Chapter 11, Tracking
Master steps out of the inn with that familiar noir exhaustion weighing on his shoulders, coat shifting as he adjusts the strap of his pack. The clan hall doors shut behind us with a dull thud, and the air of Maw Mine hits sharp and cold. Tunnels stretch out ahead, each one a throat swallowing torchlight.
He exhales, long and low, and mutters in that gravel-dry tone, “Looks like we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.” My heart jumps. Old-fashioned means tracking. Hunting. Following the stink of criminals through stone and dark. I nod once. Then I drop silently onto all fours. The stone is cold under my palms, but the bond sings, my instincts snapping awake sharp as knives. My spine arches, tail curling behind me like a poised whip, ears pricking forward.
TRACKING ROLL 9 +5 Feline Scent Instinct: +2 = 16
My nose twitches, first catching the familiar smells, rock dust, lamp oil, stale ale, fish from the market district, the faint musk of Embercrack pilgrims, Ren sweat soaked into the edges of their clothes. Then, A different thread. A wrong thread. Something sharp. Something chemical. Something that shouldn’t be here. The scent curls into my nose in a thin, acrid line that makes my teeth bare in a slow, automatic snarl.
It isn’t fish. It isn’t mushroom. It isn’t oil, it's a concentrated black-market accelerant used by organised syndicates to mark safehouses, to torch evidence, to send warnings.
A scent used by crime orgs smart enough to hide, but stupid enough to think I wouldn’t find it.
I lift my head, pupils huge, claws clicking against the stone as I prowl forward a few paces, following the faint trail where it stains the cave dust. Master watches me with that unreadable detective stillness, hands in his pockets, letting me work. My tail lashes once. “Master…” My voice comes out low and dangerous, halfway between a growl and a purr. “I smell something wrong.”
I sniff again, deeper. “Someone’s been marking territory here. Someone organised. Someone careful.” I turn my head toward him, eyes blazing. “It isn’t random. It isn’t Ren. It isn’t Vigilance.” My tail stiffens straight out, instincts spiking. “This is criminal work. Professional. Hidden. Syndicate blood.” I bare my teeth in a slow smile that is far too pleased.
The scent trail drags us deeper and deeper into the mid-veins of Maw Mine, and every step feels more like slipping into a hunt than following a lead. Master’s boots echo with that low, steady rhythm behind me, his silhouette a dark shadow against the torchlight. I prowl ahead on all fours, letting instinct sharpen the world into a map only I can read.
The early morning crowd thickens as we move through the crisscrossing tunnels. Miners shuffle toward the lower shafts with lanterns rattling on their belts. Ren fighters linger near the market’s edge, toothpicks between their lips, pretending they aren’t watching us. Embercrack pilgrims chant their morning rites near the lake caverns, the faint scent of ash and old blood drifting around them like fog. But I don’t spare any of them more than a flick of my ear.
The ground beneath my hands tells me more than any of their faces ever could. Dust shifted recently. A scuff in the stone. The faintest smear of blackened residue half-hidden where someone tried to wipe it away. And over all of it, twisting through the air like a poisonous thread.
My spine arches as I lower my face toward the stone, whiskers brushing the dirt. My breaths become short, sharp, deliberate. Every inhale cuts deeper into the trail, pulling the path forward in my mind: a narrow corridor, then a turn, over rubble, past abandoned scaffolding, under a broken arch where Black Fang symbols still scratch the wall.
My tail sways behind me in a slow, hypnotic rhythm the hunting rhythm. Master says nothing. He doesn’t need to. He lets me work. Lets me lead. And every time I glance back, his eyes are already on me, measuring, calm, trusting The tunnels widen as we climb north-east, and the torches become more spaced out. The air grows colder. More disciplined. More watched.
Black Fang graffiti still stains the walls here, old, faded skull symbols, half-scraped away during the Vigilance takeover. Barricades made of scavenged timber still lean against the stone, left to rot rather than waste the effort to dismantle them entirely. I slink under a collapsed beam, sniffing the underside. The scent is faint but present. But not careful enough to hide from me.
