After they returned, Bai Yue stood near the central fire, her knees aching from kneeling in the dirt for so long.
Beside her, Yan Shu was slowly finding his breath, his chest heaving beneath the tattered robes of a scholar who was far more accustomed to scrolls than sprinting for his life.
She glanced at Yan Shu from the corner of her eye.
He was trembling, not from cold, but from the overload of emotion. His large, fluffy red panda ears twitched nervously, and his brown eyes kept darting to her, then away, as if he were afraid she might vanish if he looked too long.
He was so soft. So incredibly, painfully soft.
They were all so different, her husbands.
Han Shān was ice and stone, a fortress of stoic protection that required a battering ram to breach.
Zhāo Yàn was fire, a cunning predator who wrapped you in warmth before you realized you were trapped.
