Now that he had handled one of the traps, Xiao Zai took the lead while Fan Jiang followed behind, awkwardly dragging the dead tiger with them.
Xiao Zai couldn't shake the feeling that sothing wasn't right, along with Chu Hean's scent there should be fresh tracks on the snow, allowing both Xiao Zai and Xiao Yuan to find him.
But not only where there no fox tracks, his scent was faint as well.
More concerning were the abundant hoof tracks. Why had a horse passed through here? The more Xiao Zai inspected them the more concerned he got. The edges were very defined, but it had been snowing intermittently since morning, just a light powder, but enough to blur tracks like these.
Xiao Zai stood still waiting for Fan Jiang to reach him.
Fan Jiang stopped at his side, letting go of the tiger, and panting loudly. Xiao Zai pawed at the horse tracks, hoping to make his aning clear. For a mont it seed like Fan Jiang wasn't going to understand him, but monts later he started scenting the ground, chasing a trail.
Xiao Zai carried the tiger himself, and followed after him, his own senses told him that Xiao Yuan was not very far away.
---
Chu Yun kept looking out into the dark forest, as if expecting to see any obvious sing of activity. He jumped whenever a tree swayed between the others, imagining it being displaced by the speed of a run, or the violence of a battle. Any sound made him cling to the edge of the viewing box in anxiety, expecting soone to erge from the tree line at any mont.
As the night fell, torches were lit all around the clearing, but they didn't make it any easier to look into the dense pine forest.
"Will you stop your fretting? It's making dizzy just to look at you," the Queen Dowager said, fanning herself despite the bitterly cold weather, which the braziers lit in their viewing tower were doing little to dispel.
She had been making similar comnts for the whole evening, and well into the night. At first Chu Yun found them funny, but as the hours passed with no sign of Xiao Zai they were beginning to grate on him.
Beside the Queen, Gu Wei snorted while looking up at Chu Yun's pinched expression. "What is it? Are you worried because you can't intervene and save the day?"
That comnt made Chu Yun freeze. Was that why both of them were there? To ensure he didn't do anything reckless?
"I'm far too old to require supervision," he said, biting back what he really wanted to say.
The Queen Dowager let out a rattling laugh, snapping her closed fan against the armrest of the portable sofa on which she was sitting. "Ah, no one is ever too old for that, believe . But you can rest assured that no one here is supervising you..."
"Her royal Highness is your witness," Gu Wei said, a smirk playing at the corners of his lips.
"Witness for what?" Chu Yun asked, completely at a loss.
The Queen Dowager smirked. "Everything can happen during a hunt, I don't want my son to cast any suspicion about your role in any of it," she flicked her fan open again, "therefore, I'll be your witness, that you spent the entire night up in this tower, and were accounted for at all tis."
She leaned towards Gu Wei with a smile filled with false apology. "Bailiu's word is worthless in my son's eyes, so he doesn't count." She paused. "No offence ant, of course."
"None taken," Gu Wei said, surprisingly, he looked like he ant it.
Chu Yun supposed if he were to shift into his fox form and discreetly enter the woods he could help Xiao Zai, but there were too many variables involved with sothing like that. He wouldn't try to attempt it, not in front of these many people.
But the Queen Dowager's words made him worry that she new sothing he didn't.
With his stomach churning with anxiety, Chu Yun turned his gaze once again towards the dark pine woods.
---
Xiao Zai knew the mont he heard the sound of hooves that they'd caught them. He let go of the tiger's carcass and sprinted in the direction of the sound.
He broke through a thicket of boxthorn and surprised a fully human Chu Hean in the middle of climbing behind a cloaked man on a horse.
He threw one look at Xiao Zai from above his shoulder and pulled sothing from his wrist, throwing it in his direction. "Give my brother this."
The rider didn't wait and set his horse into a full gallop. Xiao Zai gave chase, but it beca apparent right away that as fast as he was, he wouldn't be catching up to the horse, cutting through the dense woods like a dark shadow.
Chu Hean's behaviour was puzzling, but the day was about to break and he didn't have ti to stand there and try to figure it out. Xiao Zai returned to the spot where the red bracelet had fallen and picked it up carefully between his teeth. In Chu Hean's absence it would have to do.
---
Chu Yun along with several others had climbed down the towers, and was waiting close to the passage into the woods. The sky was taking on the dark purple of dawn, and the hunt would be over soon.
If no one returned before the incense stopped burning, there would be no winners.
He had begun entertaining all kinds of terrible thoughts about Xiao Zai lying sowhere in the middle of the forest, injured or worse, when a black wolf ca out of three line dragging a huge white tiger by the ruff.
Chu Yun broke away from the crowd surrounding him and rushed towards the wolf. Xiao Zai ca to a stop in front of him and dropped the dead tiger at his feet. At the sa ti, servants surrounded him, carrying robes to hide him behind and for him to change into as he shifted back into his human form.
Before they could exchange a single word, a silver wolf ambled out of the forest. Xiao Yuan was dragging sothing between his teeth too, but instead of a successful catch it was another, smaller wolf.
Dead, much like the tiger.
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