Caspian took Hana inside the den and the other two took care of the mother and the kits, rolling them to one corner, far from their bed space, allowing the mid wife the badgers had found to take care of the kits there.

Hana does not like other beasts in her home, but if it’s far from her supplies and herself, then it was fine. She had asked them to take care of them so that was what they were doing.

The midwives marveled at the white lights that shine brightly in all corners, convinced that the human female had plucked the sun into their ceilings.

Meanwhile, in the bed space, the silence that settled there was heavy, thick with the scent of ozone from Caspian’s scales, the sterile sting of medical foam, and the metallic tang of spilled blood that still clung to his hand.

Caspian had yet to wash off the blood because he refused to move an inch, his massive arms forming an unyielding cradle around Hana’s sleeping form. His golden eyes, completely slit into predator needles, watched the cave opening as if expecting the very shadows to grow teeth.

"Kulu," Caspian rumbled, his voice dropping into a low frequency that wouldn’t vibrate against Hana’s ears. "Did you set the stabilization parameters to continuous? If that female rabbit dies in our den, Hana will be furious about the resource waste."

Kulu nodded, though his crimson feathers were still stiff, but the ungrounded panic had been entirely replaced by a cold, sharp gaze.

"Yes," he said. He had checked the automated fields, ensuring the blue light indicators remained solid.

Hana placed such values on those lines and that he could not forget what they stood for.

"The markers are stable," Kulu reported back, his voice flat as his gaze remained fixed on Hana. But after a second more, he turned around and said, "I will watch from the high ledge. Nothing enters this place and nothing breathes near the mouth of this den unless I say so."

"And what of the street rats outside?" Raiden asked.

The Fox Tribe remained huddled on the rocks outside the den like a collection of ghosts, entirely subdued under the implicit promise of the labor chains awaiting them.

Even though they were all fox kin, they could not deny what they had seen. Not even the chief who was a nine tailed fox could unleash such demonic and feral aura. It had clawed at their throats and squeezed at their souls, promising torment unlike any other.

Coupled with Caspian’s unleashed wrath, it had stripped them of any lingering thoughts of rebellion.

"I think those rats will make trouble." Raiden added.

He was sitting on a low crate, his long fingers carefully parting his pink hair to inspect the massive, throbbing bump Caspian’s tail had left behind. His nine pink tails were wrapped tightly around his ankles, completely devoid of their usual insufferable vanity, though his emerald eyes had retained a lingering, dangerous glint.

"They won’t dare," Caspian hissed. "They shall wait right where they are." he added, his jaw tightening as he adjusted his grip to keep Hana’s head resting perfectly against his shoulder. "Hana said to make sure they do not escape. If a single fox leaves the rock perimeter before she wakes, I will burn the lower forest until there is no shade left for them to hide in."

Raiden let out a short, cold chuckle, his ears twitching toward the spilled harvest scattered across the dirt clearing outside.

"Well, they can think about it, but I doubt they’ll try." His eyes glinted. "They saw my true tails today. They know what happens when the lineage from my mother’s side goes feral. I will go down to the lower ridge and organize the inventory. Since our love wants tubers, I’ll make sure those cowards pack every single potato into the hub sector before sunset."

He stood up, his elegant frame shifting with a fluid, lethal grace as he kicked a stray piece of bone out of his path.

With Kulu stationed on the high granite vantage point like a silent, red-winged gargoyle and Raiden descending to the flats in the blazing mid-afternoon heat to enforce the new slave labor protocol, the perimeter of New Eden tightened like a noose.

Caspian gripped Hana firmly and planted his lips on her temple. His eyes went down to the stab wound that was still repairing itself and he closed his eyes.

He had bragged so much to her, only to have failed her at the last moment. He was no protector, he was a failed mate. And he would live the rest of his life making up for it.

Nothing and no one shall harm her or their child in the future.

His eyes opened, the slits thinning even more and the gold flashing with a lethal glow. It was a promise of violence.

Meanwhile, the darkness that claimed Hana wasn’t the peaceful, empty void of rest she had hoped for. Instead, her consciousness sank like a stone into a cold, stagnant mire, dragging her backward through the data banks of her own memory until the sterile smell of the cave was violently replaced by the stench of burning plastic, wet concrete, radioactive air and old blood.

