Page 100 of Evan and the Alpha

“You’re the one who’s mated to him. Can’t you find him through the bond?”

I stare at Yafir for a full minute, then swallow nervously. The answer is no. I can’t feel anything through our bond. I have no idea where Evan is or if he’s even alive. There’s nothing at all, not even a thread of hope.

“That’s nothing but a fairy tale,” I tell him, turning my head.

An uneasy hush falls over the group. They’re all thinking the same thing as me. I can’t feel Evan through the bond because he’s dead.

If he was dead, though, wouldn’t I know? Wouldn’t there be … something from the bond, some kind of pain or something?

I pretend to sniff at the wind. “This way,” I say, pointing, just as Darwin turns in the opposite direction and says, “This way!”

We stare at each other for a moment. Darwin gestures to the instrument in his hand. “The compass is finally working,” he says, almost apologetically.

“Oh.”

“What’s it do?” Yafir asks, leaning over to look at it.

“It contains a magnet, which pulls the dial to the north—the pole of the planet. It will always find north, and from there, you can find the other directions and determine which way to go.”

“At least,” Vince says, “that’s the way it works on Earth. Things might be different here.” He gives Darwin a cautionary look.

Darwin pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “That’s true, but I’ve no reason to believe it would be any different. The compass is pointing north now, so south would be this way.”

“Are you sure we want to go south, though?” Yafir asks, and we’re all quiet for a moment.

“It’s the best lead we have,” Vince says. “That the shuttle took a southerly path when it left the ship.”

All eyes on me. I cross my arms and glare at the other side of the river—I can’t even see the other bank. What if Evan’s standing right across from us? We wouldn’t even see him in this.

I shake my head. “South,” I say, plodding past the humans and Yafir.

We trudge south for what feels like a very long time. It’s difficult to tell if it’s getting darker because the storm is intensifying or if the suns are setting and we’re losing daylight. Visibility gets worse and worse, until I can hardly see my own hands in front of my face.

“We have to stop,” I announce, and I almost feel the sigh of relief. That irritates me even more.

We don’t bother with the tents; the wind will just rip them down again. Instead, we hunker down under blankets, ensuring our faces are well-protected from the flying, scratching sand.

I’m not sure how any of us sleep, not with the wind howling and moaning like that. It goes on and on, all night long.

The storm blows itself out, though, which is a relief. We make quick work of shaking out the blankets and rolling them up. Enochtra is rising much earlier than Nomantru at this point in the cycle, illuminating the opposite bank of the river. We plod south, toward where Nomantru is rising. I think that must be much more reliable than some compass with a magnet, but Darwin swears by the little gold thing.

We mount a dune, then slide into the valley, almost tripping over three smaller dunes that turn out to be very solid.

And groaning. I stumble to a stop, then whip around, staring at the largest of the mounds, which wriggles to life, shaking sand off his scales. A kroakka emerges, snorting sand out of his nostrils, blinking it from his eyes. He swings his tail, then rises to his feet. His eyes widen in surprise; I’m sure mine do the same. “Sobek,” he says.

“Ge-Ro.”

He laughs, almost like he’s delirious, then spies Yafir standing behind him. “And you too, brother,” he says, and Yafirnods.

Ge-Ro bounces from foot to foot—hilarious to watch, actually, because he’s such a hulking mountain of a kroakka—then crouches down, landing a hand on one of the other mounds.

He shakes and a dark-haired human emerges, blinking sand from dark eyes. Min. She crinkles her nose, then spits sand. “Ugh,” she says, then looks at the crowd gathering around her. “Vince?” she asks when her gaze lands on the other human.

He nods, and she sighs with something like relief. “Thank God,” she mutters, then shakes herself free from the rest of the sand. Both she and Ge-Ro work at uncovering the other mound.

Another human. My heart stops. Evan.

His normally golden skin is the color of egg shells, as though someone bleached him. He coughs.