Archive of Our Own

The body is barely recognizable as human. It’s been ripped apart from throat to groin—mangled by tooth and claw until the flesh is nothing but a raw, pulpy mess, the ribcage cracked open by powerful jaws and the entrails torn out and eaten. It’s nearly impossible to guess at this point what might have been responsible: it could have been a yao, or a ghost, or even a wild animal. By now it has certainly made a meal for more than a few scavengers, as well.

Her face is no more recognizable than the rest of her, but Song Lan, kneeling at her side, knows who she is. Her name was A-Xiu, and three days ago she went to the market in nearby Yiling to barter rice from her family’s farm before the worst of the late winter cold sets in. She never came home. Her parents asked them to find her, and they have found her corpse.

Fuxue sniffs around the body, her muzzle to the frostbitten earth, thorough and methodical even in the face of spattered blood and strewn viscera. She’s been seeking a scent for several minutes already, and Song Lan has no optimism left.

Finally she huffs out a frustrated breath and lifts her head. I can’t find anything, she says. A wolf has no need of apologies, but Song Lan can feel the regret behind her thoughts. There’s no scent left. I think she’s been here for at least two days.

The ground is frozen solid now, but it rained the night before; Song Lan hadn’t had much hope to begin with. “Thank you for trying,” he says, and strokes his knuckles over her skull, a ghost of a touch. She huffs out a noise, briefly pressing her cold nose into his palm.

Song Lan stands, shaking the dust from his robes, and walks back to the edge of the clearing. Xingchen is waiting there with Shuanghua, one restraining hand buried tight in the thick fur at the back of the wolf’s neck.

“Nothing,” Song Lan says, and Xingchen slumps in dismay. “Another dead end.”

Xingchen makes a sound in his throat, mingled distress and frustration. “How many does that make now?” he says. “Half a dozen? And no sign yet of the attacker at all.”

“Our luck has been bad,” Song Lan says. Between the winter rains and the more-than-animal intelligence of whatever creature they’re hunting, they’ve found no trails to follow; there have been no witnesses to the attacks, and none of the victims have yet been found alive. “Fuxue couldn’t pick up a trail, but Shuanghua might,” he says. “His nose is better.”

“I doubt it’ll make a difference, what with last night’s rain,” Xingchen says, and sighs. “I suppose it’s worth a try. Leave the body alone,” he adds sternly, releasing his grip on his wolf’s ruff.

Shuanghua whines, in protest or in sympathy, but does as he’s told. Rather than approach the mangled corpse, he puts his nose to the ground and starts searching the edges of the clearing; Fuxue joins him, and together they range back and forth around this little patch of woodland where A-Xiu was dragged. With a nod to Xingchen, Song Lan paces after their wolves, keeping an eye out for visual signs of a trail that they might overlook. Xingchen stays where he is, watching over the body.

They hunt for nearly an hour. Eventually they are forced to conclude that there is simply nothing left for them to find.

“I suppose we’d best get back to the village,” Xingchen says quietly. “A-Xiu’s parents will want to know where to find her body.”

They make their way out of the woodlands. Fuxue falls in beside Song Lan as they walk, bumping her face against his arm in comfort. Not for the first time Song Lan is swamped with gratitude for the knowledge that she chose him. She’s been his closest companion since he was barely into adolescence—his only companion, in fact, until they met Xingchen and Shuanghua.

He and Xingchen have been in western Yunmeng for nearly four weeks. Three attacks—that they know of—happened before they arrived; there have been three since. As near as they can tell, they began with the start of this year’s winter, and have been increasing in frequency as the weather has grown worse. The trails have all been long cold by the time they’ve found the bodies of the victims, or the elements have worked against them, or their quarry has been clever enough to drag its prey into a river or over bare rock to obscure its own scent. The attacks have been frustratingly random as well, dispersed widely across the area east of Yiling and well into the edges of Yunmeng Jiang territory.

It’s not a region he and Xingchen would normally find themselves in. The Jiang Sect, even with their numbers greatly diminished in the wake of the Sunshot Campaign, have always put in the work to defend those living in their territory. But in this case, it’s precisely the location of the attacks that is the problem: as with any unexplained violence happening in the vicinity of Yiling, it’s being blamed on the Yiling Laozu. The Jiang have had their hands full, what with the balance between dissuading the other sects from going after their former sect brother, and avoiding the accusation of being accomplice to his crimes—and in the meantime, people are dying.

Just once, Song Lan would love for the sects to pay more care towards protecting people than to arguing over the appearance of honour. If any of them—Jiang or otherwise—had actually bothered to send their people in to deal with the problem, a cursory investigation would have been enough to determine that it has nothing to do with Wei Wuxian. Song Lan hardly approves of demonic cultivation, but it’s well known that the Yiling Laozu fights with ghouls and fierce corpses and resentful energy, not with simple animal violence. It can’t even be his wolf carrying out attacks on his behalf: the rumour is that Suibian barely even acts like she’s bonded to him anymore, not since the day he walked out of the Burial Mounds—and now she’s just as penned up in there as all the rest of them.

Song Lan can’t imagine they’d have the time to spare on senseless attacks in any case. It’s surely enough simply to be fighting to survive a hard winter on resentment-poisoned ground.

A gust of cold wind interrupts his thoughts as they come over the crest of the hill, and he and Fuxue lift their faces into it in an echo of each other’s movement. Below them, the little village that is their destination is nestled into the dip of the valley; but Song Lan is looking to the sky, and to the low-hanging layer of heavy clouds rolling in.

Snow in the air, Fuxue says.

“We should take shelter,” Xingchen says, half a beat later.

Xingchen can’t hear what Fuxue says, of course—not that it’s hearing, exactly; it’s more an empathic bond, combined with an intuitive understanding of the wolves’ language of scent and physical signal—but Fuxue and Shuanghua do speak to each other. Xingchen has no doubt heard the same warning from him.

He doesn’t mean for them to seek shelter in the village. Xingchen and Song Lan rarely stay in towns if they don’t have to: the wolves make people nervous, and Shuanghua’s prey drive is high enough that he doesn’t deal well with crowds. Usually the four of them are perfectly content with setting camp in the wilds, but that will make for an uncomfortable few days if there’s a snowstorm coming in. “I’ll pick up some supplies,” Song Lan says. “I can ask about where we might stay.”

“Thank you,” Xingchen says, and then his face turns sad. “I’ll take Shuanghua with me to see A-Xiu’s parents.”

Song Lan returns from the village as evening falls, with their meal for the night, supplies for the coming days, and directions to the nearby Yiling Supervisory Office, which has stood empty since the early days of the Sunshot Campaign. “It’s been abandoned for the past three years,” he tells Xingchen, over their dinner of fish pearl meatballs and rice. “They spoke of ghosts, in the village.”

“I think we can handle a few ghosts,” Xingchen says with a smile. “Can’t we, Shuanghua?” He’s hand-feeding his wolf again, letting him lick scraps of fish from his fingers.

“It could get ugly,” Song Lan warns. His eyes are fixed on the curl of Shuanghua’s tongue around Xingchen’s fingertips. “It was one of the first places Wei Wuxian attacked during the war.”

Xingchen’s smile falters a little at that, then firms into a self-assured line. “We can handle it,” he repeats. “It’s our duty as cultivators to put resentful energy to rest.” What goes unspoken is that Xingchen feels responsible for Wei Wuxian, who is the closest thing he has to family outside of Baoshan Sanren’s spiritual mountain; they only met him once, and only briefly, but Song Lan can understand that. Xingchen is a person always reaching after connection. Song Lan can’t imagine how hard it must be for him to be rootless.

They finish their dinner. Fuxue rejoins them as they’re packing up their things, fed and sated: Song Lan can taste the bloody tang of a hare in the back of his own mouth. Shuanghua ranges ahead of them as they make their way towards the abandoned Supervisory Office, hunting his own small game. The weather worsens around them, the temperature dropping sharply and the wind picking up until it stings at Song Lan’s exposed throat.

The Supervisory Office comes into view just as the skies open up above them, and they push the gates open onto a wild swirl of falling snow. Immediately a wave of resentful energy surges up to meet them, a bone-deep slap of darker cold that can’t be warmed away by fire. Fuxue whines, her hackles going up; Shuanghua outright growls. The wolves are more sensitive to resentful energy than humans, and Shuanghua is more sensitive than most: this can’t be comfortable for him.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Song Lan says.

But Xingchen is already pulling the gate closed behind them. “It would be worse to go back out,” he says, and Song Lan is forced to admit that he’s right: the snow is coming down hard and thick already, and visibility is rapidly deteriorating. “Come on,” he adds, and tugs very briefly at the edge of Song Lan’s sleeve. Song Lan feels it like a grip around his wrist. “We need to figure out which of these buildings is most habitable.”

They encounter their first ghost almost right away. It comes howling eerily out of the driving snow, barely more solid than the snowflakes around it, and shreds to nothing with a single snap of Shuanghua’s jaws. It’s soon followed by a second, then a third, and then Song Lan stops counting. None of them are any stronger than the first; those the wolves don’t catch are easily taken down with the sweep of a sword or a simple purifying talisman.

“Wen cultivators,” Xingchen observes, just loudly enough to be heard over the wind. “You were right—Wei Wuxian must have killed them.”

Another ghost wails in the distance; with a snarl, Shuanghua goes tearing off after it, his pale coat vanishing quickly into the falling snow. Song Lan has no idea what to say, so he simply says nothing.

Someone else is here, Fuxue says suddenly.

“What?” Song Lan says, startled into a reply. “What do you mean? They’re spirits.”

No, Fuxue says. It doesn’t smell like a ghost. Someone has been here. She snorts faintly then and shakes herself off, unsettling the clumped snowflakes from her coat. It’s hard to tell, though, with the snow covering the scent.

“Are you sure?”

No, actually, Fuxue says. It’s just a feeling. But…

“Of course,” Song Lan says. No matter what else happens, he will always trust to Fuxue’s instincts.

“What is it?” Xingchen asks.

Song Lan resettles his grip on his sword. “Keep an eye out,” he says. “Fuxue thinks someone has been here.”

They carry on. There are more ghosts; every so often Shuanghua ranges back to them, appearing out of the storm like a ghost himself before he darts off again after more prey. Fuxue sticks close by Song Lan’s side, her steady tread a perfect match to his own. They come upon buildings choked with resentful energy, or ruined by warfare, or rotted and reclaimed by the elements. None seem safe to sleep in.

“Look,” Xingchen says, as they pass by the well in the central courtyard. He picks up the abandoned bucket, tapping his nails against the interior. “There’s ice inside. Someone must have used it recently.”

“Who else would even be out here?” Song Lan says. “Another cultivator?”

“It could be something to do with the attacks,” Xingchen says. Song Lan does not miss that he hasn’t specified whether he means another pursuer, or the attacker itself. He doesn’t need to: they’re both thinking it.

Shuanghua rejoins them as they come up the steps of what must have been the Supervisory Office’s main residence. It’s less ruined than some of the other buildings, and more desolate: like even the ghosts are avoiding it. The quiet that falls as they step close enough to be sheltered from the wind is more than a little unnerving.

Xingchen hesitates with his hand on the door. “What do you think?” he says.

Song Lan can barely feel his fingers. “I think,” he says, “that if we don’t get in out of the cold, it won’t matter how bad it is in there.”

“True enough,” Xingchen says ruefully, and tugs the door open. “And it’s a large building. I’m sure we can find one room that will serve for shelter.”

They close the door behind them. It’s hardly warm inside the building, but Song Lan feels better already without the frigid air biting at his face. He sheathes his sword, and he and Xingchen dust the snowflakes from their hair and the shoulders of their robes. The wolves have already shaken themselves off; snow is melting in tiny puddles all over the stained bamboo floors.

Then Fuxue abruptly goes tense. There is someone here, she says, pressing her nose almost eagerly to the floor. Human, and also—

She lets out a yip and takes off down the hallway before she can finish the thought, Shuanghua hard on her heels. “Fuxue!” Song Lan calls, and then starts after her. Xingchen keeps pace with him; his sword is still drawn, held elegantly at his side.

The remains of the residence are dark and strange, the ceiling sagging and silk paintings fluttering in tattered disarray on the walls. There’s the sweet smell of mildew hanging in the air, and some of the doorways they pass are carved up in a reminder of the violence that took its original occupants’ lives. There’s scattered debris all over the floor; in this poor light it would be impossible to navigate if not for their cultivators’ senses. They meet no ghosts, but there always seems to be something moving in the corners of Song Lan’s eyes. His breath steams in the cold.

The room Fuxue leads them to, by contrast, is shockingly warm—or feels that way, after the chill of the storm outside. It’s lit by the subtle glow of firelight. Song Lan pauses in the doorway, allowing his eyes to adjust.

The room is mid-sized, large enough that it clearly can’t have belonged to a common clerk or soldier, but not so large as to have housed anyone of true status. There’s a little brazier in the middle of the floor, the source of both light and warmth; the detritus of broken furniture and leaf litter that once filled the room has been shoved aside, creating a comfortable open space centred around the brazier. A man is sleeping there, his head tucked down into his arms and his hair spilling over his face. He’s curled up on the floor alongside a heavy pile of furs. There’s the scent of blood on the air; Song Lan cannot tell if he’s borrowing Fuxue’s senses again, or if it really is strong enough for his human nose to pick it up.

“He’s hurt,” Xingchen says, in simple dismay, and starts towards the stranger.

Shuanghua growls.

“Wait,” Song Lan says, and can’t find the words for why. “Xingchen, don’t—”

The pile of furs raises its head, fixing Xingchen with a direct stare and resolving all at once into the shape of an enormous wolf. The prickle of intuition in the back of Song Lan’s mind crystallizes to stark clarity: this man is a cultivator. And he’s here alone—just him and his wolf—which means he’s either been separated from his pack, or he doesn’t have one to begin with.

As soon as his wolf raises his head the man goes from dead asleep to drawing his sword, bolting upright into a predator’s ready crouch. Xingchen freezes, visibly conscious of the sword still held in his hand. Shuanghua throws himself between Xingchen and the stranger, hackles raised defensively, baring his teeth in a snarl. Fuxue was already on guard as soon as she stepped into the reclaimed room; now she growls a warning. The other wolf lunges to his feet, making it abundantly clear just how massive he is: the wolves that cultivators bond with are larger than normal wolves, and Fuxue is bigger than most, but this male outstrips her in every dimension. Song Lan doesn’t like her chances if it comes to a real fight.

“Stand down,” he snaps.

“What the fuck do you want?” the other man demands near-simultaneously.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Xingchen says, as soothing as he can be in a room full of three snarling wolves. Slowly, carefully, he lowers himself to the floor, laying his sword down at his side and lifting his hands cleanly away. “We were looking for shelter from the storm, and Zichen’s wolf picked up your scent, that’s all.”

The stranger glares at him, his eyes sliding just as poisonously to Song Lan; but then he takes in the snow still clinging to their robes, and his gaze skips back to Xingchen’s sword resting innocently on the floor. His shoulders relax, just a tiny bit. “If you’re lying…,” he begins darkly.

“We’re not,” Xingchen says, calmly self-assured. “We’re no threat to you. Whatever reason you have to be wary of cultivators, it has nothing to do with us.”

The man stares at them suspiciously for another long moment, but then slumps, and suddenly it’s apparent how worn out he is. He throws his sword down, putting a steadying hand against his wolf’s flank. There’s a leather half-glove on it, and his smallest two fingers don’t quite seem to curl properly. He’s also visibly favouring his left leg; it’s hard to tell in the dim light of the brazier, but Song Lan thinks he may have bled through his robes a bit.

With swords no longer in hand and the open hostility tucked away, the wolves seem prepared to put it immediately behind them. The stranger’s wolf helps the man to sit back down; he snaps, just a little, when Shuanghua comes over to introduce himself, but then calms easily, just keeping a wary eye on Shuanghua and curling protectively around his human partner. Fuxue comes over as well, and they sniff inquisitively at each other for a moment before all three of them settle down, speaking together in the way of wolves that Song Lan only half understands.

