“I’ve thought about it for a long time. After you accepted my date, I cooled down and thought. My answer is this—an ending that satisfies us both.”

Elina braced herself at the cliff’s edge with one hand, body arched like a crescent moon, her cat’s tail counterbalancing like a metronome in the wind.

She touched the ground with a single finger, held a handstand on that needlepoint, and moved with a dancer’s hush, like silk rippling on night water.

Not a sound broke the air, only the cliff’s breath and the sea’s slow pulse.

I never imagined that under that heavy, intricate Divine Healer robe—no plate, no flail—was a body this lithe, a willow sheathed in linen.

Also, when she leapt upward, I caught a flash beneath her short dress—looked like Her Highness of Helena wasn’t wearing panties?

“Andor, did you know? Among the beastkin, the custom is battle,” she said, voice like bells in fog. “At the Summer Festival, you can challenge the one you like. If they accept, you take them home. Humans don’t do that, right? You don’t always accept someone stronger as husband or wife. I know. The parents who raised me were human. I read the rest in records.”

Summer Festival.

Every beastkin settlement holds this yearly courtship rite, like thunder calling rain back to the soil.

After spring and summer hunts, when larders swell like granaries in sun, the beastkin enter heat, a season like sap rising.

It’s a challenge, yes, but not barbaric like you think. You can refuse. Only when both are drawn, the challenge is accepted, like two sparks choosing the same tinder.

As for those depraved beastkin from the Bronze Age, who seized humans as breeding tools—I call that a wasteful method, vanity wrapped in blood.

“So you want to use the Summer Festival to challenge me—hold on, it’s winter,” I said, a chill running under the joke. “How long is your heat, exactly?”

Elina walked toward me on tiptoe, hands clasped behind her like a girl hiding a secret, and stopped at a distance that let a fighter breathe.

It was that sweet spot where your shoulders loosen, like a bow unstrung, and you still won’t miss a lunge.

“That’s why I took aphrodisiacs,” she said, eyes bright like embers under ash. “I’m not of age. I don’t know the dose for the right state. I don’t even know what heat should feel like. But after two jars, I thought, ‘This is probably it.’”

As far as I know, three kinds circulate in the market, like three currents under one tide.

First, the Mephy Consortium’s cure-all—a berserk elixir reworked into an S&M-leaning tonic, heat bottled and wired.

Second, a blue little tablet from the Mephy Consortium’s great leader, knowledge pried from the unknown, plants boiled down to a sea-blue spark.

Third, the Mephy Consortium’s luxury line for high society—crafted from the mana crystal of my not-so-cute little brother’s corpse, the Lust Demon King Yakfarro.

Kadula Group? They copy our homework and smudge the name.

It’s our own merchandise, so I know them like I know my own breath. And no, it’s not because I keep feeding them to Dulan.

From the red rims around Elina’s eyes, I’d say she took the third type. She swallowed a lethal dose and shrugged it off, then grew clearer with each hit. That’s a first for me.

I learned something tonight, like seeing a new star at dawn.

“Don’t be fooled by how politely I’m talking,” she said, voice husky as summer lightning. “I’m burning up. I took off the Divine Healer robe, socks, shoes, all that. This piece is a lady’s last line. Unless you accept me, it stays on.”

“I’m not expecting anything.” I lied. In the Hero Squad, her chest ranks first. First only gets you a C, but first is still first.

“I’m glad you didn’t shout, ‘Elina, are you broken?’ and then knock me out,” she said, laughing like a wind chime. “I’m trying to find a way for us to get along. A simplified Summer Festival. I challenge you.”

She moved closer again. Small steps. Small waves. Slow enough not to spook a deer or a man.

Bare feet kissed the ground. That clean white moved through the night soil. Round toes caught pebbles, sharp enough to ache to look at.

Or I could smear that perfect body in pitch-black, break it, stain it, make it mine alone, like ink claiming fresh snow.

I swallowed. The sound felt loud as a stone dropped in a well.

I know what ugly wants live in me. But someone begged me to give everyone a happy ending, like a lantern lit for all.

I’m not great at resisting temptation. Desire is a drum, and the night beats it steady.

“But…” I hesitated. Beating Elina cleanly would be the neat refusal. Would that leave an answer she could embrace?

Up close, her cat pupils opened into full moons. Her smile stayed elegant. The mix felt wrong, and I stepped back, like a wave retreating from a cliff.

She leapt into my chest, hung from my neck like a warm scarf, and my arms moved on their own, circling her in.

“If I win, be my boyfriend,” she breathed, like summer rain on stone. “Give me a chance. Mutual understanding. Mutual recognition.”

Her tongue traced me from chest to neck, jaw to ear, a line of heat like a match drawn across bark.

Tiny barbs on her tongue didn’t hurt. They made the licking too present, too sweet, a rough peach against skin.

“I don’t think we’re lovers yet,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Then beat me,” she murmured. “I’ll retreat. I’ll vanish from your sight. Next year, maybe I’ll forget you. Or I’ll come back stronger and challenge you again.”

Her sharp teeth nipped my earlobe, likely the canine, pain like a needle glinting in dusk.

From my angle I only saw her ears, flicking like moth wings in a quick tremor, and her tail, ramrod straight as a banner.

My answer?

Do you have to ask?

Whether as Shadow Artisan Andor Mephy or Savior Demon King Andor, I’m no block of wood who can’t read a poem.

I still fancy myself a gentleman, even with a storm in my chest.

My hands slid up and down, found her round hip and the furred tail, found the slender, resilient back and the lovely wing of her scapula.

“Your tail and muscles are stiff,” she said, voice a purr with claws. “You’re not as calm as you pretend.”

“Come on,” she huffed. “I’ve never been in love. Cut me some slack, Casanova.”

She licked my earlobe again, then opened wide, teeth neat as a saw’s edge, and bit down hard.

I tightened my grip, clamped her tail and spine, hands like manacles, breath like forge heat.

Bare hands. One on one. Moonlight for a witness, the cliff for a drum.

Riiip—her silk dress went from half-sheer to fully sheer at the shoulders and back, a flash of blaze I couldn’t spare eyes for.

When you’re pinning a zombie’s bite with your head and shoulder, no one has time for roses and verse.

Zero-range fighting is hard for anyone. Human structure fails at power there, a bow in a barrel.

Against beastkin, you face human craft fused with animal ferocity, a point-blank storm with claws.

She raised the arm on my shoulder, lifted high, then drove an elbow in like a hammer falling.

Numbness swallowed my left hand. My shoulder likely slipped, a joint like a door off hinge.

My knee strike wasn’t kind either. A groin kick hits women a tier lighter than men, but it’s still a bright-red weak point.

“This place is for making babies,” she hissed. “It’s precious!”

“Don’t think I didn’t see your half-raised leg,” I shot back. “You had the same idea.”

We both moved to chase the hurt, but a clean shot to the head each would mean we’d nap through tomorrow’s cruise out of Takinia.

We stepped back one pace each, like duelists on frost. The goal was life and death, not mutual ruin. Breathe, then break.

Elina’s face flushed crimson. She clenched her thighs, hands pressed hard between, breath ragged, long then short, like surf.

I groped for the angle to rotate my arm back in, hunting the groove where the joint would catch and serve again.

We both needed time, not a little. A pause in a midnight song.

No rush. The night is long, like a road under starlight.

The fight is long, too, and the cliff keeps its counsel.