We push deeper until the tunnel opens into that infamous border, a wide cavern throat littered with rubble, old kill trenches, barricades once soaked in blood but now replaced by Vigilance fortifications. To the west, the mining district yawns into darkness, lamps swinging, tools clattering, miners groaning awake. To the north, the arena rises.
The border stands in the way. A line carved into the Maw itself. I stop so abruptly Master nearly steps into me. My claws dig into the stone. Ears forward. Tail bristled. Lungs pulling short, sharp breaths as I track the scent… straight to the Vigilance barricade.
I stalk forward on all fours, shoulders rising and falling like a cat deciding whether to pounce or scream. I skim the stones with my nose, pressing so close I feel the cold grit cling to my whiskers. Then I lift my head, eyes narrowing. “It’s here,” I growl, voice taut with certainty. “Right here. But…” I sniff again. Deeper. Snarl curling my lip. “It doesn’t linger on this side.”
I prowl along the border’s edge, every step a sharp, irritated motion. The scent doesn’t scatter. Doesn’t break. Doesn’t retreat. “It goes past the line. Straight through.” My claws tap the stone as I turn. I flick my tail hard enough to crack the air. I sniff upward, catching the faint drift of fires.
His hand settles behind my ears, rough and claiming, the way only he can touch me, like he owns every inch, like he knows the madness simmering under my skin and takes it for granted. My whole body shudders, muscles unclenching as his fingers work through my hair, finding that secret spot just at the base of my ear where pleasure and humiliation knot together. I press into his palm, tail twitching, breath hitching, letting the panic melt into something softer, purr trembling out of me as if I can’t help it. He doesn’t need to say a word, his touch is command enough.
With every slow stroke, the shame and terror bleed away, replaced by something I’d never admit aloud, pride. Not that lazy, drooling, animal contentment those filthy strays in the alleyways settle for, rolling in the dirt and begging for scraps from anyone with a soft voice. No, I stand up straight, fixing my cloak, smoothing the wildness out of my hair with trembling fingers, chin high. My tail loops behind his knees, always in reach, always proof of my claim and his.
I flick my ears, making sure he sees me regain composure. House cats, common, pitiful little things, chase shadows and lick themselves raw, but they have no place, no meaning, no Master to define them. They wander aimlessly, rutting, yowling, shaming themselves in front of anyone who’ll watch, and for what? A life with no purpose, no leash, no law. I loathe them. I would rip them apart just to prove there’s a difference.
He leads, as always, unhurried, decisive, never doubting for a second that I’ll fall in line. I do. Of course I do. My heels echo his. My shadow threads his. My dignity is tied to him and him alone. He doesn’t need to look back. He knows I’ll be exactly where I’m supposed to be.
And if anyone dares compare me to those mangy little beasts, those ownerless, whining strays, I’ll make sure they understand, in ways they’ll never forget, what a real bond looks like. What a real cat is. My tail flicks, sharp with warning, as I watch the world shrink around us. My place is with Master. Civilised. Chosen. Claimed.
Then suddenly his fingers snap in front of my face and the world jerks back into shape like a torn page slapping against the spine. My ears twitch hard, tail whipping once behind me, the sudden sting of reality crashing in. I blink up at him, tilting my head, breath catching as I realise I’d drifted too deep inside my own thoughts, too far into that restless place where everything folds in on itself.
He stands there with that dry, cold pragmatism only he can pull off, hand already lowering from the snap. “Kitten,” he says, not unkindly, not impatient, just… checking if my mind is still anchored to the same world as his. I swallow the flicker of embarrassment and the flicker of something sharper then step back into step beside him.
He gestures toward the far street, toward the grey vein of Maw Mine stretching out into danger. “If our target’s that way,” he mutters, voice low, analytical, already three steps ahead in his head, “and we’re definitely on their hit list after last time… then we’re heading back to the High Watcher. Do what she wants.”
My claws curl against my palms at the thought of that woman deciding anything about our path. A rival in authority is still a rival. A command not from him still tastes like rust on my tongue. But I move with him anyway. Because where he walks, I walk. Where he points, I follow. The world can hate us, hunt us, stalk us through these stone alleys like wolves, but if he decides we face the High Watcher again, then the only thing I need to do… is stay close enough that no one gets the chance to touch him.
