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He did not have to.

When Lina faltered, his pace shortened. When Kesta stepped around a loose piece of black glass, his tail relaxed as though it had been waiting to see whether she noticed it.

She watched him for longer than she intended.

The battered armor. The long horns. The easy strength of his stride. The way every member of his group adjusted to him without obvious signals.

Then she caught herself studying the movement of his tail and looked firmly at Mira instead.

This was ridiculous.

She had been declared dead by her own government and deposited on a world where strangers debated whether she could legally belong to herself. The last thing she needed was physical curiosity about the alien male who had just claimed her in front of witnesses.

Ahead of her, Dreven slowed near a patch of fractured ground.

“The glass on your left is unstable,” he said without turning around.

Kesta looked down. A thin crust of dark stone covered a glowing fissure less than half a step from her boot.

She moved around it.

“How did you know where I was stepping?”

Dreven glanced back over one armored shoulder. There was enough moonlight for her to see the faint amusement in his silver eyes.

“I have been walking this planet longer than you.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“No.”

His mouth curved.

Then he faced forward again.

Kesta stared at his back for several seconds before resuming her place beside Mira.

She still did not trust him.

She had every intention of learning exactly what the word claim allowed him to do before she accepted anything at Ash Camp.

But distrust was no longer the only thing she felt.

She wanted to know why the raiders feared the sound of his horn. She wanted to know why a condemned commander with enough physical power to take nearly anything he wanted had publicly refused the rights his own law offered him. Most of all, she wanted to know what had put that flash of anger in his eyes when he saw blood on her mouth—and why he had controlled it when she told him to leave the matter alone.

That curiosity was probably dangerous.

On Kharon-Veil, Kesta was beginning to suspect most interesting things were.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Claim

Ash Camp was farther away than Dreven had implied.

He had called it a short march, which Kesta stopped believing after the second ravine, the third stretch of glassy stone, and the moment the ground opened beneath one of the raiders carrying recovered supplies. The man disappeared to his waist before the crust caught him, and a blast of heat erupted around his body with the sharp stink of scorched cloth.

Dreven spun at the sound. He did not shout. One sharp gesture sent Keth and another Ash fighter toward the fissure while the rest of the column spread away from the unstable ground. A hooked cable snapped around the raider’s chest, and they hauled him free seconds before the crust collapsed completely.