Baby Lynx of the Tiger Family - Chapter 10

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Baby Lynx of the Tiger Clan
Chapter 10
Baiden had assumed, naturally, that Sirka and Sabrina would assign his role as well.
He was wrong.
‘Well, what about you? Figure it out yourself. Meal duty? This isn’t a hunting game. Hunting is my specialty.’
Sabrina was too busy fuming over not getting the hunting role to spare Baiden a single glance.
‘Sorry, but I have to go find toys for Ah-ga to play with. Father, you’ll have to handle yours on your own.’
Even his son, the one he’d trusted, had abandoned him to win the little one’s favor.
Thankfully, his turn had been pushed to the very end, so he had bought himself some time to think… but…
‘What am I supposed to do…?’
Unfortunately, by the time Bariya came looking for him, he still hadn’t come up with a single plan.
That was how he ended up in a tense standoff with Bariya in his office.
“…Little one, is there something you’d like to do?”
In the end, Baiden handed the choice over to Bariya.
“No.”
Yet Bariya, who was still burning with a desire for revenge against the Hyena Clan and had her belly comfortably full, didn’t really have anything she wanted to do.
Most of her life had been spent locked away in the Hyena Clan, and the rest running away, so she had no idea what she was supposed to do either.
“What do ten-year-old girls usually like?”
Baiden turned to his aide, Silva, for help.
Bariya looked at Silva too.
“…Me?”
Suddenly caught under the gaze of both of them, Silva broke into a cold sweat.
Baiden with his blank expression, and Bariya with an equally blank expression.
They aren’t even related by blood, so why do they look so alike?
Anyone would think she was his real daughter.
“I don’t have any children either…”
“Tch.”
At Silva’s answer, Baiden clicked his tongue.
Silva felt terribly wronged by the look in Baiden’s eyes, the look one gives a useless nuisance.
And here you are, sir, without a daughter of your own.
“…Ah, right.”
Baiden lowered himself and carefully held out his hand.
“Little one, there’s somewhere I want to take you.”
As if afraid Bariya might refuse, Baiden added one more line.
“It might not be fun… but just go and see for yourself, and then decide.”
Bariya found those words strange to hear.
That was hardly surprising. Back at the Mariner Family, the only person who had ever asked what she wanted was her mother.
And every adult had only ever looked down at Bariya, never bending down like this to meet her eyes.
Bariya stared at Baiden’s hand.
It was the first time a grown man’s hand hadn’t frightened her, when the hands of men had always been sharp and painful.
‘He’s huge, how strange.’
He was the largest Beastkin she had ever seen, yet she felt neither scared nor intimidated.
He was far more dependable than Darius Mariner, whom she didn’t even want to call her father.
“I’ll go.”
Bariya grabbed Baiden’s hand without hesitation.
Seeing that tiny hand resting on his own thick palm made Baiden feel strange.
“Alright, let’s go.”
He pulled her gently so she wouldn’t be startled.
Then, in one motion, he lifted the child and settled her on his shoulders.
“Eh?”
“Sir?”
Both Bariya, now riding on his shoulders, and Silva were taken aback.
Paying them no mind, Baiden rose slowly to his feet so the child wouldn’t fall.
In an instant her view had climbed two meters, and Bariya’s mouth fell open in delight.
“Sir! It’s dangerous for such a young lady…!”
Just as Silva, horrified by the sight, cried out—
“High!”
Bariya shouted, her voice bursting with excitement.
“It’s super high! Wow! If I stretch my arm up, it’s like I could touch the ceiling!”
Silva let out a breathless laugh as she giggled and stretched her arm high above her head.
Thinking about it, Bariya is a beastkin of the cat kind.
She likes high places, and even if she falls from this height, she won’t get hurt.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes!”
“Hold on to my hair so you don’t fall.”
Bariya gripped Baiden’s hair tightly with both hands.
Silva rubbed his eyes more than once at the sight of golden hair being mussed to a mess by a child’s hands.
Compared to the piggyback ride, this is the bigger shock.
“Then let’s go.”
Baiden opened the office door.
Tiger beastkin are big by nature, so the doors are tall enough that Bariya won’t bump her head.
Still, he seemed worried, bending his knees as he carefully stepped out.
“Huh!”
“Whoa!”
“Gah!”
Knights and servants passing near the office stopped dead, their jaws hanging open at the sight.
Baiden, the largest man in Kalif, and Bariya perched on his shoulders, gripping his hair.
Am I dreaming with my eyes open?
“Are we going to Odi?”
“You’ll see when we get there.”
Baiden and Bariya, for their part, didn’t care one bit about the stares of others.
Everyone stood there with their mouths hanging open until the pair vanished from view.
There was someone else who was stunned by Baiden’s shocking behavior.
“Father?”
Sirka, walking by with his retainer Jake, spotted the two of them and doubted his own eyes.
“My eyes must be playing tricks on me. I’m seeing things.”
Jake denied what was in front of him and rubbed his eyes over and over.
