Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)-Chapter 413 - Quiet Quandaries & Evertouching Tomorrows

Chapter 413: Chapter 413 - Quiet Quandaries & Evertouching Tomorrows

She moved about the little ’apocalypse apartment’ that I’d attempted to make out of this system’s ability, grabbing some things she felt were necessary to leave her penthouse with. But Kyrie refused to just hand them over to me.

And because of this... mood of mine, I didn’t say anything as I sat patiently on the bed letting her come to her own realization. That my bras do not currently fit as nice as they once did - not just in cup fill size but because of the engorged tissue under my armpit that makes the band very uncomfortable.

But I did feel the need to speak after she stopped actually trying to fit and just started trying to be the ’student doctor’ looking at the changes. Not just looking, tracing a vein on the taut skin-

"You’ve learned plenty hands on, now, right? Why I can’t wear that."

"Ah. Sorry. I should have known better."

That suspicious hand of hers reaches for the next item, the matching panties, and I slap my palm over the back of it.

"If I am actually getting an exam, this is just extra clothes to remove."

The brown of her eyes flickers orange as she makes a more human grumble noise of displeasure while her hand rotates and clutches mine. I make a very inhuman, almost rodent-like squeak in return.

"You’re right. It’s extra clothes between you and anyone else."

"...Feeling a little possessive?"

"Always."

She leans in and my eyes swim everywhere - everywhere but at her face, when I realize it was just to reach the loose dress behind me. This woman eases me from the bed to a stand, raises my arms, and dresses me up like...

Well, not quite like a certain seamstress, but close. I definitely did not have any of this sort of tension with Anise. Never found myself actively holding back clinging onto her. Nor did she ever hold her hand against my waist for potentially inappropriate lengths of time.

> I should stop thinking of it as improper, it’s only making it better-worse. <

"Let’s go, before I decide to inconvenience the good doctor by making her travel here."

"Royal doctors were usually paid well to be inconvenienced."

Grabbing the pup and focusing my touch neediness on holding him, her arm curls around me and her fingers brush lightly against his fur. She really is making *nothing* easy while doing things so easily!

"Interesting. I’ve always paid Lang well to ignore me when things are completely unacceptable. Trusting sometimes that your people know better than you is important."

After we walked and talked into the elevator, her hand held on my elbow gently. Just enough pressure to suggest I shouldn’t spin around. When I looked back over my shoulder in question, she was holding something up in her other hand.

Two cheap sapphire colored spheres of plastic pulled from her pocket. A pair of hair ties I’d left for her. A memento that she apparently didn’t leave out in the cold.

"I know I didn’t give you the opportunity earlier. To get ready. To look like yourself in front of everyone. Sorry."

My throat progressively tightened as she offered one of them for me to hold, as my fingers wrapped around it, and as she started to put one side of my hair up. Fingers gently gathering black strands that had been loose for days.

I’d sat around here all this time without bothering. Barely even thought of it, I realize while twisting the blue orb in my fingers until she took it back to finish the look.

"There. Good?"

Two high tails in the shiny metal. Citra Lomdi... and her choice before every reality pressed her into shapes. Princess, Transmigrator, Chosen, Pregnant, Fated, Mother, Blessed.

My face lowered in what might have been quick enough to count as a nod. Because she turned around to press the button on the panel still so clearly marred from my distress at leaving.

Twisting around before she could move again, my forehead lands underneath her shoulder blades. My nose feels the ridge of her spine.

For a second I picture that tattoo I know is under her shirt. Picture everything underneath of her shirt. Picture her neck, exposed and waiting as I take a shudder of breath.

But I say nothing and she says nothing. We just ride down over fifty-nine floors, into the basement levels. In this position... that I’m not even sure what is meant to be expressing to her.

A choice that she seems stuck trying to puzzle out instead of letting end. Too willing to let me do what I want, even if I don’t always know what that is.

