Chương 45: I Found You

Akane emerged from the ruined mountainside laughing. She showed no sign of struggling beneath the dust and broken stone I had buried her under. Akane simply stepped out of the crater as though being thrown through a mountain had been nothing more than a mild inconvenience, laughter still warm on her lips. Under normal circumstances, that would have been enough to sour my mood.

Instead, some small and thoroughly treacherous part of me lingered on the sound and decided it liked hearing her laugh far more than it had any right to. The debris slid from Akane's shoulders as she climbed free of the crater. Dust streaked the silver-white fabric of her gown; one sleeve had torn near the shoulder, and a thin line of blood traced the corner of her mouth. Her molten-gold eyes never left mine as she wiped the blood away with her thumb.

Then, with deliberate slowness, she drew it from her skin with her tongue. My gaze stayed fixed on her as I descended onto the mountainside, landing hard enough to send a web of cracks spreading beneath my boots. Ravenport glittered in the distance behind me, its towers illuminated beneath the night while Vaust Royale crowned the city in violet light. Every alarm system in the building was probably screaming itself hoarse after I had demolished the grand entrance.

Somewhere inside Vaust Royale, Celeste was undoubtedly producing a noise audible only to dogs and emotionally unstable daughters, but I ignored the thought as Akane tilted her head toward me. Her fox ears twitched atop her dark hair while nine enormous tails swayed lazily behind her, each moving through the night air with a graceful confidence that bordered on arrogance. She studied me for a moment, amusement lingering in her eyes.

"Was that your greeting?" The question carried far too much satisfaction for someone I had just brutally attacked. My patience thinned immediately.

"No." Her smile widened, apparently pleased by the answer. I stepped toward her, letting the distance between us close.

"That was only the introduction." Then I hit her. There was no Primordial Ruin behind the strike, only the raw physical strength to make my displeasure unmistakable without ending the fight before it had truly begun. My fist slammed into Akane's crossed arms, unleashing a shockwave that tore across the slope and split the ground beneath us. The strike drove her backward several feet, her shoes carving twin trenches through the rock before she managed to stop herself. She had blocked me just in time.

Yet when her guard lowered, I found no concern in her expression. Her eyes were brighter than before; alive with an excitement that made it painfully obvious she was enjoying this.

"You really are upset." The delight in her voice only encouraged me to close the distance again. I drove my knee toward her stomach, but Akane twisted aside at the last instant. Two tails curled around my thigh and redirected my momentum, turning me with her across the slope. I immediately brought an elbow toward her collarbone. She ducked beneath it, caught my wrist, and countered with a strike toward my ribs. My forearm intercepted her hand, and the collision fractured the ground beneath us.

My expression hardened, but I could feel the emotion beneath it threatening to show anyway. Anger was there, certainly, but so was something far more difficult to admit.

"You left me waiting for nearly a century." The words came out heavier than I intended, carrying far more hurt than accusation. Akane's amusement disappeared. Something gentler entered her expression as she finally seemed to understand just how deeply her absence had affected me. I punched it off her face. Akane tore sideways through a ridge of black stone, shattering it around her.

She hit the ground on the other side, rolled with the impact, then planted one hand against the slope and smoothly pushed herself back to her feet as though I had done little more than inconvenience her.

"That hurt slightly."

"My aim will improve." Her smile returned almost immediately, carrying warmth that had no business surviving after I had just punched her through solid rock.

"My sweet Helena, your aim is perfect." There it was again, that effortless way Akane spoke my name. There was none of the caution or uncertainty that should have existed between two people meeting for the first time in this life. Instead, she said it with an intimacy that unsettled me, warm with affection and so deeply familiar that it sounded as though my name had rested on her tongue for countless years. And perhaps it had. To Akane, I was not a stranger.

She had known another Helena, loved her, fought beside her, and spoken that name so many times that even death had failed to rob it of meaning. Hearing that same affection directed at me… stirred something painfully familiar, as though a part of me recognized the sound before my mind could understand why.

Buried within the shard were memories of another Helena who had heard Akane speak her name countless times, enough that she would have known that voice across a battlefield and turned toward it without a second thought. But that Helena was supposed to belong to another life, not this one. Yet every time Akane spoke my name, the distance between us felt less like that of two strangers meeting and more like the space left behind by someone I had somehow forgotten. I did not know what to do with that feeling.

I wanted even less to acknowledge the ache it left behind, especially when a treacherous part of me was already waiting to hear her say my name again. Before that realization could take root, I moved. Akane came for me at the same instant, meeting me without the slightest hesitation. We collided with enough force to crack the air between us. The pressure of the impact swept across the mountainside, bending trees farther down the slope and scattering loose debris in every direction.

Neither of us gave ground for more than an instant before the fight swallowed us again. My fist met her palm. Her elbow struck my guard. I drove a knee toward her ribs, only for her hand to redirect it before she answered with a shoulder that forced me half a step sideways. Then her tails joined in. All nine of them... Akane moved as though they were simply extensions of her body, each tail acting independently while somehow remaining perfectly coordinated with everything else she did. It was absurdly unfair.

