardly into the sand, even with those strange shields she wears on them.

I do not move.

She takes several steps before noticing that I am not following. She turns, her face pinched as those piercing eyes find mine.

“Well, are you coming?” she calls, gesturing toward the ridge.

I remain where I stand, feeling the heat of the sand beneath my feet, sensing the danger that awaits in those distant ridges. No hunter would willingly approach the Shrieking Winds. Not alone. Not without preparation. And certainly not with a fragile, defenseless female in tow.

She must be protected at all cost. Not put in danger.

“Rok?” she says my name again and my glow reacts as if called, too. “Well?”

I tilt my head, trying to convey without words or shared thoughts that the path she has chosen leads only to death. But she cannot hear me, cannot feel the warning I am projecting with all my strength.

She looks back toward the deadly ridges, then to me again, a sigh escaping her lips. “I have to go, Rok. If you weren’t here, that’s where I’d be heading to.”

Her expression hardens suddenly, eyes narrowing. “But wait, I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t trap me on a cliff. Granted, it was to save my life,” she crosses her arms, pushing up those soft gourd-shaped protrusions on her chest, “so you get a pass for that.”

I understand the frustration in her voice, if not her words. She is worried.

She turns again, taking a few determined steps toward the Shrieking Winds. Then she stops, her shoulders slumping slightly. She does not look back at me as she speaks, but something in her posture, in the sudden softness of her voice, makes my dra-kir ache.

“I guess this is goodbye then, Rok. And…” Her shoulders slump. “Thank you.”

Her tone. The resignation. The disappointment. The touch of sadness. It all cuts deeper than any sandfin could. She intends to leave. To walk into death, alone.