Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)-Chapter 411 - Sad To See Shambles

"The heat system is successfully working? ...You didn’t tell me about that."

"Nope. I didn’t. The air exchange core down below is measuring a nice 185 degrees over the last three days as it heats and brings in fresh air. Which means the metal on the distribution manifolds will singe your fur off if you bump one. Ask Kenneth from R&D."

"Isn’t he human?"

The room grew quiet for a few seconds after that exchange, before a mewling noise from my son broke the silence. And opened the floodgates of shouting... and gruff toned stubbornness.

"That’s it. I’m climbing the hoist rope."

"Don’t break into our elevator, Kyrie!"

"Then open it for me. Now."

"Its stranded steel covered in grease, not clean static kernmantle. There’s a reason we put rappelling down elevators with ACTUAL ROPE on the training menu!"

"Don’t care. Want up."

"It will shred your hands as you climb!"

"I’ll regenerate."

Hearing that assertion and imagining those hands that had spent so long petting me covered in wounds... all of that sadness that had built after hearing of her state? Snaps away. Replaced by a different emotion I’m not sure how to describe.

"Kyrie?"

"I’ll be there in a minute."

Exasperation isn’t right. Irritation? Close. But not a kind I think I’ve felt before now.

"...Kyrie. Did it sound like I was asking for a timeline? You were only meant to pay attention to what I said next. Should I have used your full name?"

"B-boss, I think you should stop whatever you are doing right now but also somehow get the hell up here and get me out of this room with her because that face is scaring the shit out of me."

"What sort of face is she making?"

I turn away from the device on the table I’d been looking at and toward her assistant, busily backing away and trying to ease off of the couch we’d just shared. Her hand fumbles for the device - and I’m sure she is being *incredibly dramatic* for no reason.

"Uh... well..."

I’m sure. Yes. No matter how much of the lilac glow from my eyes I can see staining the white upholstery fabric. Or how much she keeps backing away.

"Did you ever come home way past curfew - except instead of the nice, sweet mom from daytime you got the quiet... ’I waited up all night to deliver a speech about dangers, safety, and disappointment’ one?"

"No. That’s... insanely specific. Can you turn the elevator on so I can come see it?"

"She cannot. But she can turn it on so she can use it to get out of my apartment. Our son is hungry. And you both have a lot to do, I expect."

My voice sounds much calmer than I feel. Simmering in wanting to be alone, but wanting neither of them to be anywhere... but here.

"Your ’workday’ in this sort of situation can’t be over yet, right? Otherwise I see no point in having come back to this place at all."

"Yep. Getting out of your apartment. Good to see you. Have a nice stay."

I hear just a bit more arguing from Kyrie after the lift dings and descends. Then I breathe in deep, let it out, transform to my new hybrid form - and do my own ’job’.

"Now I’m worried you’ll grow up like one of them. Irreverent. Irascible."

Stroking his fur as the words rumble out of me, my mind wanders. To names. Purposes. What I want for him and what he might want for himself some day.

> May you grow up healthy and strong. To take only the best from us all. Wouldn’t that be nice? <

⧖ ☾ ❄ ☽ ⧖

My hand, returned to human form, rested against the doorframe for a minute just staring at the handle. Knowing I could open it and look inside. See what she’d built in this guest room for a child she didn’t know was coming *this* soon.

> I said it again without even thinking. Our son. <

My fingers curled against the fresh coat of paint before I pushed back. The nursery was something I could grant her the opportunity to show me herself.

The thought of her giving a tour while explaining it to me, maybe even holding the pup while she points things out...

> Or holding us both? She has two arms. I guess she’d have to lift a leg to point. <

I shake my head and turned toward a door in this place that I’ve never used, though was shown it. A small, square closet of a room sits between kitchen and bedroom. With a ladder embedded into the wall inside, which goes up to a sealed trapdoor.

"How very nostalgic."

There were a number of crawlspaces and other such hidden areas in the palace. I used a few of the lesser known ones to escape the grounds a lot in my youth.

The roof access in this building very minimal - but her penthouse did have this single point of escape to it. Without having to use the elevator to go back down and travel that staircase leading from her office to the greenhouse.

Tilting my head back around, to gaze where I’d left my son curled up in the robe I’d been wearing, I bit my lip and fought the anxiety. Leaving him alone with Kyrie when I went out hunting was one thing.

"It’s okay. Safe place. No one can get him. There is enough heat. He’ll be fine for a few minutes. Fine, he’s fine, I’m fine."

Not a single word sounded like the truth to my own ears. They made each rung on the ladder take three to five times as long to reach for.

And when I finally did push and force the door open, clearly iced over from the weather... my head that popped out into the afternoon sun and wind without hair ties to handle it stopped quickly on the first thing I saw.

"Oh, no..."

The greenhouse of hers I’d visited after having fun in her office was ruined. Some of its glass panels had been dislodged from their framing and let snow in. Crawling up to my feet, I walk towards it like I wanted to do something.

But it was past the point of *doing* anything. The heaters inside were off and useless. String lights that had twinkled so prettily were now hung fully tangled on one side, where they’d been ripped partially loose by the wind.

The raised plant beds were covered in dead vegetation and so were the potted plants. With no easy way to tell at a glance which were killed by the frost and which might have just possibly been taken inside and saved.

> A pretty place. A private sanctuary built just for her and showcasing the connection to her mother. Ignored and sacrificed for... <

My feet carried me close on the outside wall to where I remembered the toad lilies growing. The pot was still there, unless there was another of the same color and design I’d never seen put out - but inside were only blackened stumps poking out of the white.

I crouched down with a hand on the icy glass, watching the melt from my body temperature form into little rivulets that ran down to freeze into icicles lower down on the frame. Like the structure itself was crying under my attention.

"She let this die. Stupid wolf."

Glory-of-the-snow, like blue-white veins of inarticulate suffering, thread harshly throughout the field of orange marigolds in my mindscape. Right after a single pot holding purple spotted white petals drops down next to me.

Reaching out with two fingers to touch the memory, I loath that I can protect that little here in my soul... that I cannot protect the reality. After all, I’m the reason, the cause - and I can turn away from the result she chose this easily.

To walk back to the ladder and get down to my son. Something still living and therefore more important than a destroyed memento kept to honor the lost life of the dead.

Barely glancing at the view in the direction I walk, interrupted by the massive telescope mount she’d told me about. Angled not at the stars we had gazed up at that night when we talked about mythologies.

At the horizon, the very wilderness we came in from. She and the people here don’t need pretty things above so much. Or myths. They need reliable things working on the ground with them.

And as I try and get the seal to set on the trapdoor again, I also try to ignore how I feel.

Existing up in this apartment as an exceptionally - maybe even ’mythically’ pretty...

But incredibly *unreliable* thing for her.

Maybe for everyone. But... not for him.