Her grin widened. That flush crept up her neck, the one her fox ears always betrayed by twitching backward. Voss tracked the movent. His mouth curved a fraction more.
He was getting better at this. The flirting. Still calculated, still layered with that analytical precision that made everything he said sound like he’d run probability models first, but there was heat underneath it now. Real heat.
Ivan materialised on her right, moving with silent purpose. He stood like a wall of scarred muscle and cedar smoke and simply held out a canteen. He said nothing; he never needed to. Felicity reached for it, her fingers curling over his massive hand for a heartbeat before she tipped her face up at him with that look—the one that made a man built like a fortress go completely, catastrophically still.
"Thank you," she murmured, and Ivan’s throat moved once as he swallowed.
"Drink," he managed. Gravel and restraint are packed into a single syllable.
She drank. As a drop of water traced down her chin, Ivan watched it with burning, single-minded focus eyes shadowed, breath caught, the movent tighter than a fist unclenching in a fight.
Victor crossed the distance to the rise in strides that covered too much ground too quickly. He stopped at the base, looking up at her surrounded by his n, by their n, this ridiculous small fox-eared woman who slled of peach and sleep and mango juice, and the possessive burn in his chest was so familiar now he barely registered it as separate from breathing.
"Lucan," he said, without looking away from her.
Lucan was already moving, untangling himself from wherever he’d been lurking, appearing with that fluid, predatory grace and that particular grin that ant he was about to be insufferable.
"Co here, little bunny." Lucan scooped her off the ground and out of Exile’s coils with a smoothness that suggested he’d been planning the trajectory for the last ten minutes. He tucked her against his chest, sweat-damp and radiating heat, and Felicity made a noise that was half protest, half surrender.
"You’re sticky," she complained, even as her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt.
"And you’re perfect." He pressed his mouth against the crown of her head, breathing her in, and his arms tightened in a way that had nothing to do with carrying and everything to do with keeping. "Just making sure the kingdom is ready for its Queen."
"I’m not a queen, I’m a nap specialist. We established this."
"Darling, you could rule this continent from a pillow, and every man on that field knows it."
Damien appeared at Lucan’s shoulder. He said nothing. He simply placed one more mango cube into Felicity’s hand, and when she looked up at him with that drowsy, grateful smile, sothing shifted behind the careful blankness of his expression. A fracture. A hairline crack in all that practised control.
His thumb grazed her knuckle as he pulled away. So light it could have been accidental.
It wasn’t.
From the edge of the group, Ash watched. He’d been there the entire ti, positioned where he could see every approach, every angle, every possible threat between her and the treeline. His dark gaze tracked Felicity’s smile the way it tracked tripwires. With absolute, devastating attention.
He didn’t move closer. He never did.
But the path between the camp and the road to Bowral was already clear. He’d swept it an hour ago, before she woke up. Before anyone asked.
The atmosphere of the camp was still buzzing with the raw power of the duels, but the sudden ripple in space near Victor made every head turn. Two streaks of fur, one shimring silver, the other a crisp, snowy white, shot out of the rift like cannonballs.
Luna and Frost didn’t care about the high-level tensions or the City of Light. They only cared about the scent of jasmine and peach.
"Mum!" Luna yipped, her small fox form blurring as she lunged toward Felicity’s midsection, Frost right on her heels.
Before they could collide with her, two sets of hands intervened with clinical precision. Damien caught Luna mid-air, his grip firm but careful, while Exile’s tail whipped out like a velvet lash to scoop Frost into a coil. Both cubs began to squirm frantically, their tiny claws scratching at the air.
"No," Damien said, his voice like iron ", Down."
Luna’s ears flattened, her big, glassy eyes brimming with tears. "But... Mum! Cuddle! Why is Dad being an?" she wailed, her voice cracking, raw with hurt, echoing through the room and tugging at everyone’s heartstrings.
Frost let out a heartbroken whimper, his tail drooping as he pouted at the ground.
Victor let out a soft sigh and crouched down, his massive fra dwarfing the two cubs. He signalled for the snakes to release them, but as soon as their paws hit the dirt, he placed a heavy hand on each of their heads to keep them grounded.
"Listen to ," Victor said, his red eyes unusually soft. "You can’t do ’rough and tumble’ with her right now. Felicity is... she’s carrying a new life. She has babies in her tummy, you have to be gentle, or you’ll hurt them."
Felicity’s heart shattered at the sight of their trembling lips. She slid wordlessly out of Lucan’s arms and dropped to the dusty ground, her arms open in silent invitation. Luna and Frost scrambled into her lap, but didn’t leap; this ti, they crawled, the wariness in their eyes as raw as Felicity’s ache.
"Oh, my sweet babies," Felicity whispered, pulling them into a tight hug. "I will never, ever love you any less. You’re my first, you’re my big girl and my big boy." She looked at them, truly looking at them. In the eleven months since the beast apocalypse had turned the world into a nightmare, they had grown at a terrifying, supernatural rate. When she’d found them, they were barely 4 years old, in the vault with the others. Now, they looked and acted more like six-year-olds. The new kits would likely catch up just as fast, fueled by whatever was actually happening in the air around them since the collapse.
Luna, the silver fox cub, pressed her face into Felicity’s neck, her small body shaking with the raw, jagged sobs of fear and relief colliding inside her.
’What if she leaves? The thought flickered through Luna’s mind, a dark, cold mory of the day the world broke. She rembered the city rumbling.’
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