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

Chapter 484 - [K] The Answer That Breaks A Link, But Not A Chain

***[POV: Heart-Aching Alpha]***

The question I’d asked had been simple. I thought. Why did you stop last night?

Not the things she was doing to me. Though the memory of it kept trying to surface in my thoughts Ever since we woke up.

Even while I was trying to stay focused on her answer. It had been the most ’generous’ night she had ever given me. Something to savor for the next few days.

What I’d meant was the other stopping. The moment where she came back after feeding Asha. When she curled on top of me and I told her how I felt again.

Her teeth were on my collarbone after she asked me to repeat it. And I literally felt something pull between us straining. Different from how it felt to be drawn to her.

For a brief moment I felt how much she was drawn to me.

And watched her choose the restraint over the completion. Again.

So I’d asked, after we both cleaned and got dressed. After I’d fed her son. Without an edge to the question, just a feeling of curiosity.

And somewhere in the half-hour of fox kingdom details, the answer she assured was coming had turned into a story about her brother. An older one, named Ravi.

I hadn’t tried to steer us back the whole time. Because whatever this was, it was more than she’d ever given me.

To cut her off and ask only for the version of the answer I’d actually wanted? Unthinkable. I’m not sure I’m the person she needs to talk things through with.

...But I am her mate. No matter what.

So I listened. To the words. To their tone. The way her voice had gone flat when describing the years after this sibling had purportedly rejected her whole existence.

Yet, it doesn’t stop her from picking and smoothing at the sleeves of the red shirt she’d picked out for today. As I asked careful questions. The kind best meant to understand.

When had it happened? What exactly did he or others say?

She’d stared at the wall above my shoulder. Instead of at me. Particularly when explaining what it felt like to realize that someone could just decide that there were reasons of some sort worth ignoring her for sixteen years.

Conditions, she called them. Went on a short tangent there. In the way of speaking she took when she didn’t trust herself to improvise.

Clear to me because words even had the same rhythm the next times she referenced them. As if she’d recorded the lines a long time ago and mastered how to recite them.

Which means they must be far blunter than what would actually cut her coming out. I know her enough to understand she protects herself that much.

The flatness wasn’t an absence of feeling. A few times, something raw slipped through anyway. A word choice that was a little too specific with a nose or eyelid twitch.

...And each time it happened, her next sentence came out more controlled than the one before. Which left me wanting to howl at the injustice of it all.

At what others let her go through. No matter if it might have been what led her to me.

Wanting to find this golden fox and make him understand what he’d broken. Wanting to pull her into my arms and promise that I would never - could never - make a choice like he had.

She looked wrung out by the end. Dry-eyed... she’d never cried. But incredibly *dulled* as her hand runs through her own hair. Even less vibrancy than after she’d just given birth.

I knew I should leave it there. Should just thank her for trusting me with this part of her. Hold her if she’d let me.

Instead, I looked inside. To the questions that had been sitting in my chest for over a month. Given a much sharper form after I’ve listened to this.

Doubt, ever since she took off from this very apartment. To go den alone. To bear the child alone. Without trusting me to be there.

"Did you think that will happen with us? Do you think that now? Is that what you’re saying?"

Her gray eyes lifted to mine. As intelligent as the day I met her... and just as wary as that day.

"Yes."

No hesitation. No softening. Just the truth. As she saw it. Even after everything.

After nearly dying in that blizzard. After she called me reliable. After I’ve held her son and hoped to stand between her and every threat that could come her way.

She still thinks... I’m going to leave? Still this certain in her belief that *everyone* gives up if the price is too right or too wrong.

I stood up from the bedside then. Looked down at her sitting there, legs pulled up to her chest. Looking smaller than Citra Lomdi truly is.

Like a fraction of herself that hides the whole of her. I turned my face away before I did or said something I’d regret. Grabbed Asha on the way out, deciding she needs time to herself today.

And walked into the elevator without another word.

Wondering if she was going to chase me down to find him.

Or just be confident he is safe with me right now.

Because no matter what she just told me, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe she actually thinks there is a ’condition’ that would ever let her abandon her son by her choice. Even eventually.

