The moment Victor’s face shifted from relieved that she was awake to something heavier, Felicity knew the news would not be good. She pushed up on her elbows too fast, and the room tilted sideways, her body still raw and hollowed out from labour.
"Where is my wolf son?" Nobody answered right away. That was the first sign the world had gone wrong. Six of them stood crowded in the doorway like a wall of muscle and feathers and fur, and not one of them would meet her eyes properly.
Victor’s jaw worked. Voss had his arms crossed so tight his knuckles had gone pale. Exile’s tail coiled and uncoiled against the floorboards, a slow, anxious metronome. "He’s fine," Victor said, too fast. "
He’s safe. But. "But what?" Her ears, still tender and heavy atop her head, flattened back hard enough to hurt. "Victor. Where is my son?" Ivan stepped forward, mist curling faintly off his shoulders as though he could not help it, as though his power leaked out whenever he was rattled.
"Little fox. Something happened while you were sleeping. We need you to stay calm." "I am calm." She was not. She could hear her own voice climbing, thin and sharp, and she hated it, hated the way her tail had already curled tight against her leg beneath the blanket. "I am extremely calm for someone whose husbands are standing in a doorway looking like someone died. Nobody died. Tell me nobody died."
"Nobody died," Damien said quickly, sliding past the others, dropping to a crouch by the bed so he was below her eye level, which only frightened her more because Damien never made himself smaller for anyone.
"Fel. Sweetheart. Look at me. He’s alive and he’s healthy. "
Then bring him to me." She was already trying to swing her legs off the bed, wincing at the pull of healing muscle, and Exile was there instantly, coils sliding warm and firm around her waist, not quite holding her down but making it very clear that rising unassisted was not an option.
Voss’s jaw tightened, and his stance settled, careful and deliberate, the same stillness he wore when he was trying to defuse something before it detonated. Which meant this was a detonating sort of situation. Which meant she was about to lose her mind. "Hear what." Her hands had started to shake. Somewhere in her chest, something hot and electric was building, the buzz beneath her skin that meant her power was listening to her fear and getting ideas of its own. She looked toward Voss, though it was Victor she spoke to, needing someone, anyone, to explain. "I gave birth hours ago. I held him. He was this big," she held her hands a foot apart, her voice cracking,
"he fit in one arm, he had Frost’s little snub nose, and now you’re all standing here like... like..."
"Half a night," Ivan said. Everyone turned to look at him. He did not flinch, did not soften it, only stood there in the doorway with his arms crossed and his weathered face set like stone, because apparently subtlety had left the building along with everyone’s nerve.
"Ivan," Voss said, a warning growl beneath it. "She wants it straight, give it to her straight." Ivan’s grey eyes did not leave her face. "Kid went from newborn to walking, talking toddler. Overnight. Maybe less." The room went very quiet.
Felicity heard herself laugh. It came out wrong, high and cracked, nothing like a real laugh at all. "No. That’s not possible." She looked at Victor, because Victor would tell her the truth even when it was terrible; that was one of the things about him, and his face did not change, did not soften into a joke, and the floor seemed to drop out from beneath the bed. "What do you mean, toddler?" she said, her voice gone very small. "What do you mean, walking? He was born last night. I was there. I felt every second of it. I don’t, that doesn’t..." Her hands found the blanket and twisted it, fabric bunching in her fists, because she needed something to hold onto that was not the room spinning. "Someone start making sense. Right now. Or I swear to god I am walking out of this bed and finding him myself, healing or no healing, and none of you is stopping me."
"We’re not stopping you from seeing him," exile said, low and careful, stepping around Ivan’s bulk. "We just needed you sitting down first. Because it’s, it’s a lot, Fel. He’s not a newborn baby anymore. He looks like he’s one, maybe close to two. He’s got teeth. He’s got words." "Words," she repeated numbly.
"He said ’mama’ about an hour ago," Damien said, and his voice actually shook on it, which frightened her more than anything else in the room. "Looking right at the door you were behind. Like he knew." Her ears had gone flat against her skull and stayed there. The electric feeling beneath her skin surged, and the lamp on the nightstand flickered, glass rattling faintly, and Exile’s coils tightened around her instinctively, a wordless breathe, little one, breathe.
"I need to see him," she said, her voice breaking clean in half on the last word. "I need to see him right now. I don’t care what he looks like, I don’t care if he’s ten feet tall, I need... Victor. Please." She hated how much she sounded like she was begging. She hated that her eyes were burning, that a giggle was trying to claw its way up out of her chest right alongside the sob, some horrible nervous reflex she could not control. "Please, someone bring my baby to me before I lose my mind."
Victor crossed the room in two strides and knelt in front of her, taking both her shaking hands in his, his thumbs pressing hard over her knuckles as though he could physically hold her together. "Okay," he said. "Okay, little fox. We’ll bring him in. But you have to promise me you’re going to breathe when you see him. Can you do that for me?" Her gaze locked on his as the lamp flickered again, and somewhere down the hall she thought she heard, impossibly, terrifyingly, the high clear sound of a child’s voice.
"I can’t promise anything," she whispered. "Just bring him to me."
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter