Chương 47: The Shape of Home

By the time the heat between us finally faded, I had received more than enough attention to last any reasonable person for the foreseeable future. Attention… Yes… That's what I'll call it. That was the word I had chosen, and I intended to remain committed to it. It was dignified, suitably vague, and most importantly, did not require me to acknowledge that I had spent a significant portion of the night discovering Akane was somehow even more unreasonable in bed than she was in combat.

Considering our introduction had involved an extended battle across a mountain, that was saying quite a lot. I stared toward the ceiling in the darkness, hoping it might offer some guidance regarding what I was supposed to do with that information. It offered nothing. Sometime afterward, Akane had asked whether I would allow her to use me as a hug pillow for the remainder of the night.

"Asked" was perhaps too generous a description. By the time the question reached me, she already had two arms, one leg, and several tails wrapped around various parts of my body with enough confidence to suggest my answer was largely ceremonial. I had agreed anyway, though technically the answer had been less dignified than I would have preferred. The actual response might have escaped between several other sounds that history had no need to preserve, but the end result was undeniable.

I was now lying in my bed wearing little more than a long shirt and underwear, staring toward the ceiling with the internal alarm of a woman who had faced demon armies with considerably less confusion. Akane slept beside me. Even that description felt inadequate. She clung to me with an ease that suggested personal boundaries had become an antiquated concept sometime during the night. Her body rested along my side, one arm draped across my waist while one leg remained tangled comfortably with mine.

Her face was tucked near my shoulder, and her tails surrounded us above and beneath the blankets until black fur tipped in white formed an absurdly soft prison around us. A prison I had absolutely no intention of admitting was comfortable. Her breathing remained slow and even, utterly untroubled despite the fact that she had fallen asleep pressed against one of the most dangerous beings on the continent.

Most people possessed at least some instinctive fear around me, which I considered perfectly healthy, entirely sensible, and perhaps even a little polite. Akane, however, slept with her throat resting dangerously close to my mouth and her entire body relaxed against mine. Her heartbeat remained steady while the presence of her soul rested close enough to the shard inside me that the two resonated faintly in the quiet. There was no fear in Akane and no trace of caution in the way she rested against me.

She trusted me with the unconscious certainty of someone who had already decided there was nowhere safer she could possibly be, and I could not determine whether that realization irritated me or frightened me more. Where Akane was concerned, those two emotions had become increasingly difficult to separate. Against my better judgment, I lowered my gaze toward her and immediately regretted the decision for an entirely different reason.

Even asleep, she was unfairly beautiful, which felt like yet another advantage she had absolutely no business possessing. Her long black hair spilled across my pillow in loose waves, framing a face that looked almost deceptively peaceful in sleep. One fox ear twitched faintly at some sound beyond my hearing, the pale fur along its inner edge catching what little light reached the bed.

I had already learned that nearly everything about Akane possessed an unreasonable softness whenever she was not using it to throw me across a mountain. Her lips rested slightly parted, and a faint trace of satisfaction remained in her expression, as though even sleep had failed to erase how pleased she was with everything that had happened between us. Looking at her stirred possessiveness I was nowhere near prepared to examine.

Some instinctive part of me already wanted to claim her as mine, even while my better judgment remained hesitant to accept that certainty after everything that had happened between us. The thought arrived with such effortless certainty that my body tensed before I could stop it. I had known Akane for less than a day in this life, regardless of whatever history our souls might share, and already some reckless part of me had decided to claim her. Surely it was too soon to be thinking like that.

The fact that I had to convince myself only made the situation worse. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, my mind had another subject waiting to torment me. At some point during the night, Akane had casually informed me that pregnancy was possible among her kind through magic. I still had no idea why she had decided that particular revelation belonged anywhere near the circumstances in which she delivered it.

My composure had already been hanging by whatever thread she had not managed to tear apart, and then she had placed an entirely new possibility inside my head as though it were harmless information. It was not harmless. I already had seven children, or close enough that arguing the distinction seemed pointless. Six were bound to me through blood, while one exceedingly stubborn dragon had declared herself my daughter with enough conviction that any alternative classification had long since become impossible.

Adrian, Celeste, Malcolm, Vera, Nadia, Rowan, and Aura already constituted more family than I had ever imagined possessing. At this point, I was dangerously close to maintaining a dynasty with fangs. That should have made Akane's revelation easy to dismiss. Instead, I could still hear the maddeningly casual way she had delivered it.

