Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)-Chapter 441 - Water Circling Around The Strain

Chapter 441: Chapter 441 - Water Circling Around The Strain

Her hands closed around my wrists and tugged. Gently, but unyielding. She didn’t say anything back to what she probably heard. Even if she’s smart enough to reason out what has me spiraling this time.

> From unnecessary jealousy of long past things to a tortured, failed savior of recent events. Why am I so... <

We moved away from the window, through the doorway into the bathroom. I didn’t have the will to resist. She probably could have ripped off my head and I wouldn’t have reacted strongly.

The water came on next. Quickly warming spray against the tile. Steamy mist beginning to rise. And I dropped my Tolerance so I could feel it all.

She started at my forearms, working the dried blood and worse from my skin with careful pressure. I watched her move my hands like they belonged to someone else. Scrubbing and lathering a mostly unscented bodywash.

"We need to get you clean. Asha is waiting for his mother."

> She means I don’t get to fall apart. <

Which sounds right to me. I don’t get to do that. I have to be useful, to her. To the people I’ve failed. To my son. To Anise.

"I’m... horribly unfit for any of this."

The words escaped my lips as I sunk my hair under the pressured streams. Not for a second, did her hands pause. Why is she so good at not reacting to me when I’m like this?

"I don’t know how to give these abilities away. If I could, I would. To you."

"Citra."

My voice cracked out something that might have been a laugh. If it had any joy in it. So I guess it was just a desperate sob that came out pitched wrong.

"So you have to use me better than I can use myself. You’re... a businesswoman. Good at using things. Resources. Assets. Use me like-"

Her fingers pushed into my hair, slicking the wet black mass away from my face. Then her forehead pressed to mine, and her eyes were so close I could see nothing else but their fire-opal glow.

"I don’t want to use you."

Rough, certain. More emotion than she usually lets slam into her voice.

"I want to live with you. For as long as you’ll have me."

She kissed me then. Soft. Barely a brush of lips. The kind of tenderness I didn’t feel like I deserved and couldn’t refuse that I craved.

And... something in me snapped.

Hands slammed firm into her shoulders, driving her back into the tile hard enough to hear it cracking. With a painfully fast transformation that was yet as transient as a blood draw’s needle-prick.

My snout was at her throat. With teeth that were so sharp I knew they’d pierce and crack collarbone and rib and sternum. Would let me clamp over her heart and make her mine as I am hers.

> NO! <

I wrenched myself back when the tip of my tongue on her skin could feel her pulse. Staggered into the glass door hard enough that it *should* have broken like the tile. But it holds, somehow, as I shake against it.

Still partially shifted in the worst way. The ache of bones that had started to reshape back into a human and stopped. The part of me that hadn’t wanted to back off was stronger than I wanted to admit.

> Thanks to the incomplete Fated mark between us, no doubt. What the fuck did I just do? <

Staring at half clawed hands, my face ticks up sharply when, across from me, Kyrie straightened. Slowly. The woman rolled her shoulder where I’d struck her, in a way that makes me hear the snap of it relocating itself.

> ...Can’t decide between guilt and arousal... <

And then, as if absolutely nothing had happened, she stepped over and reached past me for a bottle on the corner shelf. Baring her neck in front of me again without any care. Maybe even intentionally...

"This one is also unscented. I don’t want to hide that mint you have now."

She stepped close again and worked the shampoo with her fingers into my hair. Massaging my misshapen scalp with such a steady, unhurried pressure as I trembled in this fresh hell of pampering.

Even after I regained control, after she finished being thorough, I just curled silently in the corner. Because I couldn’t trust myself to reciprocate the service.

⧖ ☾ ❄ ☽ ⧖

When I finally uncurled myself to wander out into the bedroom, Kyrie had already laid out some clothes on the bed. Something silken soft and dark from my own collection out in the living room’s shipping container.

Retrieved while I was... not present. I walked past it to her closet where she was also rearmoring herself for the public. Even slipping a white tie around her neck to hang over her red blouse.

"The ones you wore before. Those... basic things."

I pointed toward the hamper where I’m sure they were left. She keeps her room appropriately tidy, unlike what I’ve done to the rest of her apartment.

"What about them?"

"...Give them here."

She didn’t ask why. Just opened the lid and handed them over. I pulled the cotton fabric of the shirt on without hesitation, already knowing that it should... basically fit properly.

> Just a little more tightly in the bust than last time I wore something of hers. I want to be smug about it. Maybe I will be later. <

"I need to see Anise."

"Now?"

"Soon. After I get Asha. I have to do it today."

I tugged on the white pants next, finding it loose in the hips but functional enough with the belt she handed over. It was more pockets than I was use to having, but the material was thinner than expected.

Clearly both of these were meant to be disposable. Cheap and replaceable if destroyed by a transformation in training. I wanted them because they felt more ascetic than anything I own, but that sort of luxury statement related to our kind sort of ruins it.

Oh well, it’s still white. That’s the important part.

"Some of the people I Annexed before... they didn’t make it. The Pack Roster tells me which ones are deceased."

Kyrie didn’t comment back on that, though she had to have connected and processed it to my moodiness earlier. Had to have been thinking about what it would mean for me to show up at the door of someone specific.

"To see if she knows, or hear what she knows... I can’t wear anything nice to that."

"I see. I’d love to come with you, but I know better than to ask."

"Thank you. I need to figure out how to handle things like this on my own."

Her fingers slicked back my hair again. Began to gather it and put it up for me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her it would be better to approach this with my hair down, in my culture.

"If that’s what you think, I won’t argue. But doing it on your own doesn’t have to mean doing it alone. Do you know how you looked when I came to the roof? Or when you stared out the window earlier?"

Well, I can’t nod about the first thing but I could see my reflection well enough against the glass. However, I’m interested in what she is going to say, so I shake my head in what I now expect her to know as a lie.

"You looked like the world ended. Like you thought you were the cause."

"...It obviously has... and I... don’t think that. I know there was no way to fully stop what was coming. Believe me, the Lunar Goddess was clear that I was only special because a deity from my world happened to like me."

> But I also know that the system calls me a Chosen and all I chose was to help myself. <

Pulling away, I roam to the hamper and steal one of her used blazers from with it. For moral support. And to wrap my son in, after retrieving him from Claire.

I don’t want to lug the basket down a flight of stairs. Or wear that pouch rigging again. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"A lot of people happen to like you, Citra. You. Not some power. Not some greater purpose you serve."

She says this into the back of my head while hugging me from behind. Hands clasped over my abdomen. Pressing me tight into her.

This wolf... she’s just going to keep doing things like this. Saying things I want to hear. Holding me like... I can’t...

> I’m not going to be able to function without it soon. Maybe this was all a mistake. <

"I’m pretty sure both me and your son need you, even if you think you don’t need yourself."

But for a few seconds, every now and then - I don’t care.

Some mistakes were meant to be made.