I looked at my cubs, it had been a week since I had brought them into the world, and it still felt surreal to imagine myself as mother to these four demanding creatures. Atlas, my firstborn, was already showing signs of the leader he would become, his golden fur slightly darker than his brothers, with a strip of thicker mane running from his forehead to between his ears that looked remarkably like a tiny mohawk. He studied everything with serious concentration; his head cocked at angles that suggested he was solving the mysteries of the universe rather than watching a leaf fall.
Ryder, the second, never stayed still. Not for a single moment. He was a golden blur of constant motion, always active, tumbling over his siblings, scrambling toward corners, attempting to climb walls with an optimism that far exceeded his ability. I had yet to see him sleep for more than ten minutes without something waking him to fresh enthusiasm.
Chase was the greedy one, appropriately named, though the thing he chased most was my nipples. He would elbow his brothers aside with shocking ruthlessness for one so small, latching on with the determination of a cub who believed the milk might run out at any moment. He was plump even by his brothers’ standards, his belly round and distended, his tiny paws kneading my skin with possessive urgency.
And then there was Jasper, my smallest, my lazy boy. Jasper slept. That was his primary activity, his defining characteristic. While his brothers wrestled and explored and demanded attention, Jasper would find the warmest spot, curl into a tiny golden ball, and drift off with a contented sigh. He only woke to nurse with brief, efficient interest before returning to his slumber, as if the effort of being awake was simply too much to bear.
They were the size of house cats now, having apparently decided that growing twice their birth size in seven days was a reasonable goal. It was crazy to imagine myself with these cubs, these four individual personalities that had come from my body. They were hungry little beasts, and my nipples were so sore, particularly thanks to Chase’s aggressive nursing style, that I had taken to applying cool cloths between feedings with religious devotion.
My mates were such great helpers, each in their own way. Since Leon was technically their uncle but also their father through his bond to me, he had claimed them with fierce pride. He loved them with abandon, playing with Ryder until the cub collapsed in exhausted heaps, which took considerable doing. He would roll Atlas’s mohawk this way and that, declaring him "the most serious cub in all the village" while Atlas stared at him with grave patience.
Soryn, on the other hand, also seemed to like the cubs, though his relationship with them remained chaotically endearing. When they climbed on him, he would shift his tail around to adjust their weight, which inevitably sent Ryder or Chase tumbling head over paws, but he would lift them immediately, checking for injury with frantic hands. Jasper he simply let sleep on his coils, the warmest, safest bed imaginable, which was an irony since Soryn was of a cooler temperature, yet the lazy cub seemed to find his presence perfectly soothing. Soryn would sit perfectly still for hours rather than disturb Jasper’s rest, his serpent’s patience finally finding its match in a sleeping lion cub.
I could not ask for better mates, truly. They were attentive, loving, and completely devoted to Atlas, Ryder, Chase, and Jasper.
They were also, unfortunately, incredibly impatient.
Since the cubs were born, I had not been intimate with any of them. Ravin understood, his patience infinite, his kisses to my forehead gentle and free of expectation. Soryn did not question me, accepting my boundaries with the same fatalistic calm he applied to most things.
But Leon.
Leon wore his sexual frustration like a banner. His face was practically a billboard announcing his needs, his dark eyes following me with a hunger that grew more obvious by the day. The guy was telling me with every expression, every stretched muscle, every huff of breath, that he was sexually frustrated and counting the days until my body healed.
As much as I understood their needs, I also needed to rest. I had pushed out four cubs, four whole lives, and my body was still knitting itself back together. I needed to heal, and they would simply have to wait.
Ravin and Leon’s parents adored their grandchildren. Their mother swept into our home with armfuls of furs and dried meats, scooping up the awake and wriggling Ryder and Chase before anyone could protest, while their father gently lifted the sleeping Jasper, cradling him with a tenderness that suggested he remembered holding his own cubs. Atlas sat nearby, his mohawk bristling as he watched with serious eyes, judging the newcomers with the gravity of a tiny elder.