My tail flicks, sharp and restless, brushing his cloak as I fall into step, eyes scanning the street, heartbeat syncing back into the rhythm of survival. “Fine,” I murmur, voice low, dangerous, steady now. “If she wants us back… then she can look us in the eye. And she’ll remember exactly why people stop breathing when they cross us.”
The moment the words leave Master’s mouth, “then we’re heading back to the High Watcher. Do what she wants.”, something sharp and electric flickers through me, a jagged line of instinct cutting up my spine like lightning through a tree.
I don’t like it. I don’t like the phrasing. I don’t like the idea of following someone else’s agenda. And I especially don’t like the implication of another catgirl trying to command where he walks. But the bond holds me tight, reins in the feral heat just enough so the snarl stays behind my teeth instead of ripping free into the open.
He turns toward the far corridor, the spine of the Maw leading to the Vigilance quarter, and I move immediately, falling into step at his flank like a blade sliding into its scabbard. Master walks like a man who made peace with danger long ago. I walk like the danger he made peace with.
The tunnels ahead are long, ribbed with supporting beams carved from ancient timber, each one charred with old battle-burns from the Black Fang riots. The floor dips where trenches were dug and repaved. Scaffolding creaks overhead as miners shift tools into place. Nothing here is quiet, not really, but everything goes quieter for him. And because everything quiets for him… everything watches me.
I pad beside him with the fluid, stalking gait of a creature halfway between domestic and wild, eyes flicking to every shadow, every doorway. My tail brushes his cloak in periodic sweeps, not for reassurance but for declaration, touching him in public is a warning, not affection.
Every inhale reminds me, someone is challenging us. Someone is daring enough to leave a scent trail across claimant lines. Someone is confident enough to walk where they shouldn’t. Someone is inviting a hunt. Master’s pace stays steady, unflustered, analytical, the kind of calm only he can wield. His coat shifts around his legs as he steps over fallen rubble and collapsed scaffolds, his silhouette cutting clean lines in the dim lamplight.
The wooden barn of the High Watcher rises out of the dim like a blunt, ugly fortress. Reinforced timber. And inside this place, Inside her place,
she waits...
Kaelenna’s presence is carved into every polished floorboard, every organised rack of weapons, every lowered voice. She is a catgirl without a master, a creature without a leash, pretending she built herself from discipline instead of instinct. A High Watcher with no one to claim her. A cat with no owner, no anchor.
How pathetic.
I can smell her from outside the door. Not her body. But her so called territory. Stale vigilance and old ambition. Green-eyed arrogance. And worst of all, the way her gaze always clings to him.
Master steps forward toward the barn door, and the thought slams into my skull so violently I say it out loud without meaning to, the words spilling sharp and furious, “She’s a catgirl without a master.” My claws flex against the stone. “One BRANDED by you.” The words taste bitter in my mouth, my tail lashing, hackles rising beneath my cloak. “She watches you,” I snarl quietly, not caring that the sentries shift uncomfortably at my tone. “Those green eyes always on you. As if you were hers. As if she could claim what she has no right to even think about.”
Master stops just short of the door. Turns slightly. Cold profile. Sharp jaw. Eyes pale and unreadable. I step closer, claws still out, breath sharp, voice dragging low and possessive and cracking at the edges...
“When you are my mate. Not hers. Not anyone’s but mine.”
Master lets me finish. Lets the echo of my words settle. And then, in that dry noir cynicism that cuts through everything I am, “At least we know roughly where the group is now.”
The simplicity of it, the way he dismisses her entirely without needing to say it, hits deeper than any petting or praise. My tail coils tighter around his thigh, my body sinking instinctively closer, claws retracting by fractions I barely control. He's not rattled. Not tempted. Not distracted by rivals.
He’s thinking about the hunt. About the syndicate trail. About the criminal work smudged across the Maw. And somehow that steadiness that refusal to play into the territorial insanity raging through me, grounds me more than any command ever could.
I breathe out, low and shaky, the last of my growling simmering into a purr full of violent pride. “Fine,” I whisper, ears tilted forward. “Let her stare. Let her envy. We’re here for the trail.” But the moment the door opens, if her eyes linger too long on him, I will remind her exactly why a catgirl needs a master. And why I am the only one who’ll ever have him.