"Among my kind, pregnancy is possible through magic." She had spoken while tracing lazy circles across my skin, apparently unconcerned that those few words had just introduced an entirely new future into a mind already struggling to survive the present. I had stared at her in stunned silence. Akane had simply smiled. Then, because mercy was evidently not one of her stronger qualities, she had explained that such a thing required both intention and agreement. Perfectly reasonable conditions.

Far less reasonable when delivered while one was lying beneath a nine-tailed demi-goddess who had already kissed coherent thought into submission. Why tell me at all? Was she merely teasing me, planting the possibility inside my head because she enjoyed watching me malfunction? Was she thinking about it herself? Testing how I might react? Knowing Akane, the answer was probably an infuriating combination of all three. She shifted in her sleep and nuzzled closer against my shoulder.

My attention drifted back toward the ceiling as I accepted the increasingly ridiculous possibility that, after everything I had survived, a sleeping fox making quiet sounds against my shoulder might finally be what defeated me. Unfortunately, Akane was not the only woman determined to complicate my life. Earlier, she had remarked that far too much of Celeste's scent lingered on me, and although the comment had been delivered casually, I had caught the brief change in her expression.

It was not anger so much as an unmistakable possessiveness; the kind that made it clear Akane was less than pleased by how thoroughly my daughter had claimed my personal space over the centuries. More troubling was how much I had enjoyed seeing that reaction from her, a detail I intended to bury somewhere no one would ever find it. At the time, I had simply wished Akane luck convincing Celeste to give me any meaningful amount of space.

A few centuries had passed since I turned her, yet Celeste still behaved as though remaining within arm's reach of me were a personal obligation. She linked herself to my arm, rested against my shoulder whenever the opportunity appeared, wandered into my office without invitation, monitored my moods with unsettling accuracy, and offered both compliments and unsolicited assessments of my emotional health with equal confidence.

Personal space, as far as Celeste was concerned, seemed to be little more than a poorly conceived suggestion. Throwing her out would only encourage her to return through a window; asking politely would somehow become an emotional tragedy, and ordering Adrian to intervene would earn me the exhausted stare of a man who had already lost that war several lifetimes ago. The more inconvenient truth was that I did not actually want Celeste gone.

Somehow, I had built a family almost entirely from people who attached themselves to me with relentless affection, and Akane had arrived, taken one look at that arrangement, and apparently decided the appropriate response was to cling even harder. Perhaps the universe is finally collecting payment for centuries of emotional avoidance. That thought should have been enough to occupy me, yet something far more troubling had been circling beneath everything else since the previous evening. The imprint…

That ridiculous mate bond had apparently survived a destroyed future, the breaking of Akane's core, the passage of centuries, and whatever force had carried pieces of our former lives into this one. I still could not understand how the imprint had survived any of it. I remembered nothing of agreeing to the bond, nothing of Akane placing it upon my soul, and nothing of the life in which I had loved her, fought beside her, fed from her, trusted her, or chosen her. Yet the imprint remained.

It had awakened the moment Akane returned, responding to her with a certainty my memories could not provide and recognizing a bond I had no conscious recollection of forming. That alone was enough to make the situation feel deeply suspicious, especially when fate had already taken far too many liberties with the structure of my existence.

I hated the idea of some unseen force rearranging pieces of my life without my knowledge, but the longer I considered everything that had happened, the harder it became to ignore the possibility forming beneath that irritation. What if the Helena who died in that lost future had not disappeared as completely as I believed? What if the soul standing here now was not merely carrying fragments of her but had somehow always been the same one? The possibility should have been easy to reject.

Instead, the longer I examined it, the more disturbingly plausible it became. My existence in this world only made the question harder to untangle. I had awakened as a primordial vampire centuries before Nadia and Rowan were ever sent into the past, and Akane had shattered her core to send them back, not me. Their journey could not explain why I was already here.

Unless something else had acted first, some force none of us understood may have moved my soul long before Akane made her desperate attempt, placing me into this timeline before any of them ever arrived. Once I allowed that possibility into my thoughts, too many details began lining up in ways I did not particularly appreciate. I had awakened centuries earlier than expected. The shard recognized me without hesitation.

The imprint remained bound to my soul despite the destruction of the future in which it had been created. Even Akane had become frustratingly careful whenever I insisted that I was not the Helena she remembered, answering with the precise restraint of someone telling me the truth while deliberately keeping the rest of it just out of reach. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

I did not like where that reasoning led, mostly because I could no longer dismiss it as impossible. There were other pieces as well. In three centuries, I had never found anyone who affected me the way people so often described attraction. Men, women, humans, monsters, nobles, mages, vampires, fae, and even dragons had crossed my path, yet none of them had ever stirred anything deeper than passing appreciation. Beauty existed.

