Felicity's Beas Chapter 118: Lucan

Chapter 118: Lucan

Dawn carried grounded strength.

Richard’s gaze moved slowly across Snow Team, asuring without challenge.

Marx exhaled.

Legend did too.

Almost in sync.

Marx muttered under his breath.

"Thank god they didn’t et her."

Sarge nodded once.

Because they were exactly her type.

Tall.

Scarred.

Quiet.

Dangerous.

The kind that didn’t chase.

The kind that got chosen.

No one laughed.

Because this was not humour, this was future complication standing in the lane.

Ivan’s gaze remained steady.

Dimitri’s too.

The greeting between them was brief.

Professional.

The kind exchanged between n who had guarded high-value lives in environnts where failure ant burial.

"You brought sothing new," Dimitri said.

Ivan did not deny it.

Dimitri nodded once.

Lucan stopped.

It was subtle.

A pause.

His head tilted slightly.

He inhaled.

Slow, asured.

Then again.

His gaze moved across Ivan.

Across Sarge.

Across Marx.

Across the air itself, he inhaled once more and muttered quietly.

"Not here."

Dimitri’s eyes flicked toward him briefly.

Then back to Ivan.

"We’re heading out," Dimitri said.

Sarge stepped from the side lane.

"Safe run."

Leaf Team moved past, Lucan lingered half a step, his gaze scanned once more then he followed.

Snow Team watched them go.

Because this ti,

they would keep Felicity away.

Because next ti,

Lucan might not say "not here."

And next ti,

the inhale might not end.

Felicity woke slowly, the kind of waking that ca from safety rather than urgency, she was clean and she thought it was probably victors doing, she murmured "Heal" and the light encompassed her and her mates, she felt like she could walk again.

For a long ti after the collapse, sleep had ant survival rather than rest. It had been sothing taken in fragnts and guarded fiercely, sothing interrupted by sound or movent or instinct that refused to let her relax completely. Now, for the first ti in what felt like months, she woke without that imdiate tension.

She remained still for a mont, her cheek resting against Damien’s shoulder while Victor’s presence ford a steady warmth in front of her. Voss was nearby, not touching, but close enough that the space around her felt contained.

The apartnt block was quiet in a way that felt earned rather than fragile.

Sarge hovered near the doorway again.

He never fully entered. He simply remained present, watchful in a way that had beco familiar enough that Felicity no longer found it strange.

She slipped into her space without needing to think about it.

Inside, the calm greeted her like a held breath finally released. Nothing here had been touched by Vineyard’s dust or tension. It remained hers.

She moved toward the storage she had built.

Food ca first.

She gathered small snacks she had saved over ti, things that would last and things that might lift soone’s mood without requiring explanation. Fizzy drinks followed, their sealed cans feeling like small pieces of normalcy preserved.

Next ca clothes.

She chose an oversized shirt and pulled it over her head. The fabric fell well past her hips, soft from wear, carrying faint traces of the n who stayed close to her.

To them, it would sll territorial.

To her, it slled like warmth.

She did not question why that made her feel calr.

She moved to the baskets.

They had started as a practical idea, a way to ensure that everyone had sothing comforting close by, but they had beco sothing else over ti. Each one received snacks, a drink, a blanket, and a small soft toy that she hugged briefly before placing inside.

It felt childish.

She did it anyway.

Coloring books followed, added without comnt.

One basket grew larger than the rest.

For Rose.

For her babies.

Felicity packed carefully. Soft wraps. Clothes that might suit either human or beast form. Blankets that would hold warmth.

She hesitated when she reached maternity dresses.

Rose did not seem like soone who would choose softness easily.

Felicity added them anyway.

She gathered the baskets and stepped back into the apartnt.

Victor noticed imdiately.

Damien did too.

Voss remained quiet.

They followed her, interested to know what her plan was.

Sarge hovered a few doors down.

Felicity smiled faintly when she saw him, she moved toward the corridor.

The walk through the building felt different, though she could not explain why. People glanced up as she passed, not openly, not rudely, but with a quiet awareness that had not existed before.

She focused on her task, delivering the basket, check on Rose.

Return.

She knocked gently before entering, Rose looked up.

Felicity held out the basket "I made this," she said softly.

Rose looked at the contents and then at Felicity, her expression shifting in a way she would not acknowledge aloud "You didn’t have to," Rose said.

"I wanted to," Felicity replied.

Rose accepted it.

Felicity did not linger.

She returned to the apartnt with her the warmth greeted her again, she lted between her mates space Damien and Victor and Voss without needing to ask.

————

Lucan POV

Lucan should have dismissed it.

In the last half a year, nothing survived by chasing every unfamiliar sensation. Curiosity got people killed. Instinct existed for a reason, and his had always been reliable.

This wasn’t.

The trace he had caught near the apartnt block had stayed with him longer than it should have. Not as scent exactly, but as a gap in the world’s usual sharpness. It had softened the air around him for a brief mont, and that alone made it dangerous.

Now, outside Vineyard’s periter, the emptiness returned quickly. The reinforced walls and settlent noise fell behind, replaced by broken terrain and the stillness that ca from too many abandoned places left to rot.

Lucan moved without using his acceleration. There was no target. No pursuit.