Xingchen returns his sword to its sheath and sits at the other side of the brazier. Song Lan sinks into a wary seat beside him, studying the stranger over the coals. Now that he has a chance to look at him properly—now that the man is no longer snarling defiance—Song Lan is startled to realize that he’s intensely pretty: not pretty in the way of Xingchen’s exquisitely ethereal grace, but pretty like he might burn. With his strong nose, sharp cheekbones, and heavy brows, he looks nearly like a wolf himself. It’s an unsettling thing to notice, and abruptly Song Lan almost has to look away.

He focuses, instead, on the other man’s robes. They’re plainer than they first appeared in the low light—eye-catchingly patterned and attractively cut, but absent the brocades and embroideries of a sect disciple. In fact, the stranger has no sect markers anywhere that Song Lan can see, on either his clothing or the sword he carries. It seems increasingly likely that he is a cultivator with no pack—and with a wolf that big, and a temper that quick, and the pair of them both so instantly ready for a fight—

Song Lan has a terrible intuition. “You’re Xue Yang,” he says.

“The one and only,” Xue Yang says. “Who the fuck are you?”

No one knew who Xue Yang was until four years ago, when he and his wolf came out of nowhere to tear the entire Chang clan apart. The sect had been small, and not especially powerful: only a tiny handful of their cultivators had been bonded with wolves themselves, and Jiangzai had ripped through each and every one of them. It had only come out in the aftermath that Chang Cian, the former sect leader, had been responsible for mutilating Xue Yang’s hand in his childhood—and the cultivation world had simply given a collective shrug and let it go. Xue Yang had been bonded with Jiangzai even at seven years old, and it was common wisdom that no one enacted violence against a packless, feral wolf without one day getting their due. Bonded so young, it stood to reason that Jiangzai was out of control, and that Xue Yang was unable to rein him in—which was exactly why the pack structure of the clans was so important. All that had remained to be seen was which sect would successfully bring them to heel.

Xue Yang and Jiangzai, perhaps unsurprisingly, had violently refuted them all.

Xingchen and Song Lan had talked a little at the time about bringing them to justice, but they had ultimately decided against it. Whichever sect they brought Xue Yang to would inevitably only take him for their own—and, in any case, if he and Jiangzai had successfully fought off all the hunting packs that had gone up against them, what chance would two lone wolves have? Better to simply stay out of the whole situation, and to avoid the area between Yueyang and Kuizhou, where Xue Yang was known to roam.

They had not expected to find him near Yiling in the middle of winter—or for him to turn up in the midst of a frustratingly unsolvable investigation into a series of brutal attacks.

Song Lan shares a glance with Xingchen. He is uncomfortably aware of how easily a wolf could have made the wounds on the victims’ bodies, and Jiangzai has already proven his willingness to kill. And it would make a certain twisted sense for Xue Yang to be responsible for attacks that the Yiling Laozu has been blamed for: he’s been rumoured to dabble in demonic cultivation himself.

Xingchen introduces them as he always does. “I’m Xiao Xingchen, and this is my friend, Song Lan.” As ever, Song Lan keeps his face impassive. It stings a little every time to be only Xingchen’s friend, even knowing that it’s by his own choice.

“Wait, I know who you are,” Xue Yang says. “The bright moon and gentle breeze, right?” His eyes are bright, lingering on Xingchen’s face and hands for a long, interested moment, before he turns his gaze on Song Lan and something mean comes into it. “Which I guess makes you the distant snows and bitter frost.”

Song Lan says nothing, just looking back at him dispassionately.

Xue Yang scoffs, shifting his attention back to Xingchen—it’s always Xingchen people focus on, but usually it doesn’t rankle like this. “If you’re not here for me, what are you doing out here?” Xue Yang says. “No one ever comes out this way, between the Yiling Laozu and the fucking Jiang.”

“We’ve been… conducting an investigation,” Xingchen says delicately. “The Yiling Laozu isn’t going to trouble us. We go where we’re needed, and the sects are otherwise occupied at the moment.”

“Sounds boring,” Xue Yang says. It’s so dismissive that for a moment Song Lan wonders how they might bring the conversation around to their suspicions without simply asking him outright—but then unexpectedly he adds, “Hold on, you’re not here about the animal attacks, are you?”

Xingchen blinks at him, just once. “What makes you say it’s an animal?” he asks, very neutral.

But Xue Yang just shrugs, shifting position as he stretches his injured leg in front of him. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” he says. “Something’s taking people for food. I mean—not animal animal, my bet’s on a yao, but it’s not a person. If it was defending its territory or going after a specific target, the attacks wouldn’t be all spread out like they are. And it started with the season. Whatever it is, it’s hungry.”

Song Lan can’t stop the disbelieving sound that lodges in his throat. “You expect us to believe you’ve been investigating the attacks yourself?”

“Uh, yes?” Xue Yang says. “What the fuck other reason would I have to be out here? It’s not like there’s anything to do in Yiling in the winter.”

“That doesn’t explain why you’re in Yiling in the winter,” Song Lan says dryly.

“There’s nothing to do in fucking Kuizhou either,” Xue Yang says. “I heard about the attacks. It sounded interesting.”

Interesting, Song Lan thinks, is not the word he would use for it.

Xingchen hesitates for just a moment. “None of the people we’ve spoken to knew there was anyone else looking into it,” he says. “They were very thankful to us.”

“Well, yeah, it’s not like I told any of them,” Xue Yang says, in a tone that almost makes that sound like a reasonable thing to do. “I’ve just been tracking the victims. I thought I’d found the yao that was doing it and everything—we put it down a few days ago, that’s how I fucked up my leg.” He gestures disgustedly at his injury; he’s definitely bled through his robes, but he doesn’t seem to care. “But then there was that girl that got taken, right? So that can’t have been it. And I’ve been stuck waiting for this to heal, so we couldn’t even go track her down. Waste of fucking time.”

Song Lan trades another glance with Xingchen. But before he can say anything Xue Yang abruptly speaks up again. “Wait,” he says. “You think I did it, don’t you?”

The answering silence is telling.

“What the fuck,” Xue Yang says.

“You have to admit your presence here raises questions,” Xingchen says—but because it’s Xingchen, he makes it sound somehow like a simple statement of fact, rather than an accusation. Song Lan could not have said it like that.

“Oh, come on,” Xue Yang says. “Just because I killed off the Chang—I don’t have anything against these people. And anyway, in case you haven’t noticed, I fucked up my leg.”

“Your wolf is uninjured,” Song Lan says.

Jiangzai, up until this point, has been engaged in his own private conversation with Fuxue and Shuanghua; now he raises his head, letting out a growl. Xue Yang bares his teeth in an unnervingly similar one.

“I get it,” he says. “You think we’re out of control. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it. Well, you know what? You can go fuck yourself.”

Song Lan only watches him stonily, and after a moment Xue Yang turns away. “You can stay until the storm has passed,” he tells Xingchen, “but then you can fuck off and leave me alone, or we’ll show you how we’ve kept the sects off our backs for all these years.”

“We won’t bother you,” Xingchen says quietly. “Thank you.”

Xue Yang makes a disdainful noise and proceeds to ignore them, settling back down with his sword in easy reach. He curls against Jiangzai and to all appearances falls immediately asleep, like he’s a wolf himself.

Xingchen stands and gives Song Lan a meaningful look, and together they draw away a little from the brazier. In an undertone Song Lan says, “I don’t trust him.”

“Yes, I could tell,” Xingchen says, just as low. “But, Zichen, do you really think it’s fair to cast suspicion on him? We have no real reason to believe he’s responsible. For all we know he’s been entirely truthful.”

“They massacred an entire sect,” Song Lan says. “And who knows how many others since then? Just because Xue Yang thinks he’s in control doesn’t mean he’s right. You know the risks when a strong wolf bonds with an untrained cultivator, especially when it happens so young.”

“I know,” Xingchen says. “But I think we should give him a chance. And besides,” he adds, “Shuanghua likes Jiangzai. Look at them.”

He’s right. All three of the wolves have settled down together, entirely at ease. Curled up in their midst, Xue Yang looks strangely small.

“Fuxue,” Song Lan calls wearily. He already knows she’s not going to listen. And, just as expected, she raises her head, gives him an unconcerned glance, and yawns pointedly in his direction before she lies back down.

“Just leave her, Zichen,” Xingchen says. “We should find somewhere to sleep ourselves.”

“There’s a mattress,” Song Lan says, nodding to the pile of discarded furniture. It looks whole enough, and should be comfortable to sleep on once freed of the broken bedframe. “We can put it down by the brazier. I’m surprised Xue Yang didn’t use it.”

But Xingchen just looks back to Xue Yang, asleep with his face buried in Jiangzai’s winter coat. “I’m not,” he says contemplatively, and goes to get the mattress.

The temperature drops precipitously overnight. In the cold, Xue Yang chafes irritably at his injured hand, but stops when he notices Song Lan looking. They eat breakfast huddled around the brazier, their wolves leaning against them to share their body heat. Xingchen serves Xue Yang from their food supplies without being asked; Xue Yang squints at him suspiciously, but eats without complaint.

Song Lan is scrubbing out their pot with a handful of snow when Xingchen says, “I could treat your wounds for you.”

“What?” Xue Yang says.

“What?” Song Lan echoes.

Xingchen casts Song Lan a faintly exasperated look, and Song Lan closes his mouth. “I have medicines,” Xingchen says. “It would help your leg to heal faster.”

“Why?” Xue Yang says. “What’s in it for you?”

Xingchen shrugs. “Nothing,” he says. “It’s just that I’d like to help.”

Xue Yang just looks at him for a long moment, until Xingchen—somehow drawing meaning from his silence—says, “You can watch everything I’m doing. If there’s anything you don’t like the look of, I’ll stop.”

Abruptly Song Lan finds he can’t stand the thought of Xingchen’s hands on Xue Yang. He gets to his feet. “Fuxue, come on,” he says. “We’re going hunting.” The snow is still coming down heavily outside, but if he wraps his hands up in silk and layers his robes, he should be warm enough to stand it for an hour or two. Exorcising a few of the Supervisory Office’s ghosts will give him something to do—and will hopefully work out some of the restless, jittery feeling in his limbs at seeing Xingchen taking care of someone who’s looking at him the way Xue Yang is.

Xingchen flashes him a smile as he goes, and does not try to stop him. Song Lan does his best not to feel bitter about it.

It takes him around an hour to explore the rest of the building. Just as they had thought the night before, he finds no spirits within, though the unnerving prickle at the back of his neck never quite goes away. Eventually he steps outside into the snow to deal with the ghosts he knows are out there; that’s where Xingchen and Xue Yang catch him up. Xingchen, in his white robes, blends into the storm nearly as well as Shuanghua does. He looks like some celestial creature come to earth, and Song Lan’s heart catches painfully in his throat.

Xue Yang, by contrast, is sparkling with manic energy. He’s wrapped up in a heavy outer robe with fur at the collar, and he’s already walking better than he was this morning. At his side, Jiangzai looks fierce and wild, the snow collecting visibly on the deep brown of his flanks.

“You’re just going to freeze out here,” Xue Yang says, sounding altogether unbothered by the prospect. “There are way too many ghosts in the Supervisory Office to deal with them all. I told Xiao Xingchen this was a waste of time,” he adds. “I don’t suppose you’re going to listen either.”

“No,” Song Lan says shortly.

“Figures,” Xue Yang says, and shrugs his furs further up around his neck. “Alright, where are we going?”

Song Lan bites down his irritation. “You don’t have to come with us,” he says.

“Sure,” Xue Yang says, “but I’m fucking bored. At least this is something to do.”

It’s hard to be anything like systematic, with the snow coming down as it is, but between the three of them they suppress or eliminate a good number of the Supervisory Office’s wandering ghosts. It’s vigorous work, but not difficult. Song Lan spends more of their time in combat than he’d care to admit watching Xue Yang and Jiangzai out of the corners of his eyes.

They’re not what he expected.

He has no idea where they learned to fight. Their forms aren’t anything like what he’s come to anticipate from sect-trained warriors; or like Xingchen and Shuanghua’s more unorthodox but gorgeously fluid style; or even like the half-traditional, half-invented partnered techniques Baixue Temple had to cobble together from forgotten martial texts they found in their library. But they are, inarguably, a matched pair—wolf and cultivator working in tandem, Jiangzai following Xue Yang’s unspoken direction and Xue Yang letting his wolf’s heightened senses lead him, both of them guarding each other’s backs and moving in perfect tune. Song Lan would have thought that Jiangzai would be dominant, but that’s not what he’s seeing now.

Fuxue nips at his hand. Pay attention, she says, just as a ghost comes howling out of the snow.

They give up after another hour and go back inside to warm up. Song Lan sits in meditation while Xingchen makes congee, chatting with Xue Yang. Normally he’s good at meditation, even through distraction, but today he finds it unexpectedly difficult to clear his mind. His attention keeps catching on the easy way Xingchen talks to Xue Yang, and on how Xue Yang flirts back in response. It’s clear that Xingchen has decided to like Xue Yang; Shuanghua, likewise, is as comfortable with Jiangzai as he is with Fuxue. In fact, all three of the wolves are curled up together again in a pile, Shuanghua and Jiangzai wrestling idly back and forth while Fuxue watches them indulgently.

Song Lan knows, through his connection to Fuxue, that the wolves will need to hunt soon: he can feel the hollow of her hunger sitting behind his own ribs. Between them, she thinks, they might be able to take down a wild yak, which would feed all three of them for several days.

You shouldn’t trust Jiangzai so easily, Song Lan reminds her. He surprises himself with how fierce it comes out.

Fuxue just yawns at him again.

The wolves do go out hunting the next morning. Song Lan hesitates at first to allow Jiangzai out of their sight, but eventually has to let it go: they need to eat, after all, and he trusts Fuxue and Shuanghua to watch him.

He’s expecting a quiet morning, but Xue Yang seems oddly restless with his wolf gone—keeps looking out the little shuttered window like he expects Jiangzai back already, or like he wants to follow him. Song Lan does his best to ignore him, but something in Xue Yang’s agitation tugs uneasily at his breastbone; and so despite himself he gets up to go hunting ghosts again. It will be different, doing it without Fuxue, but it’ll occupy their time.

Xingchen declines to come with them. “I want to check out this building some more,” he says. “I wonder if I can figure out why there aren’t any ghosts in here.”

Hearing that, Song Lan almost wants for a moment to offer to stay with him—but Xue Yang is already waiting, and an impulse Song Lan can’t name compels him to follow him out the door instead.

Xue Yang says nothing until they step out the front door of the building. “You know,” he says, casually leaping down the steps like he wasn’t injured enough to be limping all of two days ago, “you two don’t act like any pack I’ve ever seen before.”

Song Lan stops, halfway down the stairs. “We’re not pack-bonded,” he says. “Why would you think that?”

“What?” Xue Yang says, and then yelps as he steps wrong on the snow-covered pathway. “But aren’t you, like, famous partners? You’ve been travelling together for… what, four or five years now? Why the fuck wouldn’t you be pack-bonded?”

Song Lan has no way to articulate all the emotions that swell up in his throat. “You’ve resisted every attempt the sects have made to force you into a pack,” he says instead. “Why are you so surprised?”

But Xue Yang just rolls his eyes and starts walking again, slinging his sword over his shoulder. “Yeah, sure, if you want to try to make that the same thing,” he says. “Like you and Xiao Xingchen haven’t gone just as far out of your way to avoid them too. You know they only care about me because I’m outside of their control, right? If I’d been born into a sect I wouldn’t even have Jiangzai.”

Song Lan knows he’s right. Nominally, spiritual wolves bond with strong cultivators whose energy is complementary to their own qi. But in practice, the sect nobility places tight restrictions on who is allowed access to unbonded wolves at all—which means they only ever bond with the people from the most powerful families, regardless of their level of cultivation. Song Lan was lucky, when Baixue Temple received two pups as a payment from a grateful and enormously wealthy patron, that they actually allowed all the disciples to meet the wolves, so that they could bond with the fittest cultivators.

