diff --git a/src/llama-memory-hybrid-idx.cpp b/src/llama-memory-hybrid-idx.cpp
index 93b468784a..3972ce9ce2 100644
--- a/src/llama-memory-hybrid-idx.cpp
+++ b/src/llama-memory-hybrid-idx.cpp
@@ -55,6 +55,10 @@ llama_memory_hybrid_idx::llama_memory_hybrid_idx(
         // K-shift must not rotate them while the stream copies in the same update still apply
         hparams_idx.rope_type = LLAMA_ROPE_TYPE_NONE;
 
+        // fool llama_kv_cache into thinking this is a MLA cache, so it won't cache V tensors
+        hparams_idx.n_embd_head_k_mla_impl = model.hparams.indexer_head_size;
+        hparams_idx.n_embd_head_v_mla_impl = model.hparams.indexer_head_size;
+
         LLAMA_LOG_INFO("%s: creating indexer KV cache, size = %u cells\n", __func__, kv_size);
 
         return new llama_kv_cache(