In her dream, she was back in the gray ruins of Sector 4. Earth, overrun by zombies.

The sky above was a permanent, choking shroud of ash, and her boots were slick with the oily mud of a dead world.

Hana found herself pinned against a crumbling, reinforcement-bared concrete wall. Her breath came in short, shallow hitches that burned her lungs—an exact echo of the phantom pain in her ribs. Her tactical harness was light, entirely empty of ammunition clips, and her fingers were clamped around a blunt, notched combat knife.

She was entirely cornered.

But it wasn’t a horde of mutated zombies or mindless infected staring her down through the smog. It was a mob of humans.

They were gaunt, hollow-cheeked survivors, their clothes haggard and their hands trembling as they clutched makeshift iron pikes, rusted hatchets, and blunt lead pipes.

Hana recognized almost every face in the front row. There was the scavenger she had traded clean water filters to just three weeks prior; there was the limping scout whose gaping thigh wound she had crudely stitched up with a fishing line in exchange for a half-empty can of kerosene.

Now, those same ungrateful hands were pointed directly at her throat.

"Step away from the supply crate, Hana," a voice echoed through the ruins, smooth, melodic, and entirely unbothered by the grit of the wasteland.

From behind the ranks of the desperate mob stepped the Saintess. Clara.

She was completely pristine, wearing a white coat that seemed entirely immune to the ash raining from the sky. Her face was a masterclass in performative sorrow, her wide, clear eyes welling with beautiful, tragic tears as she looked down at Hana like an old friend who had gone mad.

​"You don’t need to do this, sister," Clara sighed, her voice carrying that soft, maddening lecture that used to make Hana’s blood boil. "The community needs those medical kits. True survival isn’t about hoarding or cold pragmatism. We must give freely if we want to retain our humanity. But you... you always charge a price. You only ever care about your own balance."

​"They’ll die within a week without me, you stupid bitch," Hana spat, her voice cracking as she tried to stand taller against the concrete, her knuckles white around her blade. "They don’t want community. They want a shield. And the moment your ’charity’ runs out, they’ll eat you alive."

​"I am sorry you are too far gone to see the light," Clara whispered, stepping back into the safety of the crowd with a dramatic, heavy shake of her head. "A new world cannot be built on the foundation of the wicked. For the good of the colony... purge her."

​Before the words could even fully leave Clara’s mouth, the mob surged forward, ganging up together to ensure Hana couldn’t claw her way back this time. Hard hands shoved her backward, forcing her over the precipice, right into the writhing pit of the undead waiting below.

​The dream twisted violently as she fell, the memory striking with absolute, unfiltered clarity. Hana had spent her entire life learning that trust was a death sentence. As a child, she had been treated so cruelly.

​Gritting her teeth against the agony in the vision, she looked up through the swarm of grey zombie hands reaching to dig into her skin to see who had landed the final push.

Of course, it was Clara. The ’kind’ one. The saintess. The one everyone loved.

She was the one who had organized the others, whispering that the ’Wicked’ one was too dangerous to keep around when she was part of the people who made her this wicked... this rotten.

As the zombies ripped the life from her flesh, Hana’s final thought wasn’t regret for the people she’d stepped on. It was a cold, silent vow that if she ever breathed again, if she ever had a next life, she would never be that vulnerable.

​’I swear, I will stab them in the back before they can stab me in the back.’

​The venomous rage of that final vow spiked so hard it fractured the boundaries of the vision. Just as the grey hands were about to tear her completely apart, the ruins of the old world buckled and shattered like brittle glass.

​The cold concrete pit vanished. The pristine white coat of Clara dissolved into nothingness as a pair of massive, majestic crimson wings flared outward from the shadows, completely blocking out the suffocating smog and shielding Hana from the blast.

Hana’s back, her body, met a broad, solid, and radiating chest.

​"Stay awake, Hana! Look at the light!" Caspian’s deep voice echoed from the top of the dream, pulling her forcefully out of the abyss and back into the light.

​Hana’s eyes snapped open and she was greeted by the white lights shining from the ceiling.