Extra's Life: MILFs Won't Leave the Incubus Alone Chapter 618 613: Parting on the Road

Morning came cool and clear. Frost still clung to the grass in the shaded hollows when Aiden finished the last circuit of the perimeter. The air carried the clean bite of high country, and the trees stood quiet.

Harren was already moving, checking the carriage traces and the packs lashed under the canvas. The children were awake and restless, rubbing sleep from their eyes and asking when they would reach the next settlement.

Lira had rekindled the fire and set out a simple breakfast of flatbread, dried meat, and the last of the boiled roots, as if the night had never left the trees and nothing unusual had happened.

They ate without much talk. The children focused on the food. Harren kept his attention on the harness and the road ahead.

Aiden sat a short distance apart, eating what was offered and watching the light strengthen across the ridge. The key rested against his ribs under the coat, a steady weight he had grown used to.

The ordered power under his skin remained quiet, settled at A-rank, ready but not pressing.

When the horses were hitched and the carriage ready, Harren offered a short nod.

"Eastern crossings are still two days if the weather holds. You're welcome to the rest of the road if you want it."

Aiden shook his head. "This is far enough. I'll keep to my own pace from here."

Harren accepted it without argument. He climbed onto the driver's bench and took the reins. The children settled under the canvas, already arguing in low voices about who would sit where. Lira paused at the side of the carriage, one hand on the frame. For a moment her eyes met Aiden's.

Then, while her husband was checking the off-side harness and not looking directly at them, she stepped close, rose on her toes, and kissed him once—brief, deliberate, and tasteful enough that it could have been mistaken for a formal farewell if anyone had seen it full-on.

"The road east of the next ridge turns bad," she said quietly. "Old reports of footpads and worse. Watch the cuts."

"I will."

She climbed up beside her husband. Harren called to the horses. The carriage rolled forward, wheels creaking against the packed earth, and within a few minutes the sound had faded into the morning.

Aiden stood alone on the track. The A-rank awareness mapped the retreating warmth of the four living bodies until distance swallowed them. Then there was only the road, the key against his ribs, and the ordered power under his skin. He adjusted the pack on his shoulder, checked the knife at his belt out of habit, and walked.

The first hours passed without incident. The track climbed gradually through mixed scrub and scattered rock.

Birds moved in the brush. Small game held still until he was past. By midday the country grew rougher—deeper cuts, thicker scrub, fewer signs of regular traffic. Wheel ruts grew faint. The warning proved accurate.

In a narrow defile where the track dropped between two rocky banks, three men stepped out of the brush with short blades and the confident postures of people who had done this before.

Their clothes were travel-stained and patched. Their eyes tracked the pack on his shoulder and the coat that might hide coin or better gear.

"Pack and coin," the lead one said. "No need for anyone to get cut."

Aiden stopped. He did not reach for a weapon. The incubus power rose in a controlled, precise wave. He met the first man's eyes and pushed a narrow, focused thread of influence—not the full vitality drain, only the heavy, sudden weight of sleep.

The man's knees buckled. He was unconscious before he hit the ground. The second lunged, blade coming in low and fast. Aiden sidestepped, touched the side of the man's neck with two fingers, and sent the same ordered force through the contact.

The second man folded without a sound. The third tried to run. Aiden caught him by the collar, applied the same precise pressure at the base of the skull, and let him drop.

Three bodies breathed evenly in the dust. No blood. No noise that would carry beyond the defile. Aiden took nothing from them except the certainty that they would wake with headaches and a story no one would believe. He left the defile at the same steady pace and did not look back.

The road beyond climbed into broken highland scrub. By late afternoon the light had taken on the thin, hard quality of higher country. The air cooled faster. Visibility stretched farther across the open slopes.

Aiden's senses picked up the first of the beasts while they were still half a mile off—lean, four-legged, wrong in the joints the way the vault creatures had been, but smaller and adapted to open ground. Their presence registered as sharp, hungry, and coordinated.

They came in a loose pack of five, drawn either by the residual scent of the earlier fight or by the simple presence of living power moving alone through their range.

Aiden did not try to outrun them. He chose a stretch of open ground with clear sight lines and solid footing, let the A-rank strength settle into his limbs, and met the charge.

The first beast leapt. He caught it out of the air by the throat and shoulder, drove it into the dirt hard enough to stun it, and drained enough vitality to stop its heart without lingering. The stolen energy closed the few shallow scrapes the others managed to open on his arms and side.

He moved through the rest of the pack with the same economy—no wasted motion, no unnecessary cruelty, only the clean application of power that had become second nature since the rank settled.

One tried to circle behind him; he pivoted, caught its hind leg, and snapped the joint before finishing it. Another came in low and fast; he met it with a short, precise strike and drained it mid-motion. When the last body stopped twitching, the hillside was quiet again.

He was wiping blood from his hands with a cloth when the A-rank awareness registered something else.

A single living presence, humanoid in shape but distinctly other, watching from a stand of wind-twisted trees fifty paces upslope. Not hostile. Not fleeing. Simply observing. The vitality signature was strong, steady, and non-human.

Aiden turned and waited.

She stepped out after a long moment. Beast-kin, but of a breed he had never encountered in the eastern highlands or the vault records—lean, digitigrade legs, a short balanced tail, fine patterned fur along the arms and collarbones, and eyes with a reflective inner ring that caught the late light.

Her clothing was practical hide and woven fiber, travel-worn but well-kept. She carried no visible weapon, yet the way she stood said she was not helpless. Her movements were quiet and deliberate.

"You kill cleanly," she said. Her voice was low and slightly rough, accented in a way that did not match any of the river towns. "Most men who walk alone either panic or make a mess."

"I prefer not to waste what I take," Aiden answered.

She studied him with open curiosity, head tilted a fraction. The reflective eyes lingered on the place where the key rested under his coat, though she could not have known what it was. She made no move to close the distance further.

"You are not from the settlements below," she said. "And you are not ordinary. The land answers you differently."

"You're not from the settlements either."

A faint, sharp smile. "No." She took one more step closer, still well outside striking range. "The pack you killed had been pushing into my range for days.

You saved me the trouble. I am willing to trade information for that service. The road ahead forks. One way leads to more of their kind. The other leads to a place the old stones still remember. Choose carefully."

Aiden felt the ordered power under his skin register her vitality—strong, steady, and distinctly non-human. The key remained quiet against his ribs. He kept his stance open and his attention on her posture and the surrounding ground.

"I'll listen," he said.

She nodded once, as if that was the answer she had expected, and gestured toward the higher ridge where the light was beginning to fail. The wind moved through the twisted trees. Somewhere farther up the slope a bird called once and went silent.

The solitary road had acquired its first true complication. And for the first time since leaving the farmstead, Aiden was no longer the only dangerous thing moving through the dark.