Song Lan has no idea why he’s talking about this with Xue Yang—except that the snow is still coming down around them, and it feels, as they walk through a long-abandoned complex haunted by the unquiet dead, as though they’re all alone in the world. “Xingchen and I have spoken of starting a sect,” he allows. “But neither of us has ever liked the pack structure the sects adhere to. It’s too exclusionary, and too hierarchical, and too—” Too personal, he does not say. He shakes his head. “Xingchen left his pack when he came down the mountain, and I—”

“Yeah, obviously, the politics shit is the worst,” Xue Yang agrees, kicking apart a lump of snow in the road. It reveals nothing but another drift, and he moves on. “It’s just, I figured you’d have fucked by now. Fuxue does go into heat, right? Or is there something wrong with her?”

Song Lan’s ears are ringing. It takes him several long seconds before he can parse that sentence well enough to respond to it. “There’s nothing wrong with Fuxue,” he says, because that at least he knows for sure how to answer.

“Oh,” Xue Yang says, all at once curious and sly and a little bit mean. “So is there something wrong with you, then?”

Song Lan has always made sure to be elsewhere when Fuxue goes into heat. What he feels for Xingchen is too big, too all-consuming, means far too much for him to allow it to be reduced to nothing but a mating rut. He has wanted Xingchen desperately for as long as he has known him; if Xingchen fucked him just because his wolf was in heat and then went back to normal the next day, Song Lan doesn’t know how he’d stand it. He thinks he might die. And the idea that Xingchen might want it himself is nearly as bad: the intimacy of being linked as a pack is terrifying to Song Lan, too close, too much, far more than he can handle. Better for everyone if he just avoids it altogether.

“It’s none of your business,” he says tightly.

“Ohhh,” Xue Yang says, drawn out this time in new understanding. “Oh, you want to. You want to, and you haven’t.” He grins, and Song Lan hates him with a sudden, vicious intensity. “So there is something wrong with you.”

Anger overtakes Song Lan out of nowhere. He whirls on Xue Yang, but Xue Yang is ready for it, meeting him halfway and catching his arm before Song Lan can grab him and throw him back against the nearest building. “Don’t be so crude,” he snarls.

“I didn’t say the problem was your dick,” Xue Yang says. There’s a laugh in his voice; Song Lan wants to crush it from his windpipe. “But there must be something wrong with you, if you want Xiao Xingchen that badly and have never bothered to try.”

“Xingchen doesn’t—” Song Lan says, but catches himself before he can say any more. “I told you it’s none of your business.”

But Xue Yang pounces, a predator on the hunt. “What? Xingchen doesn’t want you?” he taunts. “Are you sure about that?”

Song Lan feels sick to his stomach. He wrenches his arm from Xue Yang’s grip, shoving him away in disgust. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, and stalks off through the snow.

“Don’t I?” Xue Yang says, catching him up. He keeps pace with Song Lan easily, despite his shorter stride and the slight hitch that remains in his step. “How would you know, if you haven’t even tried it?”

“Shut up,” Song Lan says.

“Maybe you just need practice,” Xue Yang says, and somehow contrives to make it sound both wicked and earnest. He catches Song Lan’s arm again and shoves him into a nearby wall, unexpectedly aggressive; Song Lan nearly stumbles, slamming back against it with his breath coming hard in his throat. Xue Yang takes advantage of his frozen astonishment to press right up to him, the whole length of his body laid out along Song Lan’s. Abruptly Song Lan is very aware of the swell of Xue Yang’s cock against his own.

“You could fuck me,” Xue Yang says, almost too low to be heard over the winter winds. “Would that be easier?”

For a very long moment Song Lan cannot move. His entire self is lit up with Xue Yang’s proximity, his body heat and his vivid beauty and the sweep of his tongue flicking out to trace a seductive wetness over his plush lower lip. He’s right: it would be easier—it would be so much easier that Song Lan burns for it. He wants very badly to fuck Xue Yang.

“Get off of me,” he snaps, and throws Xue Yang away. He draws his sword before Xue Yang can pin him again, turning sharply aside and heading straight for the biggest tangle of resentful energy he can sense. He can hear Xue Yang laughing as he follows.

They come back inside eventually to find that the wolves have returned. Xingchen is sitting at the brazier with Shuanghua, stroking his fur in the way that he does when he’s unsettled, staring into a cup of tea. He rouses a little as Song Lan and Xue Yang come into the room, offering them a thin smile.

“Are you alright?” Song Lan says.

“I am, it’s just—” Xingchen says, then shakes his head. “I found the ghost of a woman, in a room that had been closed off before. I think she was driving all the others away. Wei Wuxian had—it doesn’t matter,” he says sadly. “I exorcised her, the poor girl, and put up some talismans to keep the rest out while we’re here.”

“I’m sorry,” Song Lan says, not knowing what else to say. He wants to put his hand on Xingchen’s shoulder in comfort; but the truth is that they rarely touch, and what Xue Yang said outside—pushed to the back of his mind by the exorcism of their own ghosts—is once again echoing loudly through his head. He cannot trust himself to touch Xingchen right now.

Xingchen just smiles again wanly. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “There’s just… so much ruin that was left, in the wake of their wars. And it’s the ordinary people who have had to bear the worst of it.”

“I know,” Song Lan says quietly.

Xue Yang, meanwhile, has been wrestling out of his fur-trimmed outer robe; now he comes over, an unexpected light of interest in his eyes. “You called him Wei Wuxian,” he says. “Do you know the Yiling Laozu?”

“Not exactly,” Xingchen says. His eyes soften a little as he looks up, the vibrant life in Xue Yang calling to Xingchen’s own bright energy. “We’ve met once. He’s my shijie’s son, which makes him my martial nephew. We don’t know each other.”

Xue Yang drops down into a seat beside Xingchen, eyes trained on his face. “I’ve never met anyone who’s actually spoken to him,” he says. “What’s he like?”

For a moment Xingchen seems to falter, but then he settles, his fingers working their way into Shuanghua’s ruff. He starts to speak—and Song Lan, suddenly, finds that he doesn’t want to hear it. Xingchen is so warm with Xue Yang, and Xue Yang so fascinated with him, and Song Lan’s emotions are still too big for his body. There is no space for him in their conversation. He’s always been cold, stony, too drawn in on himself; it shouldn’t sting, but it does.

He goes instead to the other part of the room, sitting down at Fuxue’s side.

Fuxue is lying by Jiangzai. There is red around both of their muzzles. Song Lan knows, from the sleepy, sated feeling of the wolf in his mind, that they were successful on their hunt; and here is the material evidence of it. Overcome with a fondness that is more like satisfaction, he strokes his fingers through Fuxue’s fur and says, “How did it go?”

Fuxue turns her face towards him; Song Lan has to push her head away before she gets blood all over his hand. Jiangzai is a good hunter, she says. He has better control than Shuanghua.

Warily Song Lan looks to Jiangzai, who meets his eyes for a long moment and then turns his head away dismissively. A slight unease pricks over Song Lan’s shoulders, and his fingers tighten in Fuxue’s fur. Undeterred, she goes right back to licking the blood from Jiangzai’s muzzle.

All at once Song Lan finds his focus dragged back to Xue Yang and Xingchen. Xue Yang is leaning forward in avid interest, bare inches from the gesture of Xingchen’s hands as he explains what he knows of Wei Wuxian’s life before the Sunshot Campaign.

“Why are you so interested in demonic cultivation?” Song Lan can’t stop himself from saying. “Are you not already enough of a threat in the eyes of the sects?”

Xingchen breaks off mid-sentence. Xue Yang draws himself upright, turning hard eyes on Song Lan. “You still don’t trust me.”

“No,” Song Lan says flatly.

“Zichen,” Xingchen says; the rebuke in his tone is gentle, but it bites nonetheless. “That’s unfair. Xue Yang hasn’t done anything to suggest we can’t trust him.”

“It’s not him I’m worried about,” Song Lan says. It doesn’t quite feel true, but he has to say something. “It wasn’t Xue Yang who clawed up those people.”

“You do think it was Jiangzai,” Xue Yang says, almost in disbelief. He gets to his feet, seeming somehow so much bigger than Song Lan knows he really is. “You think I can’t control him, is that it?”

Song Lan stands, an unconscious mirror to Xue Yang. He does think that—or, at least, he thinks he thinks that—why else, after all, would the two of them have ripped through the Chang Sect the way they did? But all he says is, “I don’t like him going out of our sight.”

“He needs to fucking eat,” Xue Yang snaps. “Do you not trust your own wolf to keep an eye on him? Because if you can’t trust Fuxue for that, it sounds like you’re the ones with the problem, not me and Jiangzai.”

“Your wolf,” Song Lan says, “bonded with you as child and then led you on a massacre. You might think you’re in control, but it’s obvious why you can’t be trusted.”

Xingchen makes a noise of distress, but it’s drowned out by Jiangzai’s warning growl, and by Xue Yang’s sharply rising voice. “Oh, fuck you,” Xue Yang says. “You think he fucking led me? That it wasn’t just as much my idea? Whose fucking hand was it that got all fucked up?!” he demands, brandishing his left hand in Song Lan’s face. For the first time Song Lan notices that the half-glove he wears isn’t just a brace: it’s also holding a prosthetic. “Do you think I didn’t want to kill them too? It wasn’t Jiangzai,” he spits. “It was us.”

Jiangzai shoulders his way past Song Lan to stand beside Xue Yang. Song Lan looks at them for a very long moment, at the twin snarls on their mouths and the defiance blazing in both their eyes, and has to admit to what he already knows: they’re a perfectly bonded pair, as well-matched as he and Fuxue, or Xingchen and Shuanghua. He has no reason to suspect Jiangzai of anything, except for suspecting Xue Yang.

“Okay,” he says. “It was both of you. I hope you realize that doesn’t make you more worthy of my trust.”

“Zichen, leave it,” Xingchen says, an unaccustomed note of command in his voice.

“I’m not killing those people,” Xue Yang says.

But it’s Fuxue’s reaction that truly brings Song Lan up short: she growls at him softly, bumping her head against his side with far more force than she normally would. It becomes abruptly clear that everyone in the room, both human and wolf, is arrayed against him. Fuxue doesn’t share his suspicions; Fuxue likes Jiangzai. He has no justification for the way Xue Yang rubs him wrong—no reason to believe he has lied at all.

“Fine,” Song Lan says. “I’m going for a walk.”

Xingchen blinks up at him, the unfamiliar hard edges melting from his expression in the face of his surprise. “It’s still snowing,” he says.

“I’ll be fine,” Song Lan says, more brusquely than he means to. He turns to walk out of the room, only to realize once he’s alone in the hallway that he’s not alone after all: Fuxue has followed him out, despite the irritation he can still feel thrumming through his connection to her mind. She bumps up against his leg and dips her head to lick his hand, and unexpectedly all of the fight goes out of him. Song Lan drops to one knee, wrapping his arms around her neck and burying his face in her ruff.

“I’m sorry,” he says, muffled and low. “I don’t know why I’m so irritable.”

It’s not exactly true—but a wolf has no concept of jealousy, or of sexual frustration outside of a heat, or of denying herself her desires. He has no idea how he would begin to explain it; he has no idea how he would even say it aloud.

Fuxue nudges at the tangle of his thoughts. Humans always make things too complicated, she says.

Song Lan sighs and unsticks his face from her fur. “Yes, probably,” he says, and gets to his feet. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

Their third morning in the Supervisory Office, Song Lan wakes dizzy and overheated.

Xingchen fusses at him, adjusting his robes and pressing the back of his hand to Song Lan’s forehead, all of yesterday’s annoyance forgotten. “I knew you shouldn’t have gone out in the snow,” he says. “Lie back down. You have a fever.”

“It’s not a fever,” Song Lan says. He cannot think how to explain it. He’s too hot, sticky with sweat, but there is an unshakeable conviction in him that he hasn’t fallen ill.

Xingchen hums and doesn’t correct him, pushing Song Lan back down against the mattress in a way that strongly suggests he’s only humouring him. “I’ll make you tea and congee.”

Song Lan allows Xingchen to press food on him, but as soon as he’s eaten he gets up again, pacing restlessly around the room. Sitting still is nearly painful; he itches beneath his skin. More and more, he is sure that this cannot be a sickness. He has too much energy, not too little, and as the morning wears on he feels increasingly like he’s going to burst right out of his body. He wants to—to leave, to fight, to do something, but he knows very well that Xingchen isn’t going to let him go anywhere in this condition.

“What the fuck is with you,” Xue Yang says, tracking Song Lan with his eyes as he finishes his own breakfast.

Song Lan just shakes his head and keeps pacing.

Xingchen plies him with makeshift herbal medicines and cups of calming tea. None of them have any effect. By early afternoon Song Lan is burning up; he can barely focus on the thread of a conversation for more than a few seconds at a time. Xingchen tries to persuade him to sleep, but he feels like his restlessness is going to consume him. He attempts a few times to lie down anyway, but even when he truly does intend to rest, he finds himself driven back out of bed only minutes later—that is, if he even remembers what he had agreed to in the first place.

The worst of it is, it’s not just Song Lan. Fuxue is agitated and irritable as well, snapping at Jiangzai and Shuanghua anytime they come near her and altogether refusing to settle. She alternates between pressing herself to Song Lan’s side and ranging around the perimeter of the room like she’s on the hunt. Both of the males are entirely fixated on her, watching her constantly or following her around the room. Every time they get close enough to reach, she bites them.

Xingchen’s mounting distress is evident as Song Lan gets progressively worse. Finally he breaks. “I need to go back to Yiling,” he says. “I need proper medicines for him.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Xue Yang snaps; he’s irritable too, though in his case it seems to be only from Song Lan’s ceaseless pacing. He gestures at the shuttered window. “The storm hasn’t stopped. You’ll just make yourself sick too.”

“I know, I know, but—look at him,” Xingchen says. Song Lan is floating somewhere outside himself; it takes him a moment to realize Xingchen is talking about him. “I can’t just—”

“Alright! Fine,” Xue Yang says. “But you’d better take your fucking wolf with you. And wear my overrobe.”

“Yes, of course,” Xingchen says, with palpable relief. He accepts Xue Yang’s fur-trimmed robe, swinging it around his shoulders, and then whistles for his wolf. “Shuanghua, come on.”

Shuanghua whines. He’s crept up to Fuxue, the closest he’s gotten all day without her snapping at him. Song Lan knows exactly how far away he is: he’s conscious of Fuxue’s mind in a way that goes strangely deeper than usual, like he’s feeling her emotions so closely that they no longer need to speak. He can sense the warmth in her body, her proximity to Shuanghua and Jiangzai, and how good they smell and how much she wants to bite them both. For a brief, furious moment Song Lan wants to snarl at Xingchen himself for trying to take Shuanghua away from her.

“Shuanghua,” Xingchen says, his voice sharper this time, and Song Lan comes back to his senses. Of course Shuanghua has to go with Xingchen: Xingchen will need his help to make it to Yiling through the storm. The senses and strengths of the wolves are the whole reason cultivators bond with them in the first place.

Shuanghua knows it, too. Reluctantly he drags himself away from Fuxue, joining Xingchen by the door.

Xingchen checks the fit of his boots and tucks his qiankun pouch into his sleeve. “I’m ready,” he says. “Promise me you’ll look after him.” He’s still speaking to Xue Yang, and out of nowhere the way they’re talking over his head nearly sends Song Lan into a rage. They ought, he thinks fuzzily, to be paying attention to him.

“Sure,” Xue Yang says. His voice is unusually subdued.

Xingchen just gives him a nod and disappears out the door, and then Song Lan and Fuxue are alone with Xue Yang and Jiangzai.

The itch beneath his skin grows abruptly unbearable again. Xingchen is gone, and Song Lan has no idea what to do with that knowledge. He lurches into motion with no thought for what he wants. All he knows is that he’s much too warm; he needs to cool himself off.

He makes it to the window on the other side of the room, and starts prying open the shutters before Xue Yang can get to him. “Hey, whoa,” he says, grabbing Song Lan’s hands and hauling him back. “It’s fucking freezing out there, Zichen, come on.”

It might be nice to bury himself in the snow right now, Song Lan thinks.

Xue Yang lets out a strangled laugh, and only then does Song Lan realize he must have said that out loud. “Yeah, you’re really burning up,” he says. He puts his hand to Song Lan’s face, then frowns, dropping it down his neck to check the meridian that runs through his throat. “It’s weird, though. It doesn’t feel right for a fever.”

