The force of Caspian’s punch lifted the fox off his feet and threw him backward. His ribs broke with a loud crunch as his body slammed hard into the steel door of the Aegis bunker, leaving a massive dent before he slid to the ground, coughing up blood.

At the exact same time, Kulu pointed the spear in his hand, the sharp metal tip stopping just one millimeter from the aunt’s throat, drawing a tiny drop of blood.

His big red wings flared out, blocking her view of her guards.

The courtyard went dead silent. The robed guards froze, their hands frozen on their spears.

The aunt didn’t move or panic. Her green eyes stayed calm behind Kulu’s spear point as she looked past his feathers at Hana.

Hana stepped forward, her white dress bright in the sun. She rested her hand calmly on her stun gun, looking at the dented steel of the bunker before focusing on the Matriarch.

"You see, you say you have contracts and whatnot. While I commend you for being slightly educated, it doesn’t phase me at all." She said, her voice cold and completely businesslike. "Your papers are outdated, because Raiden, who you all look down on for being pink, is already registered under my contract. If you touch my man, I will take this entire place apart piece by piece."

Raiden gushed at her words. Hana just called him her man.

The High Matriarch didn’t break her gaze from Hana, even as the tiny bead of blood on her throat grew slightly larger against the sharp metal tip of Kulu’s spear.

The silence in the courtyard was thick, broken only by the ragged, wet gasps of the five-tailed warrior groaning on the floor by the dented bunker door.

A slow, chilling smile spread across the aunt’s face. She didn’t look like a woman facing a tactical threat; she looked like someone evaluating a very bold transaction.

"Your contract?" the aunt asked, her voice entirely smooth as she lightly tapped the rolled parchment against her palm. "A contract with a human from wherever holds no weight within the Eleven Spires. You speak of him as your man, yet you do not even understand what his blood is capable of. He is a resource of the Crimson Court. We do not forfeit our assets to wanderers who happen to find our old shrines."

"Well, you should’ve thought of that before you let his mother run away and have him with a fox outside your tribe." Hana retorted. "You felt she wasn’t useful and left her to rot. But here comes the useful son. But you see something? I do not wait until something or someone has value before I can find their use. I make them useful, that’s how I play."

She pulled up her tablet with her left hand, her thumb swiping across the screen to activate a local data pulse.

"I don’t care about your spires or your bloodline theories," Hana said, her voice completely flat and businesslike. "Raiden’s genetic frequency is fully integrated into my garrison’s layout. If you try to force him into a cage, my system grid will flag this entire sector as a hostile obstruction, and they will attack whether you want to fight or not."

The robed guards shifted slightly, but they did not want to seem intimidated. They had their pride as the guards of the crimson court. But just how long could that pride save them, she wondered.

The aunt’s chilling smile widened by a fraction, her green eyes fixed on Hana’s glowing tablet.

To the Matriarch, the small glowing brick was completely alien, a strange relic from the holy shrines that only this human seemed to know how to command.

Her tribe had spent generations guarding these two massive iron structures, entirely unable to force the heavy doors open, surviving only off the strange, foreign power and dense metals that occasionally bled out from the perimeter lines to forge their spears.

"You speak with great arrogance for an outsider," the High Matriarch murmured, her tone smooth and completely steady against Kulu’s spear point. "You hold a relic from the sacred shrines and threaten us with words we do not know. But you forget where you are standing. This valley belongs to the Crimson Line. Our illusions can twist your sight until your own brutes tear each other apart."

Hana didn’t break her cold expression. Her fingers tapped a short sequence on the tablet screen. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"Try it," Hana said flatly. "My layout doesn’t rely on eyes. If your illusions mess with this valley, whatever is inside my grid will simply erase everything that moves in this courtyard. It won’t look for faces; it just detects heat signatures and clears the mass. You’ll be gone before your brain can even process what went wrong."

Raiden stood tall, his nine pink tails swaying with a sudden, vicious confidence.

The soft, gushing warmth he felt from her calling him her man solidified into a hard, protective instinct.

He glared at his aunt, his voice dropping into a dangerous purr. "You heard her, Matriarch. The mud hut you think I came from isn’t much and I can testify. But the hut where Hana came from? It’s far greater than you’d ever imagine. Don’t test her tolerance limits. You won’t like what happens when she gets mad."

Caspian stepped up right beside Hana, his massive dark frame casting a heavy shadow over the white stone floor. He let out a low, vibrating hiss that rattled the loose gravel near the guards’ boots, his golden eyes scanning the robed men like a predator picking out the weakest link in a herd.

The aunt finally lowered the parchment slightly, her eleven bright red tails shifting into a tight, defensive cluster behind her silk robes. She looked from Hana’s prominent belly to the two giant metal walls of the shrines, realizing this pregnant human held a key to the structures they had spent centuries worshipping from the outside.

"You are a very difficult negotiator," the Matriarch said, her voice dropping the performative sweetness as she stared into Hana’s deadpan eyes. "But since you have come all this way to our gates, let us see if your actions can match the weight of your words. Follow me inside the palace. Let us find out if your contract can truly hold the last male core of the Crimson Line."