Chapter 64
Within minutes, her body relaxed fully against his, her hand slipping from his ribs to rest over the center of his sternum—right above the place every fox knew as the spirit’s core. She didn’t know what she’d done.
His entire being did.
Mingxi froze and then exhaled in a silent, shaken rush. Dangerously intimate didn’t begin to cover it.
She murmured his name once, barely a breath.
“I’m here,” he answered immediately, tightening his hold, as if the night itself might try to take her away.
She sighed, content, and drifted deeper.
A fox Guardian could enter trance at will—let the body rest while the mind sharpened to a quiet, disciplined edge. Normally, all it took was a controlled exhale and a deliberate loosening of his aura.
Tonight, he tried. He closed his eyes. Slowed his breath. Let his consciousness reach for that familiar stillness.
Then, Poppy’s fingers curled faintly over his heart.
Every thought he had scattered. His eyes opened again, wide and very much awake.
The usual tether into trance—duty, discipline, the quiet hum of the leyline—was drowned out by the soft sound of her breathing, the weight of her body trusting his, the faint soreness in his muscles where they’d moved together.
He could still feel her nails in his back. Her gasp against his neck. The way she’d said, “I want you” like it was the bravest thing she’d ever done.
Trance was impossible. He didn’t move. He didn’t dare.
Moonlight filtered through the branches, silvering the curve of her shoulder where the blanket had slipped. He eased it higher without waking her, fingers grazing her skin in the barest of touches, reverent.
He should have been cataloging threats, reading the wards, thinking of the route to the moonwell, the entity, the Traveler. Instead, all he could think—stupidly, fiercely, helplessly—was: She chose me. Not as a Guardian. Not as a shield. As a man.
He bowed his head and pressed a kiss into her hair, letting his lips linger there for one breath and then two.
“I’m here,” he whispered again, quieter this time. “I’ll be here when you wake.”
Her hand tightened once, unconsciously, over his heart as if answering.
His chest ached. He adjusted his position just enough to brace his back against the tree trunk while keeping her fully wrapped in his arms. The wards hummed faintly at the edge of his senses, steady and holding.
The forest slept in layered shadows. Somewhere far off, a night bird called and fell silent again.
He stayed awake through it all, watching the slow rise and fall of her shoulders, matching his breath to hers, holding her like she was the one tether keeping him from sliding into the dark.
Hours later, when the sky finally began to pale at the edges and the moon slipped lower, his body felt the fatigue he refused to give in to. His eyes burned. His muscles ached. His spirit hummed on the knife’s edge between rest and readiness.
But Poppy slept peacefully in his arms. No nightmares. No flinching. No trace of the terror that usually haunted her rest.
That was worth every ounce of strain.
Mingxi let his eyes close at last—not to trance, not fully—but to a light doze a fox could snap out of at the slightest shift in the wards. Half rest, half watchfulness.
His last clear thought before the edges blurred was simple, terrifying, undeniable: if the entity wanted to take her, it would have to go through him.