“That’s what I told Xingchen,” Song Lan says, without any input from his brain. “I’m not sick. I don’t know what I am, but I’m not sick.”

“Well, that’s debatable,” Xue Yang says, and tugs him away from the window. Helplessly Song Lan sways into his touch, stumbling after him, overbalancing so badly that Xue Yang has to catch him.

“Shit, you’re heavy,” Xue Yang says. “Why are you so fucking warm?”

He slings Song Lan’s arm over his shoulders, dragging him back to the mattress. Song Lan does his best to help, but his feet aren’t working the way they’re meant to. Xue Yang pushes him down onto the bed, and something unnameable settles into place—this part, Song Lan thinks, feels right. He is shocked by the whine that rips out of his throat when Xue Yang breaks contact with his body; even more shocked when Xue Yang tumbles down on top of him, his hands fisted tightly in Song Lan’s robes.

“Fuck, you smell good,” Xue Yang says, and buries his face in Song Lan’s neck.

The single tiny corner of Song Lan’s mind that is still coherent is screaming at him to shove Xue Yang away. He doesn’t. He grabs onto him and hauls him in, grinding up against him, and realizes only in that moment that they’re both hard. On the other side of the room Fuxue whines, and Jiangzai shoves his head between her legs to take in her scent, and it crashes down on Song Lan like a shatter of porcelain: she’s entered her heat, a month or more earlier this year than she normally does, and neither of them had any idea.

“Fuck,” he groans, his hands tightening convulsively around Xue Yang’s slender waist.

“Yeah. Shit,” Xue Yang agrees, and tries to draw away. He doesn’t get very far: he’s still sitting on Song Lan, one knee to either side of his hips with his hands tangled in the front of his robes. “I need to—I don’t—”

Song Lan can’t even think. All his attention is on Fuxue, across the room, as she turns around fully to present herself to Jiangzai. He can see the moment the shock of it hits Xue Yang, the wave of foreign desire shuddering through his body in ripples. Song Lan is swamped by it. Dimly, beneath the surface of his own want, he can feel horror creeping up to throttle him, but he can’t quite remember why. He needs so desperately to be full. He wants Xue Yang to do it.

“You don’t want this,” Xue Yang says. “You don’t even like me—and—Xiao Xingchen—”

For a moment a violent self-loathing tears through Song Lan. He has wanted Xingchen for as long as he can remember and has never allowed this to happen with him, and now here he is pinned under Xue Yang’s body and all but begging for him. Xue Yang is right: Song Lan doesn’t like him, doesn’t want this, can’t stand the thought of being known by him so intimately—

And then Jiangzai mounts Fuxue all at once and the sensation slams through Song Lan’s mind. He makes an utterly wrecked sound, arching up into the heat of Xue Yang’s body. He needs it so badly that he feels like he’s going to scream.

“Fuck,” Xue Yang says, and then they’re tearing each other’s clothes off.

It’s fast and aggressive and Song Lan can barely see straight. Taking in the details is entirely beyond him; all he knows is that he needs Xue Yang’s skin on his. Between them they somehow manage to get Xue Yang naked, and then Xue Yang wrestles Song Lan out of his robes and slams him down onto his stomach, shoving him facefirst into the blankets. He straddles Song Lan’s body, grinding his cock against his ass and pinning him down by the weight of his torso, breathing so hard against his ear that it almost sounds like he’s snarling. Song Lan scrabbles frantically at the mattress, bucking up against him.

“Please,” he gasps, hating himself for it. “Please, give it to me—”

Xue Yang really does snarl then, biting down so hard on Song Lan’s shoulder that Song Lan thinks he might break the skin. “Suck,” he says, and then his fingers are between Song Lan’s teeth, and Song Lan latches on, so pathetically grateful to have something inside him even in this small way.

He’s a mess. He knows he is. He ought to be embarrassed, but he can’t bring himself to stop. He draws Xue Yang’s hand into his mouth, sloppy and loose, getting spit all over his fingers. He takes him so deep he nearly gags on it.

Xue Yang groans and yanks his hand from Song Lan’s lips. Song Lan whines at the loss, and then whines again when Xue Yang without preamble shoves his fingers inside him, smearing spit all over his hole. It’s too much, too tight, too rough, and also nowhere even close to enough. All but sobbing, Song Lan digs his hands into the mattress as Xue Yang works him open, quick and cursory, and then licks his own hand to fist his dick and feed it into Song Lan’s ass.

“Relax, big guy,” Xue Yang grates out. “You’re too fucking tight.”

Song Lan can’t relax. He shakes through it, so desperate that it’s painful. He feels hollow, empty, all the more so now that Xue Yang has started to press his cock into him. He arches up into it, begging in every line of his body, grits his teeth and says, “Just put it in, I don’t care, just do it, I need it—”

Xue Yang makes a sound like he’s been hit and slams into Song Lan so hard that his vision momentarily goes black. It hurts so bad and it feels so good, like a puzzle piece slotting into place, like a dislocated joint popping back into alignment. It chokes all the words from Song Lan’s throat. All he can do is make a strangled noise, rocking back hard against Xue Yang.

Xue Yang swears shakily and starts fucking into him, bending over him to pant wetly against his shoulder. Song Lan pushes up into his thrusts, trying to force himself closer; but Xue Yang shoves him back down, one hand on the back of his neck. “Stay there,” he growls. “Just—stay down.”

Heat shudders through Song Lan’s gut. The mattress beneath his face is wet with spit. He can’t seem to close his mouth. He’s moaning with every thrust, little ah ah ahs that he cannot capture or contain.

“Fuck, you’re just,” Xue Yang gasps, and then bites down again, over and over, until Song Lan’s jaw and neck and shoulder are a mess of agonized marks. Song Lan can feel the blood dripping down over his collar; it makes something spark behind his eyes, violently good, shockingly so. He never would have thought that he had wanted it so rough.

His voice catches. “Please,” he begs, ragged with it.

Xue Yang digs his nails into his side—a convulsive movement, like he can’t help it. “Fuck,” he says. He buries his face in Song Lan’s shoulder, lapping at the blood, smearing it across his mouth, so overwhelmed that he’s trembling with it. “You taste so fucking good.”

Song Lan turns his face, lifting himself up as best he can toward Xue Yang, desperately seeking after—something, anything—entirely unsure of what he wants until his mouth meets Xue Yang’s, and then it’s like everything clicks into place all at once. He can taste his own blood all over Xue Yang’s face, on his lips, on his teeth, and it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever known. Mindlessly Song Lan licks it away, curving up into Xue Yang, the arch of his back obscene.

“Fucking hell,” Xue Yang says. He grabs onto Song Lan, nails tearing at his ribcage, and surges viciously into the kiss as he comes hard in Song Lan’s ass.

Song Lan is left panting into that spit-soaked spot on the mattress. He hasn’t been paying any attention to his own cock, too caught up in the sheer satisfaction of being filled, but all of a sudden he is acutely aware of where it’s grinding down hotly against the bed. A shameful whimper tears its way out of his throat.

“I’ve got you,” Xue Yang says breathlessly. He shoves his hand down between Song Lan’s body and the mattress, wrapping his fist around his dick. Song Lan thrusts into it, once, twice, and then he’s coming out of nowhere, his orgasm dragged out of him for what feels like forever.

They collapse together onto the bed, Xue Yang nuzzling into Song Lan’s shoulder and licking the blood from his skin far more gently than Song Lan would have thought to expect. Gradually their bodies cool, sweat and spit and blood and come drying to a tacky wetness; eventually, Xue Yang shifts off of him, his softened cock slipping out of Song Lan’s ass. The violence with which Song Lan fucking hates that is astonishing; dimly he is aware that Fuxue and Jiangzai, on the other side of the room, are still tied together by Jiangzai’s knot.

“Don’t,” he begs, reaching helplessly for Xue Yang. He can’t seem to produce any more words.

Xue Yang is barely more coherent than he is. “I’m just,” he says, and grabs for the blanket, tugging it up to cover them. It’s only then that Song Lan realizes the chill in the air has grown unpleasant now that they’re not fucking anymore.

The blanket also makes him abruptly conscious of how sticky he still is between his legs. “I’m a mess,” he mumbles.

“Yeah,” Xue Yang agrees, and makes no more move to clean him up than Song Lan himself is making. Grumbling faintly, Song Lan shifts just enough to one side that he’s no longer lying in his own wet spot, and Xue Yang curls up alongside him, one arm and leg and half his body draped warmly over Song Lan’s back.

There was a reason he didn’t want to do this, maybe, Song Lan thinks. A reason he ought to clean up the evidence of what just happened between him and Xue Yang. Try as he might, though, he can’t remember what it was. He relaxes into the scent of Xue Yang filling his nose, and falls softly into sleep.

Song Lan wakes eventually to fingers combing through his hair. He screws up his face, shifting uncomfortably: he’s stiff and sore and covered in dried come, and he thinks his shoulder might be bleeding again. It takes him another moment to entirely remember what happened. Nausea wakes in his belly, writhing and sour. It’s only then that he realizes the hand in his hair is at the wrong angle to belong to Xue Yang, who is still curled up beside him. The bottom drops out of his stomach.

He twists around, opening his eyes to Xingchen looking quietly down on him. Song Lan has no idea what time it is—it’s late enough that the winter sun has gone down, but the brazier is still lit. He can see, very clearly, the devastation written across Xingchen’s face.

He and Xingchen don’t touch—not like this. This is the most that Xingchen has ever touched him. And he doesn’t stop as Song Lan wakes, like he’s decided he has the right to now that he’s seen him all tangled up with another man. Song Lan swallows.

“Zichen,” Xingchen says. His voice cracks.

Song Lan has no idea what to say. He can’t seem to put his thoughts in order. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Xingchen’s expression seems to wobble at that, but it firms up before Song Lan can read it. “Why didn’t you tell me Fuxue was going into heat?” he says.

All at once it hits him: Xingchen thinks Song Lan didn’t trust him with it, that he allowed him to leave on purpose so he’d be alone with Xue Yang. “I didn’t—I didn’t know,” he says. He knows it sounds like an excuse, but he cannot stop himself from stumbling over the explanation. “It came early this year, I didn’t—I wasn’t expecting it—we’ve never been around anyone else when it was happening before, I didn’t recognize the signs—” He shakes his head, breathing hard; tears are leaking from his eyes. “I would have taken us somewhere else, if I had known.”

Unexpectedly that makes Xingchen’s face crumple. Before Song Lan can work out why, he says, “Do you really hate the idea so badly?”

“I don’t—” Song Lan begins, and then has to stop; he has no idea how to answer that. It felt so good to be full. Xue Yang is still sleeping softly beside him. Across the room, Shuanghua has settled down with Fuxue and Jiangzai, who are curled up together in a pile. Shuanghua is grooming Fuxue’s muzzle, and Song Lan can feel through the bond how blissfully warm she is, how much the want is still simmering in her belly. It’s all so overwhelming.

“Yes,” he says too loudly, and then stills for a moment, some instinct quieting him so he doesn’t wake Xue Yang. “It’s—it’s too much, Xingchen, I hate being so out of control—I didn’t want this,” he says, desperate to make Xingchen understand. He thinks he might break, if Xingchen believes Song Lan let him leave on purpose.

Xingchen casts his eyes down. “No, of course,” he says. It has something of relief in it, but it also sounds strangely hollow. “You’ve never wanted it.”

His tone sits uneasily on Song Lan’s mind. “What do you mean?”

For the first time, Xingchen’s fingers stop stroking through his hair. “You’ve always left,” he says finally. Song Lan is shocked at how raw it sounds; his voice is nearly broken. “Even though—I would have helped you through it, Zichen, I’d have taken care of you, don’t you know I’d do anything for you? I’ve always—” he says, and then interrupts himself, shaking his head and drawing in a slow breath. “Never mind,” he says. “It doesn’t matter.”

A horrible feeling is welling up in Song Lan’s lungs. “You’ve always what?” he says.

“It doesn’t matter,” Xingchen says more firmly. “I understand that you don’t want me. I have to respect that. I just—can you at least tell me that Xue Yang didn’t force you?”

Song Lan’s mind stutters to a stop. “What?” he says. He has barely even parsed the question; all his thoughts fizzled into nothing when Xingchen said Song Lan didn’t want him.

But Xingchen misreads his confusion. “I know I have no right to pry,” he says, and now the distress is creeping back in. ”But—what am I meant to think? You always made sure you were gone for Fuxue’s heats, and now you’re here with him, and—you say you didn’t want it, and of course I don’t want that for you, but, Zichen, there’s this horrible part of me that can’t decide if that’s worse than if you did want him actually, you just never wanted me—”

“Xue Yang didn’t force me,” Song Lan says. His entire brain feels numb; his mouth likewise. “What do you mean, I don’t want you?”

“You’ve always left,” Xingchen says, his voice cracking. “You could have had me anytime you wanted, heat or no, and you never have, and you always made sure to go somewhere else so it couldn’t happen even by accident—” He cuts himself off, dashing tears from his eyes; Song Lan can’t stop staring at him. “It’s been nearly five years and I’ve wanted you since the moment I first saw you, and I thought I’d resigned myself to it, but—seeing you like this—it hurts, Zichen, knowing I was never enough.”

Song Lan’s head is spinning. “That’s not—I don’t—” Xingchen’s words are a repeating loop in his mind—you could have had me anytime you wanted, anytime you wanted, I’ve wanted you, I’ve wanted you, since the moment I first saw you—and he cannot find a way to express just how far Xingchen is from not enough—for how incredibly too much he is—for how terrified Song Lan has been of the enormity of his own feelings, and how he couldn’t stand the idea that Xingchen might not want him at all outside of Fuxue’s heats—

Xingchen draws away, seeming to fold in on himself. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have put that on you. I’ll go.”

“Wait,” Song Lan says, and grabs for Xingchen’s hand.

A spark of heat jumps between them. Xingchen gasps. Dimly Song Lan is aware of Fuxue and Shuanghua across the room, of her tumbling playfully over him as he scents the length of her body, of her raising her hindquarters to present herself to mate. There’s an ache inside him, a germ of need blossoming to full flower, an overwhelming desire for Xingchen to fill him up. “Please,” he says.

“You don’t want this,” Xingchen says shakily. “Please don’t make me do this.”

Song Lan hadn’t wanted this. He can’t remember why. He has spent so much of his life wanting Xingchen, and it’s far too much to be borne. “Please,” he says. “You’re so beautiful.”

Xingchen makes a sound that is suspiciously like a sob. He leans his face into Song Lan’s hand; Song Lan can’t remember putting it there. He tugs, insistent, and Xingchen tips down into his touch, kissing him with all the heat and urgency of years of frustrated longing.

“Fuck,” Xingchen says against his lips, and then his fingers are wrapped around Song Lan’s wrists and he pushes him down on his back, pinning him against the mattress. Unexpectedly Song Lan moans, arching up into the press of his body, his mouth stuttering against Xingchen’s.

“Oh, you’re desperate for it, aren’t you?” Xingchen breathes, almost wondering. “I’m so sorry, Zichen. I’ll take care of you.”

“Don’t,” Song Lan says, and means don’t be sorry, but his breath hitches and all his words are lost. His head is swimming. Xue Yang is still asleep on the bed beside them; Song Lan finds his gaze caught on him, the line of his brow and the fall of his hair and the soft part of his lips, still smudged faintly with Song Lan’s blood. None of this makes sense anymore. He is terrified by how much he wants, so overwhelmed by the depths of his desire that he thinks he’s nearly delirious.

Lightly Xingchen squeezes his wrists. “Keep your hands where they are,” he says, low-voiced, and Song Lan shudders against it and relaxes into the bed, sinking gratefully into the relief of having someone else take up control.

“Good,” Xingchen says. He lets go with one hand, running his fingers down Song Lan’s body and pushing the blanket aside. Song Lan is still naked, and already achingly hard, his cock flushed and straining against his pelvis. For a moment Xingchen’s breath catches; his hand flutters over it briefly, and then his fingers dip lower to press between Song Lan’s legs, rubbing at the stick of Xue Yang’s come. Song Lan makes a wounded sound, jerking up into it.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Xingchen all but croons. “You must be so sore.”