One curled around my ankle the moment I stepped too deep into her reach, threatening my balance just long enough for her to slip away from my next strike. Another caught my wrist and pulled my fist off course before releasing me almost immediately. I recovered my footing and pressed in again, only for a third tail to sweep between us. This one did not strike. Its soft fur brushed across my cheek with such unexpected gentleness that my body reacted before my thoughts could catch up.

I went still for the briefest instant, caught off guard by the warmth of it and by a familiarity that had no right to exist between us. The shard pulsed inside me in immediate response, sending a wash of golden heat through my chest. Akane noticed. A knowing glimmer entered her eyes, followed by the smallest hint of satisfaction, as though that single involuntary reaction had told her far more than I ever intended to reveal. That was enough. I caught the offending tail before she could pull it away.

For once, genuine surprise broke through Akane's composure, her eyes widening as my fingers closed firmly around the soft fur. The sight cut cleanly through the confusion twisting inside me and replaced it with a sharp, deeply satisfying sense of victory. Finally... At last, I had caught her off guard. Before Akane could recover, my grip tightened around the tail while my free hand seized another. I planted my feet, turned with the momentum, and put my entire body into the motion.

For one deeply satisfying moment, an ancient nine-tailed fox became a remarkably elegant throwing weapon. Akane went hurtling down the mountainside. She struck the slope hard, bounced through the impact, and crashed down again before finally digging her claws into the rock and bringing herself to a stop just short of the tree line. From higher on the slope, I watched her recover with two loose strands of black-and-white fur still caught between my fingers. Her gaze slowly lifted to meet mine.

I expected anger after being hurled down a mountain by her own tail. Perhaps pain, or at the very least some wounded pride. There was none. Only heat… A slow, dangerous delight burned through those eyes and sent an answering flare through the shard inside my chest. Akane rose as dust slipped from her body. Her tails spread wider behind her now, curling and uncurling with considerably more energy than before.

Her smile had changed with it, the teasing still present but now threaded with a deeper, more dangerous hunger. It had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with me, which was considerably more troublesome.

"You really did miss me."

"I'm going to bury you again." Her ears perked.

"Promises already? We have barely reunited." I attacked before she could say anything worse. Listening to Akane speak was rapidly becoming hazardous. She slipped beneath my first strike and moved inside my reach before I could redirect it, driving her shoulder into my chest hard enough to force me back half a step. The moment my balance shifted, three tails curled around my waist and yanked me toward her. My response was immediate. I drove my forehead into hers.

The impact snapped through both of us, yet Akane only laughed, warm and breathless, as though being head butted had somehow improved the experience. At that point, I was beginning to have serious concerns about the romantic judgment of my previous self. Very serious concerns. Before Akane could make matters worse by speaking, I twisted free of her tails, swept her legs out from beneath her, and drove her toward the ground. She caught both of my shoulders on the way down and dragged me with her.

We hit the mountainside together. The impact sent a circular web of fractures racing outward beneath us, throwing dust and fragments of rock into the air. When the haze began to clear, I realized Akane had landed beneath me. Her face was only inches from mine. Molten-gold eyes stared up at me beneath waves of black hair. Her fox ears twitched once, and those irritatingly attractive lips curved into the same unbearable smile. For the briefest moment, neither of us moved.

After everything that had happened since Akane stepped into my lobby, the sudden stillness felt almost unnatural. We were surrounded by fractured stone and settling dust, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her breath and see the faint amusement lingering in her eyes. Then her expression softened.

"Hello again." The words were barely more than a whisper, but they struck with far more weight than they had any right to. My jaw tightened.

"I don't remember the first time." Akane's gaze remained locked with mine, but the amusement in her expression faded. For a moment, something far more vulnerable took its place, the weight of memories that only one of us could truly remember.

"I do." There was no teasing in her voice now, only a tenderness that made the words land far harder than I was prepared to handle. I did not know what to do with that tenderness. So I chose violence.

"Then you can suffer twice." I shoved away from her and regained my footing, but Akane was already moving. One of her tails swept low toward my legs, forcing me to leap over it. She anticipated the movement. Before my feet could touch the ground, another tail came down from above and caught me across the shoulder, knocking me sideways into a nearby boulder with enough force to reduce it to rubble. Dust and fragments of rock scattered around me as I stepped from the wreckage, my patience rapidly wearing thin.

My gaze settled on Akane as I pointed toward her.

"No magic." Akane's ears lifted with exaggerated innocence.

"That was a tail."

"That tail had intent."

"All of my tails have intent."

"Then I dislike all nine of them."

"They're devastated." Several of the tails curled inward behind her as though personally wounded by the accusation. I stared at the display, only for one tail to droop even farther as though genuinely wounded by my rejection. My expression flattened in response, and the faint twitch at the corner of Akane's mouth told me she was barely holding back a laugh.

"You taught them theatrics."

"They were born expressive."

"They are limbs, not actors."

"They disagree."

"I will revoke their voting rights." The amusement in Akane's eyes brightened into something far more dangerous.

