Hana looked at her and frowned.

​"I don’t like being told what to do," she said, her voice dropping into a flat, steady tone that carried absolutely no emotion. "And I certainly don’t like getting tested. So if you’re going to test me on something and I lose my patience, you won’t like what I’ll do next."

​The aunt looked at Hana’s deadpan expression and the blank yet deadly look in her eyes. This human was serious. And she was... dangerous.

Just what makes her so confident when she is hairless, not a beast with claws or wings, and even heavily pregnant?

What makes her so confident that she can do damage beyond their worst dreams?

​The aunt clicked her tongue, feeling insulted. She was just placing her trust on her mates to do the damage, wasn’t she? Typical of a weak thing.

Her eleven bright red tails twitched aggressively behind her silk robes, but the cold metal tip of Kulu’s spear was still drawing blood from her throat, and Caspian was hovering right beside her like a dark wall of muscle.

She had no choice but to swallow her pride for now.

She took a step back from the spear’s reach and then turned on her heel with a sharp rustle of her crimson silks. The Matriarch, Celene, gestured for them to follow.

​"We shall see if your temper holds when you stand before the true pillars of this valley, human," Celene said coldly, her performative sweetness completely gone.

​Hana didn’t answer. She just walked forward, her round protruding belly leading the way under her white dress.

Caspian stepped right in beside her, his golden eyes scanning every corner of the palace hallways, while Kulu walked on her other side, his hand securely gripping the metal spear.

Raiden followed closely, his nine pink tails completely still, his jaw locked tight as they walked deeper into the inner court, away from the light outside.

​The traditional architecture inside was breathtakingly lavish, but Hana’s eyes were focused on the layout.

As they passed deeper into the structure, she noticed the stone walls were laced with rough, jagged metal conduits—salvaged materials the foxes had managed to bleed out from the edges of the two closed Aegis bunkers to fortify their palace.

They couldn’t open the main doors, but they had spent generations harvesting the scraps just to build their defenses. Clever of them.

Unlike the other tribes who had died off to the bunkers in their territory or simply let it to rot, these foxes had actually made good use of whatever they could get their hands on

​Celene led them straight toward a massive, high-ceilinged chamber at the very heart of the inner court.

​Seated on elevated granite platforms along the walls were six powerful, high-level fox elders—the representatives of the spires the messenger and Celene spoke so highly of.

Each one of them possessed multiple red tails and looked down at the arriving party with deep, aristocratic arrogance.

They didn’t carry weapons, completely confident in the natural power of their sharp claws and illusion arts, but the moment their eyes landed on Caspian’s massive scaled form and the lingering vibration of the crack in the outer door, a heavy, tense silence filled the room.

Be they mighty foxes of old times, they were not so foolish as to assume that they were more superior than an ancient dragon.

Yet, the true center of pressure came from the highest platform at the back of the hall.

​Sitting on a carved stone throne was an old male fox with pristine, snow-white fur and piercing, predatory eyes that seemed to cut straight through the air. His presence was suffocatingly heavy.

Behind his high-collared crimson robes, his tails rested in a massive, red tipped powerful fan.

​This was Raiden’s grandfather. The man who had not cared at all when his own daughter ran away to the lower ridges, simply because he didn’t see her as useful to the bloodline.

​His Imperial Excellency, Lord Kaelen of the Crimson Line. The High Sovereign of the Crimson Court, Master of the Eleven Spires, and the direct progenitor of the truest, purest fox lineage left in this world.

​Lord Kaelen’s sharp gaze skipped past the two apex vanguards, completely ignored the way they were prepared to rip him apart if he crossed the line with Hana, and briefly swept over Raiden’s pink hair with an unfeeling, clinical coldness.

Finally, his eyes stopped dead on Hana.

​The system interface blinked sharply in the corner of Hana’s eye, updating her of the quest Progress in silent neon blue text.

> ​[QUEST PROGRESS: 45%]

> [Current Objective: Determine the validity of the Ancestral Claim. Evaluate High Sovereign Kaelen’s position regarding your Mate, Raiden.] 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

​Hana lifted her gaze from the system window and met the High Sovereign’s heavy, crushing gaze without a single flinch, her hand resting flat against her stun gun.

The old fox wanted to display his dominance, but to her, he was just another target obstructing her half-million point payout.

Beasts had instincts to cower in the face of danger. They possessed sharp senses designed to tell them exactly when they were in the presence of absolute power. Humans had those same senses, too, and they usually processed that power through paralyzing fear.

​But a very specific set of humans had learned to throw away that fear entirely to face everything head-on. Those were the ones who would do anything for survival, trampling on even those who prided themselves on being at the apex of the world, just to get a higher footstool to their destination.

​Hana was one of those humans.

​Right now, as she stared up at the highest platform, this intimidating old fox looked no different to her than a common wall decoration in a museum she would have loved to visit as a kid. And his grand, powerful tails? Well, they just looked like they would make good pillow material.

​The thing about psychology was simple: once you chose to see even the most dangerous threats as something to smile about—seeing a viper as a harmless, moving string of spaghetti, or a lion’s roar as a nice melody—all fear disappeared. It was all about how she coded the data in her own mind.

​Lord Kaelen’s piercing, predatory eyes narrowed slightly when the heavily pregnant human didn’t buckle under his pressure. The suffocating weight of his aura didn’t even cause her posture to waver.

​"So," Lord Kaelen spoke, his voice deep, and smooth, echoing off the high stone walls. "This is the outsider who has taken our runaway bloodline into her keeping. Celene tells me you speak very loudly for a hairless creature, human."

​Hana didn’t break her lock on his gaze. Her hand remained flat and relaxed against the grip of the stun gun on her thigh.

​"I don’t speak loudly," Hana said, her voice completely level and unbothered by the six powerful elders watching her from the platforms. "I speak practically. Your daughter left this tribe because she was useless to your cause, and now you’ve sent a retrieval unit because your male heir count is running a deficit. Let’s skip the grand introductions and get straight to the audit. What exactly do you want with Raiden?"