Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)-Chapter 437 - Clearing Viscera & Airwaves

A/N: Not *that* descriptive, but still probably don’t be eating when/near the time of reading this...

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"Surely you’d let me help for another half hour. I can still get a lot of meetings done after that, into the evening. Though I hope you’ll share a meal with me before we go to bed."

> Argh - she won’t leave! And she’s talking happy family-time situations! <

I stomp out to the clean tarp while seeing lilac glow glinting off of every reflective surface. Letting the carcass appear and flop onto the ground, I pointedly try not to look her way.

"F-fine. You take the meat. I’ll handle the guts."

Pointing to the bag of butchering implements with a grimace before I grab a large empty flower pot and the contractor bag... she has to know that my mood is so, so *unstable* today but she just stays here looking at me!

> If Vrika was here, it might impress upon me a question of when I was *ever* stable... stupid wolf. Stupid wolves. Why did I have to be one too, I am CERTAIN everything is more mortifying because of that! <

Speaking angrily in my mindscape while wringing the white plush’s neck - slamming it onto the useless, UTTERLY USELESS slab of | Guardian’s Composure | - I would have to agree about my instability.

I’ve always found myself to be very excellent at assessing the reality of myself. Which is why I know I am a hypocrite, a liar, and just generally go out of my way to deny myself the possibility of a thing that might or might not make me happy just because I’m scared of the sorrow on the horizon.

A miserable ideal of existence. Minimizing melancholy while only pursuing pleasure sounded fine in theory, worked well enough in practice I might add, but ultimately gets highlighted in my own soul as the stiffest of compromises I had to make with what were once my ideals.

One I’ve struggled *out* of making more and more since coming here to this world. I can struggle some more, yet. Struggle in other ways.

With the potential, uncertain sorrow that I want to avoid for her as best I can. And that means-

"Citra..."

There’s no way she’ll get close enough for me to mark her if I’m busy evacuating innards! Nineteen hells, I don’t even want to be doing it. But Webber had mentioned an interesting possibility while discussing ways to use *everything* that I can.

> Braided rawhide as teething implements. I barely remember the time myself, as a kit. The urge to chew and chew and *chew* on anything to lessen the irritation of gums. But bones are nice... <

"The shoulders come off clean if you pull the forearm away and slice through the armpit. Hip joints will need force to pop, but you have the strength to crack or pull off any piece you need to."

It was how I intended to handle it all, by myself. Finesse had its place, but power has undeniable properties for simplifying many matters. Clearly she knows that too... or so I can think while looking at that armor.

I severed a length of intestine from the fatty mesentery. About six feet as suggested, so that I will end up making three sets of twists of three. Pinching it between two fingers at the top, I squeezed downward.

Forcing the contents out the bottom end and gagging in a way that made me wish the air purifier container was sitting right beside me. The smell - rich, bacterial, and alive in a whole other way than the blood and fat had been.

> I thought living things weren’t allowed, this ability is so haphazard! This was a terrible idea! <

The rest of the work was fine, but really should have ’outsourced’ the project here. I’m sure someone would have done this for my no problem in exchange for... actually, exchanging favors for Pack Membership now that I can Augment people...

"Citra..."

She starts again, this time from much closer.

"What. Why. It stinks, this is messy, go over-"

"You left it laying out. Can you please put it on?"

She held the system given earpiece out toward me, not approaching further than arm’s length. Looking down at my hands, I frown and squint back up at her. She gets the meaning immediately. Gets the meaning she wants to get!

"Let me, then."

Slipping it over my ear and caressing just a bit too obviously, I can feel my jaw clench and grind. My neck muscles tighten. As I try not to think that burying my face in her neck would be much more pleasant.

"Claire. Private channel. Truly private. No recording, no listening. Just us."

Then she begins to walk away, talking to the air. The assistant listening over the ’airwaves’, anyway.

"Switching you both over now. Enjoy your privacy."

The ambient hiss in my ear changed quality slightly. Though I couldn’t wrap my senses around how. Missing some kind of tone?

"Can you hear me?"

Kyrie’s voice came through, quietly, from where she’d moved to the carcass. Examining the shoulder joint I’d described, testing the range of motion with her fingers like I had for the neck.

"...Unfortunately as clearly as if you were laying right beside me..."

Reaching for a nearby wind slab, I break off a chalky chunk of packed snow - crumbled into grainy chunks - and stuff it into the length of cleared gut. Repeating the stripping process from before, using this to scrub more of what can rot off the flexible tube walls.

> Ugh, eight more times left. Though it’s neat how translucent it looks now. <

"I know something is bothering you. I’m not going to force you to talk about it."

"No? Just give me perfect conditions to bare my heart to you should I suddenly feel the need."

She chuckles at my *venom* and I angrily cut away another piece of this nasty work. This woman. I wonder just how vicious I would have to get for her to ever take me seriously?

A thing to muse on. Even as I know in every corner of my soul that I probably... won’t ’be a bitch’. Intentionally.

"If you wanted to tell me something, I don’t think a lack of privacy would ever stop you. However, do you mind if you explain to me all the details... of how I am now able to stand up here without feeling any cold?"

I heard the popping separation through my own ears and the earpiece both, a strange doubled sound as she began quartering the meat and removing the legs.

"The system must have... recognized you as counting. Again."

I glanced up in the silence to find her looking at me across the distance, shoulder hanging loose from her grip. She nodded and looked away, grabbing a sharp knife.

> Somehow I feel like she chose to believe me, but also didn’t believe me?! <

"Really. I mean it. I... I’ve never actually gone through the same process with you as for others. You shouldn’t be on the roster in this way, but you are."

"I understand. You don’t have to defend yourself."

"Oh, but I do. It doesn’t make me feel good when options are taken from me. It makes me feel worse to have to tell you I’m not the one that picked this."

A short laugh after I speak. Sending a tingle into my forearms and down my lower back. Perhaps it was a terrible, terrible idea to ask for the ability to be connected to her implant when I need the distance to make smarter choices.

"You let me mark you, Citra. You’ve picked me plenty. From everything you’ve explained to me, it makes its own decisions about how you feel. I get it. I’m not upset."

"Who said I’m worried about you? I’m just complaining for my own sake!"

"That’s not why I wanted a private line. Though it’s very adorable that you are worrying about how I take this."

"I... I just said-"

"This is very valuable, Citra. Being able to share this ability with your people. I’m not sure you know just how much."

Her voice is serious. Severe. Like the Queen I keep calling her lately.

Like the ruler I wanted for myself. And for others.

> Like a chew toy that is making my gums itchy. Vrika... would have liked that one. <