I understood desire well enough in theory and had certainly recognized when someone was attractive. Yet none of them had ever truly fit. I could recognize beauty, understand desire in theory, and appreciate attraction from a distance, but no one had ever reached the deeper instincts beneath it. My body and soul remained indifferent. Then Akane stepped into my lobby. Her voice reached the shard, she looked at me with those golden eyes, and she had the audacity to complain that I kept her waiting for six seconds.

My entire body had responded to Akane with the unmistakable recognition of something long buried finally finding what it had been waiting for, which would have been easier to accept if this were the kind of problem I could solve with violence. Akane released a sigh in her sleep and tightened her arm around my waist, pulling my attention back to the woman at the center of every unanswered question. Against my better judgment, I looked down at her again.

"When exactly do you intend to wake up?" My voice was louder than it probably should have, but I didn't care. She remained asleep. Sleeping people were remarkably inconsiderate conversational partners. Unfortunately, the imprint and Akane's casual revelation about magical pregnancy were not the only pieces of information she had decided to drop into my already overcrowded mind during the night. At some point, with entirely too much satisfaction, she had also informed me that I could feed from her whenever I wished.

The offer alone would have been enough to occupy my thoughts, but Akane had made matters considerably worse by explaining that the Helena she remembered had fed from her before and that she had enjoyed those occasions far more than was helpful for me to know. Everything about the way she described it had been suggestive, from the deliberate wording to the look in her eyes, and by the time she finished, even her tone felt dangerously calculated. The safest conclusion was that Akane was an exceptionally strange fox.

Akane was, in every possible sense, a beautiful, dangerous, unreasonable, soul-imprinting, timeline-crossing fox who had thoroughly disrupted what little remained of my peace of mind. As if that were not enough, she had now casually informed me that her blood was mine to take whenever I wished. Meanwhile, the source of every new complication slept peacefully against me while I was left to sort through the consequences. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the night thinking.

Sleep had never been particularly necessary for me. I could enjoy rest when I chose, but unconsciousness was optional and frequently inconvenient. Even if I had wanted it, Akane's presence would have made sleep difficult. Not because she was uncomfortable. Quite the opposite.

Every time my thoughts began to settle, another detail pulled my attention back toward her: the warmth of her breath against my skin, the weight of her arm around me, the faint twitch of one ear, or the tail resting across my thigh beneath the blankets. More distracting than any physical detail was the quiet resonance between Akane's soul and the shard within mine, a constant reminder that some part of us recognized the connection even while I was still struggling to understand it.

Beneath that awareness rested an even more unsettling truth: Akane trusted me completely. Sometime during the long hours of the night, I had been forced to admit that I did not merely tolerate that trust. I valued it far more than I was prepared to say aloud. By the time morning finally crept through the curtains in pale bands of gold, I was still awake beside her. Far beneath Vaust Royale, Ravenport slowly returned to life.

The city's heartbeat assembled itself in layers as distant engines stirred, harbor horns sounded near the water, elevators began moving between floors, staff changed shifts, and guests started their mornings without the slightest idea that their vampire queen had spent the entire night experiencing an existential crisis because a fox woman had decided to use her as a pillow.

I was still watching Akane when her eyes finally opened, sleep lingering in their golden depths for several seconds before her attention settled completely on me. Being the first thing she looked for upon waking affected me more than I expected, leaving me caught on the simple intimacy of it before I had time to decide what the feeling meant. Akane gave me no opportunity to examine it further.

She leaned in and kissed me without warning, her lips meeting mine with an easy certainty that made it clear she considered this a perfectly acceptable way to begin the morning. A muffled sound escaped me, caught somewhere between protest and surrender, before she finally drew back just enough to let me speak.

"You waste absolutely no time." Her answering giggle carried the rough softness of sleep, and the effect it had on me was entirely unreasonable.

"We have already wasted enough," she murmured, delight gradually sharpening beneath the lingering drowsiness in her voice.

"I have no intention of holding back now." The response that entered my mind escaped through my mouth before I realized what was happening.

"That's somehow thrilling and terrifying at the same time." Akane's eyes brightened immediately. I realized my mistake. Her smile spread with horrifying patience.

"Helena."

"What?"

"You said that aloud." I stared at her.

"No, I didn't."

"You absolutely did."

"I thought it."

"You spoke it."

"I refuse to acknowledge that."

