Felicity's Beast World Apocalypse

Chapter 308: New Leader Of Snow Team

Dimitris’s hands dropped down to cradle the curve of her, fingers spread wide, trembling.

She felt his breath against her skin. Hot. Ragged. He was breathing like he’d been running.

"I’m losing my mind," he said into her belly, the words muffled and raw. "Do you understand? I am genuinely, completely losing my mind over you, and I have tried god, Felicity, I have tried so hard to be reasonable about this."

One of the cubs kicked, hard, right against the place where his forehead rested. Dimitri went utterly still. Then a sound came out of him, half laugh, half sob, that made her chest crack open.

"Four cubs," he whispered. "You’re carrying four cubs, and every single one of them is going to be born into a world that wants to eat them alive. And I."

His hands tightened on her hips. Not painfully. Possessively. The way someone holds something they’ve already decided they would die before surrendering.

"I will burn Bowral to the ground before I let anyone near them," he said. The words were quiet and absolute. No theatrics, no performance, just the plain, devastating truth of a man who had reached the end of every rope he had. "Every desperate soul in this town, every hungry mouth, every pair of eyes that looks at you with anything other than reverence, I will end them. All of them. Do you hear me? and will lead a new snow team, and our team," tilting his head towards the other men, her men, their family.

Felicity up at his face, at his dark hair, the way his shoulders were shaking, the way his entire body had curved around her belly like a shield. Something hot and liquid spilled down her cheeks, and she realised she was crying.

She reached down and touched his hair. It was soft. Softer than she expected.

"Dimitri," she said.

"You don’t have to do this alone," she whispered.

He made a sound, wounded, animal-like and his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer. She could feel the tension in him, the way every muscle was locked, the way he was holding himself together through sheer force of will and failing.

"I have watched you walk toward danger every single day since I met you," he said. His voice was steadier now, but only because he’d reached the bottom of whatever well he’d been drawing from. "You keep running toward things that could take you from me." His hand rested heavily at her waist, fingers splayed wide. "At some point, I’m going to stop letting you."

Felicity frowned down at him, even through the tears. "You don’t get to decide that."

His thumb pressed once against her side. Grounding. Immovable. The kind of pressure that said I am here and I am not moving, and the world will have to break me before it breaks you.

"Watch me," he said.

Felicity reached down, curled her fingers beneath his chin, and tilted his face down.

His eyes were red-rimmed, bright, devastating. There was nothing hidden in them anymore. No walls, no restraint, no carefully maintained distance. Just raw, unfiltered want, so intense it was almost painful to look at.

She pulled.

The kiss was not gentle.

It was claiming. Deep and hungry and desperate, his lips moving against hers with a hunger that bordered on violence, his tongue sliding against hers, his arms wrapping around her so completely that she was lifted slightly off her feet. She kissed him back with everything she had, pouring every ounce of feeling, the fear, the loneliness, the bone-deep exhaustion, the fierce, blazing love she’d been denying herself into the press of her mouth against his.

He tasted like salt and smoke and something darker, something that lived in the shadows where he made his home, and she drank it in greedily.

When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing hard. Felicity’s lips were swollen. Dimitri’s eyes had gone nearly black, the pupils blown so wide there was almost no colour left.

"If someone decides to test their luck with you..." He started, his voice rough.

"They won’t get far," she finished, and the corner of his mouth twitched not quite a smile, but something adjacent to one.

The corner of his mouth twitched again, not quite a smile, but something that lived in the same neighbourhood. Something dangerous and pleased and entirely too satisfied.

"I love you," she said into his hand. "Even when you’re being a terrifying, overdramatic lunatic who threatens to burn down entire towns."

A low rumble vibrated through his chest. Approval, possession, something primal that made her belly tighten in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the cubs. His forehead dropped to rest against hers, his breath mingling with hers in the narrow space between them.

"I love you too." The words came softly, pressed against her temple like a secret. Then, quieter: "Also, I wasn’t being overdramatic, I have the matches."

From somewhere behind them, Lucan’s drawl cut through the heavy air: "For the record, if he burns down Bowral, I’m going to need at least two hours’ notice to relocate my snack stash. I’ve got seventeen cans of candied peaches hidden in that town, and I refuse to lose them to a dramatic love confession."

Felicity snorted wet, undignified, half a sob still clinging to the edges, and felt Dimitri’s arms tighten around her, his chest shaking with a laugh he was clearly trying to suppress.

"Eighteen," Voss corrected from somewhere in the living room. Quiet and precise. "You miscounted."

Lucan’s outraged roar echoed off the walls, and Felicity buried her face in Dimitri’s chest, laughing and crying simultaneously, surrounded by the absurd, violent, impossibly devoted disaster of a family she’d somehow built in the ruins of the world.

Dimitri’s hand settled back over her belly. Broad. Steady. His thumb traced a slow circle over the place where one of the cubs had kicked, and he pressed his lips to the crown of her head.

"Seventeen cans of peaches," he murmured against her hair. "I’ll factor that into the evacuation timeline."

"You’re not burning down the town," Felicity said.

His thumb kept circling. "We’ll see."