I Abandoned My Beast Cubs for the Protagonist... Oops?-Chapter 141: A Mother’s Fury

Bai Yue was already moving, already scanning the treeline, already running the calculation she had run so many times in five years that it had carved grooves into her brain: how long ago, which direction, how fast.

"ZHEN!"

Birds fled. Leaves shook. Dà Jiāo Huǒ, still holding the ceremonial stone, looked up with ancient eyes that went very still very fast.

Nothing answered.

"ZHEN!"

Han Shān was already at the eastern path, crouching, reading the ground with the focus of a predator. Ruì Xuě had gone pale. He was nine years old and very smart and he understood, immediately, that this was different from this morning. This was not Zhen running toward something fun.

This was Zhen not answering.

"She went east," Han Shān said. "Recently. Minutes."

"Then let’s go—"

"Wait." He held up one hand. His eyes moved, tracking something invisible. "Her trail goes east, but it’s—" He paused. "It’s not panicked. She was following something. An animal, maybe."

"A butterfly," Ruì Xuě said quietly.

Everyone looked at him.

He looked at the ground. "She saw a butterfly. I saw her see it. I thought she was just looking."

Bai Yue closed her eyes for one second. She breathed.

Then she opened them and she was moving.

~

Within ten minutes, Thousand Fang had mobilised.

This was one of the things about their tribe that Bai Yue had never taken for granted, not once in five years. The way it moved. The way every family turned outward the moment there was trouble. Mo Xiao had appeared at the treeline before she had even reached the village, Fēng Yá clinging to his back and pointing east with a small, shaking finger because he had seen her go that way, she took my hand and then she let go and then—

The snake twins, grown now, nineteen, split without being asked. Shé Yì went north. Shé Èr went south. Yòu Lín—

Yòu Lín had not been in the village.

He appeared from the direction of the forest at a dead sprint, his orange hair wild, his eyes already calculating. He was ten and tall and he had his father’s eyes and none of his father’s patience when it came to things he loved.

"How long?" he demanded.

"Maybe twenty minutes," Ruì Xuě said.

Yòu Lín was already turning. "I know the eastern paths better than anyone. I’ll go ahead—"

"You’ll go with someone," Bai Yue said.

"Mama—"

"WITH SOMEONE, Yòu Lín."

He looked at her face and did not argue.

Hóng Yè arrived last, slightly rumpled, a smear of something on his collar that suggested he had been very abruptly interrupted from something he was not going to explain. He was seventeen and trying to look like he wasn’t scared and failing completely.

"Zhen’s gone," he said flatly.

"She followed a butterfly," Ruì Xuě said.

"Of course she did." He pressed both hands to his face. Then he dropped them and straightened. "I’ll go west. In case she doubled back."

~

Bai Yue stood in the center of the village clearing and tried very hard not to spiral.

She had been doing so well. Five years of doing well. Five years of building something that felt, most mornings, like safety.

Li Hua had not been seen in five years.

This was the fact that lived in the back of Bai Yue’s mind like a splinter, quiet and small and always there. The woman who had come in the night for the triplets and been turned back by Mo Xiao’s watchfulness. The woman who had looked at Mo Xiao’s sleeping children and seen leverage. She had vanished after that, retreated into wherever she came from, and five years had passed with no word, no sighting, nothing.

Five years was a long time.

Five years was also exactly long enough to plan.

"It’s not her."

Han Shān’s voice. Close. His hand found her shoulder.

"You don’t know that," Bai Yue said.

"No." He turned her, gently but firmly, until she was looking at him. His face was steady. He had the face he wore when the situation was serious but not yet lost. She had learned every version of his face in five years. "I don’t know that. But I know our daughter. She went east. She went fast. She found something interesting and she followed it." The ghost of something moved across his expression. "She always follows interesting things."

"She’s five."

"She’s very fast."

Yàn Shū appeared at her other side, his hand finding hers, squeezing once. He had been making quiet notes of everyone’s search routes since the moment they’d gathered. He was the one who remembered which paths converged and which didn’t, who knew the water sources and the clearings. His brain worked like a map when he was scared and he knew it and he used it.

