Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)-Chapter 452 - This Is Not The Song That Doesn’t End

The first time he cried out, I woke. Of course I did.

Three weeks of maternal conditioning doesn’t evaporate because someone with warm hands and a warmer voice told me to sleep through it. Told me that she was already preparing the food and had woken up early to do it.

My body was merely upright before my mind caught up, already swinging legs toward the floor. Only for the gentle palm on my shoulder to press back down more firmly as I... growled at the resistance between me and my son.

"I have it. Sleep. You promised."

The obstacle turns into a beauty with a reddish glow to her eyes. Looking for all the world like she was ready to try and wrestle me down on this point.

"But..."

"You agreed. I made you agree three more times three hours and forty seven minutes ago. Sleep, Princess."

I didn’t do as she asked. I just eased down while she walked back off... and laid there in the container’s bed with my eyes closed, listening to the sounds of her out in the kitchen. The same place where that little voice mewls and sends a *need* right into my chest.

> Maybe I should have milked before I slept. <

Eventually my enhanced senses note the eager, wet sounds of a tiny beast eating his second set of semi-solids. Wondering if she remembered the bonemeal. And hearing Kyrie’s low murmurs to him as she guided him perfectly without my help.

"Patience, Asha."

...

"Slow down, it’s not going anywhere."

...

"...You have her appetite, don’t you. That’s almost half a cup this time."

Spoken with entirely too much affection for either of us, I feel myself slip half into sleep. Accepting that things are fine. Accepting that my Kyrie is trustworthy.

When I feel the mattress dip, I realize she is staying on the far side’s edge. Kyrie didn’t move quickly to drape herself over me, like I expected her to do. It’s what she did earlier.

"Still awake, aren’t you."

It took me a few groggy seconds to understand that she was... miffed at me. With all the pettiness possible in a very successful woman who runs a multi-billion dollar company, I hear her grab for her pillow - and feel her get back up again.

"I’m taking the next feeding too, then. Sleeping on the couch with Asha. Keep your promises this time, hm?"

...I guess she decided that she simply would not lay close enough for me to feel when she got up. Maybe even that she could do a better job next time, to keep me from reacting to his cries by having the food ready even earlier.

Silly wolf. As if that would work if it didn’t this time. Now I’m just going to have to sit here without either of their warmth beside me. Now...

...

Exhaustion won. I slept. Hard. So much that I surfaced from the dream of swimming in a certain waterfall in my kingdom extra slowly, instead of jolting awake like before.

This time I still heard her voice, but not directed at me to keep me asleep. Low and out in the living room nearby as I start to feel tightness in my chest again. Less in need to address his feeding and more just...

In general engorgement. Since it has now been many hours since they have been... emptied. Fun to realize that will be what my first duty today is. Not feeding my child directly, but hooking myself up to that... werewolf milker.

Feeling slightly irritable in some ways, even as I feel more grounded in others, I try to make no noise as I slide off the bed to sneak a peek. Hoping the purple glow behind me isn’t casting too obvious shadows, or that she is looking out the window at the dawn light like it sounds.

"My mother would have liked you."

Eventually I can see the outline of her, the arm cradling the full tummy and the other hand patiently letting him nip playfully with his little extra energy as she speaks down at him. At least, I’m pretty sure that soft voice was meant to be at him and not me.

"I take after my father, as much as I hate to say it. He might have grown used to the idea of you, but I’ll never know anything that he might have grown used to."

Though I’d be a fool to think she hasn’t already noticed the change in my breathing, let alone the shifting of sheets against my bare skin - or that one little creak in the shipping container’s floor. However, she doesn’t turn around to acknowledge that I’m watching, and listening, from the edge of my little safe place’s door.

"But mom was... less serious than me. More like yours in some ways, actually. Often knew exactly what to say to make someone feel like the most important person in a room, or the smallest in the world."

A soft sound from Asha which... might have been an attempt at a growl. Or might have been indigestion. Seeing him energetic and not immediately rushing back to sleep makes me want to just walk over.

> I want to interact and play with him too! Why does it feel like I’m already getting slowly pushed to the bad cop parent without anyone asking? <

"She used to sing to him while he worked at home, as a form of punishment for not getting things done in the allotted hours. He never got upset over it, even when distracting him with her attention. Forcing him to balance home with work."

At my side, fingers twitch. Realizing that she had done something similarly forceful but caring by bringing me dinner. That I’d done something similar too, by trying to get her to go do work instead of let her play the newlywed wife.

"My father would just get this look on his face. It was just a little look. But when I was a child... I understood it. As his love. Because he never showed it to anyone else."

With me here listening, I try and empathize. Try and think back to if I’d ever witnessed anything like this with my own mother and father. I find I cannot place anything. And that... just kind of makes me sad.

"And when he died, she never sung again. Because she’d lost it. His love."

...But not as sad as that.