"Wang." His voice ca out rough, cracked at the edges. "I am sorry. I am truly sorry for what happened."
Wang said nothing. His face gave nothing.
Keal kept going, the words coming out in an unsteady rush like he had been holding them behind his teeth for too long.
"After you left to search for Lin Wan..." He swallowed hard. "The female I had been pursuing ca to . She said she wanted to be my female. I agreed. I was glad." His hands pressed flat against the ground. "It was only after I gave her my mark that she told the terms. That the only way my mark would hold, the only way she would ever bear my cubs, was if I stayed out of your matter with i Xiu. If I did not interfere."
Wang’s expression didn’t shift. But sothing in his eyes changed.
"I didn’t know," Keal said. "I swear to you I didn’t know she and i Xiu were working together. By the ti I understood what had happened, it was already done. My mark was on her. And in the beast world..." He didn’t need to finish that sentence.
Wang knew.
Cubs. The promise of cubs. There was no sharper blade a female could hold over a male’s throat. It wasn’t just desire. It was lineage. Continuation. Sothing woven so deep into beastman nature that threatening it was as good as threatening the male’s life itself.
"After you left," Keal continued, his voice quieter now, "Da Jun and I decided we couldn’t stay. What was being done was wrong. We both knew it." He glanced toward Da Jun, who had pulled himself upright beside him, pale and unsteady. "But when we tried to leave, she said she would dissolve the mark if we did."
A beat of heavy silence.
"She dissolved it anyway."
The words landed quietly. But Wang heard everything in them.
A dissolved mark was not simply a broken bond. In the eyes of the beast world, it was a verdict. A female dissolving a male’s mark ant he had committed sothing unforgivable, sothing so abominable that she had been forced to sever herself from him. No pack would take in a male wearing that verdict. The beast gods themselves seed to turn away from them, the feral pull creeping in at the edges without the stabilizing weight of a bond to hold it back.
Wang looked at the two of them properly now.
They were weak. The kind of weak that ca from the inside out.
Da Jun hadn’t spoken. He was just sitting there, holding himself upright through what looked like sheer stubbornness.
Keal lifted his head slowly. "I know I have no right to ask anything of you, Wang. I only ca because my conscience would not let stay away." He began to push himself to his feet, slow and unsteady. Da Jun followed. "We will go."
They turned.
"Keal."
Wang’s voice stopped them.
Both males went still.
Wang let the silence stretch for one more mont. Long enough to an sothing.
Then he spoke.
"Welco to my pack."
Four words. Simple. Final.
But in the beast world, those four words were everything. A pack leader’s acceptance didn’t just offer shelter. It dissolved the feral verdict. It said, before the beast gods and any who would question it, that these males were claid. That whatever had been said about them before no longer stood.
Keal turned back slowly, his expression unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with his weakened body.
Da Jun blinked hard, just once, like he was making sure he had heard correctly.
Wang t their eyes. His own expression was still calm, still asured. But there was nothing cold in it anymore.
"You left when it mattered," Wang said. "That counts for sothing."
He turned back toward the belongings they still needed to finish packing.
From the side, Qin Mo had watched the entire thing without a word.
His golden eyes moved between Wang and the two newly accepted males, and sothing quiet moved through his expression.
He said nothing about the situation, but kept it in mind.
The silver leopard who had lost everything and was already, quietly, carefully, building it back.
And at the center of that rebuilding, as always, was Lin Wan.
Qin Mo picked up the bundle he had set down earlier and resud packing without comnt.
But his thoughts did not quiet so easily, it was churning.
. . .
In the coldera, The river was clear all the way to the bottom. One could see the stones beneath the surface, smooth and pale, the small jewel-bright fish darting between them unbothered by her presence. Lin Wan crouched at the bank and unwrapped the pork, both pieces from a wild boar Wang had brought down before he and Qin Mo left to retrieve the rest of their belongings.
She rolled up her sleeves and got to work.
Washing at properly was sothing her grandmother had drilled into her, she believed that cleanliness in the kitchen was next to godliness. Lin Wan scrubbed, rinsed, turned the pieces over and scrubbed again. The cold river water ran clear around her hands.
"Grandma would be satisfied if she saw how many tis I washed this ats," she murmured to herself.
She carried everything back up and set up near the outer edge of the caldera, close enough to the treeline to have shade but open enough to work. The stone pit Qin Mo had used before still held its shape. Lin Wan rebuilt the fire carefully, coaxing it from spark to steady fla with dried bark and thin branches before feeding it larger wood.
She hung the clay pot over the fla first.
Water. Pork bones. A generous pinch of salt.
While the broth began its slow work, Lin Wan turned her attention to the second portion of at. She had already sliced it thin, the way her mother used to, each piece roughly the sa width so they would cook evenly. She laid them out on a flat stone beside her and began preparing everything else.
The garlic ca from Weiwei’s system store, smooth pale cloves that Lin Wan crushed with the flat of her hand the way she had seen done a thousand tis in cooking shows, She peeled them quickly, crushing and rough chopping until the sharp clean sll of it rose up and made her own eyes water slightly.
Salt. Pepper. Cumin.
She mixed the spices together in one of the small clay bowls, tasted a pinch against her fingertip, and nodded to herself.
Good enough.
The second pot, shallower and wider, went over the fire next. Lin Wan added a small amount of rendered fat she had saved from the preparation, watching it lt and shimr before it began to smoke lightly at the edges.
That was when she added the garlic.
The sound it made hitting the hot fat was imdiate and violent and deeply satisfying. The sizzle crackled up sharply, and then the sll hit, rich and sharp and warm all at once, garlic blooming open in the heat, filling the air around her so fast she took an involuntary breath of it and felt her own stomach respond with embarrassing enthusiasm.
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