Her fingers wouldn’t unclench from the tiny body against her chest. She couldn’t. She couldn’t let go. "Give him to me, little fox." Ivan’s voice was warm and certain in her ear. His hand was already moving, already sliding beneath the cub with that careful, enormous gentleness. "I’ve got him, you focus on pushing push."
She released the cub into Ivan’s arms, watched the big lion cradle him against his chest with a reverence that made her throat tight, and then the next contraction seized her, and she was pushing, pushing, her back arching off the mattress as Voss guided and supported and spoke to her in that steady, grounding voice.
"Voss," she gasped.
"Right here, Fel." He was behind her, all around her, his massive body a wall she could brace against. One hand splayed across her lower belly, the other gripping hers so she could crush his fingers as hard as she needed. His mouth pressed to her sweat-damp temple. "You’re doing it. You’re already doing it. Push."
"Head’s crowning. That’s it. Push when you feel it, don’t fight it"
She pushed. Screamed through her teeth. Felt the burn and the stretch and the impossible pressure, and then release.
The cub slid into Voss’s waiting hands, and the room went very still.
Blonde hair. Wet and matted and the exact shade of honey-gold that Felicity saw in the mirror every morning. Small, pointed ears, wolf ears, blonde and soft pressed flat against a tiny head. A scrunched-up human face, red and furious, and instead of crying, instead of the wail she’d expected, the cub made a sound. A whimper. Small and indignant and stubborn, like he was fighting it, like crying was beneath him, like he’d already decided at four seconds old that he was too tough for tears.
Just like his father.
Voss made a sound she’d never heard from him before. Something between a growl and a sob, rough and broken and utterly undone.
"My son," he breathed. His scarred hands were trembling as he lifted the cub, and his orange eyes, those blazing, fierce eyes, were shining with tears he’d never let fall. "My baby."
The cub’s tail emerged last, a small, blonde wolf tail that began to wag almost immediately, twitching against Voss’s wrist with a restless, happy energy. And when the cub’s eyes opened, when those tiny lids parted, and Felicity saw the colour behind them, her breath left her in a rush.
Orange and they were blazing, wildfire orange. Voss’s eyes.
Her hair. His ears. His tail. His eyes. The cub was a perfect, impossible blend of both of them, and Voss was staring at him like he’d been handed the sun.
The air left her lungs.
"He has your eyes." Her own words cracked apart on her. "Voss. He got your eyes."
Voss couldn’t answer. He bent, pressed his forehead to the cub’s, and breathed him in—and the sound he made against that impossible small skull was so raw with love that she felt it settle into her bones like heat into cold stone.
The cub whimpered again. That same stubborn fighting sound. Then he squinted up at his father, working his tiny jaw, deeply unimpressed with the entire situation.
A wet laugh burst out of Voss. "He’s already judging me."
"He’s a wolf." She swiped at her cheeks, grinning through the mess of it. "That’s just his face. You do it too."
"I do not."
"You’re doing it right now."
Voss huffed, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him, tugging up into something helpless and undone. He looked at their son like a man handed the sun and told him to hold it carefully.
Then the cub’s mouth opened, searching, small tongue working, and Voss’s whole expression collapsed into panic so pure it drew another laugh straight out of her.
"What does he want? Is he ok? Is this normal?" One of the deadliest strategists in the wasteland, a man who’d dismantled cities in cold blood, blinking down at a hungry infant like he’d been handed a live grenade with a heartbeat. "What do I do?"
"You bring him to me," she said, already dragging the fabric aside, already reaching, her arms empty and aching in a way nothing else had ever touched. "Give me my baby, Voss."
He crossed the small space and laid the cub against her chest with a reverence that stole what breath she had left, his shaking hand cupped protectively over that tiny, fragile back even as he surrendered him. The weight settled over her heart. The cub snuggled in, latched, and went instantly, blissfully quiet.
Voss stayed bent over them both, one arm bracketing her shoulders, his forehead resting against her hair where the clean cedar-and-rain smell of him still clung to her skin.
"You gave me a son." His words broke against her temple. "Fel. You... there aren’t words. I don’t have the words for this."
"You don’t need them." She turned her face into his jaw, pressed her mouth there, tasted salt she couldn’t tell belonged to which of them. "He’s got your grumpy little frown, and is just as stubborn as you, that says plenty."
Voss let out a shuddering breath that was almost a laugh, and his lips found her hair, and he held them both of them, his whole world folded into the crook of one scarred arm as he’d finally found the thing worth surviving the end of everything for.
The cub at her breast worked his jaw with that stubborn little determination, and the sound of him, the tiny, wet, contented suckling, filled the small space like something holy. Felicity let her head fall back against Voss’s arm, her fennec ears drooping with exhaustion she could feel in every bone.
Then the grumble came.
Low, small, unmistakable. A hiss that was more wounded than angry, followed by a series of sharp little clicks that she knew like she knew her own heartbeat.
She turned her head. Ivan was standing at the edge of the mattress, the snake cub cradled in the crook of one enormous arm, and the little thing had the grumpiest little face and a tiny tongue flicking, making that possessive, jealous, mine sound that Exile made in his sleep when she rolled too far away.
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