"You know, Voss..." Felicity trailed her fingers through the thick silver fur at his neck, her cheek pressed against the broad warmth of his back as he carried her through the forest. The smell of pine and cold stone clung to him, mixed with that particular clean musk that was just him. "I wonder what our cub will look like."

The massive wolf beneath her went absolutely still. Mid-stride. One paw suspended above the frozen ground like the world had stopped turning.

Felicity’s fox ears flicked forward. She felt the shift in his breathing, the way his ribs expanded and held, the tremor that passed through muscle dense enough to crush bone. Her tail curled against his flank, and a grin tugged at her mouth.

She’d broken him.

The great strategic mind of Snow Team, the man who planned seven moves ahead in every fight, who could calculate enemy positions while half-asleep, was reduced to a statue by eight words.

"Voss?" She pressed her palm flat against his shoulder. "You still in there?"

A sound rolled up from his chest. Not a growl, not a rumble deeper than both. A resonance that vibrated through her belly and settled somewhere between her hips. His head turned, just enough that one molten gold gaze caught her from the corner, and the raw want in it made her breath hitch.

He started walking again. Slower now. Each step measured and heavy with intention, like he was carrying something infinitely precious and had just realised it.

"Whatever our cub is," he said, and his tone had dropped into that register, the one that made her thighs clench involuntarily, the one he usually reserved for murmuring filthy things against her throat in the dark, "will be the most devastating creature this world has ever produced."

Felicity snorted, "devastating."

"Mmm." Another step. The forest moved around them, but she barely noticed "wolf, of course, and your stubbornness. My mind." A pause that felt deliberate enough to be theatrical. "Poor thing won’t stand a chance at being ordinary."

Her hand slid lower, resting over her abdomen where the faintest swell had begun to change the landscape of her body. Something fluttered there.

Voss’s stride faltered again. Just barely. A hitch in his gait that told her he’d noticed where her hand had gone.

"You’re going to be insufferable about this," she said, and her cheeks burned because she already knew the answer.

"I’m going to be meticulous about this." His tail swept once behind them, a controlled wag he’d deny later. "Nutrition schedules. Rest rotations. Defensive perimeter adjustments for the house we make."

"It’s a few babies, Voss, not a siege."

"Every baby is a siege." He turned his head fully now, and the look he gave her, gold burning low and steady, mouth pulled into that barely-there smirk that made her want to bite him, held something so fierce and tender it stole the air from her lungs. "You made me a father, Felicity."

The way he said her name. Full and complete. Like it was the only word in any language that mattered.

Her throat tightened. She buried her face against his fur, inhaling pine and frost and the faint metallic tang of his magic. "You helped," she mumbled against him.

"Extensively." The smirk was audible now. "Repeatedly with great enthusiasm and..."

"Voss."

"—dedication to thoroughness."

She smacked his shoulder. He chuffed that deep, vibrating sound that was pure wolf satisfaction, and she felt it travel through her entire body like a second heartbeat.

"Our cub," he said after a moment, quieter now, the humour banked into something raw, "will never wonder if it’s loved, not for a single breath, nor will the others you bear."

Felicity’s fingers curled into his fur. Her fox ears pressed flat against her hair, the way they always did when emotion threatened to overwhelm her careful composure.

"That’s cheating," she whispered. "You can’t just say things like that while I’m stuck up here unable to kiss you."

Voss stopped walking entirely.

Then he was shifting bones, reforming, fur receding, until she was no longer perched on a wolf’s back but caught in arms that wrapped around her with the precision of someone who had calculated exactly how to hold her without letting her feet touch the ground. Silver hair fell across sharp cheekbones. That smirk, now on a human mouth, hovered inches from hers.

"Problem solved," he murmured.

She grabbed his jaw with both hands and kissed him like breathing was optional.

He tasted like winter berries and smug satisfaction, and when she pulled back, his pupils had blown wide, gold reduced to a thin ring around black.

"You know what I just realised?" Felicity said, slightly breathless, thumbs tracing the cut of his cheekbones.

"You’re all going to lose your minds when they are born."

Voss blinked. Then a grin split his face, not the controlled smirk, not the calculated half-smile, but a real, devastating, boyish grin that made him look ten years younger and absolutely lethal.

"Victor’s going to build a fortress," Voss said.

"He’s going to build three fortresses."

"One for each trimester." Voss pressed his forehead to hers, still grinning.

"Damien will simply stop sleeping entirely, and Ivan will try to carry you everywhere and I." He kissed the bridge of her nose. "Will enjoy watching all of them spiral while I remain perfectly composed."

"You shifted forms mid-sentence thirty seconds ago because I said I wanted to kiss you."

"Tactical adaptation."

"You’re already spiralling." 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

His arms tightened around her. Not painfully, never painfully, but with a possessive certainty that made her toes curl. His mouth found the spot just below her ear, lips brushing the sensitive skin there, and she felt his next words more than heard them.

"Completely," he admitted. "Irreversibly." Another kiss, pressed to her jaw. "And I have never been less interested in composure in my entire life."

Her tail wagged.

She couldn’t stop it, didn’t even try.

Voss pulled back just enough to look at it, and the expression on his face was wonder and hunger and something so adoring it hurt to witness, made her want to crawl inside his chest and live there.