We made camp on the last rise before the coast, the air already tasting of salt and the vastness of the sea. Tomorrow we would reach the Mer folk clan, but tonight we were still land bound, still surrounded by trees and earth and the familiar chaos of family.
My older cubs had enjoyed the wilderness, probably because they were the same age as my new litter was now, all gangly limbs and boundless energy and absolutely no sense of self preservation. They chased butterflies into bramble patches. They tried to climb trees that were clearly too thin to hold them. They attempted to "help" hunt by sneaking up on squirrels and then shouting "SURPRISE!" at the top of their lungs.
The squirrels were never surprised.
Since the older cubs failed at getting us dinner, the daddies had to hunt to make sure we had food. Ravin and Leon returned with two fat rabbits and a grouse, looking smug about their success while Atlas and Ryder sulked about their failure.
But it was bedtime that truly tested the limits of parental sanity.
I swear, the weirdest sleeping duo in the history of sleeping duos was my little Jasper and Soryn, my serpent mate. Every night, without fail, Jasper would wriggle his way into Soryn’s coils, tucking himself into that scaled embrace like a pearl in an oyster. The problem was that Jasper was getting too big now, his body stretching longer every day, his bones turning from puppy softness to gangly adolescent angles.
Soryn’s coils were running out of room.
"Ow," Soryn hissed this night, extracting himself from the tangle with difficulty. "Jasper, my love, my precious cub, you must sleep in your own furs tonight. Dada Soryn’s spine is not meant to bend that direction."
Jasper, half asleep and utterly unimpressed, simply grabbed Soryn’s tail and pulled, wrapping it around himself like a blanket. "Comfy," he mumbled.
Soryn looked at me with the desperate eyes of a male being slowly crushed by affection. "Help," he mouthed.
I laughed into my hand and turned away.
Even I could not lift them anymore when they were in their beast forms, not when they decided to become a single, writhing unit of stubbornness. They were too big, too heavy, too solid with the muscle of approaching juvenile age. But when they shifted to their human forms, they looked about six to eight years old, all gangly limbs and knobby knees, and were much easier to deal with in that state. I could scoop them up, redirect them, actually win in strength once in a while.
And they had become cautious with me now, ever since the Incident.
Just last week, Ryder had come running to snuggle me, his face alight with joy, his body a furry missile of love. He had knocked me clean off my feet. I hit the ground hard, my head bouncing off a rock, and ended up with a bump the size of a goose egg.
Ryder had been distraught. Absolutely devastated. He had cried harder than I had, his whole body shaking with remorse, his nose pressed against my cheek as he wailed his apologies.
"It’s okay, baby," I had said, patting his back while stars danced in my vision. "Mama is fine. See? No blood."
"But I hurt you!" he had sobbed. "I am a bad cub! A monster!"
"You are not a monster," I had insisted, though I was seeing double and my head was pounding. "You are just... enthusiastic."
Ravin, hearing the commotion, had arrived with his stern face on, the one he usually reserved for warriors who had disobeyed orders. "Ryder," he had said, his voice like gravel. "You must consider your weight. Your mother cannot shift like us. She is not strong. You could have seriously injured her." He paused, his expression softening slightly as he looked down at his trembling son. "If you want to run into her arms and embrace her, do so in your man form. She can bear that weight. She cannot bear a lion cub barreling into her like a boulder."
I had blinked up at him, cradling my throbbing head, not entirely sure if he was trying to help or insult me. But Ryder had nodded solemnly, his tears slowing as he absorbed the lesson, and I supposed that was what mattered.
"Did you just call me weak?" I had asked.
"I just said you are not strong," he had clarified, which was not better.
But after that, the cubs had become almost comically gentle in their beast forms. They approached me like I was made of glass, touching me with the lightest of paws, asking permission before they hugged me, checking my temperature with their noses as if I might shatter at any moment. It was sweet. It was also deeply annoying.
In their man forms, however, they were the same as always. Rough and tumble, loud and chaotic, all the energy of six to eight year old boys with none of the caution. They would crash into me, grab my hands, demand to be swung around.
Now I looked at my cubs, all of them settling into their various nests and piles, and we all readied ourselves for bed.
