The first contraction didn’t build slowly. It slammed into her lower abdomen like a physical blow, throwing her entire system into sudden, early labour.
A sharp, ragged scream tore from her throat, completely shattering the quiet of the bedroom. Her large, ultra-sensitive fox ears pinned flat against her blonde hair, trembling violently as she collapsed back into the pillows.
"Felicity!"
Ivan was on his knees beside the large bed before the echo of her cry could even fade. The towering, mountain-built beast-man looked completely panicked. His usual stoic expression dissolved as his massive, calloused hands hovered over her shaking shoulders, terrified that using his raw strength might hurt her.
"Ivan... It’s time. They’re coming early," she gasped, her spine arching as another wave of pain ripped through her. Her stomach, heavy with the cubs, tightened into a hard knot beneath her dress.
The babies were coming.
Right now.
"Fel! Felicity, look at me, look at Ivan, my sun, breathe for me, please, just breathe."
Ivan was on his knees at the edge of the silk nest before the echoes of her scream could even bounce off the walls. The towering, mountain-like beast-man looked completely unmade. His usual stoic, unshakable expression had vanished, replaced by a raw, sweating panic that turned his golden eyes wide and wet with uncharacteristic terror. His massive, calloused hands hovered inches above her shaking shoulders, completely paralysed by the fear that if he used even a fraction of his standard strength, he might shatter her delicate frame.
Another contraction seized her, meaner than the last, a wave of agony so pure her sight bleached to white. Desperate to anchor herself against the pain shredding through her core, Felicity dragged her right arm to her mouth and bit down savagely on her own wrist.
Her sharp teeth sliced instantly through her pale skin, drawing a bright, clean line of crimson blood that began to smear across her arm.
"No please no, no, no, sweetheart, don’t do that. Don’t you dare hurt yourself." Ivan’s roar cracked in the middle, his composure dropping straight through the floorboards at the sight of her blood.
Without a single care for his own flesh, Ivan shoved his massive forearm directly into her mouth, his thick fingers gently but firmly prying her jaws away from her own bloodied wrist.
"Bite me instead." His words fractured, thick with devotion and dread as his other hand curled around the back of her sweat-damp head, drawing her tiny frame into the wall of his chest. He smelled of clean sweat, cedar smoke, and warm skin. "Take it out on me, little fox. Chew right through to the bone if it helps. I don’t care. Just leave that pretty wrist alone! I’m here, I’ve got you."
Felicity didn’t have the capacity to argue. Blinded by a fresh wave of labour pains
Her jaw clamped down with the terrifying, desperate strength of a mother beast-man in crisis. Her teeth punctured his thick, conditioned hide, drawing a rush of dark, heavy blood that stained her lips and chin.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t so much as blink as she ground down on his muscle. He only registered the frantic shallowness of her breathing, the thrash of her little tail against the sheets in helpless distress, and the fact that Victor still hadn’t run down the panther.
At the very least, a small sliver of sanity remained intact. Luna and Frost were in Victor’s space, safe and sound away from the tigers, away from the zombies and away from the screams of their mother.
When the wave finally ebbed, she released his arm with a wet gasp, blinking his blurry face back into focus. Blood smeared her mouth like she’d lost a bar fight and won.
"You’re leaking," she rasped, staring at the twin punctures oozing down his forearm.
"Bleeding," he corrected, hoarse.
"Same thing." A shaky, half-mad giggle broke out of her before she could stop it. "You realise you just told a woman in labour to eat you alive, and I said yes, and this is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me."
A sound tore out of him, not quite a laugh, not quite a sob, snagged somewhere raw in his throat. He pressed his forehead to hers, close enough that his breath stirred the damp blonde strands at her temple.
"Then I’ll bleed for you every day of my life," he murmured against her skin, "if it means you stop biting yourself and start biting me."
"That is a genuinely unhinged wedding vow, Ivan."
"You married seven of us. You knew what you signed up for."
Her laugh cracked into a whimper as her stomach tightened again, and his thumb swept the sweat and blood from her cheek with a tenderness that had no business living in hands that size.
"That’s it. Look at me. Only me." His golden gaze held hers, steady now, all that terror crushed down into something fierce and grounding. "You’re the strongest thing I’ve ever seen. You know that? The whole world went to hell, and you’re the one holding it together. Our cubs are about to be so damn lucky."
Something split wide open in her chest, warmer than the pain, bigger than the fear.
Sensible to its owner’s frantic physical needs, the space around them instantly changed to provide exactly what she required to survive. The bed widened, its sheets rippling as stacks of thick, clean, sterile white towels appeared neatly at the foot of the mattress. Large basins of steaming hot water materialised on the cedar side tables, providing the practical tools they needed for a sudden delivery.
Ivan didn’t look at any of it. He kept his forehead against hers, his ruined arm offered up like the easiest gift in the world.
"Next one comes," he breathed, "you bite down, and you hold on. I’m not going anywhere, little sun. Not ever."
—- Outside the space ——
The magnificent, rare albino leopard beast-man Dimitri was a blur of ghostly white hair and muscle, his pale, snow-white spots blending into a deadly camouflage against the rising dust. His claws were twice as long as a standard leopard’s, gleaming with a terrifying, matte-white bone sheen. Every swipe of his arm didn’t just tear flesh; it cleanly decapitated three or four zombies at a time, his tail whipping behind him like a steel wire to maintain an impossible, gravity-defying balance as he bounded off the stone pillars.
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