All the air in Song Lan’s lungs deserts him like he’s been punched in the chest. Heat pulses through his gut. Xingchen’s eyes sharpen. “Oh,” he says. “You like that, don’t you?”

Helplessly Song Lan nods.

Xingchen’s gaze heats. He pushes down on Song Lan’s wrist, until the mattress dips around it. “Stay there for me,” he says. “Can you do that?”

Song Lan nods again, nearly giddy with it.

Xingchen releases him, getting to his feet; Song Lan whines without meaning to. He almost shoves himself upright, chasing after the warmth of Xingchen’s body, before he remembers that he just said he could stay where Xingchen put him. He forces himself to still, shaking with the strain. Xingchen’s absence is the worst thing he’s ever felt. He feels like he’s going to cry.

“Hush, sweetheart, it’s alright,” Xingchen says. “I’m just getting something, I’ll only be a minute.”

Song Lan closes his eyes and tries to remember how to breathe.

True to his word, Xingchen is back a moment later: his weight settling lightly between Song Lan’s knees, his hands sliding down his inner thighs to nudge them gently apart. Song Lan spreads his legs eagerly, desperate for Xingchen’s touch. He manages to blink his eyes open just as Xingchen presses his fingertips to his hole again, now cool and slick with an unknown substance.

“Is that—” Song Lan rasps.

“A salve,” Xingchen says. “Not—it’s not meant for this. But there are oils in it, and it will be—easier.” His fingers sink into Song Lan’s ass as he speaks. Song Lan makes a shocked sound at how painless it is, especially after how much it hurt—how good it was—with Xue Yang. It wakes a vicious urgency in his body: two fingers inside him is barely anything, but it’s a violent reminder of the need coursing through his veins. He wants more.

“Please,” he gasps. “Please, please, fill me up, I need you inside me—”

Xingchen swears, abruptly fumbling the salve. He slicks Song Lan’s entrance quickly, drops the jar to the bed beside them, undoes his robes and shirt and shoves his pants down out of the way. His cock is hard, richly flushed and perfectly curved, just as pretty as the rest of him. Song Lan is entranced. He can’t tear his eyes away. He never thought he’d get to see Xingchen like this.

And then he has no more room for admiring, because Xingchen has taken his cock in hand and is pushing it slowly inside him.

Song Lan’s breath hitches on a sob. He arches up, his spine curving right off the bed. Xingchen presses him sweetly back down, pinning his wrists again, and Song Lan shudders and goes loose all at once and rocks his hips against him. It’s only a moment before Xingchen is fucking into him, firm, almost punishing; Song Lan has the sense that he might like to take things slower, if only he weren’t quite so desperate himself.

Xingchen bends his face to Song Lan’s shoulder. Song Lan had forgotten about the bites there, and all the blood, but he remembers very abruptly as Xingchen presses his lips to it, mouthing gently over the mess of broken skin. “Do you want it rough, Zichen?” he murmurs. “Is that how you like it?”

A spike of pain lances down Song Lan’s nerves, followed immediately by a bolt of arousal. The sight of Xingchen with blood on his lips is making him lightheaded. “I want you,” he says. “Just you, Xingchen, however you want it, whatever you want, just, please—”

Xingchen lets out a shaky, wounded laugh. “You can’t say things like that,” he whispers, pressing a bloody kiss to Song Lan’s lips. “You’ll make me think you want to keep me.”

How can Xingchen still not understand how much Song Lan wants to keep him, how much he wants to be kept? “Please,” he begs, tightening his legs around Xingchen’s hips. “I want to, I want to, I need it—”

Xingchen just makes a rough sound in the back of his throat and shakes his head.

On the bed beside them, Xue Yang blinks awake, so soft and slow that for a moment Song Lan doesn’t entirely understand that it’s happened. His eyes flicker over their bodies in brief confusion, and then he exhales an awed breath. “Wow,” he says, curling in against Song Lan and pressing his face into the side of his neck. “I must have done something really good, if I get to wake up to this.”

Song Lan thinks that he’s meant to feel shame. It’s not normal to have fucked two men one right after another like this; not normal to have begged for Xingchen with Xue Yang still sleeping beside them, unaware of what they’re doing. He shouldn’t have—he ought to—there must be something wrong with him. He is astonished to realize, as Xue Yang licks hotly over his pulse point, that all he feels is desire.

He whines, turning his face into Xue Yang’s, twisting against the hold Xingchen still has on his wrists. Xue Yang kisses him softly, like they’re sinking into a warm bath; bites gently at his lower lip and soothes the sting away with the curl of his tongue.

“Oh,” Xingchen says—unexpectedly fascinated, like he’s surprised at himself. “Oh, you’re so beautiful.”

His words punch straight through Song Lan, and he makes a startled noise against Xue Yang’s mouth. Xue Yang nips at him, tugs on his lips—drags his tongue along his jaw—then shoves his face into Song Lan’s neck again, deeply inhaling his scent.

“You still smell fucking good,” he mumbles, worrying a mark onto Song Lan’s throat. “Do you need to come again? You need Xiao Xingchen to come inside you?”

“Yes,” Song Lan moans, like the answer has been ripped from him. All of a sudden he’s burning for it. ”Xingchen—Xingchen, please—”

Xingchen is staring at him, shaken, needy, desperate. Xue Yang kisses Song Lan’s neck again and then turns his head, settling his face against his shoulder where he can watch Xingchen fucking into him. Song Lan can hear the smirk in his voice. “What are you waiting for?” he says. “Fuck him full.”

Xingchen makes a wrecked little sound and slams into him, harder, faster, until Song Lan can feel it in his lungs. He spills himself inside Song Lan, buried deep, filling him up as much as he physically can, and it swamps Song Lan with such an intense and primal satisfaction that for a moment he forgets that he hasn’t even come.

“Fuck,” Xingchen groans, and presses his hand down against Song Lan’s cock, and Song Lan comes all over his stomach with a shocked cry and nothing more than a touch.

Suddenly the room is stunningly quiet. Xingchen slumps down against Song Lan, panting for air. Song Lan can’t even move. Xue Yang blows out a long, slow breath. “Shit,” he says. “That was—fucking hell.”

Song Lan lets out a crackly laugh, too fucked out and incoherent to restrain himself as he normally would. Nothing makes sense anymore; he feels entirely out of his head. All he knows is that it feels so good, to have Xingchen still buried inside him and two warm bodies curled around his own. He tightens his legs around Xingchen’s waist, flexing his wrists contentedly in his grip, and turns his face to nuzzle into Xue Yang’s hair.

Xue Yang laughs at him, but somehow it doesn’t sound mean. “Fuck, you really do get heat-stupid, huh?”

“Mm,” Song Lan says agreeably, and means, whatever you like.

For some reason, that makes Xingchen go stiff against him.

Something about it sits uneasily on Song Lan’s chest. He unsticks his voice. “Xingchen?” he says. “What’s…”

All the air seems to shudder out of Xingchen at once. He pushes himself upright, letting go of Song Lan’s wrists. “I—I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have done that.”

“What?” Song Lan says. He can’t parse Xingchen’s words into a sentence that means something.

“You didn’t want,” Xingchen begins, and then has to take a steadying breath. It doesn’t seem to have any effect. “I’m sorry, I don’t—I really shouldn’t have done that.”

Before Song Lan can stop him, Xingchen pulls out of him, crawling back on his hands and knees. It feels unexpectedly awful, far worse than it did when Xue Yang pulled out of him earlier, and Song Lan can’t keep himself from whining. He reaches for Xingchen, but Xingchen recoils from him, looking somehow even more distressed.

“Zichen, don’t,” he says, tugging his pants back up over his hips and clutching his robes around his body. He’s fumbling with the ties, his hands shaking so bad that he can’t even make a knot.

“What are you talking about?” Song Lan says. He can feel himself wavering perilously on the edge of tears.

But Xingchen just shakes his head, his face utterly miserable, and shoves himself to his feet. He barely even pauses to yank on his boots before he’s running out of the room, the door banging against the frame as he throws it closed behind him. Shuanghua—still tied with Fuxue and lying close by to Jiangzai—raises his head and makes a pitiful little noise.

Song Lan stares after Xingchen, slow and confused, like he’s missed several steps in the conversation. “I don’t understand.”

Xue Yang, however, has raised himself up on one elbow and is looking after Xingchen with a furrow in his brow. “He thinks he took advantage of you,” he says slowly.

For a long moment Song Lan can’t make sense of his words; then his blood runs cold. He struggles upright, trying to untangle himself from Xue Yang. “I—I have to—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, just go,” Xue Yang groans, flopping back down onto the mattress. Song Lan scrambles to his feet, starting for the door, and he adds, “Take a robe, asshole.”

Song Lan makes a grateful sound and changes course, grabbing his outer robe from the floor and throwing it around his shoulders. He tumbles out the door and races down the hallway, his body feeling alien and strange—like it has more energy than he could possibly know what to do with, like it’s not entirely his, like he wants to drop to all fours and eat up the distance in a wolf’s loping tread. Fuxue, in his mind, is radiating fierce approval at him chasing after his mate.

“Xingchen!” he cries, as he throws open the doors to the building and stumbles out into the courtyard.

Xingchen is a white shape against the snow, impossible to get a fix on, but he whirls around at the sound of Song Lan’s voice and his face and hair materialize out of the storm. “Zichen, what are you doing?!” he demands. He scrambles back to Song Lan, like he can’t quite help himself, urging him up the stairs. “Go back inside! You’ll freeze to death.”

Song Lan pulls his robe tighter around himself and refuses to move; he hadn’t even realized he was barefoot until he started sinking into the snow. “So will you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Xingchen says furiously; it takes Song Lan a long moment to realize Xingchen isn’t angry with him. “I’m not—I shouldn’t be around you right now.”

All Song Lan wants is for Xingchen to be around him—all the time, in every possible way, for all the rest of his life. “Why not?” he says, and then belatedly remembers what Xue Yang had said. “You’re not—you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Xingchen just laughs, raw, rough, entirely humourless. “Didn’t I?” he says. “You could barely think, let alone speak. You said you wanted it, but as soon as Fuxue isn’t in heat anymore you’ll change your mind.” He sounds so faultlessly certain that it stuns Song Lan, knocking the wind from his lungs. “I’ve ruined everything—I should have been satisfied with our friendship, and now I won’t even have that.”

Song Lan feels clumsy and stupid. He has no idea how to have this conversation. He shakes his head, like he can erase all of Xingchen’s words by refusing them. “You’re not making any sense,” he pleads. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’ll change your mind,” Xingchen repeats miserably. “Go back inside.”

“Not without you,” Song Lan says.

“Zichen—”

“No,” Song Lan says. “I’m not changing my mind.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Xingchen says. There’s a real note of despair in his voice. “You’re not yourself right now, you’re not thinking straight—”

Song Lan makes a frustrated noise, grabbing at Xingchen’s sleeve. “I don’t need to be thinking straight to know that I love you!”

Xingchen goes still. It’s like he’s frozen over in that moment, like he’s formed from the snow and ice, like he’s a statue carved of pure white jade. “What?” he says softly.

“I’ve always,” Song Lan says, and then finds his voice has failed him. “You’re so, you’re perfect, how could I not—I’ve always wanted you, Xingchen. That’s not Fuxue’s heat.”

”But—but you always left,” Xingchen says, shocked and dumb. There’s snow in his hair, and clinging to his lashes, and he’s so fucking beautiful that Song Lan can barely breathe.

“I couldn’t,” he attempts, stumbling over his tongue. “If you hadn’t wanted me, if you’d tried to make it meaningless—if it was only because of her heats—I couldn’t. I’d have died. I had to—”

All at once understanding steals over Xingchen’s face. Not for the first time Song Lan is unspeakably grateful for the way Xingchen can read him—especially now, when coherency is wholly lost to him. “Zichen…,” Xingchen says, and reaches up to touch his face with chilled fingers.

“Please,” Song Lan says. “Come back inside.”

Xingchen steps closer, gently taking Song Lan’s robe from his unresisting hands and settling it more tightly around him. It’s only then, with the heat of Xingchen’s body ghosting against his, that Song Lan realizes how cold he is. “We’d better,” Xingchen says, and smiles faintly. “You really are going to freeze.”

They go inside. The warmth of their shared room, with the brazier and the wolves and the lingering heat of sex, sets all of Song Lan’s extremities to tingling as soon as he walks back in. Xue Yang has stoked up the coals, and is now sitting upright next to the brazier, digging around in what appears to be Song Lan’s qiankun bag. He lifts his head as they open the door and flashes them a surprisingly genuine smile. “Oh, good,” he says dryly. “You got him to come back in.”

Song Lan sits down across from him. “What are you doing?” he says. He is uncomfortably aware, now, of how sticky he is between his legs, of the way Xingchen’s come is leaking out of him in a steady drip, of how close he is to completely undressed. Xue Yang is barely dressed either: he’s just pulled his pants back on without bothering with robes at all. Song Lan’s eyes trace over his shoulders, down his arms, to his hands, linger on the way his riotous hair falls against his skin. He didn’t get the chance to admire Xue Yang properly, before, but now he finds he cannot stop. It’s astonishing how beautiful he is.

Xue Yang glances up at him, then flicks him a smirk. “Alright, keep it in your pants, big guy. Or in your—whatever you’ve got going on there,” he adds, gesturing pointedly to the split in Song Lan’s robes. “At least until I’m done.”

Song Lan tightens his grip on his robe, flushing all down his chest. It’s unnerving, how much he likes Xue Yang looking at his cock. “Done what?” he says.

Xue Yang pulls Song Lan’s cooking pot out of the bag and sets it aside, next to the bag of rice. “I’m making dinner,” he says, matter-of-fact. “You know how long Fuxue’s heat is going to last, right?”

On the other side of the room, Xingchen drops something with a clatter. Song Lan twists around to look at him. He’s cleaning himself up with water from the bucket of snow they’d set to melt, and was just in the process of taking down his guan when Xue Yang spoke. Now he scoops it up from the floor, staring wide-eyed at Song Lan. Song Lan’s gaze keeps catching on the spill of his unbound hair.

And then Xue Yang’s words sink in.

“I—oh, fuck,” Song Lan says. He hadn’t even considered it.

Xue Yang just laughs. He pulls out another jar, tugging out the stopper to investigate its contents: salt fish, preserved in oil. “Yeah,” he agrees. “We’ve got five or six days of this left. We’re going to need to eat.”

They eat. Eventually they curl up together on the mattress, this time to sleep, the three of them as tangled up with each other as their wolves are. None of them bother to put their clothes back on: there’s no purpose to pretending.

Song Lan is lying in the middle. Normally he would hate to be so fenced in like this, to have this much bare skin pressed to his own; on the rare occasions he had slept with someone before this, he had never liked to linger in bed with his partners. But right now, with the insistent tug of Fuxue’s heat pulsing through his body, it just makes him feel warm—like there’s a fire burning low beneath his skin, and the touch of Xue Yang and Xingchen’s hands is stoking it to a blaze. The thrum of his desire is such that he thinks he won’t be able to sleep, but as they lie down together he finds himself instead unexpectedly content. He slips into a dreamless sleep with the smell of their hair in his nose.

He wakes some hours later to the predawn darkness, already aching to be filled. Across the room he can hear Fuxue rutting with one of the males; in the dark he can’t even tell which of them it is. His mind is just enough his own still that for a moment a wave of resentment nearly chokes the air from his lungs. He hates that her mating urges can overrun him so completely. It’s so horrifically vulnerable, to have no say in his desires like this—to be so utterly overwhelmed with a need that isn’t even his own that he’s reduced to begging for it like he’s a bitch in heat himself.

Then the male mounts her, and Song Lan lets out a shocked, desperate sound, once again swept under by the sheer magnitude of how much he wants.

Xingchen and Xue Yang are both stirring now as well, roused by Song Lan’s movements or by their connection to their own wolves. Xue Yang is warm at Song Lan’s back, grinding up against him in tiny little shifts as he comes gradually out of his dreams. In front of him Xingchen blinks awake, his eyes glittering in the dimness, and looks Song Lan in the face. It’s too much, too hot, far too intense, and abruptly Song Lan feels like he’s drowning.

