Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)-Chapter 445 - Custodian Of Shapes Beyond Belief, pt1

Chapter 445: Chapter 445 - Custodian Of Shapes Beyond Belief, pt1

Moving at the sound and smell of the intruder, not pausing first to think. From my knees to sliding on hands and feet - claws scraping the flooring with both. Arched low on the ground between the Rimecoat member and the two people who *mattered* behind me.

"If you take another step closer to either of them, your Alpha will not have the chance to hear your side."

Voice wasn’t *quite* as guttural as the first times I used it in hybrid form, but that’s also... not what I am? Partially shifted. Partially in between.

I don’t take my eyes off of him, but I can ’see’ every bit of it in the reaction of my soul. The sort of form I took a time or two already when emotionally out of control but... more.

Legs and hips are bent into a different shape than human. Bones and tendons press under skin that felt too thin to contain them.

Something incomplete but tail-like twitched at the base of my spine, slipping over top of the edge of hiked up pants. And something else pricked at the top sides of my skull, where ears had moved halfway into position and shape.

My nose felt a little funny, but my snout and jaw had not elongated. Hands also felt wrong as usual. Still lacking fur but elongated, with sharp black points that look like they could pierce glass.

Missing fur *everywhere* except the long, thick black strands still growing from my head and slung wildly around me. Still fitting in my clothing, thankfully, if we don’t count the raised tail-thing.

The guard had frozen mid-step to take in everything I had become. Orange eyes wide, hand on the doorframe... mouth open not in a snarl, but unable to understand that anyone had become... this.

"Get back to your post. Now."

Standing to my feet as I commanded the white werewolf, making it further clear I am a being with her faculties fully intact. Thankfully, he blinked - snapped his teeth together - and didn’t choose wrong.

His hybrid form shrank slowly away as he retreated. Leaving the door open as he left - because he would have had to step forward to reach the handle and he apparently follows orders superbly.

Shifting my weight, I walk the distance and close the door myself. I also lose my transformation along the way. Forehead taps against the metal surface as I run a hand over one side of my head and my lower back.

> That was... weird. <

"I’m sorry. That’s not how I usually - I mean it does look something like that, but not without fur and... anyway, I didn’t mean to frighten you. Just him. Though I can’t expect anyone to have known what mourning sounds like from my culture. Should have warned him when I walked past... ideally... but..."

"Jessica also talked too much when she was nervous."

Anise’s hoarse voice came from rather close behind me. Closer than I expected her to get after what I just was.

"Even as a little girl. Chattered constantly when she was scared. Like if she just kept making noise and being active, nothing bad could catch her."

"I’m sorry."

The repeated words were inadequate. But they were all I had to say to the blonde who was not looking... at me.

"I know."

Her eyes were dry, unlike mine, but there was a rawness there that told me the tears had run out days ago. That any clearness I saw before was just plain emptiness.

"I know you are. And I know - logically, I do - that there’s nothing you could have done all that differently. The dominoes were set and it didn’t fall just because you poked one wrong."

She drains the rest of her glass of water in hand in one go. And I connect right then, somehow, that she doesn’t smell even faintly of alcohol. The entire room does not, at all.

> Wanted her sober... the recording said. <

"Even if you’d warned me about what was coming, even if I’d believed you... she was already in Colorado before you left for the cabin... the one that I guess you didn’t ever go to. Already planned to be there those weeks before I ever met you, Citra."

"That doesn’t absolve me. I didn’t... give you the options I could have."

She sat down on the floor across from me, suddenly looking every one of her years and more. The mothering-friend energy I’d grown accustomed to had been muted all this while.

I *want* it to feel only buried under exhaustion and grief. Yet, I can’t help but expect it may be worse. That she has stopped letting herself care.

> Different from the way I did as a young Princess. Her loss is different. <

If that’s her choice - if I broke the conditions that allowed her to show affection to me - then... I will handle it. I’ve lived with it before.

> Yes. I’ve had... lots of practice. Just like Ravi. This would be just like that. I think. Right? <

I can feel myself trying to gloss over the sense of mismatch. How it doesn’t click into place the same, just like it didn’t when Vrika took off. But I don’t know how else to deal with it.

"So just... blame me. If it helps you."

"I’ve had two weeks to think about things like that."

Quietly, still looking like she’s going to bonelessly melt onto the floor. The voice that consistently got excited for helping me pick clothes has no energy to it at all.

"Trust me, I’ve tried to fit that from every angle. Blamed myself for encouraging the trip. I sent her a thousand dollars for her birthday to seed it in the first place. Would have paid for the whole thing if she just asked."

I have to wince hearing that. I thought I had considered all the ways she might be feeling like she was at fault, but because Jessica seemed strong and free-willed... I certainly didn’t think ’I sent her there’ was one Anise could use.

"Tried to blame her for not coming home a day or two earlier. Christmas Eve would have been safe to travel. Blamed the airline of course, for weather they couldn’t predict. The planet, the universe... whatever controls all of it."

Her gaze met mine directly. Pale blue underneath twitching lids. Emotional pain that I can’t actually understand, no matter what I felt for myself.

"Blamed you, for a little while. Yes. For knowing something was coming and being silent. Thought a lot of very unkind things that I wouldn’t say to your face. And I think I’ve called you a coward directly a few times."

"...You said I was scared of a relationship, you didn’t-"

"Oh. Well, I thought it. I just assumed I might have said it while drunk. But anyway, I realized quick enough that it’s not fair to scapegoat you, is it? I wouldn’t have believed you if you came clean. An apocalypse... warning is not something people would digest without irrefutable proof."

I could have shown her my ability, just like I did to make Kyrie believe. But she’s right. Even Claire only went with it at first because her boss believed it.

"You’re allowed to blame me anyway. If needed."

"I’d rather not. You were pregnant - which I wish I *was* told. Alone - though you didn’t have to be, which is why you were a coward."

"Are you sure calling me that over and over is not part of you blaming me?"

"Hm... maybe. I just know that losing you too, on top of everything else, would be one more thing I couldn’t bear."

She reached out, not quite touching my hand but stretching very close.

"And for a while there, when no one could contact you... I thought you were running away for good. Just a transient friendship. You always did seem like you were looking to leave as much as you were looking to stay."

I used to pride myself on being hard to get a read on in court. Even though my priorities were always pretty obvious, most people failed to believe I was being truthful.

Hearing that this body had its heart so much on its sleeve... is mortifying.

"Then I thought you’d perhaps died out in the storm too and grieved. Like I had lost two nieces instead of one."

...Hearing *that* produces a whole different kind of shame.