"Uhh..." Her tail puffed to twice its size. "Umm, I uhh..."

She made a sound like a kettle reaching a boil, shoved the mug fully into his hands, and bolted. She fled across the camp with her fluffy tail streaming behind her like a distress signal.

Sarge stood there. Coffee in hand, the ghost of her skin was still imprinted on his fingers.

His brain caught up approximately four seconds too late.

Oh no.

A sharp crack to the back of his skull snapped his head forward. Coffee sloshed over his knuckles.

Lucan appeared beside him, because of course he did, the man moved like smoke and malice combined, his expression flat, his gaze tracking Felicity’s retreat with the focus of a predator watching something precious flee in the wrong direction.

"Get it together." Damien’s jaw was tight enough to fracture stone. One hand still raised from the strike, the other curled into a fist at his side. "You scare her like that again, and I’ll bury you where no one finds the pieces."

Sarge opened his mouth, closed it. Took a sip of coffee because he had absolutely no defence prepared.

Across camp, Felicity had reached Victor’s side and was aggressively distributing mugs while refusing to make visual contact with anyone. Her ears remained pinned flat. Her tail had wrapped around her own leg like a security blanket.

Victor accepted his coffee, glanced once in Sarge’s direction, and the temperature of the entire clearing dropped three degrees.

Marx appeared from nowhere, leaning against a supply crate with his own mug already in hand, watching the chaos unfold with barely concealed amusement. "Bold strategy," he called across the distance, one brow raised. "Confessing before your brain boots up truly revolutionary warfare."

"Shut up," Sarge muttered into his mug.

Legend dropped from a tree branch overhead, landing in a crouch with a grin so wide it threatened to split his face. "Oh, this is the best morning I’ve had in months. Do it again, say something else unhinged. Tell her she’s the reason you breathe or something. I want to see if Victor actually combusts."

Lucan’s hand twitched toward a bit of metal.

"Legend," Sarge growled. "One more word and I’m using you for target practice."

"Worth it." Legend clutched his chest theatrically. "I love you," he mimicked in a gravelly baritone. "Just standing there like a lobotomized bear holding a coffee cup..."

Sarge moved. Legend yelped and scrambled backward.

Felicity pressed both hands flat against Victor’s chest. The solid wall of him beneath her palms. Cedar and iron and something sharp like winter air off a mountain peak. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, bunching it tight.

"Why did he say that?" Her throat ached around the words. "Like that. Why did he say it like that?"

She tilted her face up, and the hot blur at the edges of her vision made everything soft and terrible. Her ears had flattened back against her hair without permission, and her tail had gone rigid behind her, puffed out to twice its normal size. Traitor body. Traitor fox instincts broadcasting every fragile thing she wanted to keep tucked away.

Victor’s hand came up. Not to her head. To her jaw. His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone, rough pad dragging slowly across damp skin, and the pad of his finger caught the edge of a tear before it could fall.

"It scared me," she whispered.

His other arm folded around her waist, not gentle but possessive. The kind of hold that said nothing in this world or any other was getting through him to reach her. He pulled her flush against his chest, and the sound that left her was small and involuntary, half a hiccup and half relief.

"Shh." Low, a rumble more than a word, vibrating through his ribcage directly into her palms. "I’m here, little Fel."

She pressed her forehead into the hollow of his throat. His pulse beat steadily against her skin. Steady. Unshakeable. The kind of rhythm that reorganised her own heartbeat into matching it, whether she wanted to or not.

"He won’t do that again." Victor’s chin settled on top of her head, and his fingers spread wide across the small of her back, spanning nearly the entire width of her. His thumb swept a slow arc against her side. "That was a nasty little stunt he pulled."

"It wasn’t funny." Her words came out muffled against his collarbone.

"No." A pause. Then his hand slid from her jaw to the back of her neck, cradling her skull like she was something irreplaceable. His fingers threaded into the soft hair at her nape, and a tremor ran through her tail before it finally began to relax.

"It wasn’t. And I’ll be having a conversation with him about it that he won’t enjoy."

The way he said the conversation made it sound like it might involve fewer words and more fists. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Felicity sniffled. Pressed closer. The heat of him soaked through her clothes and into her bones, and her ears slowly, reluctantly, began to lift from their flattened position.

"You’re getting my shirt wet," Victor said.

She laughed. It came out watery and hiccupping and undignified, and she smacked his chest with one open palm. "You’re awful."

"I’m practical." His thumb found the base of one of her ears and rubbed a slow circle there, and her entire body went boneless against him. A melted fox-shaped puddle of residual fear and overwhelming comfort. "There’s a difference."

There really isn’t." But her fingers had unclenched from his shirt. We’re smoothing the wrinkled fabric now, tracing absent patterns across the plane of his chest. His heartbeat kicked harder under her touch. She felt it.

Victor’s arm tightened. Just fractionally, his mouth pressed against the crown of her head, lingering there, breath fanning through her hair.

"You know," he murmured against her scalp, "if you keep hiding behind supply crates with me, Voss is going to start drawing tactical diagrams about optimal ambush positions for stealing you away."

"Voss can get in line."

The laugh that left Victor was quiet and dark and entirely too pleased. His hand splayed wider across her back, fingers curling against her ribs like he was memorising the shape of her through touch alone.