"We will find her," he said simply.

She believed him. She did. She just also—

"I am going."

Dà Jiāo Huǒ had been standing at the edge of the gathering, silent, the ceremonial stone still in his hand. Now he set it on a nearby log with perfect, deliberate calm. He looked at Bai Yue and his molten gold eyes were the most serious she had ever seen them.

"She left her bracelet," he said. "I can feel it. The trail-charm your grandmother wove into the beads." He paused. "She left it on purpose. She left it for you to find." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Bai Yue’s breath stuttered.

If you’re ever in trouble, she had told her daughter, leave something of yours.

Zhen had remembered. Zhen had been smart and careful and had left a trail and—

The Burning Sky stepped back, and shifted.

One moment a man, the next a dragon so massive his wings, still folded, still unfurling, eclipsed the sun.

The clearing shook when he launched.

He was gone before the leaves finished falling.

~

Bai Yue held herself together until Shé Èr came back.

The younger snake twin moved fast, low to the ground, his expression tight in the way it got when he was carrying bad news but hadn’t decided how to say it yet. He stopped in front of her and held out his hand.

A single feather sat in his palm.

Dark. Large. Primary feather, not down.

Bai Yue looked at it.

She had seen feathers like this before. Years ago, when she had been learning what this world contained and what it wanted from her. She had felt them overhead. She had heard the sound they made.

"Vultures," she said.

Shé Èr nodded.

The word moved through the gathered tribe like a cold wind. Adults straightened. Weapons appeared. Mo Xiao’s expression went from worried to something considerably harder.

They hadn’t struck in years. Not since the last time they had learned, comprehensively, what happened when they came near Thousand Fang. Not since the time before that, when Bai Yue had come at them with a literal tree and considerably more fury than they had expected.

And now they had her daughter.

Bai Yue felt it happen, a hot boiling rage and fury that rose in her chest. Her teeth gritted. Those bastards. As though they had not learnt their lesson.

"Glimmer," she said. "Get me Glimmer."

Glimmer had been living near Thousand Fang for two years now.

This had been Yòu Lín’s doing, in the indirect way that most things were Yòu Lín’s doing: he had not asked her to stay, he had simply kept visiting, kept writing wind-messages, kept showing up with food from Wēn Jìng’s kitchen and questions about dragon territory and a complete, apparently genuine interest in everything she had to say.

Glimmer had stayed because she wanted to and nyone who raised an eyebrow about the grown emerald-green dragon who had parked herself three miles from a lowlander village could, respectfully, mind their own business.

She came when called, her scales bright in the afternoon sun, her landing scattering the smaller animals for a considerable distance. She was not as large as Dà Jiāo Huǒ, not even close, but she was large enough that most threats reconsidered.

Large enough for one person.

Bai Yue was moving toward her before she had fully landed.

"East," Bai Yue said. "Vultures. They have Zhen."

Glimmer’s head came down. Her eyes found Bai Yue’s face, and whatever she saw there made her expression go very serious.

"Get on," Glimmer said.

"BAI YUE."

Han Shān called out. She stopped. He was in front of her, his brows furrowed.

"Vultures," he said quietly. "Bai Yue. You know what vultures do when someone comes in fast and angry. You know what they do to leverage. You should not be going alone, Bai Yue."

"I agree with him," Mo Xiao called out. "It is not safe Bai Yue. We should move together."

Bai Yue had to bite her lip so she wouldn’t let out a bitter laugh. Her daughter, had been kidnapped by the same bastards that had tried to sell Rui Xue. Perhaps this was an act of revenge, a pathetic one. Either way, she was NOT going to wait.

"Go, Glimmer," she whispered to the dragon, who looked torn over whether to obey her or not.

"Go!" Bai Yue roared. The dragon spread her wings, pushing them further and further up with each flap. Bai Yue deliberately shut out the calls of her husbands and her children pleading with her to not go.

"Go, Glimmer, and be fast!"