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

Chapter 466 - [K] Not Just A Nice Stand-In To Hug

The quiet as I just stood and held onto her was the kind I’d spent too long not knowing I wanted. Though maybe it was better I never knew? Until she had become possible.

I’m quite certain I am enjoying it, but my wolf would have been very restless in it. Reading her stillness for signs of flight.

Urging me to calculate the odds she’d bolt if I let go. Feeding me impulses to hold tighter so she can’t disappear on me again.

But now it’s only my own feelings on those things - and they aren’t nearly as loud. Though they exist. They *certainly* exist.

Perhaps at the level of the sound of a computer’s cooling fan system. A thing you can come to ignore through the workday.

Instead of a person standing at your desk, making verbal demands and smashing documents on the table. Figuratively.

There was a reason my desk was made of a fairly crush-proof material. And it wasn’t because it was *my* hobby to break things and people when I was angry.

"What are you thinking about?"

One of her hands drifted to my forearm. Not holding it exactly, but resting on it the way you’d glide your hand on a bannister.

The sort of thing you trusted to hold your weight if you needed to press down.

"How nice this feels."

The tip of her ear went extra warm against my jaw quite quickly. I know this because I’d managed to figure out how to do what she said that she can do.

Intentionally subdue the system’s Augment. Turn off the Tolerance, as she says. It was actually much easier than wrangling the wolf spirit.

And it allows me to feel her warmth directly. Especially when she goes and sheds that impossible ideal temperature herself. Like she told me this morning she like to do when held...

"Don’t say unnecessary things."

One side of her hair, put up in that style she loves, was trapped between our necks. My chin lay across the black strands... and smiling at the sound of her insistence, I find myself rubbing the spot she’d left on me against her.

And attempt to hold back asking if she wants one too. Again. I don’t want to be pushy.

"I’ll try to contain myself. Though I think it’s needed for me to say it. So you don’t forget I like it too soon."

"You just said it was nice this morning. My memory is not so terrible as that?"

Hearing the inflection, the smile on my face expands.

"Asking or telling?"

"...I hate you."

"I love you."

Asha made a sudden noise in his sleep shortly after I said that. Citra makes no noise at all, just shivers and leans more weight on me. My face might actually start hurting if it gets stuck in these smiles.

...Though I might toss my own aside, if she can keep one on a little more than she does. I haven’t forgotten that she claimed she would decide things again after a week of being here.

Letting me mark her, naming her son, telling me she would help, negotiating with the covens regarding her Chosen powers... I want to believe all of those things mean she is finding herself settling into a normal.

That she forgot or never really meant to hold onto that limit she set for herself. But I have to do everything I can to make her feel welcome and safe. Both of them.

"I spoke with Luca earlier. About the Pineheart pack members trying to organize a religion around our son."

"So you heard what Sue said..."

"No? I trusted you fully, there was no need to eavesdrop on private conversations. And I told Claire I didn’t need to know anything that you wouldn’t tell me."

Maybe I should admit I also suggested that Claire still had permission to use her own judgment to help my mate. In whatever trouble she may or may not know she is getting in yet.

A continuation of the policy already in place from before the Apocalypse began. Not because she is more important than before, but because she’s just as important as ever.

Her hand on my forearm tightened down. Strong and completely flipped from letting herself be soft in my arms. She tugs and begins to take a step, and I sync with her.

"Sit."

Not leading me to a chair at the table, but just the corner of the kitchen. Past the playpen she brought in. Far enough away to face the door without being immediately seen.

Why do I find that cute? Her little overthinking, wary actions.

"Now wh-"

After I have my back uncomfortably between the walls, she hands Asha to me before I can finish my sentence and steps away quickly. If this was a few days ago, I might have been worried.

Maybe could have fully mistaken the motion for handing me her son so she could run away for good. But now I only recognize the possibility and honestly don’t care to believe it.

"Haven’t been out of this room in a couple hours. I really have to pee. Watch him, I’ll hurry right back."

Besides, if she did run, I’d just chase her again. I don’t think I’d even be mad. But I don’t think I’ll get to learn that.

When she got to the door she paused with her hand on the handle. Turning around, her grey eyes light up brightly in that new lilac as she looks at me.

"I like being hugged by you, but we should really try to moderate it. No more than... once during midday. Or else they’ll stop being special and start feeling like a crutch."

Out the door without waiting for me to respond. I hear the sound of her feet slapping against the tile. At a pace that certainly suggests she really needed the bathroom.

Or really wanted to get back to me, which makes me laugh.

"Ah... your mother... she really is so precious. Intelligent and strong. Weak and silly."

His dark lashes didn’t even flutter at my voice. Still sound asleep and warm against my chest. I shifted him around a bit, just to see the total disregard for the world in his slumber.

The pup that isn’t mine, even if he is.

I’ve been carrying that thought for a long while now. Surprisingly, it’s one of the few things that bothers me more than it ever did my own wolf.

Perhaps because the man responsible for half of what he is... deserved worse than what I gave him that conclave night. A man I’d never choose to share a room or anything with, let alone a child.

And yet when I look down to him, I cannot find the... *seam* that I feel should exist. The place where what I feel for her child is supposed to be different from what a biological parent feels.

I’ve looked. In the early days around him especially, while I was recovering from the hypothermia stress. I thought it would arrive eventually - a limit to my patience or willingness.

Just some kind of sudden internal boundary showing itself that would remind me that I was merely helping. That I was acting as the generous Alpha who chose to accept the whole package and was actually only in it to win the vixen.

It never came.

What came instead was a long night in that cave, around those sheltering humans. Where I realized I’d been counting his breaths to pass time while being vigilant. Instead of hers.

That the specific pitch of his hungry cry produced a physical response. My arms would move as if I could do something for him, before my thoughts caught up. Though not as quickly as she does when he alerted to be fed.

"And she’s just an excellent parent so far. I’ll try to match with her, okay?"

An answer had already been living in me. In the way I hold him now. In the way I know which sounds coming from his little stomach mean approaching hunger and which just mean gas...

Before she returned and took him, I pressed my mouth against the top of his head and breathed him in. He still mostly has the milky scent about him, but my imagination sometimes conjures something else.

The sound of feet returning on tile grew louder. Not quite running, but quicker than needed.

"She’s going to be embarrassed enough. About how fast she came back. Grow up quick so we can tease her together, hm?"