Chapter 166: Follower

Kael spent most of the remaining hours buried inside her.

By the time the light outside the window had shifted from afternoon to early evening he had lost count of how many times he had finished. The bed was a wreck of tangled sheets and the air smelled of sex and the faint sweetness of her skin. Tsunade lay between his legs now, gold hair spilling across his thighs, mouth working over his cock with a slow, thorough hunger that still surprised him. She took him deep, throat relaxing around the head, then drew back with a wet sound only to sink down again.

"Mmm... gluck... slurp..."

He watched her through half-lidded eyes, one hand resting lightly in her hair. When he finally pulsed against her tongue she stayed locked around him and swallowed every drop without pulling away. Only after the last tremor left him did she ease off, lips shiny, and let him pull her up so her bare breasts pressed against his chest. He wrapped both arms around her and held her there for a long time, feeling the steady beat of her heart against his.

Eventually she spoke, voice soft against his neck.

"Do we really have to get back to work?"

Kael smiled into her hair. "We’re adults. We can’t just stay in bed forever."

She licked a slow line along the side of his throat. "I want to stay like this forever."

He kissed her forehead. "I know. But I’m going now. You should sleep. You’ve already missed two days. Shizune’s going to collapse under the workload if you don’t show your face soon."

Tsunade gave a quiet laugh. "Yeah, yeah. You’re leaving now?"

"Yeah."

She murmured a soft goodbye against his collarbone. Kael dressed, gave her one last lingering kiss, and stepped out into the evening.

The sky looked wrong. Heavy clouds had rolled in while they were occupied, and distant lightning flickered on the horizon. He quickened his pace. Rain would come soon.

As he walked he turned his attention inward to the new reward. Toad Sage Mode. One of the original Naruto’s signature transformations. He partially activated it. The change was immediate—his eyes shifted, pupils taking on the horizontal slit of a toad, and the world sharpened. Chakra signatures bloomed into clarity all around him. He could feel the living energy in every person, every animal, even the faint pulse of natural energy threaded through the air itself. When he reached for that natural energy it flowed into him without resistance, converting cleanly into chakra and expanding his reserves.

Sensory Perception unfolded like a second set of senses. He could track signatures across surprising distances, feel the subtle shifts that preceded movement, almost see without using his eyes.

One signature stood out.

Someone was hiding behind a utility pole half a block back, watching him. The chakra was familiar but muted, deliberately suppressed. Not hostile—at least not yet—but definitely following. Most of the high-level jōnin were already out of the village, assigned to secure the routes for the incoming Kage. Even Minato would leave in three days. If this watcher meant trouble, the timing was perfect.

Kael considered the possibilities, then decided he might be overthinking it. Still, better to know.

He turned down a quieter side street as full night settled in. A quick hand seal produced a perfect shadow clone. The clone continued along the original route without breaking stride. Kael himself melted into the shadows on the opposite side of the road, erasing his presence the way the new sensory awareness made almost instinctive.

The follower took the bait.

A slender figure slipped from cover and trailed the clone at a careful distance. Kael circled wide, came up behind her, and recognized the posture, the dark hair, the hesitant way she moved even when she thought herself unseen.

Hinata.

He hadn’t seen her in over a month—not since the intense stretch of days when the system had demanded he make her his. The memory of her soft voice and the way she had submitted still sat clear in his mind. Apparently she had been watching him longer than he realized.

He closed the last few steps in silence, then reached out and delivered a firm, open-handed slap across the curve of her ass.

"Hinata?"

She spun on pure reflex.

The strike was instantaneous—no thought, no recognition, only the trained reaction of a Hyūga who had spent years drilling the Gentle Fist. Her palm drove straight into the exact point on his abdomen where several major chakra pathways converged. The impact was precise and devastating.

Pain exploded through Kael’s core. His vision whited out. The newly heightened sensory field collapsed into static. He felt his knees buckle.

Hinata’s voice reached him as if from a great distance, already breaking with horror.

"Naru... Naruto—!"

He never heard the rest. Consciousness dropped out from under him and the street rushed up to meet his face.

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