She woke with her hand already reaching across the furs.
The furs were cold.
Yanshi's eyes snapped open. The fire was ash. The hut smelled of smoke and sex and spent herbs, and the warmth that should have been radiating off that infuriating, spear-snapping, knot-making carcass of a man was simply not there.
"Gone," she said, to the ceiling.
She sat up. Listened. No heartbeat but her own and Xiaoyue's tiny drumbeat one fur over. No sandalwood on the air. Not even the smug aftertaste of a farewell note, because men like him didn't write notes, notes were for people who could be refused.
"Good," she said.
She said it again, louder, to make it true.
"Good. Riddance. Freedom."
Xiaoyue's ears twitched in her sleep. The wolfkin murmured something with "Master's" in it and smiled into her own tail, and her little hips gave one slow, dreaming grind against the fur beneath her, and she sighed like a girl in a warm bath.
