AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Where did you get such a creature?” Zai asked when his humor subsided.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Ben admitted.
“Apparently, this is the royal hunting fox. It saved my skin more than once already. Didn’t you used to have one when you were Queen Gaia’s Master Hunter?”
“No,” Zai said.
“Foxes are to be hunted; they do not help to hunt.”
“Exactly as I would have thought,” Ben agreed.
“But this fox is different, I guess.”
He thought of the creature’s nine tails. Well, eight now.
And asked, “By the way, have you noticed anything strange about it?”
“No,” came the curt reply.
“Huh.”
Ben supposed it wasn’t so strange that he could see the fox’s many tails but no one else could. He’d always had the ability to see people’s true selves.
“Are you going to tell me what happened between you and the liger?” he fished.
“No.”
He sighed. It wasn’t exactly an unexpected answer.
“He doesn’t seem to be following us any more. I don’t see him behind us anywhere.”
“He’s there,” Zai immediately refuted. “I know it.”
“How?”
“Doesn’t matter,” the Hunter ground out. “Just as it does not matter whether he follows or not. As it happens, he is covering our tracks by making different ones to confuse potential pursuers.”
“Wow, you know all this without even looking?” Ben mused.
“Do you guys share some kind of a bond? It’s like you’re connected to each other.”
For the longest time, the Hunter didn’t speak. But just when Ben was starting to nod off on top of his horse, having traveled far and without rest, he thought he heard the other man’s reply:
“No bond,” Zai muttered low.
“Merely instinct.”
~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~
For four days and nights they traveled north, sometimes veering slightly east, then doubling back to confuse and retrace their steps.
The woods that surrounded this range of mountains extended far and wide, dense with foliage from trees as old as these lands.
Sin had never been this far north before.
He liked staying to the south where the climate was warmer, and the lush green forests gave way to golden desserts and jungle oases. He loved the jungle and the dessert equally, perhaps because of his tiger mother and lion father.
But he was quickly becoming enamored of the forests most of all, because of the addictive crisp, fresh piney scent of one particular male.
