Chapter 78: 78. Lionfolk, Leah of the Auric Pride

They set up in a conference room at the nearest Association satellite office, which turned out to be a converted warehouse on the mountain road that smelled like instant noodles and old paperwork. Yuki had seen worse debrief locations.

Owen sat at the table in his humanoid form, which continued to unsettle the Association staff in ways they were professionally trying not to show. His wings folded against the back of his chair. His tail curled around the chair leg. His golden eyes tracked the room with the particular attention of someone who had stopped finding human administrative spaces surprising but hadn’t fully started finding them comfortable.

Leah sat across from him.

In the overhead light of the conference room, with the jacket traded for clothing the Association’s emergency supply had provided, she looked different from the figure Owen had found in the underground chamber. Not less impressive — the predator’s quality of her attention hadn’t diminished at all. But the context changed the reading.

She was young. Maybe twenty-two, twenty-three in human terms. The mane of golden hair fell to the middle of her back when it wasn’t filthy and matted. Her lion ears moved independently, tracking sounds the humans in the room couldn’t hear, flicking toward the door every time footsteps passed in the corridor.

She caught him looking and looked back without embarrassment.

“How long were you in there?” Owen asked.

“Fourteen months.” She said it the way people say numbers they’ve repeated enough times that the weight has been temporarily separated from the words. “I was taken on a transport from the Auric Pride’s border territory. There were eight of us. I’m the only one who—” A pause. “I’m the only one still here.”

Yuki, sitting beside Owen, said nothing. The silence she offered was the right kind, not uncomfortable, not pushing for more. Just present.

“The Auric Pride,” Owen said. “That’s your clan?”

“It’s one of the three great lion-folk clans of the Auric Savanna. My mother is pride-mother.” Leah’s tail moved in a slow arc. “Or was. Fourteen months is a long time. I don’t know what’s happened since I was taken.”

Owen filed that away. Pride-mother’s daughter. Which meant Leah wasn’t just a victim to be returned, she was a political figure in a society he knew almost nothing about.

“We’ll get you home,” he said.

Leah looked at him with those amber eyes, the way she had been measuring him since the moment he had walked through the cell door.

“Just like that,” she said. “You’ll take me home.”

“Just like that.”

“And what do you want for it?”

It was a reasonable question. A smart question. Fourteen months in Eckstein’s facility had given her a very specific education in what people wanted when they offered things.

“Nothing from you,” Owen said. “I’m going to the beastfolk continent anyway. The other survivors need to go home too, and you know those territories. That makes you useful company, its not a transaction.”

Leah considered this. Her ears flicked once.

“You’re going to the beastfolk continent,” she repeated. “A true dragon. With a human tamer and—” she glanced at Odessa, who had appeared in the doorway with two cups of coffee and an expression of unabashed curiosity, “—whoever she is.”

“B-rank hunter,” Odessa supplied helpfully. “Beast tamer. Wayne family” She set a coffee cup in front of Leah with the ease of someone who had decided they were friends and was simply waiting for the other party to catch up. “I’m Odessa. You’re Leah. I have a lot of questions but Alfred told me to pace myself, so I’m starting with: do you take milk?”

Leah stared at her.

Then, unexpectedly, something that might have been the beginning of a smile crossed her face. Gone almost immediately. But there.

“Black,” she said.

“Excellent choice.” Odessa sat down. “Now. Tell us about the Auric Savanna.”

—

The debrief with Helena happened an hour later, and it was thorough in the way that Association investigations were always thorough, systematic, documented, recorded from three angles.

Owen answered questions about the dungeon, the demons, Azmireth’s abilities and retreat, the amulet and the voice that had come through it. He gave a precise and complete account of everything except one thing: he did not mention Dominus, Drak’thar, the Will of the World, or any of the cosmological context that made Vorthraxx’s specific interest in him make sense.

Those were not things the Hunter Association was equipped to handle yet.

Helena listened to everything he did tell her with the focused attention of someone building a structure in their head as they listened, each new piece of information finding its place in the architecture of what she was constructing.

“Three demons,” she said. “In the human continent. Outside the sealed territory.”

“Three that I saw,” Owen said. “There may be more.”

Helena looked at Mason. Mason looked at his notepad.

“The amulet,” she continued. “The entity communicating through it. You said the voice was—”

“was unfamiliar” Owen said. “but it is sealed somewhere. It needed the blood ritual to reach through.” He paused. “I don’t know who it is.”

This was a lie. He delivered it with the calm of someone who was lying for reasons that were more complicated than simple self-interest, and Helena Ridge was good enough at her job that she probably knew it was a lie, and they both maintained the fiction because the alternative required a conversation neither of them was prepared to have in a conference room that smelled like instant noodles.

“The survivors,” Yuki said, redirecting. “What happens to them?”

Helena’s expression shifted, the investigator stepping back to let the person through for a moment. “Medical evaluation. Psychological support. Documentation of their accounts for the legal cases. And then” she exhaled slowly.

“repatriation. Most of them are beastfolk. The Association has diplomatic protocols with the beastfolk continent for exactly this kind of situation.” A pause. “Though I’ll be honest, forty-one individuals at once is going to strain those protocols considerably.”

“We can help with that,” Owen said.

Helena looked at him.

“We’re going to the beastfolk continent anyway,” he continued. “And Leah knows the territory. If you need official escort for the survivors’ return, someone who can ensure they actually reach their home clans rather than being processed through a bureaucratic system that might take months. we can do that.”

Helena was quiet for a moment.

“I’m going to need that in writing,” she said finally. “And I’m going to need your names on an official Association contractor register. And I’m going to need weekly check-ins.”

“Done,” Yuki said.

Helena looked between them, the woman with the dual katanas and the slime on her head, the dragon in human form with wings folded against his chair, the silver-haired heiress who was making notes on her phone, the elderly man with the tower shield propped against the wall and the expression on her face was the expression of someone who was going to be writing a very unusual incident report.

“Heaven help me,” she said quietly, and reached for the contractor forms.

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