Voss’s chest tightened with sothing fierce and protective, a pull below his ribs, sharp as a blade’s edge. The image of her sitting there, soft and round with their children growing inside her, those golden ears perked in mild curiosity when they walked through the door.
He was going to build a wall.
No, a moat and a wall.
No. He was going to ask Victor to simply eat anyone who ca within fifty ters.
"For the record," Marx said, his composure cracking just enough to let sothing raw bleed through, "if a single one of those idiots gets close enough to see her smile, we’re going to have a body count that makes the apocalypse look like a mild disagreent."
Voss didn’t respond.
He didn’t need to.
They both walked faster.
anwhile, in a two-story townhouse on the east end of Bowral, Maddie was bored.
Not the idle, comfortable boredom of a woman content with her lot. This was the sharp, gnawing kind that sat behind her ribs like a splinter she couldn’t dig out. She lounged across a velvet chaise salvaged from so dead boutique on Bong Bong Street with one leg draped over the arm, a bowl of grapes balanced on her stomach. The fruit was sweet. Overripe. A luxury that nine tenths of Bowral’s population hadn’t tasted in months.
Ten of her husbands crowded the room, and the noise of them was a low, constant hum that she’d long ago learned to tune out. Gregor, her wolf, her second favourite, was rubbing her feet with calloused hands, murmuring sothing about the supply run tomorrow. Marcus, the bear, stood by the window cleaning his rifle with thodical strokes. Two more were arguing quietly about guard rotations. Another was attempting to read to her from a book with half its pages missing, his deep voice a pleasant rumble she wasn’t listening to.
She plucked a grape, rolled it between her fingers, and popped it into her mouth without looking.
Boring.
Sixty husbands. Sixty males who would tear apart anyone who so much as glanced at her wrong. Her top ten all sat comfortably in the seventies, massive power levels that made the settlent’s defence force look like children playing with sticks. She’d given birth to a cub already. A male. Strong. Healthy. Proof of her fertility, her worth, her supremacy in a world where won were so rare they were practically worshipped.
And yet.
The General had denied her the manor. Had told her with that infuriating calm, that look that the townhouse was more than sufficient for her needs. She still rembered the heat in her cheeks, the way her claws had extended without permission. She was pregnant at the ti. Carrying the future of Bowral’s strongest bloodline, and he’d put her in this cramped, drafty building like she was so common...
The front door slamd open.
She didn’t move. Didn’t even look up. But the room went silent that instant, the electric silence of sixty beasts catching a scent they didn’t recognise.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Heavy. Desperate.
A man she vaguely recognised, one of the lower tiers, a dog breed, sothing with mottled brown fur and anxious eyes, burst through the doorway. He was panting, his chest heaving, sweat darkening the collar of his shirt. His tail hung low between his legs, and the sll of him, fear and exertion and sothing sharper underneath, hit her nose like a slap.
"Maddie!" he gasped, bracing himself against the doorfra. "News, big news."
She turned her head slowly. Tilted it. Let her gaze travel from his muddy boots up his shaking legs, over his heaving chest, and finally land on his face.
The death stare she gave him could have frozen lava.
"This," she said, her voice flat and quiet in the way that made even Marcus stop cleaning his rifle, "had better be the most important thing you’ve ever said to ." She let the silence stretch. Let him feel it. "Or you’re sleeping outside tonight. In the rain with the mutts."
He shuddered. Full-body, tail tucking so hard it disappeared between his legs. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.
"Uh... s-so it’s about the new female. The one you wanted to keep an ear out for?"
Her interest flickered, barely. She set the bowl of grapes aside and sat up straighter, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. "Spit it out, then. I don’t have all day."
The dog-beast coughed, looked down at the floor, then back up at her with that pathetic, hopeful wag starting at the base of his tail. "She’s a fox, and she’s blonde. And she’s- she’s pregnant, Maddie. Already carrying."
Sothing cold moved through her chest. She stilled. Completely. Not a breath, not a twitch of her ears. The fire in her eyes banked, then flared a blaze that turned her amber irises molten gold.
"Well." The word ca out asured. Controlled. The kind of control that took effort. "I suppose that happens. As long as there are no girl cubs in there, it’s fine." She waved a hand dismissively, but her claws were out, pressing crescent moons into her palms. "And she’s probably scarred. Ugly. Half-starved from the road. They all are."
The dog-beast shifted his weight. His tail had stopped wagging. "Also—" He swallowed again. "Also, she’s staying at the manor. The General put her there. And I heard her husbands are quite strong. Like, strong strong."
The room temperature dropped.
Maddie stood.
She stood slowly, the way sothing dangerous stands, every muscle uncoiling with deliberate, terrible grace. The bowl of grapes hit the floor. Fruit scattered across the hardwood like green marbles, and no one moved to pick them up.
"What?" The word cracked like a whip. "In the manor?"
Her voice climbed. Sharpened. Beca sothing that made Gregor step back from her feet.
"The General wouldn’t let stay there." Each word was a blade, honed and placed with precision. "I was pregnant. I was carrying the strongest bloodline in this entire godforsaken settlent, and he put in this? this hut!" She gestured wildly at the townhouse, at the peeling wallpaper, at the water stain on the ceiling she’d stared at for months. "And so fox waltzes in off the road and gets the manor? Pregnant? With strong husbands?"
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