"Oh, my darling." She reached, and Ivan was already leaning, already transferring that small warm weight into her waiting hand. She drew the snake cub close, pressed her lips to the smooth scales of his forehead, and felt the little body go instantly, meltingly soft against her chest. "Hush now. You’re as jealous as your father. Do you know that? Just as dramatic about it, too. But I love you. You have a little brother now, and you’re just as loved, just as mine. Always."
The snake cub answered with a soft, cooing hiss that vibrated against her collarbone, and the ache behind her ribs unclenched into a bright, spreading glow. He coiled tighter, his tiny tail wrapping her wrist the exact way Exile’s did when he wanted to hold on and pretend he wasn’t.
"Exile," she murmured, looking past Ivan’s shoulder to where the beastman stood near the wall, quiet and attentive. "Can you wrap him for me? One of the soft ones, the blue. He’ll want to be held while his brother finishes."
Exile was already moving, already reaching for the folded fabric on the low table. He gathered the cub in hands broad enough to cradle her whole head and drew the little one against his chest with a tenderness that made her throat go tight. The cub chirped one furious protest, then surrendered to the slow, practised wrap. The jealous hissing dissolved into contentment.
Felicity closed her eyes. Drew a breath. Let the magic rise the way it always did, golden and living behind her ribs, the thing that made her useful, the thing that was only hers. She pressed her palm flat to her own belly and felt the heat bloom outward, felt the torn and aching places knit shut with a searing pull that clamped her jaw tight.
Two more. Two more cubs to bring into this rough, cracked-open world, and she would not do it in pieces.
The magic settled. The exhaustion pulled back, not gone but leashed, its sharp teeth blunted into something she could carry.
She opened her eyes to find Damien at her other side, that yellow slit-pupil gaze steady on her face, his long clawed fingers resting on the mattress edge. She reached for his hand and squeezed. His thumb stroked once across her knuckles, slow, like he had all the time in the world to memorise them.
"Damien." Her words came out smaller than she wanted. "Where are they? Victor and Lucan. They should be back."
Damien’s gaze shifted toward the entrance of her space—the heavy curtain that separated this warm, golden-lit pocket from the rest of the manor. His jaw worked once, the scales along his throat shifting with the motion.
His gaze cut to the heavy curtain that walled off this golden-lit pocket from the rest of the manor. His jaw worked, scales along his throat catching the light with the motion.
"I can go check." Each word was placed with that careful, unhurried weight he gave everything. "But they’ll be back soon. They need to make the area safe. For you." His thumb moved again. "For us. For our cubs."
That word. Our. It dropped into her chest and sent rings spreading outward, wide and slow.
"Even though the cubs are the others’," he went on, gaze returning to hers with a steadiness that made her throat ache, "you are the mother. So they are mine, too." His free hand lifted, brushed a sweat-damp strand from her cheek with a gentleness that shouldn’t have been possible from claws built to open a man’s throat to hip. "They are beautiful, Fel. You did well."
The laugh burst out of her, bright and startled and wet, tumbling from that place behind her ribs where the joy had been building pressure all afternoon. She pressed her forehead to his wrist and shook with it, tears spilling hot down her cheeks.
"You’re going to be unbearable about this," she managed, hiccupping. "Seven husbands are already claiming babies that came out of me for four other men. You realise the maths on this family is genuinely deranged."
His mouth curved, that rare, slow thing that felt like being handed a secret. "I have never been good at maths." A pause. "But I can count everything that is mine. It takes a while."
Another laugh cracked out of her, and she swatted weakly at his chest, and he caught her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles, forked tongue flicking once against her skin in a way that made her toes curl even now, even wrecked and glowing and stretched thin between labours.
Then the pain hit.
It seized her low and deep, a fist closing around the base of her spine, and she ground her teeth until she heard it in her own skull. She breathed through her nose, slow and shaking, and let her hand drift to the cub still nursing at her breast. She patted his soft back, felt the hammering thread of his heartbeat under her palm, and pressed her lips to the crown of his head where the pale hair was drying into something impossibly fine.
"Once he finishes," she got out between breaths, "will you take him? Get him cleaned up, wrap him warm so he doesn’t get cold." She turned her face up to Damien, knowing her cheeks were swimming, knowing she must look ruined, and held his gaze anyway. "Thank you."
Damien nodded. Once. That solemn, certain dip of his chin that meant I have you. I will do this. You are safe.
The contraction crested, and she rode it, crushing Voss’s hand where he still held her from behind, his chest a wall of muscle at her back, his wolf ears angled toward her like she was the only sound in the world. And beneath the pain, the next wave was already gathering, dark and rising, ready to break.
She bore down.
The push tore through her differently this time, deeper, wider, a pressure that felt less like a wave and more like the whole ocean shifting. Her thighs trembled. Her jaw locked. Something about this one was bigger, heavier, the weight of it dragging low in her pelvis in a way that made her breath stutter. She didn’t know why. She didn’t have the breath to ask. She just pressed her heels into the mattress and pushed with everything the healing had left her, and felt Voss shift behind her, felt his arms tighten, felt the wet heat of his tears still cooling against her temple even as his voice went low and steady against her ear.
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