Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)

Chapter 460 - Cat Lives + Magic Number = Missing Time

"Lodestone flagged your query to me. I’m supplementing after it answers."

The speaker on the monitor system activated, letting Claire’s voice come through. As if she’d been waiting for a moment to insert herself into a conversation she had never expressly been invited to.

Right before her own... child of sorts, begins to speak in that artificial tone.

"Database result regarding hidden identifiers on entities: Rimecoat operational records include three documented cases over the last forty years of supernatural beings whose Alias has been observed to be disparate from a so called true name. Hunter network members suspect this property is adjacent to certain non-werewolf supernatural creatures, though information on this is labeled as anecdotal or conjecture."

That... was the computer’s limited contribution. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe to just directly tell me the man was... I think the European culture here called them ’unseelie’? But the system *is* telling me he is human - and Claire’s addition made my claws retract.

"I’ve had a file on Webber since he moved into the tower. It’s thin because there’s genuinely nothing expressly concerning in it. His background checks out as far as any human’s would. Where he was born, the degree he got in college, work history experience. No gaps, no inconsistencies."

"So you’re saying I’m panicking for nothing?"

Most of the witches seem to think so. Michelle peaked out from between her arms as Martha says something to Webber in a language I don’t know.

> Dylech chi ddweud wrthi. It’s a good thing I have a mindscape’s ear for this. So that I can memorize a phrase I have no idea how to translate. <

Sounded possibly... Celtic? I really wish I knew more about this world’s languages. Helene studied about a lot of things when she was younger, but learning a full second language was not one of them.

"You are known to do panic. And make decisions that are questionable. And run away from protection, help, and all sorts of other things that are good for you. In fact, if he was dangerous you’d probably be more likely to run right into his clutches."

"I’m worried that I’m already in them!"

My eyes cut to the man in question, who had the wickedness to only look mildly sheepish about all of this. With his hand raised, I back up again... and start to sit down in the playpen with my son.

"You will tell me something that sets my mind at ease, or this meeting is over with."

I didn’t direct that at just him, but at the room. Frankly, as long as anyone could tell me he was fine in a way that I believed it, I would be okay!

"Database result regarding numerological meanings: the number nine holds significance across multiple mystical traditions archived within Rimecoat operational records. It is associated with completion and cyclical returns in several folk practices. Debunked hunter field manuals note it as a primary identifier for magic associated with fairies and elves. Modern human practitioners tend toward prime number distributions."

"Hear that? You’ve been debunked."

Dr. Mei seems to smile after speaking, before her mouth was covered by the hand of another. Martha shook her head at the other woman and sighed. Confirming that they’d all known.

"Additional result outside of bounds of query: In mathematics, any whole number which is factorable by nine can have its constituent digits added together until eventually collapsing again into the number nine. This happens because nine happens to be the final digit in base-10, with similar quirks appearing in-"

"Alright. Ending that query. When it thinks you want to learn math, it can really talk."

"...Thank you."

Remaining seated, I start stroking my son’s head without blinking. Because I needed a moment to separate what I knew from what I feared. The calm and ease I see over at the table, despite stories Helene knew about stealing human children and replacing them with fae, confuses me.

Or then there is the tales from mine, with entities that used the breaking of sometimes very arbitrary and malleable rules of Maya itself to justify their malevolence. Asuric rākṣasa & rākṣasī

, feral yakṣa & yakṣiṇī... these and more were some of the ’fae’ of my world.

> And the ones that were not nice, were *not* nice. <

The trickster and death deities of our pantheon oddly were not evil themselves. In fact, the fox part of me even respected the trickster gods and goddesses a lot. But their darker aspects, taken to utter extreme by beings operating to pervert the spirit of the world, had always been something I didn’t understand why they allowed.

A trait that carries over here.

"Webber’s nature has been known to the local covens for-"

"No, I’ll say it. When I was a child I witnessed something either by accident or trick. An elf dance during a misty morning, that felt like only a few hours of watching the most beautiful creatures dance."

"So beautiful that you never took a wife."

A barb, it seems, from Michelle. Who no longer cowered where she sat, but is looking in my tea pot like it contains something she is interested in. Despite being allergic to a material within it.

I shake my head and try and focus on what he just admitted to. Elves... well, honestly I don’t know much about the difference between them and the fairies of this world. If there is one.

> It does seem like their varied paganisms mixed in and recontextualized themselves a lot across many cultures as information became shared more commonly... <

But if it is music and dancing, then perhaps something closer to ghandarvas & apsaras

.

"I’d rather have taken none, like I have, than stop at thirteen as you have."

"It’s a good number. I’ve learned my lesson at it."

"Please, you two. Ms. Lom- Mrs. Voss is still over there looking like she wants to pick up her son and bowl right past us. Can you stay on topic for a little while?"

The chicken witch I trusted before now tries to help matters. But with the question marks I ignored before, she is kind of on my list of suspicious people now.

"Alright. Where was I? They danced, a few hours... but when it was over, it turned into me wandering back out of the forest on my own. Only to find ninety-nine years had passed."

More and more it sounds like what I know from my world. Minus the appearance of their celestial city, within the mists or sky, as the boundary between realms became thin.

"How does that explain what I’m seeing and not seeing?"

"Well, after figuring out my entire family was now gone, I obviously went back to the forest to try and see if I could get back. There I met an avatar of the Solar God."

> Like Mira was for the Lunar Goddess. <

"He told me my true name and told me to protect it. So that I at least wouldn’t fall prey to the tricks of spirits whom I normally could not see, ever again."

Lucky, if true. That means he is blessed like I am, but of a different deity. Explains why Martha would trust him.

"And I have. Kept it safe. The only people that know the name Holunder are in this room."

The moment he speaks the term, or concept, or *whatever* it is... I feel a tug at my own divine spark. Feel how he just opened himself up to me magically in a way that the mystics of my world might have called foolish.

He just looks at me as I look back. Like I’m looking at a fool. Like Dr. Sue Mei is looking at him as well. Martha pointedly does not look and Michelle... well, she’s inching toward the cupboards.

"Oh. It means elder in German, but like the tree. Or shrub. Or berry. Neat."

Claire speaks this over my technology, again. The woman who would blackmail anyone.

He is so... so...

"Screwed tight, isn’t this?"

I cover my face as the strange woman speaks, trying to get into my sealed jar of chicken bone broth, for some reason...