Another shape moved along the fence line, broader than the first, unmistakably steady in the way it stood, not pretending to walk past at all.
Sarge. Of course it was Sarge; the man didn’t have the decency to pretend he wasn’t looking, just planted himself there like a fence post, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the window with the kind of discipline that probably cost him something.
She could practically feel the effort it took him not to turn away.
She let her arms drift up, wringing water from her hair, taking her time about it. Let them look; she’d carried five babies at once and come out the other side with a body that still made grown men forget how to speak; there was a petty, delicious satisfaction in that.
She wasn’t giving her heart to anyone new, wasn’t about to add an eighth name to a list that already stretched her thin in ways she was still learning to manage, but there was no harm in a little shameless preening. She was allowed that much. She’d earned it.
The giggle came out before she could stop it, bright and a little wicked, swallowed by the drum of water against tile.
Then the thought crept back in, unbidden, the way it always did when her hands were busy, and her mind wasn’t watched closely enough.
Maddy’s men, out past the property somewhere. The zombies that were supposed to have been cleared from the town. Those generals, cold, mist-wrapped, unreadable, that she still hadn’t decided whether to fear or simply endure.
She breathed out slowly, tipped her face back into the spray, and let the thought that hurt the most rise up last, the way it always did.
Lucan. Where are you? I miss you so much; your babies are here.
The water ran hot down Fels’ spine, and for a moment she just stood there, feeling small in a way she hated, wishing he’d walk through the door and prove her wrong.
When she finally shut off the water and reached for the towel, the air outside the glass had gone quiet, Sarge’s shape gone from the fence line, and whoever else had been lingering along the path vanished back into the trees as if they’d never been there at all. She wrapped herself, wrung the last of the water from her ears, and pushed open the bathroom door on a cloud of steam.
Exile was already there.
He didn’t say anything at first, just looked at her the way he always did, like she was something rare he still couldn’t quite believe he got to keep. Then he crossed the room in that slow, deliberate glide of his, coils shifting beneath the loose drape of his clothes, and kissed her long and unhurried, one broad palm sliding up her damp back to settle between her shoulder blades.
"Good morning, Fel." His voice rumbled low, more felt than heard.
She smiled against his mouth, let herself lean into the solid heat of him. "Good morning."
He kissed her again before she could pull back, slower this time, and when he finally drew away, his amber eyes had gone soft in a way that made her chest ache. "Good morning, Mummy," he murmured, forehead resting against hers. "Thank you. For our son. For all of them."
Her ears twitched, warmth crawling up her throat that had nothing to do with the shower. "You’re welcome," she said, voice cracking a little around the edges. "I love them so much already, Exile, it’s...it’s a lot."
"You are tired." Not a question. His hands smoothed down her arms, steadying. "I can dress you. Carry you."
She laughed, soft and a little wobbly. "I can walk, I promise." She caught his hand before he could argue, held it against her chest. "I’m okay. Just—overwhelmed. Happy overwhelmed. But so many cubs, Exile. I don’t know how we’re going to manage feeding them all, sleeping them all, keeping them all safe at once." She hesitated, worry creeping back in around the edges of her voice. "And Luna and Frost. I’m scared they’re going to feel replaced or forgotten."
Exile’s mouth curved, the movement nearly invisible, a flicker of patience so absolute it seemed outside the bounds of ordinary time. "They were grumpy this morning," he said, listening as if the words themselves mattered less than the hush between them. "Everyone busy with cubs, no one free for playtime or stories." He let her absorb it, his thumb tracing slow, deliberate circles over her knuckles, so light she could barely tell the difference between his touch and her own pulse beneath the skin. "But you saw Teddy. Toddler after one night. The cubs will not stay small. Soon they run beside Luna and Frost, and there is no jealousy, only chaos."
He meant it to comfort, she knew that. But comfort today was a hard thing to hold onto. His words left her aching with the peculiar weight of knowing what came next—and wanting, impossibly, to slow it all down. The world outside kept shoving forward. Bodies changed, children grew, the old rules got rewritten by teeth and hunger and the plain animal need to survive. Sometimes all she wanted was for one moment to stay soft and slow and small.
A world where Luna laughed with a mouth full of cookies. Where Frost still held on to her sleeve when the wind howled sharp down the road. But Teddy would wake tomorrow with words, and the new cubs would outgrow her arms.
Her face crumpled around the sadness before she could stop it, just a flicker, a small pinch at the corners.
Exile saw. Of course he saw. He noticed everything, even the tucked-away places she was certain she’d hidden.
He drew her in with a slow, sure pull that made her throat go tight, his nose burrowing into the damp hollow of her shoulder.
He breathed her in like she was the one fixed point in a shifting world—like the smell of her, sweat and the eucalyptus-rosemary that had rubbed off his own skin onto hers, could hold him steady against the undertow. His hands moved down her back in careful, unhurried lines.
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