Maurik finished the cut cleanly.

  The buffalo had already given up its weight—blood drained, hide peeled back, muscle exposed in broad, honest slabs. No ceremony to it. Just work that kept people alive and left no room for thoughts that didn't serve the body.

  The tribe ate quietly.

  Not feasting. Not celebrating. Eating.

  Grease on fingers. Warm meat passed hand to hand. Children given first pick, elders second. The rest sorted itself out without argument. Hunger had a way of organizing people faster than authority ever did.

  Ethan sat where Maurik told him to sit and ate what he was handed.

  When he finished, Maurik didn't look at him.

  "Sleep," the hunter said. Not a suggestion. "You move wrong when you don't."

  Ethan nodded and didn't argue.

  The tent flap was already open when he reached it.

  Ressa lay inside, curled on her side, back to the entrance. Boots off. Knife set within reach but untouched. Her breathing was slow, deep—deeper than he'd heard since before everything broke.

  She did not look at him.

  He did not speak.

  Ethan eased inside, careful not to disturb the bedding, and lay down on the opposite side. His back faced hers, space between them deliberate and maintained. No touch, no shift toward each other. Just shared shelter and shared silence.

  Azrael hovered briefly near the tent pole.

  "You're not even pretending this is temporary," she observed.

  "I'm not pretending anything," Ethan replied quietly.

  He closed his eyes.

  Sleep took him almost immediately.

  Different this time. Not the half-rest he'd grown used to, where his mind stayed braced for interruption. Not the thin dozing of someone who expected to be woken by fear.

  This was heavy. Anchored.

  When he woke, the light was already high.

  Ressa was still there. Still turned away. Still breathing evenly.

  Ethan lay still for a moment, registering the unfamiliar weight in his limbs. The absence of tension behind his eyes. The way his thoughts felt slower, less scraped raw.

  He hadn't slept like that in months.

  That unsettled him more than the lack of a knife at his throat.

  He rose quietly and left her undisturbed.

  Outside, the camp was already moving. Meat being hung. Hides stretched. Voices low and steady. Survival continuing without drama.

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  Ethan went straight to the vessels.

  They sat where he'd left them—thick ceramic jars marked with shallow, imprecise symbols. Not commands. Boundaries. He knelt and unsealed the first.

  The centipedes inside had changed.

  Longer now. Thicker. Their segmented bodies darker, edges catching light with a dull metallic suggestion rather than shine. They did not thrash. They did not flee.

  They turned.

  Toward him.

  Ethan exhaled slowly.

  "Okay," he murmured. "So you're still you."

  Azrael drifted closer, careful. "Those are not the same creatures you put in there."

  "No," Ethan agreed. "But they're not something else either."

  He watched them move. How they oriented. How their attention tracked heat, proximity, intent.

  He'd seen this pattern before. Not with insects—with parasites.

  The maggots he carried beneath his tongue, in his ear—those had been language-touched, altered to serve perception and translation. Faithful, in their way. Utility-bound.

  These were different.

  "What makes these different from those?" Azrael asked. "The maggots, the insects that live in you—aren't they the same principle?"

  "No," Ethan said quietly. "Those serve without taking. Perception. Translation. They're symbiotic—I feed them, they give me function. Passive function."

  "And these?"

  "These are predators," he said. "Gu made for violence. Most are. That's what makes them dangerous."

  Azrael drifted closer, studying the vessels. "You're keeping predators under your skin."

  "Yes."

  "That you have to feed."

  "Yes."

  "With bloodshed."

  Ethan met her gaze. "With bloodshed."

  She was quiet for a moment. "That's not the same as what you've been doing."

  "No," he agreed. "It's not."

  He reached for the second vessel.

  These centipedes pressed against the ceramic briefly, then settled. Their movement was communal—not a hive, not a swarm. A paired awareness, looping back on itself.

  "They're waiting," Azrael noted.

  "Yes."

  "For what?"

  Ethan thought for a long moment.

  "For me to decide what I am to them."

  He did not open the vessels fully.

  Not yet.

  Instead, he began the ritual.

  Not a grand one. No chanting. No dramatic invocation. Just structure.

  Salt. Iron filings. A shallow cut across his palm—not offered, just acknowledged. He let the centipedes scent him through the ceramic, then sealed them again.

  "No feeding," he said calmly. "Not yet."

  Inside the vessels, movement surged—then stilled.

  Conditioning mattered as much as magic.

  He repeated the process twice more. Same result. Less agitation. More attention.

  "Bond before reward," Azrael said slowly. "You're treating them like animals."

  "Like partners," Ethan corrected. "Who don't get to decide the terms."

  When he was satisfied—when the pressure in the vessels eased instead of escalated—he stood.

  "I need a hunt," he said.

  "Alone?"

  "Yes."

  Azrael frowned. "That's risky."

  "So is everything worth keeping," Ethan replied.

  He moved into the open plains, far enough from camp that no one would follow. The savanna breathed around him—wide, exposed, honest in its dangers.

  He found the gazelle quickly.

  Fast. Alert. Alone.

  Perfect.

  Ethan did not rush.

  He grounded himself. Let the shadow settle. Then—slowly, deliberately—he opened one vessel.

  The centipede did not leap.

  It flowed.

  Up his arm. Beneath his skin. Pain flared sharp and brief, then reorganized into something colder. He held still, breathing through it, refusing to move until the creature stilled as well.

  Only then did he allow the second.

  Together, they settled.

  He did not command.

  He invited.

  The bond snapped into place like a joint seating properly for the first time.

  When the gazelle bolted, Ethan moved.

  Not faster than before.

  More decisive.

  The iron-edged filament emerged at his will, short and brutal. One cut. Clean. The animal fell without prolonged suffering.

  Ethan knelt beside it, heart pounding—not with thrill, but with awareness.

  "Now," he said quietly.

  He allowed them to feed.

  The pressure eased. The bond tightened.

  When he withdrew the filaments, they obeyed.

  Back beneath his skin. Dormant. Sated.

  Ethan stood alone in the tall grass, blood drying on his hands.

  This wasn't power.

  It was responsibility with teeth.

  When he returned to camp, Ressa was awake and watching.

  She didn't ask what he'd done.

  She didn't need to.

  That night, when she entered his tent again, neither of them commented.

  They slept back to back.

  And again, he slept better than he had any right to.

  The story did not change all at once.

  It rarely did.

  But something had begun to settle—inside him, beneath his skin, and beside him in the dark.

  And none of it would let him pretend it didn't matter.