Free Web NovelChapter 328: The Birds And The Puppies?
"Voss," she called, halfway across the grass. "Are they okay? Is it true they trapped Tommy in the toy box?"
The wolf’s ears pricked. "They’re fine," he said, low, calm, measured as always. "And yes. They locked him in on purpose."
Felicity’s jaw clenched. "They’re children. You’re making Luna run laps until she breaks down. She’s obviously upset."
"Discipline isn’t cruelty. They need to learn..."
"They need to be loved," Felicity shot back, jabbing a finger into the wall of muscle that was his chest. He smelled of cedar and rain-wet fur, that grounding warmth she leaned toward even when she was busy being furious. "Not drilled into
His big hand came up and caught her wrist, not stopping her, just holding, his thumb settling over the flutter of her pulse like he wanted to count it. "You want them soft, Fel. This is the apocalypse." A pause. His attention dropped to her mouth, then climbed back. "Even you fight. You think you’re weak. You’re not. You’re the strongest thing I’ve ever stood next to. They need that. Even at seven."
Felicity’s breath caught somewhere it had no business catching. He’d said it plainly, the way he said everything, no flourish, no charm, just truth dropped at her feet like he expected her to step over it.
"That’s not fair," she managed, though her finger had stopped pressing and started, traitorously, curling into his shirt. "Using compliments to win an argument."
The corner of his mouth tugged. "It’s a strategy. I have a lot of moves planned."
"Oh, do you?"
"Mm." He bent, his rough cheek grazing the curve of her fox ear, his breath stirring the fine hair there until her tail betrayed her and gave one slow, helpless sway behind her. "Move one. I let you win. Move two. You forgive me by dinner. Move three..." his thumb dragged once more over her wrist "I tell Luna she ran enough, and you look at me like that for the rest of the day."
"Like what?" It came out embarrassingly breathless.
"Like you’re deciding whether to kiss me or kick me."
She huffed, fighting the heat blooming across her cheeks. "Why not both. In that order."
That earned her an actual laugh, gravel and honey, the kind he hoarded and rarely spent. Then his attention flicked past her shoulder to where Luna had stopped dead in the grass, staring at the two of them with open horror.
"Mama Fel," Luna announced, loud enough for the whole yard, "are you going to grow puppies with daddy Voss? Because Tommy said that’s how it works, and Tommy is gross and also still in the toy box."
Felicity made a sound like a kettle going off. Voss didn’t so much as blink.
"Go tell your brother you’re done with laps," he called to Luna, perfectly calm. Then, lower, just for Felicity, his lips brushing the shell of her ear: "We’ll discuss the puppies later; she’s already with puppies right now."
Voss tucked her into his side, all that solid heat folding around her as she belonged there because, God help her, she did. Luna was already sprinting toward Frost, ears up, sunlight catching the silver of her curls, the misery wiped clean off her small face. And Felicity, pressed against the one man who’d looked at her like she was carved out of strength, decided the argument could wait.
The kicking, too. Probably.
—— Maddie’s POV —-
Before the world broke, the town had been a picturesque haven of Victorian-style architecture and charming cobblestone roads. Now, the cobblestones were cracked and upturned by long-past earthquake tremors, weeds bursting through the seams, and creeping ivy climbed the ornate, faded facades of the old brick houses. It was a beautiful, slightly buggered ghost of the past, adapted for grim, post-apocalyptic survival.
Down an alleyway flanked by two crumbling Victorian storefronts, Maddie stood in the dry morning air, her teeth grinding as she looked toward the western ridge. She couldn’t see the grand manor house from here. It was completely blocked from view, privatised, and locked down by the tight, impenetrable circle of elite beast men,the men Felicity strung along alongside her seven fiercely possessive husbands.
Nobody in Bowral could get a glimpse of the fox. She was kept entirely hidden, wrapped in luxury within a fortress that Maddie believed, with every fibre of her being, should have been hers.
But the latest rumours drifting through the town’s dirt tracks had pushed Maddie completely over the edge. Everyone in the settlement already knew the blonde bitch was pregnant, but there was more than that; word had travelled fast after Felicity visited a doctor in a town over the other day. But the exact details had just leaked out, hitting the local taverns like a bomb. She wasn’t just pregnant. She was carrying four cubs. Quadruplets. Two boys, two girls.
In a ruined world with a staggering ratio of ten thousand men to barely 1 women, a historic pregnancy like that made Felicity more valuable than any resource on the planet. She already had two healthy cubs, and now four more were on the way. Maddie, who had only managed to conceive a single cub in her entire life, was sick with envy.
Forty of Maddie’s best males had just been utterly obliterated on the manor’s front lawn, vaporised into nothing by a single, terrifying display from just one of Felicity’s men, unjustly and unfairly done.
Maddie wasn’t unmated, but in a base starved of females, she could have as many men as she wanted. She wasn’t a great beauty, but right now, she didn’t need to be. She just needed to be a woman who was willing to talk to the desperate.
"She’s a parasite, and she’s hoarding everything," Maddie hissed, her voice sharp and urgent.
She wasn’t trying to convince the Tiger General. The General was too smart, too seasoned, and respected the raw power of Felicity’s inner circle too much to interfere. Instead, Maddie had sought out the General’s lower-ranking, unmated guards.
Three tiger beast-men, rough-hewn and scarred, stood rigid against a rusted iron fence. Their ears twitched, their eyes locked completely onto Maddie. To these desperate, unbonded males who hadn’t been spoken to by a female in months, the mere fact that Maddie had walked down to their post to personally converse with them was an intoxicating, ego-boosting rush. They were hanging on her every word.
