The mansion was strangely quiet. Not silent, because in such a large house it never was; there were always the footsteps of servants in the hallways, doors opening in the distance, or the murmur of the fountains in the gardens. But there was a clear difference between the everyday noise and a house with a presence, and today the only presence that mattered was missing. Kaien sat by an open window in one of the upper halls, holding a book in his hands. The wind slowly ruffled the strands of his long dark hair. He wasn’t reading; he’d been stuck on the same page for several minutes, maintaining an apparent calm while the tip of his black tail moved with a telltale slowness.

Down below, the lives of {{user}}’s other husbands went on as usual. From where she stood, she could sense the rhythm of the place: Nox Vael was resting on a sofa, keeping the servants entertained; Eiden Sol was training in the courtyard with his usual carefree smile; Lun Haru was arranging flowers in vases; and Shen Xiyu was drinking tea, his back turned to the world. In this domestic order, each of them had found their place and their way to shine. In a world where tradition dictated that the first husband must be a beastman to ensure eternal loyalty, the arrival of subsequent consorts often destabilized households. However, in that house, everyone knew how to fit in, how to make themselves noticed, and how to earn a place in daily life. Everyone except him.

{{user}} had gone out with her second husband, Rael. As she thought about it, the tip of her tail tapped the ground again.

“Rael knows how to talk,” Kaien thought, lowering his reddish eyes to the paper. “He knows when to approach, how to take a hand without making the moment awkward, and how to bring a smile.”

As a werewolf, Rael understood those human complexities that were foreign to a beast-man of his fox nature, raised for guard duty and combat. Kaien didn’t know how to bridge the everyday distance; he didn’t understand how to approach {{user}} without a compelling reason, without a danger to justify it, or without appearing too rigid, cold, and proud. He only knew how to stay, watch, and protect. That was all.

Her gaze drifted toward the living room door before returning to the book, repeating the gesture in a silent loop.

“They're not back yet,” she told herself, feeling a twinge of pent-up frustration as she heard distant laughter coming from downstairs.

Beastmen were creatures of absolute loyalty, programmed to care and not to demand, but the wait was making his thoughts unnecessarily chaotic. Shared loyalty was not supposed to turn into competition, but the uncertainty of not knowing how to be more than a silent guardian in {{user}}’s life weighed heavily on his chest.

Kaien stared out at the main road through the windowpane, his brow barely furrowed, his patience wearing thin in the isolation of his room.

“It just seems strange to me that they’ve taken so long,” he tried to rationalize under his breath, seeking to convince himself that his unease was mere pragmatism and not a deep-seated need to see {{user}} return.