Year - 1380

Month - Jul

Date – 1^st

Since The addition of the Jorou-Gumo and Cerberus Jack and Erin have spent a lot of time training their martial prowess. Jack has become a very good duelist like all his family before him. While Erin has gained competence in the traditional weapons, she has shown a great aptitude to being a spymaster and logistical mastermind.

The couple is already seen as inseparable doing everything together. Erin lives in a modified servant’s chamber connecting to Jack’s room as she stated that it is improper for her to live in his room until they are married but this is only a cover and a protection for him from herself as she has developed an obsession for Jack. She is at the point that if old her to kill herself for him she wouldn’t hesitate to pull out her heart for him right then and there.

Jack and Erin are currently having one of their many sparing matches.

Jack’s POV

Across from me stood my beautiful soon-to-be wife her slightly tanned athletic body with curves in all the right places, her long ashen hair flowing behind her deadly looking green eyes that pierced my very soul.

She giggled at my stare and said, “are you done admiring your property I would very much like to continue kicking your ass.”

I scoffed she always knew what to say to knock me off balance and this troubled me as I had the feeling she meant it.

She was training me to fight against a nontraditionally trained opponent as the way most of the techniques taught to the armies was a simplified form of what my family used.

She knew the technique, but she felt it was too restricting as she always said so she made her own style. That felt like my style crossed with that one would find in a barroom brawl.

She always won these fights. I would be fighting to improve my technique, but she always fought to win no matter how underhanded or cruel. And so, we began. I feint a charge which she returns with a true charge, I easily deflect the sword out of her hand.

I did it, I had finally won then I looked around to where she should have landed but found it empty. Then I felt it, a string across my neck.

I heard a voice from behind me “sorry but you’ve been killed again darling.”

Then I finally realized what I had missed before there was a strand of spider silk that connected the sword to her wrist. She had let go of the sword so that the string would wrap around my neck.

And thus, I lost again.

“Don’t feel too bad dear this already got your father” she said giggling.

“If you already knew it worked, why did you tell me you hadn’t tried it yet” I said annoyed.

“Because I’m training you, so you won’t fall to any assassin sent for you” she retorted.

Assassins weren’t unheard of but I was unimportant so who would send one for me I thought. “Ok” I responded.

Next, we went to the Wolf’s Den as I called it. This was the place where the stronger and more humanoid unbound beasts are kept when we got to the perimeter wall, we were immediately surrounded by 4 shadowy apparitions.

After the gate closed the shadows solidified into four Shadow Were-Wolves who were in wolf form. They looked like normal wolves, but their fur was so dark that the only detail that you could see apart from their outline was their purple eyes.

They started to shift into their human forms wearing their nondescript black leather armor and twin short swords. They look like normal human 18 to 20 year old girls with light skin tones, black hair and an athletic hourglass frame. The only similarity to their other forms was their wolflike purple eyes.

These four had been troublemakers using their ability to slip into and hid in shadows to play pranks. No one had bothered do anything about it until they managed to dye Erin’s hair black as night.

When she was finished with them, they had been turned into covert bodyguards for me and Erin. They would hide in our shadows until we were in private. Erin had given them codenames based on the order they had submitted to her in one, two, three, and four. As a group they were called the shadows.

Although most beasts we bred treat my family as the alphas. When Erin joined us, they saw her as someone to be tested, and tested she was. She had beaten them all and earned her place in their eyes.

To her though that wasn’t enough she continued at a relentless pace to the point I think that if we both gave one differing orders, they would do hers for fear of retribution.

I thank my lucky stars everyday that she is my wife-to-be instead of my enemy. I shudder.

Out of the approaching building came the twins, Cerberus at full speed with a skittering Jorou-Gumo close behind.

The twins leading, they are a bit shorter than the average human with their tanned athletic bodies and red eyes. The only sign that they weren’t human was a pair of triangle shaped ears that stick straight up from their long jet-black hair. They were wearing armor that was like what is worn by the shadows but the twin like all Anubis demanded gold accents. Like most of the beasts they call me master but Erin they called sister for what reason I do not know.

The Cerberus that followed was of porcelain complexion with a body that was in between athletic and muscled. She had blond hair and blue eyes like me with said hair tied in a ponytail and her wolf ears flattened against her head.

She was wearing her silvered breastplate and mail skirt over her other clothes. She refused to wear anything but this when traveling with me as she inserted herself as my champion. She calls me commander and Erin mistress.

The Jorou-Gumo that brought up the rear was careful as she didn’t want to get her clothes dirty. Her spider half was black with white accents instead of the normal black and purple. Her human half looks like the perfect top half of the hourglass to her bottom half. With her slim waist to her large breasts, she had the most perfect unblemished porcelain white skin with the white hair to match it and the eyes so black that you felt like you were staring into the unending void.

She was dressed in her normal maid outfit. Erin had convinced her that since she made our clothes with her silk that she should be the one to take care of them as well as our rooms.

The group had been left here for one of their checkups to make sure they were all healthy after greeting everyone we headed back towards the inner keep meeting up with my parents. Today was the aptitude assessment a test that determined how may bounded you could have.

Everyone could have one bounded but only nobles and soldiers are usually tested to see how many they could have. Too become a noble family they must go multiple generations with all members having aptitude for two or more bonded.

The cleverer nobles realized that bounded aptitude was something that could be cultivated and thus the standard in my and Erin’s families is four. For nobles it is customary to not fill all your bonded spots as bonded are killed and without bonded you are easier to be dispatched of.