"They enjoy it when you threaten them." That caught me off guard just long enough for Akane to notice, and the way her smile deepened told me she intended to enjoy every second of it. My eyes narrowed.

"What?" Akane's expression turned almost innocent.

"Nothing."

"That was not nothing. You made a face." Her lips curved a little farther.

"Say it." The amusement in her eyes sharpened into something warmer and far more dangerous, as though she had just discovered another weakness she intended to cherish.

"You are very attractive when you're jealous of my tails." For a moment, I could only stare at her. Of all the conclusions she could have reached, naturally she had chosen the most ridiculous one.

"I'm not jealous of your tails." Akane's gaze flicked toward the two I had thrown her with before returning to me.

"You did grab them rather possessively."

"I grabbed them because they were interfering with the fight."

"And then you held on."

"I used them to throw you down a mountain." Her smile eased into something far too pleased with itself.

"I know." The answer carried an unmistakable fondness that made the simple words feel far more intimate than they had any right to. Akane tilted her head afterward, one ear twitching as a tail curled lazily at her side, almost as though it shared her amusement.

"My favorite kind of affection." A confusing mixture of embarrassment, frustration, and a warmth I had no intention of examining any further tightened inside my chest. The change must have shown on my face, because Akane caught it immediately, and her smile widened with unmistakable satisfaction. At that point, continuing the conversation seemed actively detrimental to me. I lunged.

Akane came forward at the same instant, meeting me with a delighted grin as our collision sent another violent tremor through the mountainside. Whatever fragile intimacy had existed between us a moment earlier vanished beneath fists, tails, and shattered rock as the fight carried us farther up the mountain. We did not truly fly, but every leap carried enough force to launch us from broken ridge to cliff face and from one collapsing section of mountain to another.

I caught Akane by the arm and drove her into a vertical wall. She planted both feet against the stone, pushed away, and tackled me through a cluster of ancient pines. Trees snapped around us. Despite the destruction spreading across the mountainside, an unspoken rule had existed between us from the moment the fight began. Neither of us intended to kill the other. I never reached for Primordial Ruin, and Akane never called upon her foxfire.

Even our physical attacks carried a deliberate restraint, avoiding the heart, throat, spine, and skull whenever the full force behind a strike could have made it lethal. Akane showed me the same restraint, carefully keeping every strike just short of becoming lethal. By our standards, the entire exchange was remarkably controlled. The mountain would have disagreed. Our fight lasted twenty-four minutes.

I only learned the exact duration later, when Adrian informed me with the particular exhaustion of a son who had apparently watched his mother and her future mate turn a perfectly respectable mountainside into a geological argument. For those twenty-four minutes, neither of us slowed down. We tore across the slope in a relentless exchange of strikes, throws, counters, and Akane's nine infuriating tails finding increasingly creative ways to interfere with me.

A natural stone arch disappeared after I drove her through it. Not long afterward, two tails caught my wrist and used my momentum to send me crashing into a cliff face. I repaid the favor by catching Akane around the waist and driving her into the mountainside hard enough to alter the course of a nearby stream. Somewhere between one collision and the next, however, Akane decided violence alone was no longer entertaining enough.

One of her tails slipped around the back of my neck, and before I could catch it, she used the leverage to pull herself directly into my space. Her body came close to mine, and for the briefest instant I thought she intended another strike. Instead, Akane leaned toward my face. Her lips passed just beside my cheek, close enough that the warmth of her breath brushed across my skin.

"Too slow." Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. The words were barely out of her mouth before I caught her and threw her over my shoulder.

"I was not trying to kiss you." Akane twisted gracefully through the air, still looking entirely too pleased with herself.

"Tragic." She landed somewhere behind me. I was beginning to understand that fighting this woman required considerably more patience than I possessed. The battle continued across the mountain, carrying us over fractured ridges and eventually across a ravine when I tackled her clear to the opposite side. Akane returned the favor soon afterward. Six tails caught me almost simultaneously and drove me back against the slope, spreading around my body before I could tear myself free.

One of her hands settled against my throat as she stepped closer, but there was no pressure behind her grip. She was not trying to choke me, only hold me in place, but that distinction became considerably harder to ignore when her thumb began to move. It traced slowly along the edge of my jaw, and my body went still for the briefest moment, just long enough for Akane to notice the reaction I had failed to hide.

The playful satisfaction in Akane's expression slowly faded as she studied me, replaced by something softer and far more dangerous to my composure. Tenderness… It was not the triumphant look of someone who had found an opening in a fight. She looked at me as though that brief reaction beneath her thumb had given her something she had been waiting years to see. For a suspended moment, neither of us moved.

Her hand remained at my throat, her thumb resting against my jaw; while those eyes searched my face with an affection I still had no idea how to accept. The warmth gathering in my chest became intolerable. So I punched her in the stomach. Akane shot backward across the slope, the sudden blow tearing her tails away from me. She twisted gracefully in the air and landed several yards away, her shoes sliding across the rock before she regained her balance. A startled breath escaped her. Then she laughed.

