I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes.
The ink was still drying on the last line. I'd been at this for hours, hunched over the desk with a candle burning low and my handwriting getting progressively worse the deeper I went.
I dragged a hand through my hair, fingers catching on a knot.
"Damn it…" I muttered under my breath.
Then my thoughts drifted back to the half-empty classroom across the hall.
That's when it came back to me.
Sylvie had asked me a question today.
"Papa why don't you wear that boar mask anymore?"
One I couldn't answer.
She'd gone quiet after that for a while, slightly upset. Then she'd nodded once, said "okay," and gone back outside to yell at Tommy about the rules of tag.
Poor Tommy
But the question stuck with me. So I started writing about it. Not for her — not yet, maybe not for years — but so the story existed somewhere outside my head. So it wouldn't get worn down by time the way memories do, edges softening, details blurring, until you're not sure what you remember and what you filled in.
I set the quill down and stared at the page, then picked the quill up again and wrote.
We stared each other down like vipers.
Good way to end it for now. I closed the notebook, slid it into the second drawer — not the bottom one, Sylvie had finally cracked that during the last chalk raid, last month — and sat there for a moment in the quiet of my office.
Three years. It had been three years since Sylvie's sixth birthday, the one with the cake and the crown and Jack's yell that I swear loosened a roof tile. We hadn't done anything that big since. Demi-human tradition held that proper birthday celebrations happened every five years, which meant her next big one wasn't until she turned ten. She'd already informed me, with the seriousness of a military strategist, that she expected "at least two cakes and a real crown this time, not a ribbon one." I told her I'd take it under advisement.
She was nine now. Nine. The number didn't feel real. The tiny girl who used to grab my sleeve and flinch at loud noises was gone, replaced by this loud, bossy, fearless creature who ran the orphanage like a benevolent dictator.
The younger kids followed her around like ducklings. The older ones respected her because she'd earned it — not through authority but through sheer force of personality. She settled disputes. She organised games. She once talked a crying six-year-old off the kitchen roof using nothing but patience and a biscuit, which was more than I could've managed.
She still slept with Mister the rabbit. She still checked the door was locked three times before bed. Some things stayed.
Through the open window I could hear the courtyard winding down for the evening, voices fading as Miss Dena herded the last stragglers toward the dormitories. A normal evening. A good evening. The kind I'd stopped taking for granted a long time ago.
I picked up the quill again, intending to start on next week's supply order, and then a thought hit me from absolutely nowhere.
I'm twenty-seven.
I set the quill down.
Twenty-seven.
When did that happen? I ran the math again just to make sure I hadn't miscounted. Arrived in this world at sixteen. Six years with Arthur. A couple years in the Empire before the orphanage. Nearly four years running this place. Yeah. Twenty-seven. Almost twenty-eight, actually, depending on how you counted.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling.
Twenty-seven and I had never once been on a date. Never held a woman's hand. Never even had time to think about it, honestly, because every year of my life in this world had been consumed by training, fighting, surviving, or raising two hundred and thirty-six children who treated personal boundaries as a suggestion.
Back in my old life it hadn't mattered. I was young, busy, and I had a very specific view about relationships — intimacy came after commitment, not before.
That hadn't changed. If anything, this world had reinforced it. I'd seen what happened when people treated connection as disposable. The cages. The ledgers with names and prices. No. When I did this, I'd do it properly.
But twenty-seven.
Arthur had been married at — what had he said? Young. Really young. Different world, different customs, but the point stood. The man had built a life. Had a family. Loved someone.
And here I was, writing supply orders and arguing with nine-year-olds about bedtime.
I closed my eyes. It wasn't loneliness exactly. I had Sylvie. I had the kids. I had this place. But there was a shape in my life that was empty, and I'd been stepping around it for years pretending it was just part of the floor.
The thought nagged at me for the rest of the evening. Through dinner. Through Sylvie's nightly report on who had been "good" and who had been "suspicious" — her word, not mine — and through the quiet hour after the kids went to sleep when I usually trained or read.
I didn't train that night. I just sat on the porch and thought about it.
---
The next morning, between the breakfast rush and the first lesson, Sylvie appeared in my doorway with her hair looking like she'd fought a hedge and lost.
"Papa."
"Bug."
"Tommy says boys are stronger than girls and I need you to come outside and tell him he's wrong."
"Tommy's wrong."
"I know that. But he needs to hear it from you because he says I'm biased."
"You are biased."
"That doesn't mean I'm wrong." She crossed her arms with the devastating logic of a child who had already won the argument and was simply collecting confirmation. I shooed her off with a promise to address the Tommy situation at recess, and she vanished down the hallway at her usual dead sprint.
I watched her go. Listened to her bare feet slapping the floorboards, already yelling something to Mia before she'd even rounded the corner.
That girl deserved a full family. Not just me. Not just a father figure held together by stubbornness and scar tissue. She deserved a home with warmth in every corner of it.
I grabbed my coat.
---
Lea's office in the Monad estate was exactly what you'd expect from someone who could kill you seventeen different ways but also kept fresh flowers on her desk. Clean. Organised. A single sword mounted on the wall that I knew for a fact was not decorative.
She was reading a report when I walked in, and she didn't look up for a solid ten seconds, which I'd learned was her way of saying "I acknowledge you but I'm finishing this sentence."
"Noel." She set the report down. "What brings you here? Orphanage trouble?"
"No, the orphanage is fine." I sat down across from her. Paused. Realised I had no idea how to start this conversation. Decided to just say it. "I need advice. About... finding a wife."
Lea stared at me.
Then a grin spread across her face — not her polite noble grin, her real one, the one that made her look like the big sister who'd just caught you doing something embarrassing.