Xingchen presses up to him, burying his face in Song Lan’s throat and scenting him greedily. He drags his hand down Song Lan’s chest and stomach, tracing over the muscle of his abdomen and skimming the line of his pelvis, and then wraps his elegant fingers around Song Lan’s already-hard cock. It’s so demanding, so proprietary, and Song Lan has no idea how to cope.

“Don’t,” he gasps wetly, and finds himself blinking back tears.

Xue Yang freezes. Xingchen’s hand stills. Song Lan regrets his words immediately. He wants to be fucked so, so bad. But it’s all still so immensely overwhelming, and it’s easier to cling to his years of resistance than to admit that deep down some part of him might actually want this. He wants to fight it. He wants to refuse. He wants to struggle and cry and to tell them they can’t, and he wants to be forced to take it regardless.

Xingchen draws back, just far enough to study Song Lan’s face. Even though he stopped his movements, he hasn’t taken his hand from Song Lan’s dick yet, and Song Lan holds onto that, to the hope that Xingchen will somehow understand—that he’ll see it on Song Lan’s face, and Song Lan won’t have to explain—Xingchen has always been so good at reading him—

“Tell me to stop,” Xingchen says slowly. “Just that. If you really mean it, Zichen, say stop, and I will. That’s all you have to say.”

Relief floods through Song Lan. He has no idea what sign he gave, what signal Xingchen read in his eyes, but—

“Please,” Song Lan whispers. “Xingchen, please don’t, I can’t, it’s too much—”

“So tell me to stop,” Xingchen says, pressing back in. He tightens his grip on Song Lan’s dick and starts to stroke him, just a little too rough.

Song Lan is already so, so hard. “No,” he gasps. “No, don’t—”

“Holy shit,” Xue Yang whispers, and then, a frantic note edging into his voice: “Holy shit.” He shoves himself up against Song Lan’s back, grabbing him around the ribs with vicious, greedy fingers, grinding hard against the swell of his ass. “Fuck, you’re so fucking hot—”

Song Lan whimpers. With no warning at all he finds himself releasing thick, heavy tears. He tries to fight his way out of Xue Yang’s grip, or out of Xingchen’s. He doesn’t get far: every time he nearly tears away from Xue Yang, Xingchen presses him back down; every time he jerks back from Xingchen, he only drives himself into Xue Yang. He is tangled in the blankets, smothered by their body heat, and they won’t let him run from them—

“No,” he sobs, and means, please make me. “No, I can’t, don’t, it’s too much—”

“Oh, Zichen,” Xingchen sighs—tender and merciless, his hand twisting almost painfully on Song Lan’s cock. “You only think that.”

“No, please—”

“I’ll decide when you’ve had enough,” Xingchen says.

“Fuck,” Xue Yang says, raking his nails down Song Lan’s body, clutching urgently at them both. “Xingchen, Xingchen, please, I want to fuck him, please let me fuck him—”

Song Lan is so lightheaded that he thinks he might pass out.

“Hush, Yang’er,” Xingchen says, leaning in to kiss Xue Yang over Song Lan’s shoulder. Song Lan shudders into it—can’t seem to shut out the soft wet sounds of their mouths by his ear. He feels so—so small, so used, so fucking desperate still—

Xingchen must bite as he pulls away, because Xue Yang makes a pained, needy little noise. “You can fuck him,” Xingchen decides, and then makes sure Song Lan has met his eyes before he adds: “We both will. He can take it.”

“Fuck,” Xue Yang says.

Song Lan chokes. “No—no, don’t, I can’t, Xingchen, I can’t,” he says, and starts struggling all over again. Xue Yang wraps his arms around him, holding him too tightly, and bites down on the back of his neck. Song Lan moans in shock and nearly melts back into his grip.

“You can,” Xingchen says, far too carelessly. He digs his hand into Song Lan’s thigh and pries his legs apart, shifting himself down to get a better grip. “Yang’er, hold his leg.”

Song Lan tries to wrench himself out of their grasp, but he can’t: he feels so helpless, weak and paralyzed, utterly wretched with desperation. Xue Yang hooks his arm under Song Lan’s knee, hiking up his leg, and Xingchen turns away for a moment to pick up the pot of salve, which he evidently left by the bed for exactly this purpose. The sound of him slicking up his hand is obscene. The feeling as he works his fingers into Song Lan’s ass is even more so.

“Loosen up for me, sweetheart,” Xingchen says. “You need to relax. You wouldn’t want us to hurt you, would you?”

“Let me go,” Song Lan begs. He can’t seem to raise his voice above a whisper. “Please, Xingchen, don’t—don’t make me—just let me go.”

“You know I’m not going to do that, Zichen,” Xingchen says fondly. And then, over Song Lan’s shoulder he adds, “Yang’er, can you hold still if you’re inside him?”

Song Lan can feel how Xue Yang nods against his back, frantic and feverish. “Yeah, yeah, fuck, yes.”

Xingchen smiles his approval. “Good boy,” he says. Song Lan knows it’s not meant for him, and it makes the small thing curl up even smaller inside him, pathetic and shivery. Xingchen reaches back between his legs, fisting Xue Yang’s dick with a messy sound. Xue Yang makes a strangled moan in Song Lan’s ear, and then his cockhead is pushing into Song Lan’s hole, blunt and inexorable, and all the air freezes in Song Lan’s lungs.

Xue Yang sinks into him slowly, burying himself deep inside Song Lan, stretching him out inch by agonizing inch until he finally bottoms out. He stops moving then, just like Xingchen said—clinging tightly to Song Lan’s stomach and thigh, panting against the bruised-up ruin of his shoulder. Song Lan can’t move at all. He feels like he can’t even breathe.

“There you go,” Xingchen croons, smudging kisses across Song Lan’s brow, his cheekbone, the corner of his slack mouth. He slicks his hand again, slipping it between Song Lan’s legs to test at his entrance, pressing his fingers into his body alongside Xue Yang’s cock. “Keep still, Yang’er,” he reminds him.

Xue Yang shudders, but does as he’s told, his hands tight on Song Lan’s body as he trembles with the strain. He’s impossible to ignore, a hotly solid length inside Song Lan, too big in his stillness; Xingchen’s fingers pushing into him are perfect little spikes of pain, stark against that uncomfortable fullness. Song Lan’s head is spinning; he has no idea if he wants to keep begging them to stop, or to beg for more, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because he’s lost all of his words. All he can do is shake and cry, tears dripping silently down his cheeks in an endless stream.

“There. There, sweetheart, you’re so good,” Xingchen says, as he works a third finger inside of him alongside Xue Yang’s cock. “You’ve stopped fighting, Zichen, isn’t that better? We know what you need. We’ll take care of you.”

Xue Yang whines in the back of his throat, loud and abrupt. “Xingchen—”

“I know. I know,” Xingchen says. He slides his hand out of Song Lan’s ass, and against his will Song Lan makes a tiny wounded noise. But then Xingchen crowds up against him, cock in hand, nudging at his entrance, shoving his way gently inside—and out of nowhere Song Lan is terrified.

Somehow he finds it in himself to speak. “Xingchen—Xingchen, don’t,” he gasps. “Please, please, fuck, it’s too much, it hurts—”

“Tell me to stop,” Xingchen murmurs against his mouth, and doesn’t slow down at all.

Song Lan feels out the shape of the word behind his teeth. It sits heavily on his tongue, tangled in a knot of fear, huge and messy and far too loud. For a moment the urge to give in is overwhelming, so large that it makes him dizzy. He almost says it. But—

But beneath all the terror, the pain, the panic: he doesn’t want it to end. They’re taking such good care of him. It’s so good he almost feels nauseous.

He swallows the word back down.

“I can’t,” he says, “I can’t, I can’t do it, Xingchen, please don’t make me—”

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m not making you do anything,” Xingchen says. The head of his cock pops fully past Song Lan’s rim; slowly Xingchen eases into him. The stretch of it aches: it’s so much, more than Song Lan has ever taken before, and it fits like a key to a lock somewhere inside him, finally satisfying the horrible desire to be filled. This must be what it’s like for Fuxue to be tied to one of her mates, he thinks hysterically, as Xingchen and Xue Yang force him open together.

“Look at you,” Xingchen breathes. “You’re taking it so well. Oh, you needed this.”

“Please,” Song Lan sobs. “Please—”

Xingchen kisses the tears from his cheeks; when he kisses Song Lan’s lips, his mouth tastes of salt. “You want to be bred,” he says, “don’t you?”

Xue Yang jerks, his hands convulsing on Song Lan’s skin. “Fuck,” he groans. “Xingchen, please—”

“You’ve been so good for me, Yang’er,” Xingchen says. “Yes—yes, sweetheart, you can move now—”

Xue Yang makes a choked noise and starts fucking into Song Lan, not roughly but thoroughly. Song Lan is so tight around them that Xue Yang can barely move, but he’s so deep inside him that it feels like he’s striking his core. And then Xingchen starts moving too, rocking in little shifts in time with Xue Yang’s thrusts, and Song Lan’s vision goes grey around the edges. It takes him several long seconds before his lungs remember they need to breathe.

“You’re so tight,” Xue Yang says, ragged and urgent. “Your ass is fucking perfect, fuck, I want to be inside you all the time—”

A ribbon of heat coils through Song Lan’s gut. He must make some sound, because Xingchen says, “You’d like that, Zichen, wouldn’t you?” He presses up to Song Lan, whispering shamelessly against his mouth. “You want to be filled up like this, full of our come, split open on our cocks like a bitchwolf in heat.”

Song Lan lets out a helpless little moan, and then just doesn’t stop, wanton noises spilling from his throat with their every movement. He’s burning up, so hot he really does feel feverish now: he’s dripping sweat, gasping in lungfuls of air that tastes somehow too wet. No matter what he does he can’t seem to get a full breath. He can feel his heartbeat pounding in every part of his body. His cock is so hard it’s throbbing. He’s leaking all over himself, sticky and slick, the air thick with the smell of sex; he can’t remember ever making this much of a mess before.

He knows it’s just Fuxue’s heat—he thinks it is, anyway—that must be what it is—

He wants to be bred so bad.

“Gonna come,” Xue Yang grits out.

“Do it,” Xingchen says, “come inside him, he’s been so good for us—”

Xue Yang groans and drives into Song Lan, hard and deep, grinding up against him and holding himself close as he comes in hot pulses in his ass. He doesn’t shift away as he finishes, his hips pressed tight to Song Lan’s. “Gotta keep it inside,” he murmurs against Song Lan’s jaw, mouthing down the column of his neck. Song Lan’s whole body flares with heat, and he whines, desperate and needy.

“Oh, good,” Xingchen says. “Good boy, my good boy, not even fighting us.” He fucks into Song Lan faster, harder, more free to move now that Xue Yang is holding himself still; Song Lan is so full with their cocks that it’s impossible for Xingchen not to hit his prostate on every thrust. And then without any warning at all Xingchen is coming too, shuddering and panting and spilling himself into Song Lan in an endless heady rush that seems to go on forever. Deliriously Song Lan imagines he can feel it stretching him out from the inside.

“Please,” he gasps, barely even conscious of what he’s saying. “Please, I need—”

“Shh,” Xingchen says. “I told you, Zichen, we know what you need.” Already their hands are reaching for him: Xingchen wraps his elegant fingers around the head of Song Lan’s cock, deftly twisting his grip to smear precome down his length; and Xue Yang’s arm circles around him until he can grip Song Lan by the base, jerking him roughly, the perfect counterpoint to Xingchen’s languid touch.

“Come on, Zichen, come for us,” Xue Yang whispers, and Song Lan—trembling and crying out and shaking himself apart—does.

Afterward, they stay inside him for a long time, gradually allowing their cocks to soften without pulling out of his body. Xue Yang bites gently over his shoulders, soothing the sting of his teeth with the honeyed drag of his lips and tongue. Xingchen strokes his hand through Song Lan’s hair and kisses over his face, nestling in against him and breathing in his scent. Eventually he pulls back far enough to look Song Lan in the eye, cradling his cheeks in both hands as he makes a careful study of his expression.

“Was that okay?” he says finally.

Song Lan has to work to find his voice. “Yeah,” he manages, the word scraping in his throat. “It was—you were perfect.”

“Okay,” Xingchen says, and kisses him. Song Lan’s mouth still feels too slack, like the split of an overripe plum, and despite how slow it is he can’t seem to keep up. It’s all he can do to just breathe against Xingchen’s lips.

After a little while Xingchen draws away again. “I’m going to get up now,” he says. “Is that alright?”

Song Lan doesn’t entirely like it, but the visceral need to be full has faded away with the aftershocks of his orgasm. He nods. Cautiously Xingchen pulls out of him, and right away Song Lan becomes aware of how slick he is, of the spill of come already leaking out of him despite Xue Yang’s cock still buried in his ass. By this point he’s starting to grow resigned to it: this, he knows, will be his life for the next several days.

Xingchen gets up from the bed. Song Lan closes his eyes, sinking back into Xue Yang’s hold on him. Xue Yang just tightens his grip around Song Lan’s ribs and nuzzles sweetly into his neck.

Song Lan can hear Xingchen moving around the room, but he can’t make sense of the noises. He drifts a little: floating on the warmth of Xue Yang’s body, the scent of his hair, his strong hands pressed to Song Lan’s stomach. Eventually Xingchen comes back, with warm water and a washcloth, and a fragrant pot of tea, and the cooking smell of rice trailing in his wake. Gently Xue Yang pulls out of him, and Xingchen wipes them both clean; and then they help Song Lan to sit up, Xue Yang steadying him with patient hands while Xingchen passes him a cup of tea.

“Drink,” he says. Song Lan drinks.

When Song Lan is sitting under his own power, Xue Yang lets him go. He picks up the washcloth, rinsing it out and squeezing the worst of the water from it, and then starts carefully dabbing at Song Lan’s neck and shoulder and sides. It takes Song Lan a very long moment to realize he’s cleaning up all the places where he bit or clawed him open.

Xingchen picks up a pot of ointment—not the salve they’ve been using to ease their way, but a thicker one with a strongly medicinal scent, sharp and herbal. As Xue Yang wipes the blood from Song Lan’s skin, Xingchen dabs ointment onto the cuts to guard against infection. There’s something about the way the two of them are moving, some quiet accord, a shared understanding, something Song Lan can’t quite put into words. It’s like they know exactly where each other is going to be. It satisfies an ache inside him, one he hadn’t even known was there. Good, he thinks, and can’t say why he feels that way: they ought to be getting along.

“Come on,” Xingchen says softly. “You need to keep your strength up.” He nudges Song Lan to his feet, guiding him towards the smell of cooking food. When he stumbles, Xue Yang is right there to brace his other side.

With a small noise of assent, Song Lan allows their hands to lead him where they will.

Five days later, properly dressed for the first time in what feels like an age, Song Lan steps out of the main residence of the Supervisory Office and into a sugar-glazed world of melting snow.

The storm passed sometime in the middle of Fuxue’s heat. Since then, the temperature has edged back up to something closer to a seasonal normal: there’s still a chill in the air, but the ice no longer lasts beyond late morning. The plum blossoms, which had started blooming a month past, are all the more lovely for the snow crystals delicately dripping from them. Song Lan hadn’t even known there was a tree on the other side of the courtyard.

He is only half-convinced that it’s all truly real; he still hasn’t processed everything he did while his mind was not his own.

Fuxue pads out into the yard beside him, nudging at his hand with her head. She’s glowing with self-satisfaction; Song Lan is certain that she’s going to give birth to a litter of pups in two months’ time. He has absolutely no idea what they’re going to do with them.

“Congratulations,” he tells her dryly. “You successfully diverted us for an entire week. Now what are we going to do?”

Lightly she nips at the palm of his hand, as unconcerned as ever with the complexities of human emotion. Didn’t you have a hunt to finish?

Song Lan nearly startles. With everything that’s happened since they took shelter from the storm, he had entirely forgotten about the attacks. The days before Fuxue went into heat feel like something out of a dream. Against his will he finds his eyes dragged across the yard to Xue Yang, who is wrestling playfully with Jiangzai on the porch of the building that has been their mutual shelter.

