"There’s plenty," she said. "Sit."
He sat. Something in his shoulders loosened like he’d been braced for rejection.
Ash arrived without anyone quite noticing when he simply was there, at the edge of the blanket, close enough to see everything and far enough to take up no space at all, a shortbread already vanishing between his fingers before she’d even offered.
And all around, she could feel it, the way every one of them kept looking at her. Not staring, not exactly, but their eyes returning to her again and again like they couldn’t quite believe it. Like they were checking she was still solid, still breathing, still upright and pink-cheeked and laughing instead of pale and still on a birthing bed with blood soaking through white sheets.
She understood it. She’d frightened them and hell, he’d frightened herself.
But she was here. She was here, sitting on a blanket in dappled shade with jacaranda petals in her hair, surrounded by every person who mattered to her in this ruined and beautiful world, and nothing had ever tasted as sweet as the shortbread crumbling between her own fingers.
"Mama!" Luna’s voice cut across the yard like a bell, and then she was there, throwing herself bodily into Felicity’s lap in a tangle of white curls and flailing limbs, nearly upending a plate of tarts in the process. "Frost said cookies! Are there cookies?!"
"There are cookies," Felicity laughed, catching her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and breathing in the cold-clean scent of her hair. "So many cookies."
Frost arrived a moment behind, more careful in his approach, sliding onto the blanket beside her with the deliberate poise of someone trying very hard to seem grown-up about the whole thing, though his pale eyes were fixed hungrily on the tray of spiced cookies just out of reach.
"You can have one," Felicity told him, and watched the small, private smile break across his face before he schooled it back into something more solemn.
Victor rose without a word, and that was answer enough. Voss followed, then Ivan, and Exile uncoiled from where he’d settled at the edge of the blanket, moving with that slow, deliberate grace that never seemed to hurry and yet somehow crossed the yard faster than anyone expected.
Damien peeled away from the shade of the jacaranda tree.
"Where’s everyone going?" Frost asked around a mouthful of cookie, immediately betraying his solemn composure.
"You’ll see," Felicity said, and pressed her nose briefly against Luna’s curls to hide her smile.
It didn’t take long. She heard them before she saw them, the low rumble of Ivan’s voice pitched soft, the creak of the nursery door, Damien murmuring something that might have been a lullaby if Damien could carry a tune. Then they came around the side of the house in a loose cluster, five grown men who could break bone and end lives moving like they were carrying spun glass.
Exile came first, coils shifted to cradle two small bundles against the dark scales of his chest, and Felicity’s heart did something complicated and enormous when she saw the twins, her panther cubs, black-haired, both with their blue eyes and already blinking sleepily in the sunlight, the other batting tiny fists at the air like she meant to fight the whole world before nap time.
Victor carried the third, propped in the crook of one arm with a care that looked almost comic on a man built for war
Felicity’s breath caught at the sight of him—her wolf cub, hair the same honey-blonde as her own, eyes a bright and startling blue, already trying to squirm his way upright though he wasn’t quite a few days old yet.
And Ivan held the last, tucked against his chest with a stillness that spoke of long practice, small white wings folded against her back, a wisp of white hair catching the light, eyes the same impossible blue as her brother’s.
"Oh," Felicity breathed, and beside her Luna went rigid with delight.
"Babies," Luna whispered reverently, as if she hadn’t seen them a hundred times already, as if this were some sacred unveiling.
They laid the cubs down on the blanket in a neat little row, and for a moment nobody moved, the whole team gone silent and staring the way people stared at something they were afraid to want too much. Then the wolf cub, Teddy- she’d named him Teddy, because he’d been round and soft as a stuffed bear from the moment he was born rolled himself onto his back and let out a delighted shriek at the sky, all chubby fists and kicking feet, and something in the tension broke apart like ice cracking on a pond.
"He’s?" Sarge started, and then seemed to lose the thread of whatever gruff, dismissive thing he’d meant to say, because he was already lowering himself down beside the cub with the careful stiffness of an old soldier kneeling before something he revered.
"Can I?" someone else asked, and then they were all asking, all reaching, and Felicity laughed and waved a hand because of course, of course, this was exactly what she’d wanted; this was the whole reason for the blanket and the cookies and the jacaranda petals still caught in her hair.
Sarge lifted Teddy like he’d handled a thousand babies instead of none at all, and the cub immediately grabbed a fistful of his beard and yanked, delighted, babbling nonsense "bah bah wa wa wa awawawa" like he had important things to report and no patience for anyone who wouldn’t listen.
"Easy, cub," Sarge muttered, though his scarred face had gone soft in a way Felicity had never seen it go, not once, not in all the months she’d known him. The panther twins got passed hand to hand with the reverence of holy relics.
Luna and Frost hovered at the edges, not quite allowed to hold, too small still despite their protests, but no less thrilled for it, crouching low to poke gentle fingers at tiny hands and squealing when tiny hands grabbed back.
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