Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)-Chapter 449 - If A Fox Has Your Tongue…

Texture of tongues aside, the middle step there of clearing my tastebuds was a good idea. Allows me to enjoy the next thing fully for what it was, turning this into more of an event than just a quick meal.

He managed to preserve lots of the aspects of digging right into a fresh kill while also managing to turn it into a proper cooked and seasoned dish. He is very skilled and I guess that does deserve a kind word or two.

"You can have as much of it as you want, no need to stop at half."

I glare at her while plating some of it and pushing it over her way. She could at least pretend like she isn’t getting full *just* watching me.

"It’s delicious. Thank you. Now you try it."

"...Alright. I’ll let him know you praised it. He was worried."

"...Why?"

"Well, that you ran off weeks ago because you didn’t appreciate his cooking."

> Ugh. The look on her face. I can’t tell if she is kidding - or this is a real thing a man I never met said... and she just finds it amusing. <

My money would be on her telling the truth, if money mattered much anymore. I quietly eat every flake of this green-apple and gin granita that she hands me next, before she begins to push over the kidney dish.

Seared to an outer crisp, since that texture is clearly seen as superior to the dining experience - but still nice and pink inside. On top of a garlic smelling sourdough bread slice and drizzled in a bordelaise that smells more like fat and a bit of blood than the beef broth version I’d tried at a local restaurant.

The first bite is already exquisite. So much I almost didn’t want to let go of it with one hand to wipe my chin before she can. All that goes by as I mull over what to say to that... accusation that wasn’t actually meant to be one.

"You could have introduced him to me this evening. If keeping him happy is important to you."

"So you could tell him his food was ’acceptable’?"

Some spice went down the wrong hole after she slyly verbalized that excuse... and she rubs my back while I cough for a moment. My fault for sneaking a remaining piece of brain she doesn’t seem inclined to touch.

> Maybe I’m not the only one with mood swings today. < 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

This woman keeps shifting from that stiflingly warm possessiveness to burning iron hot with her teases. We should probably both just eat, sleep, and then wake up refreshed to get ready for another day of...

> Too much to deal with. <

"I was joking. You’d like each other, you both enjoy food. I just didn’t want outsiders up here in your space without your approval."

"It’s your building. You can and should do whatever you please, Pyārī."

"But it’s your space in it now. Currently storing your food. Of course, so is my apartment and anywhere else you end up feeling you need..."

"Okay, okay, stop being *so* nice to me. You have to find some sort of balance or I won’t be able to either."

"That’s what I’m working on."

Leaning her head toward me while also tilting it, elbow on the counter... exposing the side of her neck in what must be an *intentional* trap... I find myself growling softly and losing focus as I stare at the white strands of hair hanging away from her scalp.

> I could reach out and touch her too. There’s nothing really stopping me... except myself and the fact that I pushed her into a wall earlier. <

This wolf has let others up to see me, but has clearly been narrowing my world down to what was safe and necessary - in the same way I did when I left. Let me wander down the stairs on my own with my son as I wanted, even though she must have been fearing I would escape again or that something else bad might happen.

"...You should eat more. I won’t have you skipping meals to coddle me."

"I already ate downstairs while waiting for his preparations. This was always intended for you, mistress of my tower. Swaminee to my heart."

My teeth pressed together and I focused very hard on the plate. Instead of her too pleased face after the... *attempted* pronunciation of what I told her myself to call me.

Because if I looked at those fire-opal eyes right now - after Anise, after the voicemail, after everything this day has pulled out of me...

> Just like when I told her to call me svāminī because I’d been thinking of myself as very favored by her Alpha Queen-ness. Like I was a highborn wife. I might say something I actually mean if I open my mouth now. <

Like the questions that have been stinging my throat since she mentioned her father earlier. I might let her know I actually had interest in her past, even if she stubbornly - but smartly - avoided telling me the details of her dalliances herself.

I’ve never really wanted to know so much about someone. Not without it being just for social ammunition to turn the tables on them. I want to know. I need-

"How did they die? Your parents."

The question came out with the grace of a stone whispering through a window. But Kyrie Voss, the leader of the Rimecoat pack and CEO of Lunarizon Industries, grand philanthropist and core provider for all of Vossden did not flinch at the suddenness.

She just nodded and sits down her fork, which makes me look down at my soiled fingers and realize I’d really been... being a beast. She brought a nice dinner and I’m just eating it with my hands like I don’t know any better.

But I’ve spent the better part of today thinking about the failures behind me, the possible results of actions ahead of me, and listening to the hopes of a dead woman. That has stripped a lot of what remained for caring about some details, it seems.

"My father passed first. I was seventeen at the time."

"Young."

I obviously can’t understand this, even if I wanted to try. Both of mine were still alive when I transmigrated. However, the calm smile on her face seems like the kind held by someone who had come to terms with a hurt.

And she takes my food-dirtied hand in hers to squeeze slightly, with little spasms, that burrow inside the top of my chest with phantom pain. Because she wanted to show me that she is calmer on the surface than inside.

"He was visiting a site of one of his company’s commercial builds in the warehouse district. Something went wrong with a temporary support structure. A heavy vehicle bumped the scaffolding. Told it was unstable and starting to fold by the foreman, they began to evacuate with everyone else."

Controlled. Like the words had been practiced for years. She’d probably had to do interviews from nosy journalists that I could have looked up all on my own.

If I’d only been willing to seek out more information on her life before I met her. Instead of doing all I could to be the only one being chased.

My fingers curled tight around hers as if they’d make the next assertion of mine somehow less... just less.

"He didn’t leave."

"No. He instantly went up. Because he saw two of his crew were still tethered and operating tools. Somehow the others skipped alerting them and they didn’t notice the buckling. One human, one Rimecoat. He got them both down."

The pause that followed that ending, with her looking through me and knowing this was a story of his death, told me the rest before she could say it. Told me more about her inner feelings than the anecdotal complaints over flowers and anniversaries.

> You can hate your father. But you can also love him. I did at times with mine. <

"Everything came down before he got out of the way of it, himself."

She actually smiled after saying that. Not because of the words, I think. Or the fatality... I... think.

But because I gripped her hand a bit too hard. At least the softly narrowed, natural brown eyes staring right into mine suggest I am the cause.

While the pain must be more distant, being smiled at like I am some sort of salve to her - where Anise could not manage that with me...

I guess she *can* reduce that newer glow now and has just been in... a very wolven state of mind all day? Even without her spirit around anymore.

> However, I am kind of glad I can still see them this way. Both versions are pretty. <

Maybe I’ll tell her that when we go to sleep.