"You cannot refuse something after it has already happened."

"I'm ancient… I can refuse a surprising number of things." Akane laughed and rolled closer until her body pressed fully against mine again.

"Thrilling and terrifying," she repeated with entirely too much enjoyment. Heat immediately climbed across my face. This was not blushing, absolutely not. It was clearly some obscure medical condition that happened to primordial vampires when harassed too early in the morning.

"You misheard me," I retorted.

"I have excellent ears."

"I can remove them."

"You like my ears."

"I tolerate their existence." That was the version of the truth I was willing to give her. In reality, I liked the feel of Akane's fur far more than I intended to admit, and her ears were no exception. Telling her that, however, would only give the fox another advantage she absolutely did not need.

"You touched them last night." My thoughts stopped. Akane's smile became lethal.

"My, my... You remember that part."

"I remember nothing."

"You remember considerably more than nothing."

"I was distracted."

"You were enthusiastic," she beamed. That accusation required immediate retaliation. I grabbed the nearest pillow and pressed it over her face. Akane laughed beneath it. Several tails immediately wrapped around my waist and dragged me closer, rendering the pillow strategy almost completely useless. When she finally emerged from beneath it, her hair was disheveled, her eyes bright, and her expression so unbearably alive that my irritation lost some of its conviction. I should have retreated.

There were several reasonable things I could have done instead of remaining there. I could have stood, dressed, restored some distance, recovered what remained of my dignity, and reminded both of us that an approaching war threatened the world outside this room. Instead, I kissed her. With more force than I intended. Akane made a pleased sound against my mouth, and whatever fragile structure remained of my morning composure gave up entirely.

She answered my sudden enthusiasm without hesitation, one hand slipping into my hair while a tail curled along my back. I attempted to resist giving her complete control of the kiss.

"Attempted" was the important part, because the moment Akane settled more fully against me, my grip tightened around her waist, and whatever resistance I had intended to maintain became increasingly theoretical. This felt far different from the night before.

What happened then had been fueled by everything surrounding Akane's return: the attraction neither of us could ignore, my confusion over memories that did not feel entirely my own, the awakening imprint, Akane's years of waiting to reach me, and all the emotions our reunion had dragged to the surface. By the time we were finally alone together, there had been too much between us to contain any longer, and the intensity of the night had reflected that. Morning carried none of that force.

Instead, there was an ease to the way Akane fit against me, and somehow that unsettled me more. Sunlight spilled across her dark hair while Ravenport stirred far below us. My bed was warm, her body rested naturally against mine, and the entire scene possessed a domestic intimacy I had never associated with myself before. Physical attraction was something I could understand. It could burn hot, pass quickly, and ask very little beyond the moment itself. What unsettled me now was far more difficult to dismiss.

Waking beside Akane did not feel intrusive or temporary. Her presence seemed to settle naturally into the space around me, creating the strange impression that something had been missing from the room long before I ever realized there was an absence. That sense of belonging reached somewhere attraction alone never could. Akane eventually drew back from the kiss, yet none of her usual teasing followed.

She remained close instead, studying my face with an unusual seriousness that left me more exposed than any flirtation ever had. Her silence made it clear she was not simply enjoying my reaction this time. She was trying to understand what was happening inside me.

"You're thinking too much."

"I think frequently."

"You defend frequently."

"They are closely related skills."

"No." Her thumb moved gently along my cheek.

"They come from different wounds." My gaze slipped away from hers, but Akane made no attempt to pull my attention back. She simply remained beside me and gave the space to gather my thoughts, and that patience meant far more than I was prepared to admit.

"I don't know how to do this." The admission escaped before I could reshape it into something safer. Akane's expression changed as she took in what I had confessed. For one fleeting moment, I almost regretted saying it. Then the concern in her face made regret considerably harder to maintain.

"This?" she asked. I gestured between us, unable to think of a sufficiently dignified description. A small smile touched her lips.

"Being loved?" My throat tightened. There were very few words capable of making me feel cornered anymore. Apparently, she had discovered one.

"Yes," I said honestly. Her tails shifted around us, settling with less of their usual possessive enthusiasm and more like a shelter she was offering rather than imposing.

"Then we can learn it slowly." I stared at her.

"You don't know how to do anything slowly."

"I can learn."

"You crossed fate and whatever remained of a destroyed future, entered my hotel, flirted with me almost immediately, allowed me to throw you into a mountain, fought me for twenty-four minutes, kissed me senseless, moved directly into my room, revealed a magical mate bond, and then spent most of the night dismantling what little composure I had left." Akane appeared to consider the evidence seriously.