"...I didn’t grab him for that pretext... right?"

⧖ ☾ ❄ ☽ ⧖

The room had reinforced walls for a reason. Me. I’m the justification for the expense.

I remember that when I hit the heavy bag hard enough that the specially made chains squealed on the hook. Again. And again.

My hands had ’shifted’ partially at some point. I realize when I reach out and full-stop the wild swinging training equipment.

My claws shred through the canvas. Not because I was done working this out.

Because of a scent. A realization that I’m failing in my duties.

Luca had appeared in the doorway. Watching the rubber mulch spilling across the floor. Still much too far away to bolt toward Asha where I left him in sight.

Yet, my guard had still been too down. And this is how she must have felt. Every moment since she arrived and learned she was pregnant.

Insufficient. In danger. On guard.

Wariness in her eyes. Underneath her skin. In her bones.

He didn’t say anything as I stared his way, but not *at* him. Just started setting up a bag in another spot.

One designed for a full werewolf’s contact, rather than the one for an Omega that was already hanging to take my anger.

"Want to talk about it?"

He asked after I began pacing. Trying to get myself to breathe through the bit of... unsolvable fury and irrational hurt.

Family in another world, in the past, but effects that persist right now. That hurt her right now.

My foot lashes out and kicks the ruined heavy bag, tearing it further.

A mess is a mess is a mess.

"No."

Starting to count to ten in my head, I rethink my belief that it was just my wolf that was always responsible for *this*. For I knew that I wasn’t perfect. That I had my issues.

But I’d been so very, very calm since I expelled it. And I’m starting to realize that the times I let it push me on, that the things I’ve done to maintain control of this pack... were far more revealing of me than it.

"Want me to call for some sparring partners?"

Yes. Is what I want to say. I want to fight. Until I’m too exhausted to feel this way.

Need it to be useful. To go out and hunt those people eaters waiting in the Sandhowl pack.

Or the group living under Chad Duskpaw’s control, before he targets her again.

Only, that would be leaving here. Leaving her. Proving her right, even for a moment.

...Not like leaving the apartment when I did, or how, was all that much better.

"Not yet. Can’t afford Rimecoat injuries. Our people area already pushing their limits."

Checking my watch, I realize I have only fifteen minutes until the morning meeting. The one I’d agreed to with the remaining Vossden government body.

Something about complaints that the floor I’d given them to work from isn’t enough. That the share of compute Claire allotted them from connection to Lodestone servers weren’t enough.

Rations aren’t enough. Space isn’t enough. Food plans aren’t enough. Rescue operations aren’t enough.

I wasn’t enough to solve the problems dropped on me all at once.

...

But when has that ever made me give up? If she thinks I’ll look away from her eventually, I can believe things, too.

Hold the market position that others seem to want to bail from. With a cold, patient logic that the business world has taught me since I ventured inside it.

"Start giving me a rundown of today’s problems. Treat it like the usual triage Claire has you do."

"In the lobby... actually, I don’t think I want to say."

"What is it?"

After glancing toward the child I’d picked up, Luca closes his eyes and clears his throat. My Beta is rarely so avoidant. So it must be bad.

We don’t need bad. But maybe I do need something to solve, if I can.

"Security said Citra just made a scene. Then dragged three other women into the elevator. All different pack wolves."

"Oh? Is that all?"

"...Alpha?"

His voice shakes. Like it usually does when I smile this calculating way. The person I’m supposed to trust to physically stop me if I lost my mind.

Oh well... he never did like being a part of corporate strategy meetings. Which is why he heads Lunarizon’s security.

"She’s fine, then."

"But-"

"If she didn’t leave the tower, it’s fine."

"Uh..."

"It’s. Fine. Lets go parley with the humans again. It will make them feel better."

If the CEO looks like they are worried, everything quickly falls apart. Same if the pack leader seems like they don’t trust their mate.

And time has shown me that there is a payoff to trusting her. In a different sort of uneven way than she trusts me.

A return that always tastes, feels, and looks like my broken princess.

If you squint at the fragment she shows you. On any given day.

From minute to minute.