Even their half siblings Marcus and Lyle came to see the new additions to the family, the young males awkward at first but quickly melting under the assault of four pairs of curious eyes and batting paws. Marcus let Ryder climb his leg while Lyle lay on the floor allowing Chase to knead his stomach in search of milk, the young lion laughing as the greedy cub nosed at his makeshift shirt I made in confusion.
It was chaos, beautiful and exhausting and entirely ours.
---
"Ravin," I whispered one evening, my fingers tracing lazy circles on Jasper’s round belly where he lay sprawled across my lap, his purrs rumbling like a tiny engine. "When will our cubs start to talk? I want to hear their voices."
Ravin looked up from where he sat with Atlas, our firstborn’s mohawk bristling as Ravin stroked it flat only to watch it spring back up. "They will begin talking after four moons from their birth," he said softly, his deep voice gentle. "Small words at first, simple sounds. But they will not shift until six moons have passed."
"How long is six moons?" I asked, trying to calculate in my head.
He tilted his head, thinking. "About one hundred seventy seven days. Nearly half a year."
He paused, his hand stilling on Atlas’s head, and something shadowed his golden eyes. "Their first shift is painful. Excruciating, even. It is what every beast goes through, the body learning to hold two forms, the bones remembering how to bend and reshape."
My heart clenched at the thought, my hand pressing protectively over Jasper’s sleeping form. The idea of my babies in agony, of Atlas’s serious eyes clouded with pain, of Ryder’s boundless energy stilled by suffering, of Chase’s greedy appetite silenced, of Jasper’s peaceful sleep broken by torment, it hurt more than I could express. I would have taken the pain for them if I could, would have borne it ten times over to spare them.
"I will be there," I said fiercely. "For all of them. Every moment."
Ravin’s smile was sad and knowing. "You will not be able to take it from them, Krys. But you will be there. That is all any parent can do."
Leon had taken it upon himself to solve one of our more immediate problems, the nighttime chaos of four cubs in one sleeping space. Ryder kicked. Chase elbowed. Atlas sprawled with the confidence of a king. And Jasper, poor lazy Jasper, always ended up pushed to the edge, tumbling onto the floor with a soft thump, yet somehow remaining asleep through the entire indignity.
"I cannot watch it anymore," Leon had declared one morning, scooping Jasper from the floor for the third time, the cub blinking confusedly before immediately falling back asleep in his arms. "My poor Jasper always ending up on the floor. It is because they are crowded in one space."
Using his woodcraft talent, Leon spent three days carving and sanding, shaping four small beds from soft pine, each with raised edges to keep the occupants contained and padded with down and fur for comfort. He presented them with a flourish, his chest puffed with pride, and I had kissed him until he forgot why he had been sexually frustrated in the first place.
Soryn and Ravin, meanwhile, had transformed the small extra room into a nursery, giving me my own sleeping furs so that I would never be far from my cubs. I had never had a room to myself before, always sharing with my mates in the rotating schedule of our bonding, and the luxury of private space combined with the presence of my babies made me happier than I could express.
"I can sleep," I told them, my eyes filling with tears as I looked at the four small beds arranged in a semi-circle around my own larger nest. "I can actually sleep near my babies."
Soryn had coiled around me then, his cooler temperature soothing against my still healing body. "You deserve space," he murmured. "And they deserve their mother close. This works for both."
It was perfect.
"You will be sleeping with us still, right?" Leon asked.
"Let me sleep with our cubs until I fully heal," I said. "Once I am fully healed I will start our rotation again. There are seven days in the week. So the first three days I will rotate my sleeping arrangement with the three of you, and the next four days will be with our cubs. Does that sound good?"
"But that makes our time short," Leon whined. "In the week I get to be with you two times. Now it would be only one. If you are doing that."
"I have her three days out of the week which reduces to one," Ravin told him. "You do not see me complaining, Leon."
"But brother, still,"
"Stop whining, you stupid lion," Soryn cut in. "Krys wants to be with the cubs. We should be good mates to her during these times."
"Do not act like you do not feel the way I do," Leon grumbled.
"No, I do. But I also know how to be patient and understanding. Unlike you."
