Chapter 15: Sora's Challenge
The next three days passed in a rhythm that unsettled Taichi more than any direct assault. Yamato didn’t try to linger after closing.He didn’t make grand declarations over the bar.He simply… appeared.
He came in with the evening crowd, sometimes still in his patrol leathers, smelling of horse and cold air. He’d take the same stool at the end of the bar, order a pint of the seasonal stout, and nurse it through the night. He talked to the other patrons—the miller, the blacksmith’s apprentice—with an easy camaraderie that slowly, infuriatingly, made him seem less like an outsider.He laughed at their jokes.He listened.He was just a guy at the bar.
But Taichi was always aware of him.A prickling on the back of his neck. A low, steady hum of alpha presence that seeped into the woodwork of his tavern. It was polite, controlled, but it was there. And worse, Taichi’s own stupid biology had started to buzz in response, a quiet, traitorous static under his skin whenever those blue eyes tracked him moving a barrel or pulling a tap.
Tonight, the last of the farmers had stumbled out into the crisp night, bellies full of ale and Sora’s mutton stew. The door shut, cutting off the draft. Silence, thick and heavy, settled over the Ember & Stein, broken only by the crackle of the dying fire and the rhythmic shush-shush of Sora scrubbing her giant stew pot in the kitchen.
Taichi leaned against the bar, wiping down the polished mahogany with a damp cloth. The scent of roasted nuts and spilled mead was familiar, comforting. Overlaid on it now was the distinct, clean scent of Yamato, who had, for the first time, not left with the others. He was still on his stool, finishing the dregs of his drink.
“We’re closed,” Taichi said, not looking at him.“I know.” Yamato’s voice was quiet. He placed his mug gently on the bar.“I was hoping to speak with Sora.”
That made Taichi freeze. He finally looked up.Yamato’s expression was serious, the usual playful glint absent. “Why?”
“I think you know why.”
Before Taichi could fire back a retort, Sora appeared in the kitchen doorway. She’d traded her apron for a worn leather jerkin, and she was drying her hands on a rough cloth. Her red hair, usually tied back, fell in loose strands around her sharp face.She didn’t look surprised.
“Kitchen,” she said to Yamato, her voice flat. “Now.”
Yamato stood, his movements deliberate and calm. He gave Taichi a small, unreadable nod, then followed Sora into the back.The swinging door sighed shut behind them.Taichi stayed rooted to the spot. He should keep cleaning.He should ignore them.This was a bad idea. He tossed the rag into a bucket and crept closer to the kitchen door, which didn’t quite latch properly. A thin vertical slice of the room was visible.
The kitchen was a world of shadows and warm, low light from the banked oven.Copper pots hung like dormant bells. Sora stood by the central butcher-block table, arms crossed.Yamato faced her, his posture straight but not aggressive, his hands visible at his sides.
Sora didn’t speak at first. She reached behind her and picked up her favorite cleaver from its block.The wide, heavy blade caught the amber glow. She didn’t brandish it.She just held it, her fingers wrapped comfortably around the handle, testing its weight.
“That omega in there,” she said finally, her voice low and devoid of its usual boisterous warmth.“He’s my brother. In every way that counts.”
“I know,” Yamato replied.His voice held no challenge.
“He’s spent his whole life fighting to be seen as more than his designation.Fighting to build something no one thought he could. This place isn’t just a business.It’s his hide. It’s every scar, every sleepless night, every ounce of pride he owns.”
“I know that, too.”
Sora took a step forward. The cleaver, hanging by her side, seemed to absorb all the light in the room. “If you’re here on a whim,” she said, each word deliberate as a knife-strike, “if you’re bored, if you see a pretty, stubborn thing you want to conquer and then discard… I will gut you.Not a metaphor. I will open you from navel to sternum, Yamato of the Crown’s Guard. I will pull your insides out and leave them for the crows in the midden heap.Your rank won’t protect you. Your pretty face won’t save you. Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?”
The air in the kitchen went still and cold. Taichi held his breath, his fingers biting into the wood of the doorframe.Yamato didn’t flinch. He didn’t look at the cleaver.He held Sora’s fierce, alpha-red gaze steadily. Slowly, he raised his hands, palms open and empty, in a gesture of surrender and transparency.
“I understand,” he said, and his voice was rougher now, stripped bare of charm. “And I swear to you, on every scar I carry and every oath I’ve ever taken, I would rather die by that blade than be the one who puts a scar on his heart. He is… he is everything I didn’t know I was looking for.”
Sora’s eyes narrowed, searching his face for any flicker of deceit. The silence stretched, taut as a bowstring.
Then, with a sharp, derisive snort, she turned and slammed the cleaver point-first into the butcher block, where it stuck, quivering. “Words are cheap.”
She stomped over to a sack in the corner, hefted it with a grunt, and threw it at Yamato’s feet.It landed with a heavy, earthy thud. Potatoes spilled out across the stone floor.“You want to prove it? You want to earn a single grain of my trust?” She jerked her chin at the mess.“Peel. Every last one.Blades are in the drawer.The peels go in the bucket for the pigs. You waste flesh, you answer to me.”
Yamato looked from Sora’s stony face to the sack of potatoes. For a second, Taichi thought he might laugh, or protest, or walk out.He didn’t.
He simply nodded, a small, respectful dip of his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
He righted the sack, gathered the spilled potatoes, found the peeling knife in the drawer, and pulled the low stool toward the bucket. Without another word, he selected a potato and began. The scritch-scratch of the blade against the skin was loud in the quiet kitchen.
Sora watched him for a full minute, her arms crossed again. She watched the careful, methodical way his hands worked—a soldier’s hands, accustomed to the weight of a sword, now deftly turning a humble vegetable. She watched the concentration on his face, the absence of resentment or irony.A flicker passed through her eyes.Not approval. Not yet.But a grudging, cautious respect for the simplicity of the action. He’d accepted the test without complaint.
She turned and pushed back through the swinging door into the tavern, making Taichi jump back.She caught him staring, his face pale in the dim light.
She walked past him, grabbing her cloak from a hook. “He’s peeling,” she said, her voice back to its normal gruff timbre.“Lock up after he’s done. And make him sweep.”
She left, the door slamming behind her, leaving Taichi alone in the silent tavern with the relentless, rhythmic sound of a blade peeling potatoes coming from his kitchen.