⧖ ☾ ❄ ☽ ⧖

"What you’re experiencing is perfectly normal from a biological standpoint."

This compassionate explanation to my question about craving touch was in contrast to the first fifteen minutes of our consultation. Wherein Dr. Lang had systematically, with her warm voice, catalogued every risk I’d taken by giving birth alone in a cave.

Hemorrhage, infection, positioning complications, inability to get help if something went catastrophically wrong. She may be the same person, but her eyes were just a bit sharper from everything going on.

"Normal you say..."

Kyrie had stayed outside in the waiting area. Something about giving me privacy to speak freely that I both questioned and immediately took advantage of immediately after the exam.

"The oxytocin released during nursing creates a strong drive for physical closeness and touch - especially from someone you already trust and feel safe with. Combined with postpartum hormonal shifts in your progesterone and estrogen, your body is essentially directing you toward behaviors that ensure protection and support from others during recovery."

Her short gray-streaked hair looked almost translucent in the annoying fluorescent light of this room. Making me feel like all of the science words were some sort of mystical spell being cast by a deity.

"It’s actually one of the biggest emotional hurdles for a new mother. Everyone loves to hold the baby, but few want to acknowledge that the woman behind that natural miracle needs the same sort of care."

"Still failing to see how it can be normal if no one is treating it that way?"

"I’m a doctor of health and medicine, not of modern anthropology - or whatever this societal question is best listed under. But while we could probably label it internalized patriarchy and call it a day, the fact that you felt the need to ask me and not just admit the need to your partner could lie in any number of mental health reasons."

Smoothing the hem of my dress, wrinkled by the pup on my lap, I make a rather noncommittal noise to that answer. I’ve avoided thinking about it, but Helene did know a minimal amount about the fields of psychology and psychiatry.

Enough to know that seeking therapy for my problems was an option. If I hadn’t had so many other things going on.

> A nice excuse to avoid it, more likely. I had plenty of time to try out a whole career. <

"Werewolf physiology intensifies these effects even more than human postpartum experiences. There’s a reason our females den still and the males become gatekeepers. Your hormonal instincts are telling you to reinforce bonds with your pack - or in your case, with the person who’s been acting as your primary support."

"So my body is betraying me."

She snorted, covering her mouth, while shaking her head. The woman in her labcoat then looked at me with slightly softer, glowing orange eyes while her elbows rested on her knees. Serious still, but loosening somewhat from her professional upset at my choices.

"It’s good that it sounds like you have some humor about it. But I need to ask you something directly, and I need you to be honest with me. Are these feelings genuinely distressing you? Making you feel out of control in a way that’s causing lingering anxiety?"

For a long while, I don’t answer. I simply dove inside and float up within my mindscape. Looking at the field of flowers, mostly orange like her eyes. Sent to me on the very night I wanted to pray for a good birth.

Mixed now with her favorite variety, as complicated as she feels about that particular fact. Almost pulsing blue-white in a constant breeze of my own making.

Looking like cracks in the mass of feelings I imagined she holds for me, that have been plugged with a mortar made... of my regard for her.

"...No. It’s the opposite. I’m almost exceptionally undistressed in some ways. There are plenty of things to be anxious about. But some parts of me that used to be so loud are so very calm and quiet."

"And that’s concerning to you."

"Yes."

> Maybe I really should seek therapy. <

"You’re clearly attracted to Kyrie-"

My mouth opened but her hand helpfully raised up to stop me from inserting my foot in it.

"-and before you object, that was obvious from body language alone when the two of you arrived."

Her hand then reaches down to pat my knee - which is a *lot* less invasive than where they were ten minutes ago during the exam.

"Your biology doesn’t exist in a laboratory vacuum, Citra. Just because there are hormonal components doesn’t mean the feelings aren’t real or meaningful to you right now."

"I want them to be meaningful later, too!"

From the way that she eyed me and my willfully blurted out assertion...

"Good luck?"

She clearly doesn’t understand my ’problems’.