"Say that again. Slower."
"I'm not repeating it."
"Noel Xerlectus, the Boar, the man who beat Ragnar V Valgard in a fistfight, the monster who flattened a thousand soldiers with no equipment, is sitting in my office asking me for romantic advice."
She leaned back in her chair, clearly savoring every second of this. "This might be the best day of my life."
"Are you going to help me or not?"
She composed herself, mostly, though the corners of her mouth kept twitching. "Alright. Fine. Have you considered anyone? Any woman you've met, spent time with, felt something for?"
"No."
"No one? In all the years you've been here?"
"I've been busy."
"Busy." She said it flat, like she was tasting the word and finding it wanting. "You've been busy for a decade."
"Raising children. Fighting monsters. Building an orphanage. Yes. Busy."
She studied me for a moment with those sharp eyes, and I could see the gears turning behind them. Then she leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and her tone shifted from teasing to practical. The Legendary Stalker assessing a situation.
"Have you considered an arranged marriage?"
I blinked. "A what?"
"Arranged. Marriage. Two families agree on a match, the couple meets, and the relationship develops within the commitment rather than before it." She said it like she was describing a supply chain, not a life partnership.
"That sounds... cold."
"Does it?" She tilted her head. "You skip the entire performance of courtship. No games. No pretending to be someone you're not over awkward dinners. You enter the marriage with clear expectations and build something real from honesty instead of infatuation. Half the noble marriages in the continent work this way, and most of them are stronger than the love matches because they're built on respect first."
I opened my mouth to argue and then closed it. Because the thing was, she wasn't wrong. The way she described it — commitment first, love developed through shared life — that was essentially what I already believed.
I'd never been comfortable with the idea of dating around, testing people like products, discarding them when the feeling faded. Marriage was supposed to be the foundation, not the reward.
"You're actually considering it," Lea said, reading my face.
"I'm thinking."
"Take your time. But Noel?" She leaned back again, and her expression softened into something genuine. "You deserve this. A partner. Someone in your corner who isn't a child or a colleague. You've spent years pouring yourself into everyone else. It's not selfish to want something for yourself."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I just nodded and left.
---
I thought about it for three days.
During breakfast while Sylvie argued with Clark about whose turn it was to feed the chickens. During lessons while Mia carefully worked through subtraction problems, her fox ears twitching with concentration. During the quiet evenings on the porch when the orphanage settled into sleep and the only sound was crickets and the occasional creak of old wood.
I thought about Arthur and Elara. Married young. Built a life together. He'd told me about her once, just once, and the way his voice changed when he said her name told me everything about what love looked like when it had roots.
I thought about Sylvie asking me, "Papa, was I always yours?" and how someday she might ask a different question. "Papa, why is it just us?"
I thought about coming home to someone. Not a child who needed protection, but a person who chose to stand beside me. Who'd argue with me about stupid things and laugh at my bad jokes and tell me when I was being an idiot, which was often.
On the third day, I went back to Lea.
---
"I'm in," I said, sitting down in the same chair.
Lea had clearly been expecting this because she already had a blank parchment and a quill ready. "Good. Now, I need to know what you're looking for so I can narrow the search. Be specific."
"No widows," I said immediately.
She raised an eyebrow but didn't question it. She wrote it down.
"Someone who's at least twenty-one. Old enough to know who she is."
The quill scratched across the parchment.
I hesitated. Lea noticed. Of course she noticed.
"What else?"
I rubbed the back of my neck. This next part felt ridiculous to say out loud, but she'd told me to be specific. "If she happens to be... a cat demi-human... that wouldn't be the worst thing."
Lea's quill stopped. She looked up at me. The grin was back, wider than before, and I could see her physically restraining herself from saying something devastating.
"A neko."
"I said it wouldn't be the worst thing. It's not a requirement."
"Noel Xerlectus has a type." She said it like she was inscribing it into historical record. "The Boar likes cat girls."
"I'm leaving."
"No, no, sit down." She was laughing now, actually laughing, one hand pressed over her mouth like that would somehow contain it. "I'm sorry. I'm done. It's written down. Cat demi-human, preferred but not required. Anything else?"
I thought for a moment. "She has to be kind. That's the only thing that actually matters. The rest is... preferences. But kind is non-negotiable. If she can't look at a child with warmth, I don't care what else she brings."
Lea stopped laughing. She looked at me for a long moment, and something in her expression shifted.
"I'll find you someone, Noel." She said it quietly, like a promise. "Give me a couple of weeks. I know more people than you'd think."
I stood up, feeling lighter than I had in days. Weeks, maybe. Like something that had been locked in my chest had finally been given permission to breathe.
"Thank you, Lea. Seriously."
"Don't thank me yet." The grin crept back. "Wait until you see the candidates."
That should have worried me more than it did.
---
That night, after the kids were asleep and the orphanage was quiet, I sat at my desk in the low candlelight and opened my status panel for the first time in a while. I hadn't checked in months. Hadn't needed to — the hunting had slowed to occasional jobs when the Association called, and most of my energy went into the orphanage these days. But something about today, about making a decision that wasn't about survival or duty but about building a future, made me want to see where I stood.
The panel flickered open in front of me.
---------------
Noel Xerlectus
Age:27
Level: 2(+)
Strength: D534→S992 (+10)
Endurance: B712→SS1237 (+20)
Dexterity: E484→S978 (+10)
Agility: F382→S903 (+60)
Magic: H178→E403
I looked at the numbers for a long time.
Then I smiled.
-------------------
AN
#no-longer-maidenless
lmk what you think and yeah next chapter might get interesting
Also I'm lowkey thinking of making a @pat, anyways.
see you soon