Kael
The silence that followed the sighting didn’t last long.
It couldn’t.
Every second we stood beside the road was another second for whoever we’d just spotted to get farther away, and judging by the expression on the guard’s face after lowering his binoculars, none of us were under any illusion about what we’d just witnessed.
We hadn’t stumbled across an abandoned trail.
We’d found an active one.
The watcher might’ve vanished back into the trees, but the damage was already done. If he belonged to the settlement, and all signs pointed toward him belonging to the settlement, then he was almost certainly on his way to warn the others.
I looked from the tree line toward Drake.
“Well,” I said, breaking the uneasy quiet that had settled over the group, “so much for stopping to rest be
