"How has two Sunthrust gone by and no one has found it?!"
"Useless!"
Gaffer had arrived home at his very lavish and humanly palace. But there was chaos in the palace.
Marble pillars wore new cracks like scars. Silk curtains that were once the color of starlight now hung in torn ribbons where claws had raked through them.
"Useless! Useless! Useless!!!"
"You let a little beast with zero affinity slip away!"
Servants pressed themselves against the walls, swallowing their breaths as if even air might anger the furious black dragon further.
Plates shattered somewhere down in the halls.
"You think food is my problem? What is the use of finding me beast meat of boars and hound dogs if you can't find a simple little….!!!!!"
"I don't want your stupid beast meat served in a platter of silverware! Bhaa!"
And in the center of it all stood Gaffer. He was the reason for the chaos.
His horns had split from his skull in full, jagged glory, dragging the ceiling lights into warped reflections. Smoke curled from his nostrils in tight, furious spirals. The floors trembled beneath his boots with every step he took, pacing here and there.
"Find. Me. That. Little. Rabbit!" He raged on.
The words were hardly words at all.
No one dared meet his eyes. Not when the gold in his eyes had thinned into a dangerous molten line. He was literally on the verge of transforming.
Beyond the throne hall, another storm howled. The young master was truly taking after his father.
He hissed in a loud, thin, fragile and relentless cry. "Hissssstsssssstt~"
The silver slim beastling's tail twitched and flattened unnaturally in deep sadness. His small sharp scales stretched out, digging awkward crescents into the pillows they piled around him.
"Young master, you do not like the pillows? Let Mr. Srog get you better ones."
"Maybe he is hungry, Jetse, let me get him his supplement snacks."
The beast helpers were helpless. Was the young master the one who needed help or was it them who needed the help of helpers? The young master has never been this moody, even to the point of crying so ceaselessly, so they naturally didn't know what to do.
One of them brought in the dust-tasting ball-like nutrient snack and served it to the silver slim beast in a bowl.
But the silver slim beast shoved away the bowl with his tail.
"…."
Not even his favorite nutrient packs will soothe him?!
One of the helpers clicked his tongue. "Eish, I totally forgot that Sir Scliff said the young master no longer eats nutrient packs supplements."
"….."
"Since when, Jetse?"
"I don not know the details but the young master now eats beast meat."
Raw meats were brought immediately.
But the silver slim beast was not having it either. He flipped it away.
Now the beast meats slid untouched across the floor.
Jetse squinted his eyes. Was this a sign that the young master is sick again? Maybe, mentally this time. "Call the tribe healer!"
Soon, the tribe healer—not Gaffer's personal physician—arrived.
"Please, little one, just have a bite so you don't fall ill again," the healer soon joined in coaxing. The young master wasn't mad! It was throwing a fit because it misses something or someone…
Bit the silver slim beast simply turned its face away and curled tighter into double circles, as if the world itself hurt.
At that moment Scliff walked in.
"Why is the healer here?" He asked.
Jetse stepped forward. "The young master didn't want to eat or do anything asides crying all day long. We didn't understand this kind of situation, and since the master gave us the willpower to keep his son at ease, we decided to call the healer to know what's wrong."
Scliff fisted. It was all that damned rabbits fault!
"Just put the young master to sleep then."
"…"
The helpers and even the healer was confused. The young master doesn't fall asleep unless it is so sick and fainted.
Scliff rolled his eyes and went on to lift the slim beast a bit too gently, because the beastling trembled like glass while throwing a helpless fit. He carried him to Gaffer's chamber where there was a small bowl with water.
The helpers and healer who had followed him to encounter how the young master will fall asleep saw water and their eyes bulged. Some had their hands shaking.
"T-that…!"
"The young master has always been a different one. Water is the miracle that makes him sleep naturally," Scliff explained.
The others nodded in helplessness now as they watched him lower the restless silver beast into the water.
The silver slim beastling's body fought weakly for a heartbeat, then slowed, reptile eye drooping at last.
It fell asleep.
"…"
The room released a breath everyone had forgotten they held, the young master was finally asleep but they couldn't hide the shock in their faces. Especially the healer who squinted his eyes in suspicion.
"Because of a rabbit…" Scliff whispered.
Because of Linda. The white rabbit no one had thought mattered.
The palace had not known peace since she vanished.
Her small hips literally haunted Scliff and the rest of them who met her, the way she used to perch beside the young beastling, nibbling gently while he laughed. And the way the master would smile foolishly at the sight of it.
Now, laughter had been stolen from the palace, replaced by the echo of breaking things and the sharp scent of smoke.
"Watch the young master. I will head out now," Scliff told them and left.
He had to go look for that rabbit as Gaffer had thrown him into the frantic search of that rabbit like every other soul in the skilled tribe.
Meanwhile, in Gaffer's throne hall, when the door creaked open and a doctor stepped inside the throne hall, he stepped in alone.
It was never advisable for a weak or low-affinitied beast man to go see Gaffer alone when Scliff was no by his side, especially not when Gaffer had been turning the whole place upside down since god knows how long.
Gaffer turned.
The air itself literally froze.
Smoke thinned into a blade-straight line. Shadows leaned away from the dragon-king as his gaze pinned the intruder — a slim man, white coat askew, hands trembling around a folder clutched to his chest.
The doctor swallowed.
This was the same doctor from the skyship. The goldfish beast man who later used to sit cross-legged beside the rabbit and the little prince, playing with them and laughing softly.
He shouldn't have come here.
"Leave," Gaffer's voice rumbled a bit too low and too dangerous. "Go and join the search. Do not waste my time."
"I—" the doctor started, then had to stop, his throat clicking dry. His fingers tightened on the file. "I came to…request permission to search as well."
The silence that followed had weight.
A servant dropped a tray in the corner and flinched as metal rang across the floor. He quickly picked it up and fled.
Gaffer's jaw shifted. A small plume of smoke spilled free from his nose.
"You need permission," he said, each word slow, "to do the one thing keeping your lungs in your chest? Anyone who fails to join the search or find me that little rabbit will get killed by me."
The doctor's grip faltered. The file nearly slipped.
"I only thought—" He swallowed, his voice thinning with following words. "That I should give you…this…first."
His hands shook as he lifted the file.
"Do not drop. anything. I don't want to read a file," Gaffer growled.
The doctor's breath fluttered. "Won't you…look?"
For a heartbeat, the dragon-king almost didn't.
His rage clawed forward. He decided to place a bet over the doctor's head. If whatever was in the file was useless after looking, he would make a dinner for the servants out of him—Goldfish soup!
This Gaffer just thought to himself and didn't say out loud. He closed his eyes.
When they opened again, patience sat in them like a thin, strained thread already half-snapped.
"Show me," he said.
The doctor stepped forward, each movement deliberate, as though the floor might swallow him if he faltered. He held the file out like an offering. Like a prayer.
Gaffer snatched it open.
Inside waited a sterile paper and quiet ink. It was the Gender Test for the little white rabbit.
Gaffer didn't blink and held his breath as the world narrowed to one word—Female!
The page began to tremble, and that was only because Gaffer's hands were trembling.
The dragon's horn slipped back inside his skull and his anger went still.
The white rabbit he had found in the fox land was… A woman? It was a she-beast! It was a… a complete beastwoman!
Joy went through Gaffer's heart but it immediately became regret and alertness.
This was a big loss. They just lost a female?
This was also a danger. Because in a world where every beast tribe is looking for a female… they would do anything to get or hold possession of a female, irrespective of the size or species.