"When you put it that way, I may have moved somewhat quickly." My eyebrow lifted.

"Somewhat?" Her smile returned.

"Then allow me to clarify. We can move slowly where it matters."

"Emotionally?"

"Yes."

"That somehow sounds more dangerous."

"It probably is."

"At least you're honest."

"Always with you." I studied her for a moment, surprised by how deeply those simple words had settled into me, despite every instinct insisting they should not matter nearly so much. Before I could examine that reaction any further, a faint scraping sound came from outside the bedroom door. My attention snapped toward it immediately, while Akane's ears twitched at nearly the same instant, confirming that neither of us had imagined the intrusion.

"Celeste." The noise stopped.

"Leave." Silence answered. Several seconds later, a whisper came through the door.

"I brought breakfast." My eyes closed. Against me, Akane buried her face near my shoulder, her body trembling with barely contained laughter.

"I don't need breakfast."

"You eat recreationally," Celeste whispered. Akane lifted her head.

"She knows you very well."

"Unfortunately." At least the door remained closed, which suggested Adrian had either finally convinced Celeste to respect some measure of privacy or threatened her with consequences severe enough to make her reconsider. The alternative was that she had somehow matured overnight, and even I was not willing to believe something that improbable.

"Mother?"

"What?"

"Are you alive?" I stared toward the door while Akane visibly fought the urge to laugh again.

"Yes." A brief pause followed.

"Is Akane alive?" Akane raised her voice enough to carry through the door.

"Very much so." A sharp noise came from the hallway, followed by enough movement to suggest that Celeste had either collapsed into Aura or been promptly dropped by her afterward. Considering the circumstances, I found both possibilities equally acceptable.

"Good," Celeste whispered, considerably louder than necessary.

"Go away," I yelled.

"Are you decent?"

"No." Akane's smile widened. Celeste remained silent just long enough for me to know she was inventing another completely unnecessary question to shout through the closed door.

"Emotionally or clothing-wise?" The pillow left my hand before conscious thought could interfere, striking the door hard enough to rattle the frame and earn a muffled yelp from the hallway. Akane finally gave up trying to contain herself and laughed openly, drawing my attention back toward her. She looked entirely too pleased lying in my bed, morning light catching against her hair while her tails occupied a completely unreasonable percentage of my blankets.

Amusement remained bright in her eyes, but something deeper rested beneath it. It was love, plain and unmistakable in the way Akane looked at me. She made no effort to hide it, soften it, or spare herself the vulnerability of letting me see exactly how deeply she felt. She simply loved me. Somehow, that love was mine if I chose to accept it, and the possibility unsettled me in ways demons, gods, and Demon Spires never had. Those were dangers I understood. They could be measured, confronted, and destroyed.

The possibility existed on a different scale. It meant a hand waiting for mine, a body curled against me without fear, and a woman powerful enough to stand beside me at the top of the world who could still look at me and ask only to be held. Akane reached across the small distance between us and took my hand with care. There was no trick in the gesture and no pressure hidden beneath it, only an offer placed gently into my palm and the freedom to decide what I wanted to do with it.

My eyes lowered to our joined fingers for a moment before I looked back at her.

"I'm still angry with you."

"I know."

"Waiting nearly a century was excessive."

"True."

"You're not forgiven."

"I assumed as much."

"I may still throw you through another mountain." Akane smiled.

"I'll wear something sturdier next time." The corner of my mouth threatened to betray me as Akane's thumb moved slowly across my knuckles. Nothing terrible followed. The world continued turning, Ravenport remained beneath us, and whatever existed between Akane and me did not require some grand declaration in that moment. Leaving my hand in hers was answer enough. Outside the room, Celeste whispered to someone nearby.

"They're definitely alive." Aura answered with considerably less understanding of the situation.

"Why are we whispering?"

"Because romance is delicate." I looked at Akane, and she looked back at me. Neither of us managed to maintain a straight face. Her laughter came first, bright and completely unrestrained, while mine followed more quietly before I could convince myself not to join her. Somewhere beneath that laughter, beneath the fear, the unanswered questions surrounding souls and imprints, and the absurdity of a fox who apparently considered patience an optional virtue, a new possibility settled into place.

I did not know exactly what Akane and I would become. I still did not understand why my soul recognized her, what had truly happened to the previous timeline, or how much of that lost Helena remained inside me. Those answers would come with time. Akane was here. Her hand remained wrapped around mine, and for now, I was willing to see where that led.