The second week of toddlerhood had arrived with all the subtlety of a hurricane made of jam and tantrums.
I wondered if the teeth brushing would ever get easier. Or if bathing would someday resemble something other than a tribal warfare reenactment.
Veylan had finally abandoned his "observe from a safe distance" approach and thrown himself into the chaos, which meant Soryn, Caelion, and my wolf mate now faced the stream together; a united front against four tiny opponents who had discovered they are faster united.
Fingers, as it turned out, were a curse disguised as evolution.
Gone were the days when the cubs simply ran away or bite. Now they could grab. And grab they did. Reeds, fish, each other’s ears, Soryn’s tail; nothing was safe from those chubby, pruny little hands that seemed to possess the grip strength of a fully grown ape.
Atlas had appointed himself official rock collector of the stream, which would have been adorable if he hadn’t also appointed himself official rock thrower. He would squat in the shallows, his golden hair plastered to his head, his tongue poking out in concentration, and select his ammunition with the care of a master sculptor choosing marble. Then he would hurl it at whichever "dada" happened to be in range, cackling with delight as the stone connected with a wet thwack.
"Atlas!" Caelion yelped, clutching his shoulder where a particularly ambitious pebble had found its mark. "We do not throw rocks at family!"
"Why?" Atlas asked, already reaching for another missile.
"Because it hurts!"
"Oh," Atlas considered this, then threw the rock anyway. "Sorry, Dada!"
Meanwhile, Jasper had discovered his true calling as a decorative lawn ornament. While his brothers created chaos, my lazy prince would simply... settle. He would walk into the water up to his waist, lower himself onto a smooth stone, and sit there with the absolute stillness of a meditating monk. His eyes would half-close, his thumb would find his mouth, and he would become one with the stream.
"Is he breathing?" Veylan asked once, genuinely concerned, prodding Jasper’s shoulder.
Jasper opened one eye, regarded him with mild annoyance, and closed it again.
"Leave him," Soryn advised, dodging another rock from Atlas. "He’s not drowning. He’s marinating."
Ryder and Chase had developed a system. They would wait until the males were distracted; usually by Atlas’s artillery or Jasper’s immovable object routine; then bolt for freedom with their little legs pumping and their shrieks echoing off the trees. They would make it approximately four steps before the stones beneath the water introduced themselves to their soft human feet.
"Ow!" Ryder would howl, hopping on one foot, tears streaming down his face. "Ow, ow, Dada, ow!"
"Stones hurt!" Chase would agree, already crying preemptively in solidarity.
And then, as if summoned by the collective misery of their fathers, they would shimmer and shift, collapsing into their golden cub forms with the suddenness of a lightning strike. Four legs instead of two. Paws instead of tender feet. Fur instead of goose bumped skin.
Which meant the game started over.
Because cubs, it turned out, hated water even more than toddlers did.
By the end of the ritual, my three mates would stumble back to our home looking like survivors of a natural disaster. Caelion would be draped in bruises from Atlas’s rock bullets, his silver hair full of mud, fatigue settling deep in his bones as he limped along. Veylan would shake himself like the wolf he was, sending droplets flying in every direction, his fur plastered to his body in defeated clumps when he finally shifted back. And Soryn... poor Soryn would slither along the ground with the posture of a serpent who had been through a war, his scales scratched from being used as a climbing wall by three frantic toddlers and one who took his statue situation very seriously, his eyes holding the thousand-yard stare of a male who had been grabbed and pulled and yanked one too many times.
"Tomorrow," Veylan announced one evening, water still pouring from his ears, "I am building a wall around the stream."
"And I," Caelion added, "am meditating like Jasper. Seems like dealing with him is much easier than the other three."
Soryn simply coiled into a tight ball and pretended to be asleep.
I watched from my lounge chair, munching dried fruit, and thought yes. This was definitely getting easier, since I didn’t have to deal with it.
The afternoon brought visitors, and with them, news that made my heart sing.
Rhonda was at my doorway and Darius stood behind her, looking simultaneously terrified and so proud he might burst into actual sparkles.
"You’re pregnant," I said, not a question.
"I’m pregnant," she confirmed, and then we were embracing, laughing, tears streaming down both our faces. "Moon above, Kyr, I’m actually scared. This is my second pregnancy, and the Beast Gods know I’ve tried with Hendrick and Fern but was never blessed like Layla, who managed to get pregnant with all her mates. I’m a bit rusty, and Darius being a worrywart isn’t helping me much."
