Chapter 126: Grandmother Should See This
Mirabelle was exhausted.
It felt as though her conversation with her grandmother had drained every last bit of energy the nearly perfect morning with Kaelith had given her.
It was almost as if the elderly lynx Beastwoman wasn’t a lynx at all...
...but a vampire that fed on stress.
And judging by how utterly depleted Mirabelle felt, she’d enjoyed a very satisfying meal.
Which was precisely why Mirabelle went looking for her three mates.
Curiously, the bond told her they were all in the same place.
That, in itself, was unusual.
Her brows drew together slightly as she changed direction and followed the quiet pull humming at the edge of her mind.
Following the bond led Mirabelle away from the noble residences and toward the castle garrison.
The sound reached her long before the training grounds came into view.
Bodies collided. Someone shouted an order.
A chorus of boots pounded against packed earth in perfect rhythm before stopping all at once.
The entire district seemed to breathe with disciplined purpose.
The soldiers’ barracks stood in long rows behind the inner castle walls, built from pale stone with dark timber roofs that had weathered decades of rain and sun alike.
Laundry fluttered lazily between several of the buildings, while polished breastplates, helmets, and shields rested on wooden stands outside open doorways, gleaming beneath the afternoon sun.
The smell was unmistakable.
Warm leather.
Freshly split timber.
Sweat.
Beyond the barracks, the training grounds opened into an enormous rectangular field covered almost entirely in pale sand. Years of relentless drills had packed it into a firm surface that still yielded just enough beneath each step to cushion heavy impacts.
The field was divided into several sections.
One area was marked by rows of wooden training dummies, their battered frames scarred by thousands of claw marks.
Another held thick wooden posts wrapped in rope for practicing punches and kicks. Several had deep cracks running through them, while others leaned ever so slightly despite repeated repairs.
Several archery lanes stretched farther back, where straw targets stood at increasing distances, many already riddled with arrows.
Beastmen rarely relied on weapons.
There was little point.
Nature had already armed them with claws, fangs, horns, talons, or sheer physical strength far deadlier than most forged steel could ever hope to be. In close combat, they trusted their bodies.
Always.
The only weapons Mirabelle had consistently seen them use were bows and spears. Which made perfect sense.
Neither competed with a Beastman’s natural advantages. Instead, they complemented them, allowing warriors to strike enemies long before those enemies came within reach of claws and teeth.
The racks lining the edge of the training grounds reflected that philosophy.
Most held long spears with polished ash shafts and broad steel heads.
Others were filled with powerful bows crafted from layered wood and horn, their strings drawn so taut that Mirabelle doubted any ordinary human could have bent them.
Compared to that, swords, axes, and other conventional weapons were entirely absent.
For Beastmen their own bodies had always been their greatest weapon.
To one side stood a broad pavilion roof shading instructors and officers from the summer sun. Opposite it rose two sturdy wooden grandstands overlooking the arena.
Most days they remained nearly empty.
But whenever tournaments, graduation trials, military demonstrations, or ceremonial duels were held, they filled with nobles, merchants, soldiers’ families, and curious citizens eager to watch Luchsenstein’s finest display their skill.
At the center of it all lay the largest ring.
Simply an enormous circle of sand, marked with wooden poles, where the strongest warriors of the duchy tested themselves against one another.
Today...
Nearly every soldier had abandoned whatever training they had originally intended to do. Instead, hundreds of eyes were fixed upon that central arena.
Mirabelle didn’t need the bond to tell her why.
The ground itself answered.
A deep boom rolled through the sand beneath her feet. Another followed. Then came the sharp crack of colliding force powerful enough to send birds erupting from nearby rooftops.
By the time she reached the edge of the arena, a crowd several rows deep had already formed around it.
She slipped through the gathered soldiers with surprising ease. Nobody was paying attention to anything except the fight.
Silas ducked beneath one of Kaelith’s sweeping strikes, his movements so fluid they almost appeared lazy.
The instant the hyena’s fist passed overhead, the panther drove forward.
Kaelith dropped low in one fluid motion, catching himself on one hand as his body twisted. His leg whipped around in a vicious arc, crashing into Silas head-on.
The collision sounded less like two bodies meeting and more like two battering rams crashing together.
The impact shook the arena.
Sand burst outward in a widening ring. Several soldiers instinctively stumbled back.
Lucien appeared seemingly from nowhere.
One heartbeat he wasn’t there. The next, a copperish flash cut between them.
His hands darted toward Silas.
Silas twisted aside just enough for his claws to miss by the width of a finger before driving his elbow toward Lucien’s ribs.
The fox was already gone. Only a swirl of dust marked where he’d been standing.
Kaelith laughed.
A loud, exhilarated sound that echoed across the entire training field.
"There you are!"