Not mockingly, but delighted. And the way she looked at me afterward made an uncomfortable realization settle into place. Akane had been enjoying herself from the beginning. That much had been obvious. Every collision seemed to brighten her eyes, every successful strike drew another laugh from her, and every threat I made only seemed to encourage her. I had misunderstood what truly delighted her. It was not the destruction or even the fight itself, but everything she managed to draw out of me along the way.

She enjoyed the anger when her teasing finally got beneath my skin, the frustration whenever one of those impossible tails slipped through my guard, and the hesitation that betrayed me whenever she came too close. Most dangerous of all were the quieter moments, when something warmer surfaced before I could force it back down. Akane noticed every one of them. And somehow, she seemed to treasure them. This was more than a battle to her.

She was learning the woman standing in front of her, comparing me against the Helena preserved in her memories while discovering all the ways I had become someone different. Every familiar reaction seemed to reassure her, while every new one only drew more warmth into her eyes. There was no disappointment there. No longing for me to become exactly who I had once been. She seemed genuinely delighted by the woman I was now. That realization unsettled me more than any strike she had landed.

Akane was not merely enjoying our fight. She was enjoying me. Each blow I landed only seemed to deepen the warmth in her expression. I could throw her through stone, threaten her, or curse those insufferable tails, and she would return looking more pleased than before. By now, her eyes were glowing with excitement, and even her smile had lost some of its teasing edge in favor of something far more breathless.

Apparently, the worse my mood became, the more delighted Akane seemed to be, which only confirmed two things at once: she was unreasonable, and she was absolutely impossible. I drove a punch toward her ribs, but Akane caught it on her guard. My kick followed immediately, only for one of her tails to curl around my ankle and shove me backward.

"You're doing that deliberately." Her brows lifted.

"Doing what?"

"Enjoying this." The smile returned instantly.

"You noticed."

"That was not a denial." Akane studied me for a moment, and some of the teasing faded from her face.

"I have waited a very long time to have you angry with me… again." I stopped, again… That lingered in my mind. One simple word, yet it landed so incredibly hard.

"In the other life, you fought me for an entire day when we met because I annoyed you." Despite myself, the image was remarkably easy to believe.

"That sounds accurate."

"You called me arrogant."

"Also accurate." A laugh escaped her.

"Then you threw me through a shrine." The corner of my mouth threatened to rise.

"I'm beginning to like this forgotten version of myself." Akane's amusement faded into something warmer.

"She liked me too." The certainty in her voice caught at something inside me, and I immediately pushed against it.

"I doubt that."

"She bit me." That earned a pause.

"Considering what I am, that could mean several things." Her molten-gold eyes brightened with unmistakable memory, and the smile that followed carried far too much intimacy for my comfort.

"In your case?" Akane leaned slightly closer.

"Every one of them was flattering." Her words caught me more effectively than any strike had, leaving me momentarily without the sharp response I usually relied upon. The satisfaction that slowly spread across Akane's face made it clear my silence had betrayed enough. I refused to give her anything more. My fist was already moving. Akane met me without hesitation, both hands rising as our strikes collided between us.

The impact split the stone beneath our feet, fractures racing outward while neither of us surrendered so much as an inch. We stood close enough that I could feel the heat coming from her body and the soft movement of her tails curling through the air around us. Inside my chest, the shard burned gold in response to her presence. Akane leaned closer as our strength remained locked between us, one hand braced against my shoulder while neither of us gave ground.

"You waited."

"I complained." Her gaze never left mine.

"You waited." She repeated.

"I threatened you often." A faint smile touched her lips, but there was no teasing in it now.

"I felt some of them." That stopped something inside me cold. The fight continued around us, yet for one suspended moment it faded into insignificance. Akane's amusement slipped away, revealing a vulnerability she had kept carefully hidden until now.

"The shard could not speak to you," she explained softly.

"Not clearly. If I had tried to force more of myself through it, I could have damaged the beacon that was guiding me back to you." Her gaze softened, but this time the tenderness carried something heavier beneath it: guilt.

"But I could see you." My eyes widened at that realization. Akane held my gaze.

"The entire time, Helena. I watched through the shard whenever it opened itself to me. I saw you grow stronger. I watched you build Vaust Royale, fight your enemies, and carry burdens you never should have had to carry alone." The words sank into me one by one.

"You were watching me?" Her ears lowered slightly.

"Yes." A rush of memories surfaced all at once: quiet nights when the shard had warmed without explanation, moments when I had spoken to it despite expecting silence, threats muttered into empty rooms, and questions I had asked only because admitting how badly I wanted her to hear them had been far more difficult. Akane had never been able to answer. But she had been there through all of it. Watching me…

"I was trapped on the other side of that connection," she continued, her voice tightening with an emotion she no longer tried to hide.

"You spoke to me, and all I could do was listen. I wanted to tell you I was alive, that I was still trying to find my way back to you, but the shard would not carry my voice. So I watched, waited, and trusted that we would be reunited when the time was right." The mountain wind moved between us, lifting strands of black hair across her face while her eyes remained fixed on mine.