It wasn’t them, Fuxue says. You know that.

“Do I?” Song Lan says. He wants her to be right. It shocks him to realize, but it’s true: he wants, quite desperately, for Xue Yang to be blameless in the attacks. But he doesn’t know.

“Do you what?” Xingchen says, as he joins Song Lan beneath the plum blossom tree, Shuanghua at his heels. He steps much closer than the would have only a few days ago; he’s nearly leaning against Song Lan’s chest. Swallowing tightly, Song Lan lifts his hand to rest it between Xingchen’s shoulder blades. The newness of their changed relationship still feels so unbearably fragile.

He hates to even give voice to his fears. It’s like asking the question aloud will make it real somehow. “Do I know that—” he begins, and then cuts himself off. “Fuxue says Xue Yang and Jiangzai aren’t responsible for the attacks.”

“They’re not,” Xingchen says. Song Lan can’t see his face, but his voice is grave. “When Shuanghua and I were in Yiling, I heard talk about another attack that had happened just that day. It couldn’t have been Xue Yang, or Jiangzai. They were both in the Supervisory Office with you.”

The relief that hits Song Lan is like a physical blow. It’s followed immediately by a bubble of giddy hysteria: it couldn’t have been Xue Yang, because he was busy fucking Song Lan.

He chokes the laughter back, but he can’t stop it from shaking through his shoulders. Everything about this is far too much.

Xue Yang ambles over to them. “What’s got into him?” he says. Xingchen just smiles and shakes his head as Song Lan fights his face back under control.

With no answer forthcoming, Xue Yang shrugs easily and says, “Did I hear right? There was another attack?”

“Yes,” Xingchen says, and straightens up. “The day I went into Yiling. They were talking about it at the herbalist’s.”

“Huh,” Xue Yang says. “Did they say where?”

“I’m not sure,” Xingchen says. “A farm southeast of town, I think, not too far out. I would have gone to investigate, but Zichen was…” He trails off, smiling ruefully.

Song Lan has to bite down a laugh again.

“That’s close enough,” Xue Yang says. “Have you got a map?”

Song Lan pulls the map from his qiankun bag, and they spread it on the building steps under the overhang of the roof, where it’s sheltered from the melting snow. Xue Yang kneels over it, bent so low that it almost looks like he’s trying to leap into the landscape, his hair falling forward over his shoulders. He traces his fingers lightly across the inkwork, up the Yunmeng river delta, into the hills and valleys around Yiling.

“There were six attacks,” he says, his fingers dancing around the western edge of Yunmeng in a repeating pattern; it takes Song Lan a moment to realize that he’s tapping precisely at the places the victims were taken. “Plus the seventh, here,” he adds, pointing to the farmland to Yiling’s southeast. “We don’t know about the most recent one, but all the others were dragged away somewhere, right? Where was that girl, the one that happened while I was laid up?”

“She was taken somewhere on the road between Yiling and her village,” Song Lan says quietly. “We found her here.” He points to the hills where they discovered A-Xiu’s body: north of the village, close to the Yiling road and almost directly to the east.

Xue Yang chews on his lip, studying the map intently; Jiangzai comes up behind him as he does, sprawling out on his stomach and shoving his head up under Xue Yang’s arm. Absently Xue Yang buries his hand in the wolf’s fur, rubbing it between his fingers. It seems to ground him. “All the people who were taken—they were alone, right?” he says. “Easy targets, off by themselves? There was that girl out on her own, a teenage boy, a couple of old men—what about the last one?”

“A girl,” Xingchen says quietly. “Tending to the animals on the farm. I think she was ten years old.” Gently Song Lan takes his hand, rubbing his thumb along his knuckles.

“Fuck’s sake,” Xue Yang mutters. He stares at the map for a moment more, then suddenly picks it up, turning it so that he’s looking at Yiling from the direction of western Yunmeng. “Shit, that’s it. I hadn’t actually looked at it all from above like this before, but—do you see?”

Song Lan looks down at the map, then back up to Xue Yang, bewildered. There’s nothing to see: none of them have made any marks on the page. “See what?”

“The attacks have been scattered,” Xue Yang says, dancing his fingers over the area again, “but they’re all coming from the east. When they get dragged somewhere, they get dragged back east.” He draws his finger in a line, from where A-Xiu was killed to where they found her body. “It’s a hunting animal, or acting like one. It started close to home, and it’s gone further and further afield as prey gets scarcer. And if we follow it back…”

He traces over the outline of the landscape—not following the roads, but across the wilds, as a wolf might hunt. With a sudden clarity Song Lan recalls the Wen encampments that dotted this region during the early days of the Sunshot Campaign, and has a flash of intuition.

“You don’t think—it’s not marked on this map,” he says, “but there was a courier station out here, back during the war.” He takes a moment to orient himself, and then puts his finger down where the station used to be. It’s right along the line Xue Yang just drew across the countryside—in fact, Song Lan’s thumb brushes against his hand, setting a spark racing along his nerves. “It’s been abandoned now. It was where Wen Chao fled when—the Yiling Laozu—”

Xingchen makes a soft, startled noise. “If there’s anywhere that’s soaked in resentment,” he says, and then entirely fails to finish his sentence.

“Yeah,” Xue Yang says, his tone sitting at the precise midpoint between satisfied and grim: “that would do it.”

The courier station is ragged and crumbling, but also strangely well-preserved: as though the resentful energy swirling around the place can’t decide if it wants to keep it standing, or tear it all down at once. The resentment is thick enough to make the hair prickle on the back of Song Lan’s neck. He can feel the low growl rumbling in Fuxue’s chest. Xingchen, beside him, has a firm grip on the scruff of Shuanghua’s neck: his wolf is outright snarling, and looks very much as though he would like to attack the building itself.

“Alright?” Song Lan says.

Xingchen gives him the momentary flicker of a smile. “I can handle it,” he says. “The sooner we deal with this, the better.”

Xue Yang and Jiangzai had been investigating the entrance gate; now they reappear at Xingchen’s side, Jiangzai nudging Shuanghua reassuringly on his flank. “We should check out the area first,” Xue Yang says. “There might be a yao or something living inside, or it might just be nearby. They do that sometimes, when the resentful energy is really bad.”

Song Lan nods. “A tether.”

“That’s a good idea,” Xingchen says. He turns away from the gate, tugging at Shuanghua’s ruff; Shuanghua doesn’t move. “Shuanghua, come on,” he says. “Shuanghua.”

But Shuanghua is still pointed at the courier station entrance, hackles rising, baring his teeth and growling with increasing ferocity—and then abruptly he rips himself from Xingchen’s grasp and lunges forward, just as a massive blur of dark fur comes tearing out through the gate. Shuanghua crashes into it with the hard smack of body striking body, hurling it back against the wall. It rounds on him in a fury of snarling and snapping. Xingchen shouts; Fuxue barks her alarm; Song Lan, his heartbeat pounding in his throat, stares in shock as it suddenly comes clear—

“It’s a wolf,” he says, and everything clicks into place. He was right after all: a feral wolf. Just not Jiangzai.

The other wolf gets its teeth into Shuanghua’s shoulder, and he yelps in pain and anger. Instantly Fuxue and Jiangzai leap to defend him, harrying at the stranger in a whirling mass of teeth and claws and fur. Song Lan draws his sword, then stops, at a loss; helplessly he looks to Xingchen, who has no more idea of how to help than he does. Human swordsmen, even cultivators, have no place in a fight between wolves.

“Wait,” Xue Yang says. “Wait, hang on—”

With a growl that makes Song Lan’s blood run cold, Shuanghua throws the strange wolf to the ground, mere inches from ripping out its throat. “Stop!” Xue Yang shouts, just as Jiangzai slams into Shuanghua’s ribs and knocks him painfully aside. Snarling, Shuanghua throws him off, and they both hurl themselves back to their feet, Jiangzai already moving to block Shuanghua even as Shuanghua is turning on the stranger. And then out of nowhere Fuxue is there, leaping atop the other wolf and pinning it down, her teeth resting delicately against its neck: a threat, but not an imminent danger.

For a moment there is silence, and Song Lan almost thinks he might have the chance to catch his breath. Then Xue Yang darts for the wolves. Song Lan grabs after him, too late to yank him back.

“Yang’er!” Xingchen cries.

“Fuck,” Xue Yang says. He’s dropped to his knees at Fuxue’s side, staring the strange wolf in the face. “What the fuck, this is—this shouldn’t be fucking possible.”

A sense of foreboding crashes down on Song Lan. “What is it?” he says.

Xue Yang turns to look at him, his eyes wide and wild. “That’s Jiaohuo,” he says. “I recognize her. She was bonded with Wen Chao.”

Song Lan stares at him.

“But,” Xingchen says, like he can’t think how to say anything else, “Wen Chao died three years ago.”

“I know,” Xue Yang says. “But that’s her.”

Song Lan shakes his head. What Xue Yang is suggesting is utterly impossible. “You must be mistaken.”

“I am not fucking mistaken,” Xue Yang snaps. “The Wen Sect came after us three fucking times before we killed enough of them that they decided we weren’t worth the trouble, okay, I know what Wen Chao’s wolf looks like.” He jerks his head; Jiangzai trots over, sticking his muzzle right up against the other wolf’s jaw. She growls at him, starting to thrash, but quickly stills when Fuxue clamps her teeth down in warning. After a moment Jiangzai lifts his face from her fur and huffs out an affirmative noise. “Yeah. It’s her.”

“But—how is that possible?” Xingchen says. His eyes keep flicking from Xue Yang to the wolf, his expression sitting somewhere between disbelief and awe. “She was bonded to him. She should have died when he died.”

“I have no fucking clue,” Xue Yang says, and shoves himself to his feet. “You think I know shit about how this kind of bond works? Maybe we should ask her.”

“If—” Song Lan begins, and then stumbles over his words as both Xingchen and Xue Yang turn to look at him. “If their qi was bonded, and Wen Chao’s spiritual consciousness has never been put to rest—”

“But that’s not possible either,” Xingchen says. “He was the noble son of a major sect. He definitely would have had a soul-calming ceremony performed in his youth.”

“So we’re trading one impossibility for another,” Xue Yang says with a shrug. “Either way, something’s not right. Why couldn’t it be that?”

“And—how would we know?” Song Lan says. “Couldn’t Wei Wuxian—couldn’t the Yiling Laozu have found some way around that? If any cultivation path could have left Wen Chao’s spirit lingering when it shouldn’t, in whatever shattered form…”

For a moment Xingchen has no answer. “No, you’re right,” he says finally. His voice is subdued. “It’s the only thing that might make sense.”

Zichen, Fuxue interrupts. While they’ve been talking, she has been speaking with Jiaohuo, and now the sense of what she learned floods into Song Lan’s mind. She’s hurting. We have to help her.

Song Lan inhales a slow breath. “Let her up.”

Delicately Fuxue releases her teeth from Jiaohuo’s throat. Jiaohuo doesn’t move for a moment, and then abruptly flips herself upright, first cowering away from the other wolves and then cringing forward in submissive posture. She’s an attractive wolf, smaller than Fuxue and a bit lighter, her coat closer in tone to Jiangzai’s deep greys and soft browns. But now that she’s no longer fighting, it’s easy to see how battered she is: the people she has attacked may be the only decent meals she’s had in months.

Song Lan steps forward. His sword is still drawn; she tracks it warily with her eyes. She’s still dangerous, but no longer trying to kill them. That will have to do.

“Jiaohuo,” he says. Her ears prick. He thinks it must have been a long, long time since anyone has addressed her by name, and in that moment something inside him breaks. “We’ve come to end this,” he tells her. “Take us where we need to go.”

It’s ugly, thankless work.

They don’t find anything resembling Wen Chao’s lingering spirit—whatever was left of him, perhaps, was too fragmented for that. But the courier station is overrun with resentful energy, and it has drawn all sorts of unpleasant things over the three years since Wei Wuxian brought a brutal end to the torments he had inflicted there. They develop a system: Xingchen, led by Shuanghua’s sensitivity to resentment, directs them to the worst-hit parts of the building. He and Xue Yang, between them, eliminate the most vicious threats and suppress what is merely aggressive. Song Lan, following in their wake, purifies what remains with Fuxue keeping pace at his side. The whole time they are working, Jiaohuo trails after him—sometimes allowing Shuanghua and Jiangzai to get ahead of her a ways, but keeping Fuxue always in her sight.

Song Lan gets used to seeing her skulking along behind them. He has no idea what it means.

It was late morning when they arrived; it’s at least three hours past the early winter sunset before they’ve cleaned the place up well enough that Song Lan thinks it might be safe to walk away. He can’t even bring himself to feel satisfied, as he makes his way out of the courier station: he’s just exhausted. It all seems like such a waste. Wen Chao was a pigheaded ass, and by every account that Song Lan has heard he likely deserved everything that was done to him—but what has lingered here was not about Wen Chao. It was just a broken, grief-mad wolf, packless and alone and barely keeping herself from starving, hunting the only prey she could get. It was just one more scar for the people to bear in the wake of a cultivators’ war.

Xingchen and Xue Yang are waiting at the gate with their wolves when Song Lan and Fuxue join them. Xue Yang seems unusually subdued; Xingchen looks as tired as Song Lan feels. They’re standing close together, their heads tilted softly towards each other’s, and it makes something aching and lovely clench in Song Lan’s chest.

Jiaohuo is still following Song Lan. Now, as Fuxue peels away from him to nuzzle affectionately against Shuanghua and Jiangzai, Jiaohuo lowers herself to a submissive crawl and creeps closer to them, step by careful step. The other wolves watch her in wary silence for a while, and then Shuanghua growls a warning.

“Shuanghua,” Xingchen scolds gently. “She’s not hurting you.” He tips his head up then, turning a smile—worn and grieved, but still valiantly present—on Song Lan. “Are you alright?”

Song Lan nods. Against all his expectations, he is: he feels better already with Xingchen and Xue Yang in his sight.

“You figure that’s enough to keep her from attacking anyone else?” Xue Yang says.

For a moment the only sound is the drip of melting snow. “I don’t know,” Xingchen says slowly. “Not all wolves do as well on their own as you and Jiangzai have done.”

Song Lan turns to look at Jiaohuo. She’s made it close enough to Fuxue to scent her; Fuxue is looking down on her, a haughty tilt to her head. With a short, cut-off whine, Jiaohuo nuzzles into her jaw and licks the underside of her muzzle. Fuxue allows it, with a hum of satisfaction that echoes deep in Song Lan’s mind.

“Zichen,” Xingchen says, “is she—”

Oh, Song Lan thinks, as all the pieces of his world tumble out of his grasp and fit themselves back together in a new order.

“What’s with Fuxue?” Xue Yang says. “She’s acting like the boss bitch of a pack.”

“She is,” Song Lan says. His voice sounds as though it comes from far outside himself. “They’ve pack-bonded.” He looks back to Xingchen and Xue Yang; Xingchen’s face is gently astonished, while Xue Yang just looks stunned. “How could we not notice?”

Immediately Xue Yang coughs. “We were, uh, a bit distracted,” he says.

Xingchen presses his hand to his mouth, not quite succeeding at stifling a giggle.

Song Lan feels like a ship that has come unmoored. He waits for the discomfort to swamp him, that dread of irrevocable intimacy that has always haunted him at the thought of belonging to a pack. He finds it entirely absent. In its place he is astounded to instead feel a fiercely possessive joy. They’re tied to each other now, all three of them, no matter where they go. Xue Yang and Xingchen are his.

That will certainly be something to think about later, when his brain feels a little less utterly disconnected from his body.

“We should,” he says, and clears his throat. “We need to leave. This isn’t a place we should camp for the night.”

Xingchen smiles warmly, slipping his hand into Song Lan’s. “I quite agree,” he says. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait, are we,” Xue Yang says, waving his hand in the general direction of the four gathered wolves. “Is she coming with us?”

We’ll all hunt together, Fuxue says. She needs us. We’ll take care of her.

“Well,” Xingchen says, “I guess that settles that.”

