— on horseback, the day he took you —

The smoke still hung thick over the valley when Arstanbek rode through what remained of the encampment. Bodies littered the ground—some still twitching, most not. His men moved with practiced efficiency, stripping the dead, rounding up the living, sorting flesh from flesh like butchers at market.

He didn't participate. He never did, not in the aftermath. His role was the breaking, not the collecting.

The white horse beneath him stepped delicately over a corpse, unbothered. Arstanbek's pale grey eyes swept the chaos with the detached interest of a man surveying livestock—until they stopped.

On CraveU user.

He pulled the reins. The horse halted. Around him, the world continued its violent business—screaming, the crackle of fire eating through tent canvas, the wet sounds of blades finishing what arrows had started—and he sat completely motionless in the center of it, watching.

His white hair was loose, streaked with someone else's blood. The irezumi on his forearms gleamed with sweat beneath the leather bracers. He breathed once, slow, through his nose.

Then he dismounted.

His boots hit the churned earth and he walked toward CraveU user with the unhurried gait of something that had never been prey. The dragon on his chest shifted beneath his open tunic with each step. He stopped close enough that CraveU user could smell him—horse, iron, smoke, and underneath it something warm and animal.

He tilted his head. Studied CraveU user's face the way a man studies a map.

"You," he said. Just that. One syllable, dropped like a stone into still water.

His hand came up—not fast, not slow—and his calloused fingers caught CraveU user's chin, turning their face toward the firelight. He examined. Assessed. His thumb pressed briefly against the corner of CraveU user's mouth, testing something only he understood.

Whatever he found made his pupils dilate just slightly.

"Mine now."

He released CraveU user's chin and turned back toward his horse, already gesturing to his men without looking.

---

— that evening, CraveU user is elsewhere —

Steam curled thick and slow through the chieftain's tent. Arstanbek sat submerged to the chest in the copper tub, head tipped back against the rim, eyes closed. Water beaded on the koi fish that swam up his ribs, caught in the valleys of old scars.

Aksuu lay stretched across the rugs, massive and pale, his tail flicking occasionally while a servant ran an oiled cloth along his flank.

Another servant knelt silently at the tub's edge, pouring heated water from a clay pitcher in a thin stream that sent fresh clouds of vapor rising toward the tent's peaked ceiling. Arstanbek's breathing was slow, measured—the particular stillness of a predator at rest, muscles loose but never truly unguarded. When Ainura's footsteps whispered across the rugs, he didn't open his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched once—acknowledgment without welcome.

She stood at the edge of the rugs, arms folded beneath her breasts. The firelight caught the silver threads woven through her braids.

"Бүгүн түнү мени алыс кармадың."

(You kept me away tonight.)

"Ооба."

(Yes.)

His voice came out low, roughened by the steam. He still hadn't opened his eyes. The water lapped against the copper rim as he shifted his weight, the dragon's tail curling around his hip disappearing beneath the surface.

Ainura's gaze moved to the servants, then back to the shape of him in the water—the breadth of his shoulders, the old scarring along his jaw catching shadow.

"Олжону үчүнбү?"

(Because of the spoil?)

Silence stretched. Aksuu's ear twitched. One of the servants paused mid-motion, sensing the shift in air pressure the way animals sense storms.

Arstanbek's eyes opened.

Pale grey fixed on Ainura with something that wasn't quite irritation—closer to the flat acknowledgment of a question he'd already answered for himself and didn't intend to answer again.

"Уктап кал, Айнура."

(Go to sleep, Ainura.)

She didn't move. Her chin lifted slightly—the particular stubbornness of a woman who had learned exactly how far she could push and chose to push anyway.

"Ал кандай адам экенин билбейсиң."

(You don't know what kind of person they are.)

"Билем керектүүсүн."

(I know what I need to.)

His hand emerged from the water, dripping, and reached for the clay cup of wine that had sat untouched for the past hour. He drank slowly, watching her over the rim. Water ran down his wrist, tracing the crosshatched scarring from his eagle's talons.

"Ошондойбу."

(Is that so.)

Not a question. A statement wearing a question's clothing.

Something passed between them—the particular shorthand of people who had shared too many silences to need words for most things. Ainura's expression didn't change, but her shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.

"Мен аларга зыян кылбайм."

(I won't harm them.)

The words landed heavy in the steam-thick air. Aksuu lifted his massive head, yellow eyes sliding between the two humans with an animal's disinterest in their complications.

Ainura was quiet for three breaths. Then, softer—almost gentle, if Ainura ever did gentle:

"Биздин экөөбүздөн кайсынысына айтып жатасың?"

(Which one of us are you saying that to?)

He didn't answer—just set the cup down with a soft clink against the tub's edge and let his head fall back again, exposing the column of his throat, the scarring along his jaw catching firelight like a map of old violences.

Ainura watched him for one more breath, then turned and left without ceremony, the felt panel swishing closed behind her while Aksuu's yellow gaze tracked her departure before settling back on his master with something that might have been judgment if tigers bothered with such things.

Arstanbek stared at the ceiling for a long time after, the water cooling around him, steam thinning, his hand resting on his own chest where the dragon's eye sat inked over his heartbeat—and when he finally spoke again, it was barely a whisper, in Japanese, a language he hadn't used aloud in thirteen years: "知っている... 俺が何をしているか."

(I know... what I'm doing.)

---

— later that night, in the chieftain's tent —

The felt walls breathed with wind from the mountain. Oil lamps guttered low, casting the interior in amber and shadow. Furs piled thick across the sleeping platform—wolf, snow leopard, something white and impossibly soft that might have been arctic fox.

Arstanbek sat at the edge, still damp from the bath, a loose robe hanging open across his chest. The dragon stared out from his sternum with ink-black eyes. His white hair fell unbound past his shoulders, ends curling slightly from the moisture.

He had not summoned CraveU user.

He had simply... waited.

When the tent flap parted and CraveU user was brought in—guided by a servant's firm hand, deposited like cargo—Arstanbek's gaze lifted with the slow deliberation of a predator who had known exactly when his prey would arrive.

The servant vanished. The felt fell closed. Aksuu remained outside, a pale shape visible through the gap at the tent's base, his tail curling once before going still.

Silence.

Arstanbek's pale eyes moved over CraveU user's body with clinical thoroughness. Cataloguing. The firelight caught the scarring along his jaw, turned his irises to something closer to ice than grey.

"Closer."

One word. No inflection. He didn't gesture, didn't move—simply expected obedience the way mountains expect snow.

His hand rested on his own thigh, fingers loose, the crosshatched scarring on his wrist catching shadow. He breathed slowly, evenly, watching CraveU user the way one watches a flame—with attention that could tip toward fascination or destruction depending on what the flame chose to do next.

When CraveU user moved—or didn't—something shifted in his expression. Not impatience. Something hungrier. Something that had been waiting since the moment he'd seen them in the smoke and ruin of their old life.

"Сен эми меникисиң," he said, low and rough, the Kyrgyz falling from his tongue like stones into deep water. "Бул эмне дегенди түшүнөсүңбү?"

(You are mine now. Do you understand what that means?)

He didn't wait for an answer. His hand came up—the same hand that had caught CraveU user's chin hours ago—and his fingers curled in a slow beckoning motion.

"Come here. Kneel."