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

Chapter 481 - Puppy Photos & Moving In Mama

A/N: Thank you for enjoying my story up to this point!

Well, obviously if you are a caught up reader at the time of this post, you know that it’s been a couple weeks without a new Chapter.

Struggling to find time and focus lately, have been for months~

I can make no promise about getting back to a more frequent release schedule at this time - but I haven’t given up on finishing the story I wanted to tell.

...It just might come in more sudden Chapter spurts like today when I’m happy with a set of them. With any luck my lovely readers (you all, yes you) will be happy with the eventual results too!

- - - - -

The fifteenth pose was better than the fourteenth, but not as good as the eleventh. Asha was awake on the white rug I’d set him on, stretched onto his belly with his nose tilted up toward me.

One tiny clawed paw kept twitching into the fur of the rug like he was testing its texture. Until he rolled onto his side with his other paw curled under his chin, and I was *certain* that would not last long enough for me to find the right angle.

So I just took as many as I could, while moving my wrists around as if I was tracing the shape of an invisible globe around him. At the distance which kept the best amount of my son in the scene.

His mouth opened in a tiny yawn, which was arguably better than any pose. I tapped over to record video and waited to see if he would do it another time. And waited.

The phone in my hands felt even more... foreign than it should have. It’s only been a month without using it. Then again, I only really made use of it in the first place for a little over a month.

> I guess that’s just the three hundred and some odd notifications I’d half-skimmed making it feel heavier than before. <

All of them had been stored in the network’s memory. Lunarizon’s Lodestone system held onto every message even before the regular cellular networks went down.

Claire had explained it to me a bit ago, when she noticed the traffic and device reconnecting. How all data was routed to ’clones’ at the tower first before ever going to the actual devices.

> Like letters left in one of the hunter’s dead drops. That the recipient forgot to check on until now. <

Those five weeks... all of it happened without me. To the people I can claim to care about enough to have bothered Annexing. And all of it could have happened *with* me around, if I hadn’t been so certain.

That my isolation was the only safe choice for the labor.

Yet, the child is healthy. No matter what it cost others or myself. That part is true. No guarantees exist inside what-ifs. Hindsight is a trap that makes a lot of assumptions and seeks perfection.

Instead of a harmony that can be lived with.

"Doesn’t exactly make it easier to read about the past, though."

I give up on capturing his yawn on film, for now. Sitting here and waiting - *wallowing* - is the last thing I need to do. Knowing that Asha will be perfectly fine where he is without me hovering, I walk into the power providing container still just... sitting in her living room.

And I began to sort.

Books I’d bought and mostly read by now went onto the shelf, beside hers. The archery equipment I practiced with in the cave so much leaned against the wall in the corner. Though I’d need to find a better place for it.

"...Maybe in her room. I wonder if she’s completely happy with her old bed. Should I just put this one in the nursery...?"

My stock of toiletries went into the guest bathroom. Though a few things went into her master bath as well. Bins of my clothing pushed and stacked near the closet, until we figure out something regarding sharing space.

I make plans to put the shelves where they might be of use to me still. Perhaps a couple in the kitchen on the other floor. And one I do take into her room.

On it, I sit almost all of my treasures and armory - both things taken from the hunter’s caches and things collected at other times. All the coins and metals, the jewelry box I bought from the pawn shop and its now filled content of trinkets, most of it functionally meaningless now.

> But I couldn’t bring myself to discard them. Even if most of it would never be useful to Asha. <

Whether Kyrie would read into things when she walked in and saw all this was something I tried not to think about too carefully. She’d either understand and say nothing... or she’d ask and I’d say nothing.

Thinking ahead to either option made my stomach do very unhelpful things. So I just sat down and took video of Asha stumbling around in... our home.

Until my phone buzzed and I made myself look at what my protégé had finally sent in reply to me messaging earlier that I’d turned the phone on.

Z: [hey so someone named ginzaburo showed up for dinner here being pushed in a wheelchair by that reina woman from tsukisushi and then he and edgar both told me to thank you for that weird thing we have now where we dont feel cold]

Ah. Because of something the system does without my even thinking about it, they’d asked her to pass along their thanks. It feels a bit unnatural to be appreciated for it, no matter how central of a conduit I am to the effect.

"However, it’s something I’ll have to get used to. I just have to think about the masses without it. Knowing it’s a thing people would be jealous about makes it simple enough to accept their thanks."

At least, that’s how I try to convince myself. While sending Zoé a message back.

C: [Tell them they’re welcome. If they want, they can get into contact with Martha Callaway. She is going to have access to enabling things like that in the future.]

My head tilts as I hear the elevator start to engage. Considering it only has a few access points and should be officially just for a few people...

C: [You can work with her on that too. After you get permission from your mother. And if you feel the need to be helpful.]

Z: [okay]

Z: [thanks]

After a few fidgeting seconds, I send her a photo of Asha and pick the pup up. It’s probably just Kyrie coming up. But it pays to be safe.

Also if it is her... I just can’t. I really can’t!

"Goddesses, I put all my stuff everywhere with hers. What in the nineteen hells was I thinking? There’s nothing subtle at all about it, is there!"

The black ball of fluff in my arms hears my panic.

...And yawns. The cute little bastard.