"And Helena…" Her voice softened until there was almost nothing left between us but the words.

"I saw how often you looked for me anyway." The way she spoke my name carried an intimacy that struck somewhere far deeper than I was prepared for.

"You thought of me very loudly." Akane's words distracted me just long enough to create an opening, and she seized it immediately. My slowed strike never had a chance to land before she caught it with effortless ease. The understanding in her eyes made it clear she knew exactly why I had hesitated. That bothered me more than the failed attack. She had seen straight through the anger I had been using as a shield, noticed the heat creeping along my throat, and found the confusion beneath both.

Worst of all, I could no longer pretend my feelings toward her were simple enough to bury beneath another punch.

"You took too long." The accusation left me quieter than I intended. Akane did not look away.

"I know."

"You left something inside me but remained absent."

"I know." My jaw tightened as everything I had spent years refusing to examine pressed suddenly against the surface.

"You gave me feelings that I don't understand." That finally changed her expression. The warmth in her eyes remained, but the playfulness disappeared beneath a weight of regret.

"They did belong to you," she answered quickly.

"They just belonged to a version of you that this life had not become yet." I did not want to hear that, so I answered the only way that still felt uncomplicated: with another punch. Akane caught the strike against her guard. I followed with another, then another, driving her backward beneath a relentless series of strikes. She met each one with her guard, but the rhythm between us had changed. The anger still burned inside me, only now it was fractured by everything her words had dragged to the surface.

Memories slipped through those cracks whether I wanted them or not. The warmth of Akane's tails surrounding me within that impossible dream. Her voice trembled with apology as she tried to explain what had happened. Her lips brushed against my forehead before we parted. The warning she had left behind, the hope she had placed in me, and her unwavering belief that if we remained together in this life, we could change the future waiting for us. None of it should have belonged to me.

I did not want memories from another life telling me what Akane was supposed to mean to me. Knowing another Helena had loved her was one thing. Deciding whether I could love her now was something else entirely, and that decision belonged to me. What unsettled me most was Akane herself. I had known her only through a fragment of her soul and the few moments since she appeared in my lobby, yet having her here somehow eased an ache I had carried for centuries without ever admitting it existed.

That realization only made me strike harder. My fist hammered into her guard again and again, forcing her steadily backward across the fractured slope. Akane yielded beneath each blow without taking her eyes from mine, and the understanding in them made it increasingly difficult to pretend I was still fighting only the woman standing in front of me. Somewhere between one strike and the next, Akane's guard stopped being what I was trying to break through. I was fighting everything she represented.

Years of waiting had left their mark on me. So had the warmth that filled the space where Akane should have been, the future still closing in around us, and memories of a Helena who had loved her deeply enough for those feelings to survive even another life. Buried beneath everything else was the truth I feared confronting most: the memories were no longer the only thing binding us.

Akane had been standing in front of me for less than an hour, yet I was already reacting to her, not merely to the woman preserved inside the shard. That frightened me far more. Memories could be blamed on another life. What I was beginning to feel now could not. Akane's expression suddenly changed. Her smile disappeared, but there was no anger in its place. She watched me for another heartbeat, saw something in my face, and seemed to reach a decision.

By the time I realized what Akane had decided, it was already too late. My fist was driving straight toward her center when she deliberately lowered her guard, leaving herself completely open. My eyes widened just before the strike landed cleanly. The impact tore through her body and into the stone behind her, sending fractures racing across the mountainside. Any ordinary creature would have been reduced to blood and fragments. Even the strongest monsters I knew would have been sent flying by a blow like that.

Akane was not. Instead of yielding to the impact, she forced herself forward through it, closing the distance between us as though the strike had never been meant to stop her. Before I could react, her arms were around me, drawing me firmly against her. Her tails followed almost at once. One curved across my back while another wrapped around my waist, drawing me closer.

A third slipped beneath my arm, another settled over my shoulders, and the remaining tails folded around us until black fur fading into silver-white surrounded me completely. Warmth enveloped me from every direction, stealing whatever response I should have made. I… completely froze. Akane held me tightly, yet there was nothing forceful in the embrace. She was not restraining me or trying to claim some victory over the fight.

She was simply holding me with a gentleness made heavier by everything that had kept us apart. There was something almost desperate beneath it, as though she had endured my absence for too long to willingly accept even another inch of distance between us. The way her arms and tails closed around me carried one unmistakable truth. Now that she finally had me within reach, letting go was the last thing she intended to do.

"There," she whispered near my ear.

"Caught you." I pressed against Akane's shoulders and tried to create some distance, but she refused to release me. When I twisted in her arms, the tails surrounding us simply shifted with the movement, sliding across my back, waist, legs, and shoulders without ever tightening enough to hurt. Soft fur brushed against me from every direction, surrounding me in an infuriating amount of warmth and comfort. Completely unacceptable… My strength had not gone anywhere.

