A butterfly, delicate and glowing, fluttered right into the shadow of the monster before him. He blinked. He hadn't even noticed it until it hovered there. But before his nerves could process it, its shape wavered, twisted, and blossomed into a foxkin of ethereal beauty.
His blood froze. Recognition stabbed through him like ice.
'Her…'
The so-called Lady White. The beastkin wife whose tail he had tugged at the feast, laughing, jeering, treating her as an object he was free to humiliate whenever he so desired.
Now she stood here, impossibly radiant, impossibly fragile, as if she were woven from moonlight itself.
She didn't just stand still, however. She leaned straight into the man's side and wrapped her hands tightly around his torso, hugging him like she was afraid the world might rip her away if she let go. She trembled, tilted her head up with wide, timid eyes that glistened with pain. Her lips parted in a whisper.