Leon was determined tonight. His daughter, Levara, had spent the entire journey clinging to me, ignoring her own father with the kind of deliberate snub only a one month old could perfect. But Leon wanted her. Desperately.
"Come, little one," he rumbled, shifting into his lion form, his golden fur catching the firelight. "Sleep with Dada tonight. I am warm. I am soft. I am..."
Levara looked at him. Then she looked at me. Then she looked back at him.
And she climbed onto his back.
Not his side. Not his belly. His back. Like he was a piece of furniture.
She kneaded his fur with her tiny paws, sharp claws coming out to test the give of his skin, scratching and clawing until she had arranged his fur to her satisfaction. She turned three times. She flopped down. She began to purr.
Leon winced. His tail twitched. His ears flattened. But he did not move. He lay there, stiff as a board, his daughter’s personal mattress, and the look of absolute bliss on his face would have been heartbreaking to interrupt.
"She is using you as a scratching post," Soryn observed from his own painful entanglement with Jasper.
"She loves me," Leon said, his voice strained but triumphant. "She chose me. She is sleeping with me."
"She is sleeping on you," I corrected.
"Same thing," Leon insisted, though a particularly sharp knead made him gasp. "I am her favorite. Obviously."
Sikai and Niku, seeing their sister’s success, abandoned their own sleeping spots and toddled over to Leon, climbing onto his belly, his legs, anywhere they could find purchase. They loved their dad’s attention, loved the warmth of him, the rumble of his purr.
But Leon only had eyes for Levara tonight, since this was the first time she had slept with him. His sons usually slept with him or gave him attention, but his daughter had always preferred me.
"What a silly lion," I whispered, settling into my own furs, surrounded by the chaos of my family.
Soryn, finally freeing one arm from Jasper’s grip, reached out and took my hand. "We are all silly," he said. "Silly and blessed."
"Speak for yourself," Aureon muttered from the other side of the fire, where Atlas had decided he was the perfect pillow. "I cannot feel my legs."
"Goodnight, my loves," I said, closing my eyes on the madness.
"Goodnight, mama," seven voices chorused, followed by Leon’s pained squeak as Levara found a particularly tender spot to knead.
Yes. Blessed. And bruised. And absolutely, ridiculously happy.
---
We continued the journey until we reached another stream, wider than the others, its waters running clear and cold from the mountains. I remembered this stream. We had passed it on our way to the fish tribe nearly a year ago when my first litters were a month old, what felt like a lifetime ago. We were almost there now, almost at the sea, and the knowledge made my bones ache with relief.
I looked at my family, at the dirt and sweat and travel stains that marked us all, and I made a decision. "We bathe here," I announced. "All of us. We will not arrive at the Mer folk clan looking like dirty travelers."
The cubs cried of the unjust. My mates groaned. But they began unpacking the soap and spare cloths without argument.
Levara and I claimed the upstream shallows for our own, a quiet eddy where the water ran gentle and warm from the sun. She sat on a smooth stone, regal as a queen, and allowed me to wash her fur with the same patience she had shown since birth. We talked, or rather I talked and she listened, her dark eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that made me feel like the most interesting person in the world. Daughter and mother, bonding in the quiet, away from the chaos of brothers and daddies.
Downstream, the boys were having their moment. And it was, as I had predicted, not a breeze.
I could hear the shrieks from where I sat, the splashing, the laughter, the occasional yelp of pain. Atlas had discovered that he could splash higher if he used his tail like a whip. Ryder had decided that Caelion’s back made an excellent diving platform. Chase was trying to catch fish with his bare hands and failing spectacularly.
And Aureon, my poor, patient Aureon, had been pulled into the chaos for the first time. The cubs had discovered that the white tiger could be climbed like a tree, and they swarmed him, using his fur as handholds, his tail as a rope, his back as a launching pad. By the time I finished with Levara and made my way downstream to check on them, he looked like a prune, his energy completely sucked dry by their unmatched, relentless vigor.
"They never stop," he said, his voice hollow, his eyes slightly glazed. "I thought I was fit. I thought I had stamina. I was wrong."
"Welcome to parenthood," I said, patting his shoulder. "It gets easier."
He looked at me with the eyes of a male who had seen things. "You are lying."
"I am absolutely lying," I confirmed.
We quickly dressed. It was about a mile out until we reached the sea, and I couldn’t wait.