I was still perfectly capable of forcing my way out of her embrace. The problem was that my desire to do so had become considerably less reliable. I could break free whenever I wanted. Probably… Assuming I actually wanted to, which I obviously did. There were limits to the indignities I was willing to endure. Being defeated by an unreasonable amount of fox fluff was one of them. As though determined to prove otherwise, one of Akane's tails swept gently across my cheek.

The fingers braced against her shoulder loosened before I could stop them. I felt betrayed by my body. Akane seemed to notice, but for once she offered no teasing remark. She simply drew me a little closer and rested her cheek against my hair.

"I found you." The words were barely more than a whisper, yet somehow they quieted everything inside me. The fight did not vanish all at once. It simply began slipping away piece by piece until the anger, the tension, and the need to keep resisting no longer felt quite as important. Cool mountain air moved across my skin while dust drifted through the moonlight and the last fragments of loosened rock finally settled along the slope.

Far behind us, Ravenport glittered beneath the night, vast and brilliant, yet even the city seemed strangely distant compared with the woman holding me as though she had crossed death, time, and ruin simply to reach this moment. My hands were still pressed against Akane, but somewhere along the way they had stopped trying to push her away. At some considerably more troubling point, my fingers had curled into the fabric at her back and held on.

"You're late." The words came out quieter than I intended, carrying none of the anger they would have only minutes earlier. Akane's arms tightened around me.

"I know." For a moment, that was enough. I had already demanded explanations. I had already thrown every accusation I had carried at her, sometimes with words and considerably more often with my fists. There was little left to say that we had not already beaten into the mountainside. And yet, standing here wrapped in her arms, one thought refused to leave me.

"You're actually here." Akane's expression faltered, surprise briefly overtaking everything else. Her hold on me softened rather than loosened, and when she spoke, the emotion in her voice was impossible to mistake.

"I always intended to."

"That's considerably easier to claim after arriving." A laugh escaped her, warm against my hair.

"I suppose I deserved that."

"You deserved several mountains."

"I noticed." The corner of my mouth almost betrayed me with a smile, though I managed to suppress most of it. Akane eased back just enough to look at me, though neither her arms nor her tails showed any intention of releasing me.

"I wondered what you would be like." My brow lifted.

"You spent years watching me through the shard."

"I watched you live." Her fingers moved gently against my back.

"That's not the same as standing here with you." I understood what she meant. Watching my life through the shard had never allowed her to actually share it with me. Akane's expression softened.

"And apparently, standing here with you involves considerably more blunt-force trauma."

"But it was earned." She just smiled at that. There was something fundamentally wrong with this woman, and yet I was beginning to understand exactly why another version of me had fallen for her. More troubling still, the realization no longer unsettled me nearly as much as it should have. Fortunately, a much safer complaint came to mind.

"You did make Celeste unbearable." Akane blinked. Then she laughed softly.

"I refuse responsibility for anything Celeste has become."

"That may be the wisest thing you have said since arriving." Her laughter deepened, and despite myself, something dangerously close to one of my own threatened to follow. I buried it against her shoulder before she could notice. Judging by the way her tails curled more snugly around me, she noticed anyway.

"I wanted to reach you sooner." The tails surrounding me loosened slightly but made no effort to actually let me go. Cowardly tails…

"My core was damaged, and I was not whole enough to cross the distance between us. The shard was the only thing I could send ahead."

"You could have found some way to reach me." Akane's ears lowered slightly, and for once there was no easy answer waiting behind her smile.

"I tried. More times than you know."

"Then why didn't you force something through the shard?" Her gaze remained on mine, but the emotion in it changed.

"Because I could have damaged it." I frowned.

"You would still have found me."

"Yes." The answer came without hesitation. That made me pause. Akane's fingers tightened faintly against me.

"Finding you was never the part I was afraid of." Something in her voice quieted the rest of my thoughts.

"I was alone, Helena. My core was shattered, my body was barely holding together, and recovery took far longer than I ever imagined it would." Her eyes lowered for a moment before returning to mine.

"The shard was the only part of you I had." My anger faltered.

"Through it, I could still see you. I saw the life you built, the strength you gained, and the family that slowly gathered around you." Her voice softened.

"On the worst days, that connection was sometimes the only thing that reminded me why I was still fighting to recover." The mountain seemed strangely quiet around us.

"If I had damaged the shard trying to force my voice through it, I could have severed the only connection I still had to you. I would have survived, and in time I would have recovered enough to reach you on my own." Akane's expression tightened with an honesty that left nowhere for humor to hide.

"But I would have had to endure all those years without even being able to see you." Her hand rose slowly to my cheek.

"I couldn't do that." That explanation struck somewhere my anger could not follow. For years, it had been easy to resent her silence because I had imagined Akane somewhere distant, simply unable to reach me. I had never considered that the shard had been keeping both of us from being entirely alone. Her fingers brushed gently along my cheek, and I made no attempt to move away. My mind might not have remembered the touch as its own. But I still found myself leaning ever so slightly into her palm.

