Dimitri leaned out of the armchair, drawn forward like gravity had picked a side, one big hand reaching toward her, not for Harry, just for her, the curve of her shoulder, maybe, or her knee. Some point of contact he’d clearly been rationing himself against for the better part of an hour.
His hand never made it.
No sound. No light. Just the faintest shimmer in the air over Felicity’s chest, there and gone before she could be sure she’d seen it, and Dimitri’s fingers stopped dead an inch from her skin, as if he’d walked into a pane of glass nobody had bothered to warn him about. He blinked. Pressed forward again, testing. The same springy resistance met him and pushed him gently, firmly, back.
Harry did not unlatch. Did not open that sliver of an eye a fraction wider. His tail, dark and small against the blanket, gave one slow, smug twitch, and that was the only confession he offered.
"Did..." Dimitri drew his hand back and studied it as if it had betrayed him. His words went hushed, almost reverent. "Did he just cast a spatial shield? To keep me off his lunch."
From the window, Ivan’s low rumble rolled out, entirely unbothered. "Or he wants his mother to himself." Weighted with what might have been approval. "Can’t fault the boy’s priorities."
Felicity peered down at the small black bundle clamped to her, the laugh already fizzing low in her chest and refusing to be swallowed. "Harry." She tapped one finger against the tiny black nose, and it wrinkled, deeply insulted. "Be nice to Daddy Dimitri. He only wants a cuddle too."
Harry did not look sorry. Harry looked, if anything, like a man who’d fought a war and won it, tail curling once around her forearm, staking a boundary, before going still.
"You know," Dimitri said, still cradling his rejected hand like it was evidence, "I’ve been shanked, shot at, and thrown off a moving truck, and this is the first time I’ve been served a restraining order by something that can’t hold its own head up."
That did it. The laugh broke loose, bright and undignified, and Felicity had to press her lips together to keep from jostling Harry mid-meal.
But Dimitri went quiet then. He sank back into the armchair, that bounced hand still held loose in front of him, and when she glanced up, his red gaze had gone bright and glassy, fixed on her with a look she’d never caught on his face before. Not smug. Not restless. Closer to disbelief, like she’d set something in his palms he’d never let himself want out loud.
"Daddy Dimitri," he repeated, low, turning the shape of it over.
"That’s what I said." Her mouth curved, soft, and her chest pulled tight in a way that owed nothing to milk or soreness. "Unless you’d rather I take it back."
"No." Rough, too fast. He cleared his throat, and the second attempt came steadier, though that stunned brightness never left. "No. I... that’s good. That’s- yeah."
She tilted her head, hair sliding off her shoulder, and let her own gaze hold his the way she rarely let herself with him, the man who argued and teased and never once treated her like she’d crack. "You went through all that trouble arguing you didn’t need a place here," she murmured. "And now you’re getting shielded out of one by a two day old."
His throat worked. He reached again, slower this time, not for Harry’s territory but for the loose strand of blonde at her jaw, tucking it back with a knuckle so careful it made her breath catch. Cedar and rain and the clean sharpness of him filled the space between them.
"He’s got the right idea," Dimitri said, quiet, thumb grazing the peak of her cheek before he made himself withdraw. "Wanting you to himself. I just don’t have the range to enforce it yet."
Felicity’s face went hot, her ears betraying her with a hard flatten, and she ducked her chin toward Harry to hide it—which fooled no one, least of all the man watching her come apart from three feet away.
From beside her, Voss made a low sound that might have been a laugh, smothered fast against the crown of Tilly’s head.
Tilly, fed and heavy with sleep, had gone slack against him, and Voss’s shoulders had that loose set they only got when nothing in the room was actively trying to kill anyone. Small mercies. Felicity counted them where she found them these days.
"Laugh it up," Dimitri muttered, but there was no heat in it, and he’d gone back to watching her with that same soft, stunned look, like he hadn’t decided yet whether to trust it.
She shifted Harry against her, careful of the tender place still healing low in her belly, and felt the pull of exhaustion drag at the backs of her eyes even as her mind kept trying to run laps around the room, counting cubs, counting husbands, counting doors. Five children. Six men holding this house together with their bare hands and no sleep between them. She could feel it in the air, that low hum of strain nobody wanted to name out loud.
"You should eat something," she said to Dimitri, because it was easier than saying you look like you haven’t slept in three days, even though he hadn’t- she was fairly sure, not properly, not since Bowral had gone quiet again.
"I’m fine."
"You said that yesterday too."
Felicity moved back to her bed to get comfortable again, then took a deep breath, just waiting for the next wave to hit.
"It was true yesterday too." He said it like that settled it, arms crossing over his chest, red eyes flicking toward the door the second a floorboard creaked somewhere down the hall. His whole body angled toward the sound before his mind seemed to catch up—shoulders tightening, weight shifting forward in the chair like he might come up out of it in one motion.
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