Li Hua had a gift for patience.
Not the passive kind. Not the kind that sat still and hoped. Her patience was the kind that moved quietly in the dark, that planned seventeen steps ahead, that waited until the exact right mont and then struck with the precision of soone who had been sharpening the blade for months.
She had been waiting for Bai Yue to co ho.
The Dragon Peaks had been an unexpected complication. When the scouts reported that the entire Thousand Fang family had been swept into the sky on a golden dragon’s back, Li Hua had set down her tea and stared at the wall for a very long ti.
Dragons, she had thought. Of course.
She had adjusted her tiline. No longer 10 days. She was good at adjusting.
But now the latest report sat on the table in front of her, the ink still fresh, the ssenger still breathing hard in the doorway.
The dragon descended at midday. The family has returned to Thousand Fang.
Li Hua stood up.
~
The problem with Tiě Xióng was not his size, though his size was considerable. It was not his strength, though she had watched him knock grown n unconscious with a single blow. It was not even his stubbornness, though that was legendary.
The problem was that he still, after everything, after all of it, looked at her like she was the one who needed protecting.
He was in the doorway before she reached it.
"No," he said.
Li Hua did not slow down. "Move."
"Li Hua." His voice had weight to it. "Think about what you’re doing."
"I have been thinking about it for enough ti." She stopped one step away from him, her chin tilted up, her eyes steady. "I have thought about it every day since you ca back from that village looking like soone had rearranged your entire understanding of the world. I have thought about it through every scout report. Through the dragon peaks. Through—" She stopped. Took a breath. "I have been very thorough, Tiě Xióng. You don’t need to ask to think."
Sothing shifted in his face. "She has cubs."
"I know."
"Young ones. She just ca back from—"
"I know what she just ca back from." Li Hua’s voice was poison. "I know everything about her at this point. The hydra. The monkeys. The soup that made a dragon princess weep." A pause. "The three husbands who would burn the world for her. The baby who chose the Burning Sky." She looked at him directly. "I have been paying very close attention."
Tiě Xióng studied her face. He was good at reading her, better than most people. It was one of the things she had always respected about him, even when she wished he wasn’t quite so perceptive.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
She smiled. It was a small smile. "Nothing permanent."
"That’s not an answer."
"It’s the only answer you’re getting." She stepped forward. He didn’t move. She pressed her palm flat against his chest, feeling the solid, immovable wall of him, and looked up. "You went to see her. You ca back different. You looked at and saw second best, and you didn’t even try to hide it well." Her voice did not waver. She was proud of that. "I am not going to ask you to apologize for it. I am not going to cry about it. I am going to go and I am going to handle this, and you are going to move."
Tiě Xióng’s jaw tightened.
She pushed.
He was a mountain. She knew that. She had always known that. But mountains moved for the right kind of pressure applied at the right kind of angle, and she had spent years learning exactly where to push.
He stepped aside.
She walked through the doorway.
"Li Hua." His voice followed her into the evening air.
She did not turn around.
"If you hurt those cubs—"
"I am not going to hurt anyone." She said it clearly, to the path ahead of her, to the dark that was settling over the hills. "I am going to remind her that happiness this loud attracts attention. That’s all."
She started walking.
After a mont, his footsteps joined hers.
She had not expected that.
She did not comnt on it.
~
Thousand Fang was asleep by the ti they arrived.
This was the part Li Hua had planned most carefully. The timing of it. Usually, it was a very chaotic affair. But eventually silence ca. Eventually the fires banked and the voices stilled and even the most vigilant sentinels let their attention soften in the small hours.
She had counted on that.
She had also counted on the panther cubs sleeping in a cluster near the eastern huts, as they apparently always did, tangled together in a pile of black fur with their father’s snoring audible three huts away.
The scouts had been very thorough.
"Here," Tiě Xióng said quietly, very quietly, the word barely a breath. He had stopped walking.
Li Hua stopped beside him.
The village stretched out below them, silver and still under the twin moons. She could see the huts. The dying fires. The garden that one of the grandmothers had apparently planted near the guest quarters, a very aggressive little garden with territorial tendencies.
And near the eastern edge, exactly where the scouts had said, three small dark shapes curled in a sleeping pile.
The panther triplets.
Miao Miao. A-Li. Xiao Hei.
She had learned their nas. She had been very thorough.
"Li Hua." Tiě Xióng’s voice had dropped so low it was almost nothing. "This is not—"
"Shh." She was already moving, her footsteps a ghost against the grass.
She was not going to hurt them. She had ant that. There was a difference, a vast and important difference, between hurting soone and making soone understand that the world was not as safe as they believed it to be. Between cruelty and demonstration.
She was going to take the triplets sowhere comfortable. Sowhere warm and close, just far enough to be discovered missing. She was going to watch what happened when Bai Yue woke up to find them gone.
She was going to see exactly how fierce this new woman really was.
And then she was going to know whether she was dealing with soone worth fearing, or soone whose luck had simply run too long.
The sleeping pile was very close now.
She crouched.
Miao Miao’s ear twitched in sleep.
A-Li shifted, his small black paw curling tighter.
Xiao Hei snored very softly, which was endearing and also irrelevant.
Li Hua reached out—
A sound.
Not large. Not alarming. Just a soft creak.
Li Hua’s hand stopped.
She looked up.
Mo Xiao was standing in the shadow of the eastern hut. He had not shifted. He was in his human form, arms crossed, his amber eyes catching the moonlight with the flat, evaluating quality of a predator that had been awake for a very long ti.
He looked at her hand, still hovering above his sleeping children.
He looked at her face.
He did not say anything. He did not need to. The quality of his silence said everything, it said I know what you are, I know what you ca here to do, I have been watching since before you cleared the tree line, and I am deciding.
Li Hua straightened slowly.
The mont stretched between them, thin and taut.
Then, very quietly, Mo Xiao stepped forward. He placed himself between her and the sleeping cubs. His amber eyes did not leave her face.
"You are in the wrong place," he said.
Li Hua held his gaze for a mont. asuring. Reassessing.
So, she thought. Not unguarded after all.
She straightened fully.
"My mistake," she said, and her voice was perfectly even, perfectly pleasant, giving him nothing.
She turned.
Tiě Xióng was waiting where she had left him, at the edge of the village, his face unreadable. But his eyes had been on the scene the entire ti. She knew that without looking.
She walked back to him.
Neither of them spoke until the village lights had faded behind the tree line, until the only sounds were the forest and their own footsteps on the path.
"He was awake," Tiě Xióng said.
"Yes."
"He knew."
"Apparently."
A pause. "That surprises you."
Li Hua was quiet for a mont. The twin moons hung above the trees, casting long, pale shadows across the path. She turned the new information over, examining it the way she examined everything, looking for the shape of it.
Mo Xiao had been awake. Standing guard in the dark, in silence, waiting. Not because he had been warned. Because he was the kind of Alpha who understood that sothing coming was not a question of if but when, and who had simply decided to be ready.
That was not luck.
That was not the desperate clinging of soone who had built sothing fragile and knew it.
She has people like that, Li Hua thought. Clever people.
She filed that away.
"We’re going back," Tiě Xióng said. It was almost a question.
"Hmm," she neither confird nor denied his statent. But....yes. She would have to be more careful and thorough.
She started walking. The path wound ahead of them through the dark, back toward their own territory, back toward the plans she was going to have to revise.
Again.
"Li Hua." His voice was careful. "What are you thinking?"
"I’m thinking," she said, "that I underestimated her."
She kept walking.
"I won’t do it again."
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