"Thank you." I had no defense against that, or at least none worth reaching for. The sharp, orderly machinery of my thoughts had dissolved into something far less useful, leaving me caught between embarrassment, unease, and a comfort I was beginning to find dangerously easy to accept. One of Akane's tails moved slowly along my back, and my eyes nearly drifted shut before I caught myself.

"You're softer than you pretend."

"I'm not."

"You are currently in my arms."

"I was captured."

"You stopped resisting."

"I'm conserving strength." Her smile returned.

"For what?" I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Akane leaned closer, and the shard within my chest answered immediately, its warmth spreading through me until it no longer felt like some foreign piece embedded in my soul. It pulsed with her presence, steady and familiar, almost like another heartbeat answering my own. My fingers tightened in the ruined fabric of her gown. This was where I should have created distance between us. Recovered what remained of my dignity.

Found something cutting to say and reminded her that I was still perfectly capable of throwing her through another mountain if necessary. Instead of stepping away, I tightened my grip on the ruined fabric of her gown and drew her toward me. Then I kissed her. There was no rush to it, no violence left from the fight we had just carved across the mountain. My lips met hers with a caution that surprised even me, as though some part of me needed to know what it felt like without a memory telling me first.

The answer came immediately. A wet and warm sensation exploded through my body. I had chosen this for myself, not because of the memories or the life another Helena had lived, but because I wanted Akane here and now. The certainty settled through me with startling ease, and for once, even Akane seemed completely unprepared for what I had done. Surprise swept across her features as the woman who had spent the entire fight effortlessly reading me finally found herself without an answer.

I was thrilled, and at the same time I felt like victory was within my grasp. Then she kissed me back. Any satisfaction I might have taken from catching her off guard vanished immediately. One hand slid behind my neck as her arms tightened around me. Akane kissed me with the same confidence she brought to everything else, as though whatever patience had carried her had finally exhausted itself.

Every coherent thought I possessed collapsed at once, taking my carefully prepared defenses, sarcastic remarks, and dignified refusals with it. I should have found that offensive. Instead, my hands tightened against Akane and pulled her closer as the kiss deepened. She kissed exactly the way she fought: direct, relentless, and with enough heat to make the cold mountain air around us completely irrelevant.

There was no room left to pretend it was tactical, no angle from which I could call it strategy, and certainly no dignified explanation for the way my body had betrayed every objection my mind had attempted to make. Eventually, Akane eased away from the kiss, leaving me completely silent in her arms, an occurrence rare enough to be mildly concerning. Her forehead came to rest gently against mine as I tried to recover whatever remained of my thoughts.

When I finally focused on her again, that infuriating smile had returned, carrying an impossible mixture of affection and wicked satisfaction.

"There you are." I probably had words somewhere, but language felt impossibly distant while Akane's tails continued brushing warmly along my back, waist, and legs, slowly carrying the last scraps of my composure somewhere I had no immediate intention of retrieving them. Then a distant voice tore through the night.

"MOTHER!" I closed my eyes as Akane's ears twitched at the approaching voice, and whatever remained of the moment collapsed instantly. Naturally, my daughter had managed to kill the moment completely.

Celeste descended onto the broken slope in a rush of wind and stormlight, landing on a fractured ledge with all the grace of a woman who had sprinted through an entire hotel, terrorized security, acquired emergency transportation through questionable means, and crossed the city fueled entirely by emotional catastrophe.

Her silver-blonde hair was thoroughly disheveled, and her eyes practically glowed with excitement as she pointed at Akane, then at me, and finally back at Akane again as though confirming what she had just witnessed.

"You kissed her." I slowly turned my head toward her. Celeste pressed both hands against her chest.

"You kissed her first," Celeste repeated, as though the words needed to be stated twice before reality would accept them. I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came. That silenced her. Celeste's excitement faltered as her eyes widened in genuine disbelief.

"Mother?" Still, nothing came. Akane's arms rested comfortably around my waist while her tails remained wrapped around nearly everything else, making the situation spectacularly unhelpful. Celeste's mouth fell open.

"She broke you." Akane smiled without releasing me.

"I have that effect on her." I glared, but she was unbothered. That only made the situation worse. Celeste produced a noise that should not have been physically possible. A moment later, Aura crashed onto the ridge behind her in human form, stumbling forward with all the indignation of a dragon that had expected a battle and instead discovered whatever this was.

"Where's the threat?" Celeste immediately pointed at Akane.

"There." Aura's violet eyes narrowed as she studied Akane, who met the scrutiny without hesitation. For several long seconds, neither of them looked away, and even the ruined mountainside seemed to hold its breath. Then Akane smiled warmly.

"You must be Aura." Aura blinked.

"I heard you became Helena's dragon." Aura straightened immediately.

"Daughter." Akane's smile deepened.

"Even better." Aura looked uncertain whether she had just been complimented or whether she should bite Akane anyway. Adrian arrived next with considerably more composure. A shadow gate opened beside the ridge, and he stepped through before Rowan emerged behind him wearing a grin he was making very little effort to conceal. Nadia followed, her gaze moving between Akane and me with open emotion.