"Come on now, guys. Not in front of the cubs," I scolded them.
Leon just pouted in response.
The outing to the stream came three days later, when the weather turned warm and the cubs were restless from confinement. We packed cloths and oils, intending to give them their first proper bath in the cool, shallow waters where the current ran gentle.
The rebellion began the moment they saw the water.
Atlas dug his tiny claws into the earth, his mohawk bristling with outrage, refusing to move another inch. Ryder squirmed in Leon’s grip, twisting like a fish on a line, determined to escape toward the trees. Chase bit Soryn’s finger when the serpent tried to adjust his grip, and Jasper simply went limp, playing dead with the commitment of a born actor.
"Come now," Ravin coaxed, crouching to their level, his voice patient and reasonable. "The water isn’t to cold. It will feel good on your fur. You will be clean and comfortable."
"Clean is good," I added, holding Atlas as he tried to squirm away, his tiny paws batting at my chin. "You will feel much better after. No more itchy spots."
They were not convinced.
Ryder managed to escape Leon’s hold and made it three steps toward the tree line before Leon snagged him by the scruff. Chase’s protests had escalated from whimpers to full throated wails that surely carried back to the village. Atlas had wrapped his front legs around my neck and was clinging with the desperation of a drowning creature, despite being nowhere near the water. Jasper had opened one eye, assessed the situation, and closed it again, apparently deciding that if he pretended hard enough to be asleep, the bath would simply go away.
"They are not going to cooperate," Leon said, breathing hard from wrestling Ryder.
"Perhaps if we," Ravin began.
Soryn moved.
His tail, usually so carefully controlled around the cubs, shot out with serpentine speed, wrapping around all four of them in a single coil. Before any of us could react, he lifted them, swung them over the bank, and deposited them with a collective splash into the shallowest part of the stream.
The wails that followed were operatic in their tragedy.
Four golden heads broke the surface, sputtering and coughing, their eyes wide with betrayal and shock. They paddled instinctively, their tiny limbs flailing, but the water was only deep enough to reach their bellies, and they were in no danger of drowning.
I rushed to the bank, my heart hammering, ready to leap in after them, but they were already wading toward the shore, shaking themselves with indignant vigor.
Ravin turned slowly to face Soryn, his expression thunderous. "You. Dumped. Our. Cubs. In. The. Water."
Soryn shrugged, the picture of serpent nonchalance. "Problem solved."
"They are wet," Ravin said, his voice dangerously controlled.
"They are clean," Soryn countered. "And they are no longer fighting. Efficiency."
Leon had already splashed into the shallows, gathering the cubs to his chest, cooing and fussing over them with theatrical sympathy. "Awe, you poor things," he crooned, rocking Chase and Jasper together while Atlas and Ryder clung to his legs. "Daddy Soryn is a big meanie. Are you okay? Did the bad water scare you?"
The cubs cried in reply, a chorus of indignant mewling that seemed to translate to yes, we are traumatized, save us from the wet monster.
I looked from my drenched, wailing sons to my unrepentant serpent mate to my furious lion mate who is the father, and to my over dramatic mate, and I laughed.
I laughed until my sides ached, until tears streamed down my face, until even the cubs stopped crying to stare at me with confused, waterlogged expressions.
"Come here," I gasped, holding out my arms. "Come here, my wet, miserable babies. Let your mother dry you off."
They came, all four of them, stumbling over each other to reach me, and I gathered them in a pile of damp golden fur, their hearts hammering against my palms, their tiny bodies shivering until I wrapped them in warm cloths.
Soryn coiled nearby, watching with hooded eyes, and when Atlas glared at him with particular severity, the serpent actually had the grace to look slightly contrite.
"Next time," he said quietly, "I will warn them first."
"There will be no next time," Ravin growled.
"There is always a next time," Soryn replied. "They are cubs. They will need many baths."
And despite the glare Ravin shot him, despite Leon’s continued dramatics, despite the four soggy bundles of indignance in my arms, I found myself smiling.
My family. Perfect, chaotic, entirely mines, and I’m so happy.