Seven days.
Hei Yan had become a local landmark at this point.
The other Shadow Claw warriors no longer tried to talk to him. They had given up around day three, after he had nearly bitten off someone's hand for suggesting he "go home and rest.
Now they just walked around him. Like he was a particularly inconvenient boulder
He didn't care.
His eyes stayed locked on the tree line. Unblinking, and waiting.
She said she would come back.
His stomach had stopped growling sometime yesterday. Or maybe the day before. Time had started to blur together into one endless stretch of waiting and needing and WHERE IS SHE.
The logical part of his brain, the tiny part that wasn't completely feral, whispered that maybe she wasn't coming. Maybe the snakes had kept her. Maybe she had chosen to stay.
He snarled at that thought.
No.
His female wouldn't do that. She had promised. And Xin Yi kept her promises, even when she was yelling at him about it.