Malcolm and Vera appeared behind them, with Vesper perched on Vera's shoulder and staring at Akane as though he had discovered a serious rival for dramatic presence. Adrian took in the devastated mountainside before turning his attention to me, his gaze eventually settling on Akane's arms and nine tails still wrapped securely around my body. His expression remained perfectly composed, which was precisely how I knew he was suffering.

"Mother."

"No." There… a word. I wasn't completely broken yet. A small, pathetic victory, but I was willing to take it. One of Adrian's brows lifted almost imperceptibly.

"I have not asked anything."

"No." The same word left my lips as if repeating it would make everyone disappear, relieving me from the extreme embarrassment I was feeling at this moment. His gaze shifted toward Akane.

"Is the threat neutralized?" Akane smiled. Celeste drew in a sharp breath beside him. I answered before my daughter could inflict any further damage.

"There is no threat." Celeste leaned toward Adrian as though she intended to whisper, though her voice carried easily across the entire ridge.

"There is romance." My gaze snapped toward her.

"I will throw you off this mountain." Her grin became unbearable.

"You already used the mountain for flirting." Akane laughed beside me. I closed my eyes. Nadia stepped forward before I could decide whether family members could legally be disowned retroactively.

"Lady Akane." Akane's expression changed immediately when she saw Nadia and Rowan. The teasing softened. It did not disappear completely. I was beginning to suspect Akane was physically incapable of existing without at least some amount of amusement. But warmth overtook it.

"Nadia... and… Rowan." Her voice gentled.

"I'm glad you made it." Rowan rubbed the back of his neck, his usual grin subdued by the memory.

"We came looking for her." Nadia's eyes moved toward me, emotion brightening them.

"We knew if we could reach Mother, everything would change." Akane followed her gaze. She was still holding me, her arms comfortably around my waist while her tails remained wrapped around nearly everything else, as though personal space were a philosophical concept she had rejected long ago. A quiet understanding passed through her expression. Akane's gaze met mine, and something warm passed between us before I looked away. Unfortunately, Celeste noticed. A dangerous little smile crept across her face.

Without bothering to look at her, I pointed in her direction.

"Do not." She immediately covered her mouth with both hands. That lasted approximately three seconds.

"This is the best day of my life," she whispered through her fingers. Aura frowned at Akane.

"I'm still deciding whether I dislike her." Akane's ears perked at the declaration.

"That seems fair." Celeste spun toward Aura.

"You cannot dislike her. Mother kissed her."

"I can dislike whatever I want," Aura retorted.

"You liked me eventually." Aura stared at her.

"Did I?" Celeste gasped.

"We're friends."

"We're coworkers."

"We're sisters." Aura's expression shifted into genuine alarm, and Adrian rubbed the bridge of his nose. Akane looked at me, openly entertained by the spectacle. I sighed.

"You see what took you so long to find." Her amusement softened.

"Yes." Akane looked around at them.

"At a family." The word settled over the ruined ridge with far more weight than something so simple should have carried. The problems waiting beyond Ravenport had not changed. Four Demon Spires remained, the future Rowan and Nadia had warned us about was still approaching, and the year ahead promised very little peace. But one thing had changed. Akane was here.

Not as a presence hidden within my soul or a memory belonging to another life, but as a living, breathing woman wrapped comfortably around me and apparently determined to remain there. She was warm, infuriating, and somehow capable of dulling the sharpest edges of my thoughts simply by standing beside me. And beneath every objection I could still think of, one dangerously possessive word surfaced before I could stop it. She was mine… damn it. I couldn't even stop the thought from repeating within my mind.

Celeste leaned toward me.

"Mother?"

"Stop." Her eyebrows rose.

"You don't even know what I was going to ask."

"You were going to ask whether Akane is moving into the top floor." Celeste froze as Akane's smile immediately sharpened into something wicked, prompting me to turn a wary look toward her.

"You too, not happening." It was hard enough being close to her right now; if we lived in the same space, how difficult would life become? Akane leaned closer, her tails swaying contentedly behind her.

"I crossed fate, death, and worlds to find you, Helena. Surely you can spare me a room." Celeste looked ready to burst as I glanced from Akane to her, then over the rest of my gathered family. Every face held some mixture of amusement, emotion, suspicion, or eager anticipation, and the sight of all of them watching me at once made one thought surface with perfect clarity. I missed demons. They were easier to handle.

"Fine." Celeste screamed. Aura groaned. Adrian released the long, exhausted sigh of a man already imagining the consequences. Akane did none of those things. She simply looked at me and smiled. There was no triumph in it, at least not over the room. That had never been what she wanted. The satisfaction in her eyes belonged to something far more significant. Her tails curled a little more securely around me.

She had crossed death, endured years of separation, survived everything standing between us, and finally reached the woman she had refused to let go of. And now she had no intention of going anywhere. Looking at her, I realized something deeply inconvenient. Akane had not won a room on the top floor. She had found her way back into my life. Apparently, throwing her through a mountain had done absolutely nothing to prevent that. If anything, I suspected it had only encouraged her more. Damn fox.