bookcurios Chapter 312: All seven of them
Chapter 312: All seven of them
Luna went down easily.
Frost took twenty minutes, three sips of water, one request for a story about a dragon who was also a baker, and a negotiation over whether his tail counted as a blanket, which it did not, and then finally, finally, the pale flutter of his lashes stilled against his cheeks and his frost magic went dormant, leaving tiny melting crystals on the pillowcase like scattered stars.
Felicity stood in the doorway between their rooms for a moment, watching the slow rise and fall of two small chests. Luna’s white curls had already spread across her pillow in a halo. Frost’s fluffy tail had migrated to cover his nose despite the ruling.
She let out a long, quiet breath through her nose and pulled both doors to.
The hallway was warm and dim and smelled like cedar and iron and the particular charged quality the air always took on when her husbands had been stationary for too long and were thinking too hard.
She noticed that before she even reached the bedroom door.
She pushed it open.
All seven of them were there.
Victor had claimed the high-backed chair near the window, one leg crossed over the other, his massive wings loosely folded, his blood-red eyes fixed on her the moment she crossed the threshold.
Voss stood against the far wall, arms folded, wolf ears angled forward.
Damien was sprawled across the foot of the bed with the casual confidence of a man who had never once in his life felt he was somewhere he didn’t belong.
Ivan and Lucan occupied opposite sides of the mattress, Ivan sitting with his forearms braced on his knees, Lucan lying on his back with one arm behind his head, already watching her from beneath half-lowered lashes. Exile had positioned himself near the window beside Victor, silent and still as carved stone, his pale eyes catching the low light.
And Dimitri.
Dimitri stood closest to the door, just inside the room, leaning one shoulder against the wall with his arms crossed and his dark red gaze settled on her face with an expression she had learned, over the past week, meant he was paying extremely close attention and had already calculated twelve different outcomes.
Seven. All seven of them, in her, their bedroom. Waiting.
The heat of it hit her low in the stomach.
Felicity looked at them all for one long moment. Then she smiled, slow and deliberate, the kind of smile that had once made Damien accuse her of being genuinely diabolical, and she reached up and slipped the strap of her dress off her shoulder.
The sound that went through the room was immediate and overlapping and not entirely human.
Victor’s growl was low and resonant, the kind she felt in her back teeth. Voss produced a sound that was half-growl, half something deeper and more territorial, his wolf ears pinning forward. Lucan’s purr started up like an engine turning over in his chest. Ivan made a low, rough noise that was all beast and no language. Damien’s amber eyes went dark, his jaw tightening as the tawny fur at his forearms rose. Exile exhaled sharply through his nose, his stillness fracturing by a single degree.
Dimitri said nothing. But his gaze dropped to the strap hanging loose off her shoulder and did not move from it.
Felicity let the dress fall.
The sounds the room made in response to that were considerably less restrained.
She turned her back on all seven of them.
She walked to the far side of the room, where the air shimmered faintly, where the veil of her personal space breathed at the edges of perception like heat rising off summer asphalt. She felt it open for her the way it always did, warm and humming and entirely hers, a soft fold in reality that smelled like clean water and warm stone and the wild green of somewhere that had never been touched by the apocalypse.
She stepped through without looking back.
She didn’t need to look back. She could hear them.
The rush of footsteps was not orderly. Victor came first, the broad sweep of his wings brushing the doorframe as he folded them to pass through. Then Voss, then the others in a surge that was barely contained, the low sounds of them overlapping as the veil closed around them all and the outside world ceased to exist.
The stream ran through the lower fold of her space in a shallow, wide curve over smooth pale stones, fed by some mechanism of her own magic that she had never fully understood and had stopped questioning. The water was warm tonight, the way it always was when she needed it to be, the air above it laced with steam and the faint mineral smell of clean earth.
She was already at the bank, the water reaching mid-thigh as she waded in, when she heard the controlled exhale behind her.
"It’s hot," she said, not to anyone in particular.
"Yes," Voss said, and his voice had dropped to the register he only used in her personal space.
She turned to face them on the bank. All seven. Victor’s red eyes burned in the dim, warm light. Damien’s amber gaze moved over her with an attention that made the water feel warmer. Lucan had already shed his shirt. Exile was doing the same.
Dimitri had not moved from the edge of the bank.
She met his eyes. He held her gaze for a moment, then gave the smallest tilt of his chin toward the stream. Not joining, no, not yet. Something quieter than that.
Later, he’d told her, the one night he’d pulled her aside and said it plainly, his hands cupped around her face and his voice stripped of everything but honesty. I can’t be in the same space as them when you’re like that. I don’t share well, little bug. Not in the moment. I’ll watch. That’s enough for me, and I need you to understand that it isn’t distance.