Still, his breathing shifted.

He inhaled.

Nothing.

Then again a faint warmth surfaced beneath the dust and old concrete.

He followed it before deciding to that was what unsettled him.

He did not make the choice consciously. His body adjusted course without command, turning toward a low formation of stones arranged deliberately against the slope.

A small rock fort.

Not defensive. Not strategic. Built without concern for visibility or strength.

It carried the trace.

The sensation did not spike.

It lingered.

Lucan crouched slightly, his fingers brushing one of the stones. His power stirred in response. The instinct to reposition flickered, not toward retreat but toward proximity.

Blink-distance.

Closer.

He did not move.

The urge remained.

That was new.

Teleportation had always synced to threat or opportunity. It triggered when sothing needed closing or escaping. Now it aligned with sothing that neither threatened nor resisted.

Lucan stood slowly and moved on the pull did not weaken.

It shifted.

Further out, past where Vineyard’s patrol routes usually ended, the trace reappeared against a fractured concrete wall.

Stronger.

Lucan inhaled again.

This ti the instinct rose faster.

Close distance, approach, the reflex did not feel like pursuit.

It felt like correction, as though the space between him and the source needed reducing.

He resisted.

Exile arrived without announcing himself, he did not ask why Lucan had left the periter he simply stepped into the space beside him and inhaled once.

His perception did not interpret the trace as scent alone.

Pressure responded first.

The air did not change in asurable density, yet his instincts registered sothing that eased rather than compressed, he perceived it as warmth.

Not temperature.

Presence.

A softness that did not belong in a world built on survival.

It did not weaken him.

It steadied him.

That was worse, because steadiness without reason could beco distraction.

Lucan remained silent.

Exile did not question.

Neither of them recognized the source.

They only understood that sothing existed which their instincts had never encountered before.

His shoulders dropped before he realized they had been tight. The constant flicker of shadow at his edges steadied, no longer snapping at nothing.

"What is this," Exile asked.

Lucan crouched without answering. His fingers pressed into the soil. The ground was dry, but heat clung beneath the surface, sunk deep instead of burned away. He rubbed the dirt between his thumb and forefinger and brought it to his nose.

His jaw shifted.

There was male here. Several. Strong. Territorial. Layered over each other in overlapping dominance.

Under it, sothing else.

Exile saw the change in his expression. He stepped closer. Too close.

Lucan did not move away.

"You sll that," Exile said.

Lucan inhaled again, slower this ti. Controlled.

It wasn’t sharp. There was no spike of fear, no sourness of distress. No tallic edge of forced claiming.

Every female they had encountered since the collapse carried strain in her scent. Hunger. Bargaining. Anger wrapped tight around bone. Even the strongest of them burned at the edges.

This did not burn.

It settled.

Exile’s shoulders lowered before he realized they had been tense. The constant tremor under his skin, the low static that followed him everywhere, thinned.

Lucan straightened gradually. His breathing had evened out. The pressure in his temples eased in a way that made him aware of how constant it had been before.

"It’s a woman," he said.

Exile’s head turned sharply. His pupils narrowed.

"No."

Lucan held his gaze.

"Yes."

They went quiet after that.

Not stunned.

Calculating.

A woman had been here. Not fleeing. Not cornered. Not overwheld.

Centered.

Lucan stepped into the middle of the clearing. His boots sank slightly where the earth had been disturbed and pressed back into place.

His power usually pressed outward without permission, testing the air for resistance. Here, it folded inward and aligned along his spine. His hands, which rarely stopped flexing, went still at his sides.

Exile watched the shift. He flexed his fingers experintally.

The shadows that clung to him responded without distortion. No fray at the edges. No lag.

He swallowed once.

"That’s not normal."

Lucan did not look at him.

He was breathing through his nose, slow, asured. His jaw was tight enough to ache. His pulse was steady.

Won did not quiet n like this.

Won negotiated. They demanded structure, safety, territory. They sharpened themselves because the world required it.

This scent did not demand.

It absorbed.

Exile stepped closer to the center and stopped when his chest felt too tight.

He exhaled slowly. The constant urge to move, to hunt, to break sothing just to feel aligned, eased.

His eyes flicked to Lucan.

Neither of them smiled.

Neither of them relaxed.

They stood in the residue of sothing intimate and did not na it.

There had been multiple males here. The evidence of it was layered and unmistakable.

The scent did not carry distress.

It carried completion.

Lucan’s jaw tightened further. A muscle jumped beneath his skin.

"That’s why we followed it," Exile said.

Lucan did not answer.

They had not been tracking territory, they had not been seeking challenge they had been pulled.

Not by dominance.

By equilibrium.

Exile’s gaze dragged slowly across the clearing again. The flattened earth. The tree bark scored by careless hands. The air that felt thicker at the center.

"If being near her does this," he said, voice controlled, "what happens when she stands in front of us."

Lucan turned his head at that.

Their eyes t.

Neither of them liked what was forming in the silence between them.

The wind shifted slightly, carrying the lingering warmth back over their skin.

Lucan stepped forward out of the clearing.

His shoulders squared.

"Find her," he said.

Exile followed.

Neither of them ntioned that they already knew this was not curiosity.

And neither of them admitted that they were not looking for a fight.