"You’ll be perfect," I promised, holding her tight. "And Darius will be there. And me. And I’m sure Fern and Hendrick will be thrilled another litter is coming."
"Thomas and Lark are visiting his family," she added, explaining the empty space beside her where her other mate and son should have stood. "So it’s just Darius and me for now. Well, and this one." She patted her stomach.
"I hope they are safe with your mates," Rhonda said, her voice dropping. "Fern was practically bouncing with excitement, but Hendrick..." She shook her head. "He didn’t want to go. Nearly threw a fit about it."
"Same here," I admitted, rubbing my belly where Leon’s cub grew. "Leon did not want to go. Locked himself in the storage room for an hour like a sulking cub." I smiled at the memory, bittersweet as it was. "But his father and Ravin said he had to. Something about learning the trade routes, about being second in command whether he liked it or not."
Darius cleared his throat. "I’m confident we will be okay." He did not look confident at all. In fact, he looked like he might vomit.
"Of course, I’m sure you both will be." I said grinning at him.
---
Later, when the home was finally quiet, I lay in Caelion’s bed, his hand resting protectively on my growing belly as he drifted into dreams of deep waters.
I rolled over, pressing my face into his shoulder, breathing in the scent of salt and sea. I missed my lion mates. The house felt hollow without Ravin’s constant worry and Leon’s clingy nature, the spaces where they should be aching like an open wound. I worried about them, out there in the cold and the danger, traveling to lands I had never seen. I worried for Rhonda too—both her mates Fern and Hendricks were with the delegation, while Thomas and Lark visited Thomas’s family tribe, leaving her alone with only Darius and her fears for company. I wondered if she felt this same hollow ache in her chest, staring at the empty side of her bed.
But tonight, with Caelion’s steady breathing beside me, with Soryn coiled around our sleeping children down the hall, with Veylan’s wolf-soft presence a warm comfort just beyond the wall, I whispered into the darkness.
"We’ll be alright."
And I hoped; prayed to every god and goddess who might listen; that somewhere out there, Ravin and Leon were safe too. That they would come home to us. That this family, this beautiful, ridiculous, chaotic family, would be whole again.
The moon rose high, silver and watchful, and I finally slept.
Tomorrow would bring more chaos. More salt paste in hair. More rock-throwing. More reed basket sacrifices.
And I would wake up grateful for every single messy, beautiful moment of it.
---
I spoke too soon.
The next day arrived on the back of a wind storm, as if the sky itself had decided to punish me for my contentment. The temperature plummeted overnight, turning the air into something sharp and biting that crept through the cracks in our dwelling and sank its teeth into my bones. I had thought I understood cold. In my old world, I had lived through winters, through nights with central heating, through damp mornings that merely required turning a dial to summon warmth. I was wrong. This was a different beast entirely, a hungry cold that gnawed at my skin despite the furs wrapped around my shoulders.
The cubs felt it too. They were miserable in their human forms, their small teeth chattering, their golden hair standing up with static electricity that made them look like frightened dandelions. Even Jasper abandoned his sleep, choosing instead to cling to velyan’s furs, abandoning Soryn’s coils, burrowing his face into Veylan’s warmth and refusing to emerge. Which I swear hurt Soryn more than he let on.
"Shift back," I urged them, rubbing Atlas’s frozen hands between my own. "Be cubs again. You have fur."
But they were stubborn, too stubborn perhaps, or too proud of their new fingers. They held out until their lips turned blue and their small bodies shook violently. Then, with miserable whimpers, they finally gave in and shimmered back into their golden cub forms, all four of them curling into balls of fur.
The males then turned their full attention to me. They scrambled to build the flames higher, positioning stones to reflect heat, wedging reed mats against the drafty gaps to form a barrier against the wind. They built it all around me, creating a nest of warmth with me at its center, tucking furs beneath me and draping them over me until I was buried in it. I gathered my shivering body into the smallest possible space and let them work, their frantic hands and worried eyes the only thing keeping me from slipping into the dangerous cold that clawed at my edges.
By midday, I was huddled in the corner of the main room, wrapped in every fur we owned, and still I could not stop shaking. The wind howled like a living thing, rattling the thatch, sending stray leaves and debris spiraling through the gaps in the door. My teeth chattered so hard I was certain they would crack. My pregnancy made me feel the cold doubly. The life inside me seemed to draw all warmth to itself, leaving my extremities numb and useless.
