The silence between them was louder than the stampede of Horned Berserker-Mice had been.
Yan Shu walked with his shoulders hunched, his hands clasped tightly in front of his chest as if holding his own heart inside his ribcage. Every step felt like walking on broken glass, yet the ground was soft, damp earth. Beside him, Bai Yue walked with her head down, kicking at small pebbles with a clumsiness that made his red panda ears twitch in confusion.
The old Bai Yue would never have kicked pebbles. The old Bai Yue would have demanded he carry her. She would have snapped her fingers and ordered him to fan her while she complained about the dust. She would have looked at him with eyes like chips of ice, devoid of any warmth whatsoever.
But this woman…..this woman was looking at her own feet.
Yan Shu stole a glance at her profile. The moonlight caught the smudge of dirt on her cheek, the same dirt she had gotten while shielding the cubs from the mice. His chest ached.