He launched himself forward again with terrifying enthusiasm.
Every strike carried enough force to crater the packed sand beneath his feet.
Silas didn’t bother redirecting the blows. He simply overpowered them, meeting force with even greater force.
Lucien remained impossible to pin down.
He flowed through openings neither of the other two even seemed to notice, forcing both of them to constantly divide their attention.
Watching the three together was less like witnessing a sparring match...
...and more like watching a natural disaster.
Every collision sent vibrations through the ground.
Wooden weapon racks rattled.
Loose helmets clinked softly against one another.
Dust drifted continuously through the air.
Around Mirabelle, not a single soldier dared speak above a whisper.
Because everyone present understood one thing: This wasn’t a contest. This was simply three monsters... enjoying themselves.
A smile found its way onto Mirabelle’s lips as she watched her three mates.
They were completely absorbed in their sparring match, so focused that the rest of the world seemed to have ceased to exist.
The soldiers surrounding her quietly shifted aside as soon as they realized who had joined them, leaving her a small pocket of space from which to watch.
No one disturbed her. No one dared.
Time slipped by almost unnoticed. Little by little, the exhausting morning faded from Mirabelle’s mind.
Instead, she found herself captivated by the way her mates fought.
Kaelith fought like controlled chaos.
Every attack that came at him became part of his own momentum. He redirected force instead of resisting it, letting his opponents’ strength flow through him before hurling it back with even greater violence. His movements were explosive, unpredictable, and impossible to ignore.
Silas was the exact opposite.
He never took a single unnecessary step. Never wasted a movement.
Where most warriors would have yielded or redirected an incoming blow, Silas simply met it head-on. Raw strength answered raw strength. He stopped attacks because he possessed the power to stop them, forcing the world to yield to him rather than yielding to it.
Lucien was something else entirely.
He flowed through the battlefield like water slipping between rocks. Always moving. Always changing.
Never where anyone expected him to be.
The more his opponents tried to pin him down, the more he seemed to slip through their grasp, turning impossibly narrow openings into opportunities before vanishing again as though he had never been there at all.
Each of them fought in a completely different way.
And yet...
Together, they formed something astonishingly close to perfect balance.
Then the wind changed. A fresh breeze swept across the training grounds.
All three Beastmen froze. Instantly.
Silas’s fist stopped barely a hand’s breadth from Lucien’s face. At the very same moment, Lucien’s hand was wrapped firmly around Kaelith’s tail.
Not a single one of them moved.
Their noses twitched. The air grew strangely still.
As one, their heads turned toward the edge of the training grounds. Toward Mirabelle.
The transformation was almost instantaneous.
The hard focus that had sharpened their features only a heartbeat before simply... melted away. Warmth swept across their faces.
Kaelith broke into a broad, unrestrained grin.
Lucien’s lips curled into an effortless smile, bright enough to rival the afternoon sun.
And even Silas —
Mirabelle couldn’t help smiling wider.
The panther’s expression softened so completely that the stern, intimidating warrior from moments ago suddenly looked approachable. Gentle, even.
Around her, quiet murmurs rippled through the gathered males. Several exchanged astonished glances.
Apparently, seeing the infamous prince smile so openly was a rarer sight than watching three monsters shake the earth during a sparring match.
The three of them relaxed almost in unison.
Tense muscles loosened. Shoulders rolled.
The intensity of the sparring match faded.
Somewhere along the way, Lucien had somehow acquired three towels. Mirabelle had absolutely no idea where he’d gotten them from.
With practiced ease, he tossed one toward Kaelith, who caught it without even looking, while handing another to Silas.
The panther ran it slowly across his face, wiping away the thin sheen of sweat.
Beside him, Kaelith draped his towel around the back of his neck before vigorously rubbing it through his hair.
Lucien dabbed at his own forehead with the remaining towel, his tail swaying lazily behind him.
"So," he asked with an easy smile, "how long have you been standing there?"
Mirabelle rewarded him with a radiant smile and began making her way across the training grounds toward them. The sand crunched pleasantly beneath her feet, warm from the afternoon sun.
"Long enough to be thoroughly reassured that invading Luchsenstein would be a spectacularly bad idea."
A grin spread across Kaelith’s face.
Lucien chuckled softly.
And the corners of Silas’s mouth twitched upward ever so slightly.
"I should probably make that a little clearer to my grandmother," she murmured under her breath.
"Hmm?"
Kaelith turned fully toward her.
She couldn’t help noticing how his shirt clung to the hard lines of his muscles, darkened by sweat and somehow making him even more attractive than usual.
"Ah, it’s nothing."
Mirabelle brushed a loose strand of hair from her face, a mischievous smile tugging at her lips.
"I was just wondering...
...whether the three of you would mind repeating that little sparring match for my grandmother."