[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 107: In Which I Train a Furrball and Miss My Husband
I’d arrived at the Kael fortress three days before Azryth showed up.
Three days of training in a place that felt like it had been waiting for me specifically, and three days of trying to teach a small black furball that it couldn’t do whatever it wanted.
The fortress was old. Not old like "built a century ago," old like "carved into volcanic rock by wardens who understood that some things needed to last." The wards hummed with power that felt familiar in ways I couldn’t quite explain, like recognizing a language I’d never learned but somehow understood.
There were training rooms. Actual dedicated spaces designed for wardens to practice with their abilities without worrying about accidentally destroying things or alerting every demon within a hundred miles.
The wards adapted to what I was doing, it responded to my warden energy like they’d been calibrated for Kael bloodline signatures specifically.
Which was useful when I was trying to figure out how to do more than just "hit things with warden energy until they stop moving."
Turns out when you’re not constantly running from one crisis to another, you can focus on developing abilities beyond direct combat.
I’d discovered I could shape the energy differently, sustain it longer, use it for things that weren’t just destruction.. shields, barriers, focused beams instead of just explosive bursts. The fortress had training protocols built into the wards themselves, responding to what I was attempting and adjusting to provide appropriate resistance or feedback.
It was educational.
It would have been more educational if Void hadn’t kept interrupting.
The small black furball had opinions about me training. Specifically, opinions about me moving around the training room in ways that made it difficult for Void to maintain constant physical contact.
Day one, it had tried to stay on my shoulder while I practiced. That lasted about five minutes before the movement made it fall off. It had hissed at the floor like the ground had personally offended it, then rolled back to me and planted itself at my feet. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂
Every time I moved, it followed.
Every time I tried to practice movement drills, it would position itself directly in my path.
I’d tried explaining that I needed space to train. Void had stared at me with those purple-black eyes and not moved.
I’d tried leaving it outside the training room. It had blasted through the stone door with enough force to crack the warding and send fragments across the floor.
I’d tried setting a boundary, literally drawing a line with warden energy and telling it to stay on one side.
Void had looked at the line, looked at me, and rolled directly across it.
"You can’t just do whatever you want," I’d said, crouching down to its level.
Void had chirped.
"I’m serious. You want to stay close to me? Fine. But you don’t get to destroy things or attack people or prevent me from doing what I need to do."
Void’s eyes had brightened slightly, purple-black energy pulsing.
I’d pointed at a spot near the wall. "You stay there while I train. You can watch, but you don’t interfere. Understand?"
Void had rolled to the spot.
Stayed there for approximately thirty seconds.
Then rolled back to me the moment I started moving again.
By day two, I’d made marginal progress.
Void would stay at the designated spot for a full minute before following. Sometimes two minutes if I looked directly at it with the expression that meant "I’m not joking about this."
It was something.
Day three, Void had actually let me complete an entire drill sequence before rolling over to reclaim its position at my feet.
I’d considered that a victory.
The bathroom situation had been worse.
I’d tried to take a shower on the first night alone, like a normal person.
Void had melted through the bathroom door.
It hadn’t blasted through it or broken the lock. The heavy stone door with its warded seal had just... dissolved where Void was touching it, purple-black energy eating through rock and magic like it was paper.
I’d stared at the furball sitting in the doorway, water running down my back, trying to figure out how to explain to a creature without a mouth that personal space was a thing.
"Out," I’d said, pointing.
Void had chirped and rolled closer.
"I mean it. Out. Now."
Void’s eyes had flared brighter, and for a second I’d thought it was going to ignore me entirely.
Then I’d pulled on just enough warden energy that my hand glowed faintly, not threatening, just present, and said very clearly: "Out. Or you don’t get to follow me tomorrow."
Void had gone still.
Then slowly, deliberately, it had rolled backward out of the bathroom.
I’d closed what remained of the door and finished my shower in peace.
The next morning, Void had been waiting outside the bathroom, hadn’t tried to come in, had just waited.
Progress.
Small, incremental, occasionally backsliding progress, but progress.
Mara had been fascinated by the whole thing.
She, Henrik, and Ryota had quarters on the other side of the fortress, close enough to respond if something went wrong but far enough to give me space to train without constant oversight.
Mara had been running scans on Void whenever it would tolerate her presence, which was approximately never.
"The energy signature is stable," she’d said on day two, staring at her scanner from across the room while Void hissed at her. "But it’s not diminishing, whatever this thing is, it’s not residual energy that’s going to dissipate. It’s sustaining itself somehow."
"Great," I’d said. "A permanent angry furball."
"An angry furball with power equivalent to what we sealed in the nexus," Henrik had added quietly. "That’s concerning."
"It saved us from the Equilibrium Emissary," I’d pointed out.
"It also melted through a warded stone door because you wanted privacy," Mara had countered. "Those aren’t mutually exclusive concerns."
She wasn’t wrong.
Ryota had been more practical about it. "Can you control it?"
"I’m working on it."
"Work faster. If that thing decides it doesn’t like someone enough to do more than hiss, we’ll have problems."
I’d been trying.
But mostly I’d been counting hours until Azryth arrived.
The spiritual phone calls helped. Being able to talk to him across realms, feel his presence through the binding even when he was dealing with demon lord responsibilities...it made the separation bearable.
But bearable wasn’t the same as good.
I missed him, physically missed him in ways that felt disproportionate to a few days apart. I missed the weight of him next to me in bed, missed his presence in the same room, missed being able to look up and see him there instead of just feeling him through the binding.
I’d tried distracting myself with training.
It hadn’t really worked.
By the third night, I’d been sitting in the common area with my phone, scrolling through nothing in particular, just trying to remember what it felt like to be a normal person on Earth doing normal things.
When was the last time I’d just sat on a couch with my phone like this? Before my sudden marriage, probably. Before my life became a sequence of cosmic crises and demon politics and warden abilities I barely understood.
It felt strange. Familiar but distant, like remembering someone else’s life.
Void had been curled up on my lap, apparently content as long as I wasn’t moving.
And then the binding had pulsed differently.
Azryth’s attention, focused and deliberate.
He’d told me he was coming to Alaska. Delegating the realm to Kelvin, Kade, and Serra so he could be here instead.
*I’d rather be with you,* he’d said.
Something warm had flooded through me. Surprise and satisfaction and what was definitely embarrassment because my demon husband choosing me over ruling a realm was enough to make me feel things I didn’t have words for.
Two or three days, he’d said.
I’d spent those days training harder, trying to make time move faster through sheer force of will.
It hadn’t worked.
But then he was here.
