Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)-Chapter 453 - What Blooms From What Withers

A/N: Neurodegenerative / atrophy content similarity warning

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Her hand stills on him for a moment as he wiggles around, at an angle he can’t gnaw on her knuckle. My son makes a small noise of complaint and she resumes... as he gnaws at her forearm’s cloth.

"A mate bond is sacred to those who respect the Lunar Goddess still."

Somehow the way she says this makes me feel bad. It has this... recently broken illusion quality to it. But that deity only has themselves to blame if their favorite looks unfavorably on them now.

"But it’s more than words of marriage and laws enforced. I saw her rebound into something after those first months that was less than my mom was in my heart. Then I watched even that remaining holdout disappear, over seven ungentle years."

If she doesn’t know I’m awake and listening, then she’s rehearsing what to tell me. Because my... our son can’t possibly understand any of this. I don’t know what to do right now.

Do I say something? Do I just keep listening? Vrika would know. The spirit would tell me to just go nuzzle her and whine sympathetically. That I don’t *have* to say anything.

> What is it gaining me by standing here like a bystander, instead of her mate? <

"With the double indemnity insurance settlement, I shifted the priorities and investment flow of Lunarizon. Acquired other real estate and industries while turning to high-margin builds for medical companies."

A small chuckle that tells me she isn’t in a horrible mood.

"Became worth hundreds of millions in the first four fierce years. Had to show everyone I knew what I was talking about the first months, though. When I wasn’t working, I was sitting with her."

Okay. Now I’m sure she knows I’m here. Because all of that except the last thing was just raw bragging. No, actually, even admitting she is the kind of person to deal with their ailing parent is also bragging!

"Sometimes she’d actually be ’there’."

...And now I feel awful for thinking that. It’s too early for this sh-

"Something in her had broken and started... I don’t know the right word. Her wolf couldn’t find what it was tethered to anymore. Instead of just... letting go and closing the connection, as often happens, it just kept searching."

My foot shuffled forward. Dooming myself. I rarely go back on decisions. It’s a real problem of mine. Which is why when I decided to stop being honest about so many things long ago, it has turned into all of this.

"It kept pulling at her from the inside."

Halfway there, she looks back to me. I don’t know what kind of face I’m making, but she sees it and smiles weakly. Raises her hand up and beckons me closer.

"And she let it unravel her."

Really, has she not learned me at all? The gesture just now only makes me slow down. Or maybe that’s the point... she wants to see how I’m still going to keep approaching anyway, despite my stubborn...

"She lost the ability to shift. Then her body began to just slowly degenerate."

I nod at her continuation as I slink beside her and reach for Asha at the same time I lay my face against her arm. What she speaks of is something my world knew of, I’m sure. We did not have separate beast spirits within, but I’m not certain that makes it different.

I know a word for it: Śoṣa. I suppose ’withering’ would be the definition. In the old texts of the mystic scholars I was allowed to read, it was the term for when two spirits entwined by a spiritual tether are split apart by force.

There are methods. Of closure. Ones that a creature eating itself alive from grief cannot name or direct with compromised faculties. I’m faintly aware that every time my son bites down on my finger, another potted toad lily appears in my mindscape.

Like *something* in me is trying to make a point.

But I don’t dive inward to really assess it. I want to be here.

With her hand lazily wrapped around my hip. And mine rubbing circles on her upper back, thinking of the tattoo there. Wondering when, in the middle of all this tragic past, she actually became the Rimecoat Alpha...

"I researched everything I could. Had Dr. Lang visiting weekly, because she is the closest thing to a specialist in our kind that exists. Brought in some wolves from other regions who had experience with... bond trauma."

Such a *clean* term for what she’s describing. A loss of who you are, physically and mentally. Helene and her pack didn’t really know about stuff like this, so I don’t have all this world’s thoughts on it. Maybe Kyle’s mother, as their apothecary, had seen related things in her time.

Things like... a rejected mate just having a heart attack then and there and dropping dead.

However, if someone lost their mate, normally a Duskpaw would simply either find another - or another would find them if you were a she-wolf. Which is probably what Chad had been waiting for by egging Jace on.

The opening to swoop in while the brain behind this body was reeling. While she felt unwanted and alone... and without ’good’ reasons to refuse his advance.

> In such a situation, I doubt he would be happily holding the child of his ’friend’ like this. And yet she does it for the offspring of a rival. Of an enemy. No, that’s not right. <

She just ignores everything but the fact that it is mine. Everything but the reality that I have allowed her to think of him... as ours. And damn it to all nineteen hells, he really is cute!

> I will find my phone and charge it today. I have to start taking pictures again. So I can be the sort of mother that embarrasses him in front of his friends or mate some day. Oh, look at my sweet child when he was a newborn, isn’t he just-<

"My parents were bonded for twenty-five years."

Right. Don’t get carried away. She’s still being... open about herself.