“You said you didn’t know what to do, and now you’ve decided to give her a piggyback ride?”
“No, it’s just that since the little one is a cat, I figured she’d like high places.”
“Re-e-ally love it.”
Bariya giggled and shook Baiden’s golden hair with both hands.
The hair that only ever came undone in front of Sabrina was turning into a fresh nest under the touch of a ten-year-old girl.
“Let’s go.”
“Let’s get moving!”
Baiden and Bariya brushed past the two of them.
“Did the Clan Head carry you on his shoulders like that when you were little, Young Family Head?”
Jake, who had rubbed his eyes until they were bloodshot before finally accepting the truth, asked in a daze.
“Hardly. When I was young, Father was never in a position to spare the time for piggyback rides.”
That’s right, I suppose.
Sirka wasn’t the type to act spoiled, and back then neither Baiden nor Sabrina had the presence of mind to indulge him.
“Not that Father would ever carry his own son on his shoulders to begin with.”
“That’s true enough. I thought only the Lady could ever ride on the Clan Head’s shoulders.”
“…”
Sirka, picturing Sabrina riding on Baiden’s shoulders, shuddered from head to toe.
“If she had, Mother would have wrung Father’s neck right then and there.”
Even Baiden couldn’t overpower Sabrina’s strength.
“Anyway, I’m glad Father seems to get along with the little one.”
Baiden, who cared about nothing except his wife Sabrina and the safety of the tiger beastkin.
I’d assumed he would be cool and distant with Bariya, so it was a pleasant surprise to see this side of him.
I was really glad I didn’t abandon her and brought her along.
* * *
Leaving behind all manner of screams, Baiden and Bariya arrived at none other than Kalif’s pride, its library.
“Wow, wooow…”
The library was clean and uncluttered, without any flashy decoration, and it had an elegant, refined air that left Bariya speechless.
“I thought you’d never get a chance to read while running away. I hope you like it.”
Bariya didn’t even hear Baiden’s voice.
The scent of books she hadn’t smelled in ages, books piled from the floor to the high ceiling, and on top of that, the subjects were incredibly varied.
“Little one?”
Bariya, who had been gaping blankly, only came to her senses after Baiden set her down on the floor.
He crouched down in front of her.
“You don’t like it? Then how about something else…?”
“No!”
Bariya immediately grabbed the hem of Baiden’s clothes.
“R-really, I really do like it! I l-love it so muuch!”
Afraid he might misunderstand, she rushed her words, and her lisp came out worse than usual.
That was how desperate she was.
“I love reading, but I could hardly ever do it at the Hyena Clan, and that made me sad. But you brought me here like this, so I’m really, truly grateful.”
She clung to Baiden, her eyes shining bright.
She had a hunger for knowledge.
Thanks to her mother Claire’s influence, she is far smarter than her peers, with an exceptionally high intelligence.
Yet instead of allowing Bariya to gain knowledge, Darius wanted her to live as a clueless fool.
Had her mother not secretly taught her every night, pouring in as much knowledge as she could, Bariya would have lived with a pitifully stunted intellect despite her sharp mind.
That’s why she was so grateful for this very moment.
“Good. I just don’t really know what children like.”
“There’s Sirka, isn’t there?”
Sure, he’s eighteen now, but he must have had a childhood too.
“…Right. If I’d paid more attention back then, would I know more than I do now?”
Baiden smiled bitterly.
For the first time, he felt sorry for never having properly looked after Sirka’s childhood.
‘Circumstances beyond my control’ is no excuse that absolves me.
“You can read any book you like here. The ones you can’t read yet are stored separately, so don’t worry and feel free to look at everything.”
“All of them?!”
“There’s plenty of interesting stuff. Beasts get called ignorant and dim-witted for never reading, and that made me so mad that I bought every kind of book I could find.”
“Huh?”
Bariya, the proud wildcat Beastkin, shot him a sharp look.
“Which ignorant jerks said that?!”
“Bird-brains, ahem. Those feathered idiots.”
So they did, huh. I won’t let them off. Just wait until I get my hands on them.
I’ll make them learn firsthand why people say a strong body means no need for a brain!
“Ah, right.”
Baiden pulled a thin booklet from a chest of drawers at the center of the library and handed it to Bariya.
“Just tell me which books you want and I’ll find every one. I’m sure there are some you’d like to read in secret, too.”
Caught reading her mind, Bariya flinched.
How did he know?
“So keep this. It’s a list of where everything is, sorted by subject.”
There was even a map of the library on the very first page.
“Th-thank you…”
“If you really can’t find a book, ask me, Sabrina, or Sirka. Don’t worry, we won’t ask why you want it or pry into it.”
I won’t ask Bariya anything about herself.
Baiden smiled, as if to honor the terms of their agreement.
Bariya clutched the booklet tighter at his gentle smile.
Only now, in the Tiger Clan’s mansion, where she had no family to speak of, was she finally receiving genuine consideration.
Her heart fluttered and tickled.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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