They make camp in the shelter of the trees, about an hour’s walk from the courier station. They’re all starving by the time they find a place to stay the night; right away the wolves disappear into the woodland to hunt their own meal, Jiaohuo slinking uncertainly after the others until Fuxue yips at her to keep up. Xingchen sits down to make dinner for the human occupants of their camp, while Song Lan sets up the tent and Xue Yang fetches water and firewood. They eat in hungry, worn-down silence; Song Lan barely tastes his food.

It’s only after they’ve finished, when they’ve scrubbed the pot clean and rinsed off all of their dishes, that the anxiety starts to gnaw at Song Lan’s gut. He and Xingchen have a system, have been travelling together for years, and he has no idea where Xue Yang—or Jiangzai, or a pack, or a new, unbonded wolf—fit into any of that. Xue Yang followed them without question when they left the courier station; he’s here and making camp with them like he expects to stick around. But all of that remains unspoken, and Song Lan has made the wrong assumption before. Where do they stand now? He doesn’t know.

He needn’t have worried. As soon as Song Lan tucks the last of their dishes away, Xue Yang immediately seats himself on his lap, straddling him with a proprietary air and slinging his arms over Song Lan’s shoulders. “So,” he says with a smirk. “Pack-bonded?”

“Looks like it,” Song Lan says, his hands settling automatically on Xue Yang’s narrow hips. His body knows this body so well; he’s spent more time with Xue Yang naked than clothed. Already he can feel his heart beating in his throat.

Xue Yang’s smile, somehow, only gets smugger. Song Lan wants to kiss it off of his lips. “So that means you’re keeping me, right?” he says.

“That depends,” Xingchen says, coming up beside Song Lan and folding gracefully to his knees. He rests his cheek on Song Lan’s shoulder, turning his face up to look at Xue Yang. “Do you want to be kept?”

Xue Yang just hums. “You know what I want?” he says. He leans in to speak right into Song Lan’s ear, mouthing along the line of his jaw. “I want to know what that big dick of yours feels like when it’s inside me.”

Song Lan’s mouth goes dry. “Yeah,” he says without thinking. His voice is already rough.

“Yeah?” Xue Yang says, grinding down against him. He presses his face into Song Lan’s neck, biting at him gently.

“Fuck, Xue Yang,” Song Lan says.

“I think I’d like to see that,” Xingchen says, heated and intent.

Song Lan nearly groans. “Tent,” he says.

The space inside their tent is small: enough to comfortably sleep Song Lan and Xingchen side by side, and no more. Somehow, Song Lan doesn’t think that will be a problem. Xue Yang is yanking at his robes almost before they’re all the way inside, hands hot and searching on his body. Xingchen does up the fastenings on the tent flap, and then joins them on the bedroll as Song Lan tumbles down onto his back, Xue Yang kneeling over him in disarray.

“Have a little patience, Yang’er,” Xingchen says. He trails his fingertip over the shell of Xue Yang’s ear, then runs it down his neck.

Xue Yang shivers. “Not on your fucking life,” he says.

Xingchen just laughs.

He helps Song Lan to strip Xue Yang bare before he starts taking his own clothes off. Song Lan’s robes are spread out chaotically beneath him; Xue Yang is going to make a mess of them, and Song Lan can’t even bring himself to care. He is consumed with the need to know what Xue Yang feels like around him, desperate for it now that the aching hollow of Fuxue’s heat is no longer demanding that they fill him up instead. He nudges Xue Yang up out of the way and shimmies out of his pants, Xue Yang’s eager hands helping and hindering in equal measure. Xue Yang all but whines when they get them down far enough to reveal Song Lan’s dick.

“Shit,” he says. “I didn’t get to appreciate it like this before.” And then, before Song Lan has the slightest chance to react to that, Xue Yang scrambles down his body to kneel between his legs, taking him into his mouth and nearly choking himself with how rapidly he swallows him down.

Song Lan shouts, thumping his head back against the bedding. He has to fight not to buck violently up into Xue Yang’s mouth, his hands clenching tightly in the blankets. He was only halfway to hard, but Xue Yang is making short work of getting him the rest of the way there.

“Fuck, Yang’er, your mouth,” Song Lan says, without conscious input from his brain. Xue Yang moans around him and forces himself down even further on his cock.

“Easy, sweetheart,” Xingchen says, settling next to them and stretching out on his side. He’s entirely naked now, too, and so glowingly beautiful that Song Lan can barely look at him. Smiling, he brushes Xue Yang’s hair back from his face, and then delicately picks the ornament out. When Xue Yang’s ponytail tumbles down around his shoulders, Xingchen winds his fist into it, tightening his grip until Xue Yang whimpers and slows his frantic pace.

“Xingchen,” Song Lan says, turning his face towards him, seeking and needy.

“You’re so beautiful,” Xingchen whispers, kissing Song Lan’s mouth, his cheek, his jaw. “You’re so good—oh, I want you, I want you—”

Xue Yang pulls off of Song Lan’s cock with an obscene pop. “Fuck,” he gasps raggedly. His throat sounds wrecked, so much so that it makes Song Lan dizzy. “I need it, I need—fuck—”

Suddenly Song Lan can’t stand how far away he is. “Come here,” he says, reaching for Xue Yang, and Xue Yang comes, crawling up his body and straddling his hips. Song Lan digs his hands into Xue Yang’s thighs, and Xue Yang rocks down against him, grinding their cocks together. Song Lan’s mind goes briefly blank. “Yang’er—”

“Here,” Xingchen says. He produces that same pot of salve—now much diminished—and smears some onto his fingers, urging Xue Yang up onto his knees. “Come on, sweetheart, that’s it. Let me help.”

Xue Yang shudders as Xingchen works his fingers into him, his cock jumping against his belly. He’s leaking all over Song Lan’s stomach, messy and too-hot, and Song Lan wraps his hand around him, smearing precome all down Xue Yang’s length. “Ah—ah, fuck,” Xue Yang says shakily, his eyes squeezed shut. “Zichen—Xingchen—”

“Hush,” Xingchen says soothingly. “You’re doing so well, sweetheart, you’re going to look so lovely riding Zichen’s cock.”

Just the thought makes Song Lan’s brain start to fray at the edges. “Please,” he groans.

Xue Yang whines, jolting back onto Xingchen’s fingers and forward into Song Lan’s hand by turns. “Now,” he says. “I want it now, I’m ready, I can take it—”

Xingchen hums and withdraws his fingers with a slick sound, crawling up behind Xue Yang. He settles one hand on his thigh, right above Song Lan’s. The other he wraps around Song Lan’s dick, smearing it with what salve he has left on his fingers and guiding it to Xue Yang’s entrance.

Xue Yang sinks down. It’s agony, waiting for him to ease his way onto Song Lan’s cock—he’s so hot and tight and desperate, and Song Lan wants him so bad, has to fight against the urge to grab hold of him and slam up inside him in a single thrust—

“Yes,” Xue Yang moans, “yes, yes, fuck, give it to me, you’re fucking huge—”

Heat blazes along Song Lan’s nerves. And then Xingchen wraps both his hands around Xue Yang’s waist and shoves, forcing him down on Song Lan’s cock all at once, splitting him open so hard and fast that Xue Yang nearly screams. He clenches reflexively around Song Lan, and Song Lan’s entire body goes white-hot. He barely remembers how to breathe.

With a tiny smirk on his perfect mouth, Xingchen lays back down beside them. He’s fully hard now, and he wraps his fingers around his dick, grinding lazily against Song Lan’s hip. Song Lan loves him so much that he can’t even think.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Xue Yang says, the words spilling from his lips like a litany. He shifts slightly on Song Lan’s cock, and his whole body seizes again. There are tears streaming down his cheeks.

Abruptly Song Lan is filled with tenderness. He reaches up, cradling Xue Yang’s face in one hand; Xue Yang tilts his head into it, almost like he’s trying to hide. “Xue Yang,” Song Lan says, and that name is everything in the world to him in this moment. “Yang’er—oh, fuck, sweetheart, you’re so pretty—”

“Zichen,” Xue Yang gasps, and then rolls his hips, tipping forward and planting his hands on Song Lan’s chest to ride him hard.

Xue Yang comes like that, achingly full and overflowing with tears, his trembling arms barely holding him upright as he spills himself all across Song Lan’s stomach. Song Lan follows him over the edge only moments later, as deep inside him as he can get, his fingers digging bruises onto Xue Yang’s hips as he holds him tightly down on his cock. Xingchen’s breath hitches in Song Lan’s ear; he strokes himself faster, making tiny pleased noises in his throat that are going to haunt Song Lan’s dreams for the rest of his life. At last he comes with a low moan, painting his release across Song Lan’s hip and Xue Yang’s thigh. Dreamily he trails his fingers through it, meeting Song Lan’s eyes with a secret little smile.

Xue Yang’s arms give out then, and he collapses down against Song Lan, still crying gently. Song Lan kisses his crown, and then tips Xue Yang’s face up to kiss him properly, losing himself for a long moment in the heat of his mouth. When he breaks away he does so softly, just breathing into the inch of space between their lips. “Alright?” he says.

“Fuck yes,” Xue Yang mumbles, and kisses him again.

Xingchen tucks himself in against them, curling sweetly around Song Lan and petting Xue Yang’s hair. “You were so beautiful, sweetheart,” he says. “You did such a good job.”

Xue Yang just whines quietly and turns his head to kiss Xingchen as well.

Song Lan closes his eyes and allows himself to relax, basking in the scent and feel of them both against his body, in Xue Yang’s weight on his chest and Xingchen’s long legs stretched the length of his, in the little sounds they’re making and the overwhelming love suffusing his entire self. He knows they’ll need to get up soon, to clean themselves off and to settle in for sleep, but for now he pretends that they can stay like this forever. He can sense Fuxue outside, slinking back into camp with the other wolves and curling up alongside them, the satisfaction of a successful hunt thrumming in her mind. Her emotions are a melodic echo of his, and sleepily she reaches back to him, all but glowing with contentment.

Song Lan tightens his arms around Xingchen and Xue Yang. My pack, he thinks, and it’s the most perfect thing in the world.

At the height of summer, they are camped outside a nameless village in the Shudong province when Xue Yang drags an urchin girl up from the streets and deposits her in the middle of their camp.

Song Lan raises an eyebrow, getting to his feet. “I thought you were going for supplies,” he says dryly. It has habitually been Xue Yang who goes into town, ever since the three of them formed their pack: he and Jiangzai are much more comfortable with being separated than any other bonded pair Song Lan has ever met, and Jiangzai had been perfectly happy to stay at camp with Fuxue, the pups, and the other two wolves while Xue Yang went down to the village.

“I was,” Xue Yang says. “I caught her trying to pickpocket me.” For some reason he sounds almost proud.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, shithead?!” the girl hollers. “Where have you taken me?” In a single furious movement she shoves herself to her feet, swinging at Xue Yang with her bamboo cane. He dodges her easily: she’s moving like she’s only estimating his position, doesn’t turn her head to track where she’s aimed. Her eyes are curiously light.

“You’re blind?” Song Lan says.

“She’s faking,” Xue Yang interrupts, before the girl can answer. “She’s a good actor, but I saw her. She walked right into the best-dressed man on that street.”

The girl spits at the ground. “Waste of my time,” she says. “Acting like a rich man, but he had barely any coin in his purse.” She tries to dart around Xue Yang, but either Xue Yang is wrong about her blindness, or she’s still intent on pretending. He fences her in, herding her back towards Song Lan. She yells at him, a short wordless screech.

Xingchen had been roughhousing with Fuxue’s three half-grown pups; now he comes over, brushing the dust from his robes. “What’s going on?”

“Xue Yang caught a pickpocket,” Song Lan says quickly, before either Xue Yang or the girl can take control of the conversation.

“Oh,” Xingchen says. He considers the girl, who continues to glare up at them all without at all meeting their eyes. It’s really very hard to tell if she can see or not. “Why is she here?”

“Good question,” Song Lan mutters.

“What do you mean?” Xue Yang says. He sounds quite genuinely baffled. “She tried to steal from me. What are we going to do with her?”

“Why do we have to do anything with her?” Song Lan says.

“Do you need help?” Xingchen asks the girl. “We can give you some money.”

Song Lan’s exasperation only intensifies. “Xingchen,” he says.

“Don’t be stupid, Xingchen, of course we’re not giving her money,” Xue Yang says.

“And we’re not doing anything else with her either,” Song Lan adds firmly. “Did she steal from you?”

Xue Yang shrugs, unrepentant. “No.”

“Then just let her go,” Song Lan says, fighting very hard to maintain a reasonable tone. “She can go back to her life of petty crime—”

“What the shit?!” the girl yelps, shooting to her feet and stumbling backward so hard that she trips again right away.

She is so alarmed that Song Lan immediately looks around, but he finds nothing out of the ordinary—nothing but Jiaohuo, normally so reserved and wary of human contact, padding easily up to their circle and pushing her way between Song Lan and Xingchen. The girl is staring up at her, scrambling frantically back on her hands. She looks tiny next to the looming bulk of a spiritual wolf.

Well, Song Lan thinks, I suppose that answers the question of whether she can see.

“Go back to Fuxue,” Xingchen is saying. Jiaohuo ignores him completely, singlemindedly fixed on the girl.

“Keep it away from me!” the girl says, a note of real panic in her voice. She’s backed herself up against a boulder without meaning to, and has nowhere left to retreat.

“Stop it,” Song Lan says, stalking forward to grab the wolf by the back of her neck. She ducks under his hand, remarkably deftly for the way she still hasn’t looked away from the girl. She doesn’t look aggressive—Song Lan can read wolves more than well enough to know that, even without a bond—but there’s no way a non-cultivator would recognize that, and Song Lan has no idea what she is doing.

Looking faintly alarmed, Xue Yang reaches for his sword. “Where the fuck are the other wolves?” he demands. “Get out of here!”

Jiaohuo no more listens to him than she did Song Lan or Xingchen. She walks right up to the girl, shoving her muzzle into her face and scenting her curiously. The girl takes one shaky gulp of air and freezes, her face screwed up in fear and a terrible anticipation.

For a very long moment, nothing happens. Jiaohuo continues to breathe in the girl’s scent, nudging her nose along her hairline and against the hinge of her jaw. Then suddenly she lets out a gusty sigh, like the release of some great tension she didn’t know she was carrying, and nuzzles her face into the girl’s neck. The girl startles, her eyes flying open with a gasp. And then she goes strangely loose, her hand lifting to bury itself in the fur of Jiaohuo’s ruff.

“Jiao yang si huo,” she says, a little dreamily, and then abruptly she blinks and focuses, a tiny frown creasing her forehead. “Her name is Jiaohuo?”

Song Lan stares at her, and then exchanges an alarmed glance with Xingchen.

“Is that possible?” Xingchen says, sounding just as bewildered as Song Lan feels.

Song Lan almost wants to laugh. “Was it possible for a bonded wolf to survive her partner’s death?” he says. “Who knows what’s possible with her?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Xue Yang says, and sheathes his sword. He offers the girl his hand. “Well, I guess you’ll be coming with us, then.”

She takes it, still looking a bit at sea, and he hauls her to her feet. “What’s going on?” she says. Her other hand hasn’t left Jiaohuo’s neck.

“You a cultivator?” Xue Yang says.

“What? No!”

“Congratulations,” Xue Yang says. “You are now. You just bonded with a spiritual wolf. What’s your name?”

“A-Qing,” she says fiercely, “and don’t you forget it.” And then the rest of what he said catches up with her, and her eyes go wide and tremulous. “Wait, does that mean—”

“You’re part of the pack now, Little Blind,” Xue Yang says cheerfully.

A-Qing gapes around at the three of them, looking to Song Lan and Xingchen in turn like they’ll give her a different answer. None is forthcoming. Xue Yang smirks at her; Xingchen smiles brightly; Song Lan just meets her eyes with a rueful glance. “You’ll get used to it,” he says, as gently as he can. “Do you want something to eat?”

Her fingers still buried in Jiaohuo’s ruff, A-Qing nods and takes a tentative step forward.

If this is how they start their sect, Song Lan thinks, there are certainly worse ways to do it.