Her hands framed his face and her forehead pressed to his and her lips landed everywhere, his mouth, his cheek, his mouth again, the corner of his lips, his mouth for the third time, rapid and artless and multiplying until they stopped being individual presses and became a sustained barrage delivered by a woman who had forgotten she was supposed to be composed.

Iris’s voice sounded all of a sudden. "If you ask me..." 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Ayame’s lips came back with a loud sound, "I didn’t ask you."

Iris continued without pause, shrugging dismissively. "It was like a parlor trick, I don’t know why you went into heat." The flat stare she aimed at the samurai wrapped around Quinlan was pure, undiluted Iris. "Your dwarven patrons will love it, though."

Ayame turned just enough to send Iris a grin so smug it could have peeled paint, kissed Quinlan once more with a loud smack, and dropped from his arms in a single fluid motion that landed her on the grass without a sound.

"I’ll see what you have to say when I finally put you in your place, foul woman. But..."

Her hand drifted to the mark above her womb, and her fingers traced the dark calligraphy with a possessive warmth, slow and lingering, as if the mark had always been exactly where she wanted it.

"Not today," she said, chin lifting, blue eyes alight with a confidence that had burned every scrap of anxiety and inferiority to ash. "Now, let’s find my badass elder sister and end this farce."

Her grin sharpened.

"Girls, ready yourselves. We’re taking over the continent once and for all."

From atop Clarisse’s head, a laugh cut through the courtyard.

The senior maid stood at the edge of the moss with both hands cupped around the tiny legs dangling past her temples, her grip steady and absolute, because if her lord’s little lady tumbled from her head while in her care, as a prim and proper career maid, she’d never be able to live with herself.

Rosie sat perched in the nest of Clarisse’s pinned hair with her small fingers resting on the maid’s forehead for balance, and the giggle that left her was bright and shameless.

"Ayame mommy is fired up!!"

Her gaze drifted across the courtyard to the women around her, and the look that crossed her small face was pure Quinlan, sly and knowing and entirely too pleased with what she was seeing.

"All of Rosie’s mommies and aunts and friends are..."

She didn’t need to finish. Across the moss, marks were beginning to glow, one after another, crimson calligraphy pulsing to life as the women who had spent hours suffering through the rite felt what Ayame had just demonstrated ripple through their own bonds.

The excitement was catching, spreading like fire through dry brush.

"There’s no time to waste," Quinlan said, moving. "You can test on the go."

His right hand rose, and [Warp Gate] tore the air open.

...

The gate opened onto hard-packed earth beneath a sky the color of iron, and the wind that hit Quinlan’s face carried the smell of hundreds of thousands of bodies gathered in one place: sweat, leather, oiled steel, and the deep earthy musk of beastkin that no other race on the continent shared. The Beastman Confederation had come out in full.

Vargis stood at the front with his arms crossed and his golden eyes locked on the seam the moment it formed, flanked by his two sons in ceremonial armor.

Gorruk the bearkin loomed at his right, multiple heads taller than anyone else present, dark eyes flat.

Rajah, leader of the tigerkin, leaned against a tent post to the left, gaze already on the people stepping through behind Quinlan.

Skarn stood apart from the others, face an unreadable mask, his wolfkin guard arrayed behind him in rigid lines.

Kitsara broke from the group before anyone spoke. Three tails streaming behind her, she crossed the distance to her father in a sprint so giddy the princess in her might as well have stayed on the other side of the gate, and the hug she drove into Vargis’s chest made the chieftain take a half-step back despite outweighing her several times over.

"Thank you!" Her voice was muffled against him. "You moved so fast!"

Vargis looked down at his daughter with the exact wry resignation he had worn each time his once obedient little princess’s attitude reminded him of a certain shameless bastard.

Kitsara beamed.

Behind the lords, the army stretched to the horizon. Dogkin infantry in column formations packed tight enough to darken the plains, bearkin in blocks that looked like moving walls of iron, tigerkin warriors ranging the flanks in fierce packs, wolfkin already prowling, teeth bared.

Quinlan turned back to the leaders, and he spoke using his diplomatic tone.

"You have my sincere gratitude for acting with such haste, Lords of the Confederation."

"This isn’t for you," Skarn said, flat and unimpressed.

Rajah straightened from his lean, amber eyes settling on Quinlan with no rush. "The Alliance of Elvardia has been a thorn in the Confederation’s side for longer than you can imagine. And..."

The tigerkin bared his teeth as he hissed, hateful and ugly. "Their dwarves armed the lionkin with siege-grade gear and sent them hordes of undead minions as allies... They must pay."

"And Silver’s foxkin fed them information from the inside," Gorruk added in a rumble that vibrated the post Rajah had been leaning against. "The traitor and every fox who followed him owe our nation a debt that can only be paid in blood."

Vargis’s golden eyes hardened at the name.

He had known Silver’s thoughts about his daughter - after her illustrious class came to light - and the growl that left his chest carried all of it. "They will pay."

Quinlan nodded once toward the chieftains. "I’ve cleared most of the dwarven forts along the way. The road into the Elvardian heartlands is open."

The silence that followed was heavier than the words.

"Accepting help from an outsider is not our way," Skarn said, and let the sentence sit for one beat. "But the Elvardians earned no honor from us. We will take what you have opened."

Gorruk’s gaze drifted toward the women at his back, landing on Kitsara’s three tails and then on Blossom’s blonde ears and the fluffy tail curled at her hip. "Two beastkin women, the same ones from back then, still happy and loyal..." the bearkin chieftain observed, as if counting supply wagons. His dark eyes moved to his fellow lords. "This young brother has impeccable taste and his women clearly cherish him. I say it’s time we trust him."

Vargis’s growl came back deeper, aimed squarely at Gorruk, who shrugged it off.

Then Vargis sighed and turned to face the army, and when his voice left his throat it was no longer the voice of a father or a diplomat but the voice of a war-chief, and it carried across the formations like thunder rolling over open ground.

"Brothers and sisters of the Confederation! The road to the Elvardian heartlands stands open! The dwarves who armed the lionkin and burned our children sit behind broken walls, and the elves who turned their faces from our suffering sit in their treehouses thinking themselves untouchable!"

His fist rose, and the crimson fang banner behind him snapped in the wind.

"They are wrong! Today, the Beastman Confederation repays every debt it is owed, in full, in blood, by our hands!"

The howl that erupted from the army was not human.

It began in the wolfkin ranks as a rising note that climbed past the tree line, and the tigerkin roars joined it from the flanks.

The bearkin war-cries rolled through the center in a bass so deep Quinlan felt it in his sternum, and the dogkin took up the call last, hundreds of thousands of throats splitting the iron sky with a sound that would have shattered the composure of anything listening from across the border.

The ground shook, and the army began to move.

It moved the way a river moves when a dam breaks, folding forward in waves until the entire mass was in motion and the plains flowed with it toward the Elvardian border.

Quinlan and his women stood at the edge of it and watched the Beastman Confederation go to war, every face that passed carrying the same cruel anticipation, and the violence of the march was its own kind of beauty.

Kitsara watched her father’s banner disappear into the dust at the head of the column, and the pride on her face was fierce enough to glow.

Quinlan let the last formations pass. The dust settled, and the plains were emptier than they had been in decades.

His right hand rose, and [Warp Gate] split the air a second time.

The Primordial Villain stepped through toward his next war.