Chapter 321: You’ll never be alone again
"Nothing." She pressed her face into his palm. "Everything. I just missed all of you together. I kept thinking about when I was taken, and the supreme’s base and-" Her voice cracked. "I don’t want to be alone anymore."
She felt Damien’s arm tighten around her waist like a vice. Felt Voss’s hand find the back of her neck, his grip solid and unshakeable. Felt Ivan’s mist curl closer, pressing against her ankles, her calves, building a wall of fog between her and the rest of the world. Lucan’s hand tightened on her knee, a rare, uncalculated gesture that cost him more than any of them would know. Exiles’ tail wrapped around her ankle, tightening, and Dimitri pressed his lips to the crown of her head, lingering, his breath unsteady against her hair.
You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone again.
Nobody said it. Everyone meant it. The words lived in the pressure of their hands, the angle of their bodies, the way the room itself seemed to contract around her until there was no space left for fear.
Victor’s thumb brushed a tear from her cheek. "Sleep," he said, and it wasn’t a suggestion. His wing pulled tighter, the silver-and-black feathers rustling as they closed around her, and the smell of him filled her lungs. "We’ve got you."
"All of us," Voss added, his grip on her neck steady. "Every time. No matter what."
She wanted to argue. Wanted to say she didn’t need this, that she was fine, that they didn’t have to arrange themselves around her like she was the centre of gravity. But her body was already going heavy against the pillows, her tail curling tighter against Voss’s leg, her fingers loosening in Victor’s grip as exhaustion pulled her under.
The last thing she registered was Damien’s rumble against her ribs, a sound that wasn’t quite a purr and wasn’t quite a growl, just the deep, primal satisfaction of a predator with his mate exactly where she belonged. And Ivan’s low murmur from the foot of the bed, pitched for her ears alone:
"Rest, little sun. We’ll be here when you wake."
She slept. Held by seven. Surrounded by the smell of cedar and pine and burning metal and eucalyptus and rosemary. Her fox ears twitched once, twice, then stilled.
And in the morning, when she opened her gaze to find all of them still there, sprawled and tangled and ridiculous, Victor’s wing draped over half the bed like a feathered blanket, Voss’s arm numb beneath her head, Damien’s tail wrapped around her thigh, Ivan still sitting sentinel at the foot of the bed with his mist keeping watch, she laughed. A real laugh, bright and startled, that made her ears perk and her tail wag against the sheets.
"What?" Victor’s grip on her hand tightened reflexively, his body coiling toward alertness.
"Nothing. Just..." She bit her lip, fighting the grin. "Ivan. Have you been awake all night?"
Ivan’s golden gaze found hers, steady. "Someone had to."
Felicity pressed her face into Voss’s chest to muffle the giggle that bubbled up, and his arm tightened around her, his lips finding the top of her head.
"Good morning," he rumbled against her hair.
"Good morning." She tilted her face up. "Your arm is definitely dead."
"Has been for four hours."
"Why didn’t you move?"
His wolf ears angled toward her. "You were on it."
The simplicity of the absolute, matter-of-fact devotion packed into three words made her chest crack open. She stretched up on her toes and pressed her mouth to the underside of his jaw, felt the rumble that moved through him, felt his fingers curl possessively into her hair.
"Disgusting," Dimitri announced from behind her, but his arm tightened around her hip and his lips found the back of her neck, contradicting every word. "Absolutely revolting, do it again."
She laughed, really laughed, and the sound filled the room like sunlight, and seven men oriented toward it like plants toward the dawn.
The journey to the settlement nearby took four hours.
Felicity spent most of it draped across Voss’s back, her arms looped around his neck, her face buried in the thick fur along his shoulders. The forest between Bowral and the doctor’s outpost was still thick with the remnants of the old world, crumbling highways choked with vines, rusted cars half-swallowed by undergrowth, and the ever-present threat of zombies lurking in the shadows between the trees.
Snow Team moved around her like a living fortress.
Victor took the lead, his wings half-extended, scanning the canopy with that predatory stillness that meant he’d already calculated every exit and kill zone. Lucan teleported ahead in short bursts, scouting the path, returning with clipped reports that Felicity only half-processed through the fog of exhaustion. Ivan’s mist rolled through the underbrush ahead of them, obscuring their scent, thickening into walls whenever something moved in the distance that made his ears twitch; exile slithered behind them all. And surrounding it was the rest of the snow team with Thane in the air above.
Dimitri walked at Voss’s left flank, Damien slithered somewhere to the right, his scales blending with the shadows, and Felicity could feel the venomous energy radiating from him like a warning sign to anything that considered approaching.
She dozed. Woke. Dozed again. The cubs pressed against her spine with increasing urgency, and every jostling step Voss took sent a dull ache radiating through her lower back. She bit her lip and didn’t complain. There was no point; they were already moving as fast as the terrain allowed, and stopping meant running into
A sound in the distance, the continuous guttural clicking that meant zombies.
Voss’s stride didn’t break, but she felt his muscles tense beneath her, felt the low growl building in his chest. Victor’s hand came up with a sharp, silent signal, and the formation shifted without a word. Ivan’s mist thickened to the east. Lucan vanished and reappeared three trees ahead, his expression grim.
"Group of six," he murmured, voice barely carrying. "Two hundred meters. Moving parallel to our path. Don’t think they’ve caught scent yet."