Veylan watched me from across the room, his silver eyes tracking the tremors that ran through my body. He had been restless since dawn, pacing, his wolf nature agitated by the storm, by the scent of prey driven to shelter, by the protective instinct that saw his mate suffering and could not abide it.
"I’ll return," he said suddenly, rising from where he had been attempting to repair a drafty window.
"Return?" I managed through chattering teeth. "Veylan, you can’t go out in this. You’ll freeze."
"I’m used to the cold, believe it or not," he said, a small smile touching his lips. "Winter wolf, remember? Northern tribe? This is practically a spring breeze where I come from."
I stared at him, my frozen brain trying to process this. Of course. He was built for this, born in snow and ice, his wolf form thick furred and fearless in the face of storms that would kill lesser beasts. It still didn’t stop my heart from clenching as he stripped off his tunic.
But he was already shifting as he moved, his form flowing from man to wolf in a shimmer of silver and grey. The massive beast that stood in his place shook out his fur, gave me one long, determined look, and then he was gone, leaping through the door that Caelion barely had time to open, disappearing into the white, grey chaos of the storm.
The hours crawled by. The wind screamed. The cubs, curling into balls of golden fur that I tucked against my sides like living hot stones. Soryn wrapped himself around us all even when he hated the heat, his serpent body a wall of muscle and scale that blocked the worst of the draft. Caelion kept the fire stoked, his hands moving with desperate speed, his eyes darting to the door with every gust that threatened to extinguish the flames.
I tried not to worry. I failed.
When the door finally burst open, I thought for a moment the wind itself had broken through. But it was Veylan, Veylan in his wolf form, his silver fur plastered with snow and blood, his sides heaving with exhaustion. And across his back, dragged with teeth and determination, was a creature I did not recognize. It was massive, shaggy, with a coat so thick it looked like it could swallow a sword.
He dropped it in the center of the room with a wet thud, shifted back to human form, and promptly collapsed to his knees from exhaustion.
"Veylan!" I tried to rise, but Soryn held me in place with a coil.
"Stay warm," the serpent hissed. "He will live."
And indeed, Veylan was already waving off Caelion’s attempts to wrap him in furs, his eyes finding mine across the room, bright with triumph despite his exhaustion. "For you," he managed, his voice rough.
He had hunted through that storm, hunted for hours, tracking, chasing, killing, while we huddled by the fire. For me. For the cub growing in my belly. For the warmth I needed, and he could not provide with his own hands.
Caelion and Soryn set to work helping Veylan, skinning the creature with the efficient speed of males who had done this a thousand times. The hide came away in one massive sheet, thick and shaggy on one side, raw and bloody on the other. They scraped it, stretched it, and worked it with stone tools.
When it was finally ready, or at least as clean and softened as they could make it in so little time, they lifted the hide from its frame and draped it over me.
I sank into the warmth almost instantly.
The thick fur surrounded me like a cocoon, trapping what little body heat I had left until the trembling in my limbs slowly began to ease. I pulled it tighter around my shoulders, tucked the heavy hide over my legs, and buried my face in the dense fur.
It had not been fully cured yet. Beneath the scents of smoke, cold air, and wilderness lingered the faint metallic trace of blood, a reminder that only hours ago, this warmth had belonged to something living.
Somehow, I did not care.
All I could think about was Veylan. The hours he had spent skinning, scraping, cleaning, and working the hide because he had seen me shivering and decided that I would not be cold again.
Wrapped inside that rough, imperfect warmth, it felt less like I was wearing an animal hide and more like I was being held by his determination.
"Thank you," I whispered, reaching out to touch his hand where it rested on his knee.
He turned his palm up, squeezed my fingers with a strength that belied his exhaustion. "You stopped shaking," he observed, and there was such profound relief in those three words that I felt my heart crack open.
The storm raged on outside, but I was warm. The cubs had crawled onto the hide with me, making nests in the fur, their small bodies finally relaxed. Soryn coiled around us all, adding his warmth to the pile. Caelion sat close, his hand on my ankle, his presence a steady comfort.
And Veylan, my newest mate, my wolf, the one still finding his place, settled on my other side, his head resting against my shoulder, his breathing evening out as the heat of the fire and the hide and our bodies lulled him toward sleep.
We’ll deal with whatever happens tomorrow.