Page 43 of Two Thousand Promises

But it wasn’t his fox who greeted him.

A young man with long, soft brown hair and enormous amber-brown eyes stepped out from behind a tree. He was breathtakingly beautiful in his navy robes as they hugged his slender frame. Full, pouty lips turned down in a frown as Xiao Dan stopped and even rocked back half a step. His hand tightened on his sword, but he didn’t reach to draw it…yet.

“Who…”

“I knew it. You have forgotten your Huli.”

“What?” he gasped, his brain rebelling against the information that was coming in. The young man spoke in Huli’s voice, but he was no fox. He retreated two more steps, but could go no farther. His shoulders slammed into the trunk of a plum tree. The leaves rattled overhead, and two soft thuds hit the ground around him as he knocked plums loose.

Was this really the huli jing in human form?

It couldn’t be. This had to be a trick.

“Huli? But…I…”

“Do you not like this form, Zhang-ge?” The young man took another step closer, and Xiao Dan tensed as if he wanted to run. This was too much. Too confusing.

When Xiao Dan didn’t answer, he sighed and hung his head. “I worked so hard.”

Before Xiao Dan could untangle his tongue and say anything, the young man disappeared in a flash of white light and was replaced with a very familiar fox with seven glorious tails.Hisfox.

“Huli,” Xiao Dan released a deep breath of relief and sagged against the tree. His knees trembled and even his head felt light.

“So you prefer me as a fox.” Huli pouted. He flopped on the ground, his ears flat, and his tails were limp on the ground.

Xiao Dan hurried over to his poor huli jing and kneeled next to him. “I’m so sorry, Huli. I do like your human form. It’s just that I was so surprised. Even after I recognized your voice, I had trouble believing it was you.” He reached out and rubbed his fingers through his warm fur on the top of his head, pausing to scratch behind one ear. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see those lovely tails starting to twitch and move as if the fox couldn’t hold in his happiness.

“I was also a little nervous,” Xiao Dan admitted as Huli continued to pout.

The fox lifted his head at last, his ears perking up. “Nervous? About what?”

Xiao Dan offered a crooked smile and a small shrug of his shoulders. “I’ve had this feeling of being watched during my trips to town. If you’re going to stay for a while, please be extra careful. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

That got the fox’s attention. He popped up on his feet, all of his tails waving and flicking behind him. “I don’t have to be careful. The person watching you was me!”

For a second, Xiao Dan couldn’t speak at all. Of all the things he’d expected to fly out of Huli’s mouth, that was not one of them. “What? For the past three months? Why?”

Huli sat with his head held high. “I learned how to change into a human years ago, but it was only when I got my latest tail that I figured out how to hold the shift for long periods oftime. For months, even! I could also make tweaks to my human appearance. Then I could come back to see my Gege.”

“Okay, but I don’t understand why you’ve been following me. Why didn’t you come see me as soon as you returned to town like you always do? We could have spent these months together.”

The fox’s ears and tails drooped a bit. “I know. It was so hard to stay away. Huli wanted to run to his Zhang-ge so many times, but this was important. When I followed you, I could see the people that Zhang-ge liked, the people you’re attracted to.”

A giant boulder sank into the pit of Xiao Dan’s stomach, and he very much wanted to run from the orchard. The idea of a huli jing tailoring one of his looks just to be attractive to him was a daunting and terrifying idea. It was flattering, in a way, but also frightening. What if he really fell in love with the human creation? What did that say about him?

It also drove home what Huli had been saying for years now—he wanted a real relationship with Xiao Dan. The kind of relationship that two humans enjoyed. It was as they were on the cusp of the moment that Xiao Dan realized how deeply he’d been in denial about the possibility. He was an idiot.

He should have seen this coming. Should have been prepared. There was no one in the world more determined. Huli had stated he wanted nine tails, and he already had seven. It wouldn’t be much longer now until he had the last two.

He’d said he wanted to shift into a human so he could win Xiao Dan. So not only had he learned how to shift, but he’d studied the appearances of people that Xiao Dan reacted to. Was it an immense shock that Huli had figured out that he was attracted to men? Of course, he knew. Nothing got by the fox.

“Am I going too fast for Gege?”

Xiao Dan narrowed his eyes on the huli jing with the seven tails. “Are you teasing me?”

“A little. It’s not often I can make you so nervous. It’s fun.”

“Behave, Huli.”

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