"A girl." Sally’s voice had gone very soft. "Alex. She’s a girl."
Alex fell back against Naga’s coils, his whole body shaking, and looked.
She was small—small but not fragile—and she was furious about everything, a tiny baby lion with cream-white soft furs, her muzzle scrunched tight, her nose twitching once in a while. Her tiny little paws clawing and relaxing as her ears flick back and forth along with her surrounding. And when she finally opened her eyes, blinking against the unfamiliar light, the color of them made every person in the alcove go quiet.
One eye was the deep, blue of the sea before a gale. The other was golden—the particular burning gold of Leo’s eyes when he was most himself, most present, most alive.
Two different colors. One for each world she carried.
Alex made a sound he couldn’t have nad. His arms reached, and Sally understood, and placed her there.
She was warm. Heavier than she looked. She imdiately stopped crying—stopped completely, as if the sound of Alex’s heartbeat beneath her cheek was the answer to every question she’d been asking since before she had words.
"Hello," Alex said, and his voice broke, and he didn’t care. "Hello, sweetheart. I’ve got you."
Leo was absolutely still. His face frozen and his breath almost unhearable.
Alex looked up, and found him—Leo, who had fought through everything with the controlled intensity that had always seed like a wall he’d built between himself and feeling too much—
Not still the way walls were still.
Still the way water went still in the mont before it overflowed.
"She has your eyes," Alex said. "And mine. Both of us."
Leo’s throat moved. He reached out—slowly, carefully, the rough hands that had fought countless battles, protected his family and built fires in the dark— gently touched the back of his daughter’s head with two fingers.
Her ears flickered once and she slowly turned toward the contact imdiately. Instinctive. Certain.
Leo made a sound that Alex had never heard from him before. Low. Undone. The sound of sothing that had held itself together through years of exile and loss and the relentless discipline of survival—and was finally, finally, allowed to set itself down.
"Hey," he said, barely above a whisper. "Hey. I’ve got you too."
The cub blinked her heterochromic eyes at her father and and tried to sniff him as if to rember his scent.
Leo softly touched the tip of his daughter’s sniffing nose and rubbed it softly. His face an expression of a soft-hearted parent who fears he might break his baby if he’s not careful enough.
Everybody basked on this heart-touching mont until the he second cub demanded attention from everyone.
Alex felt the contraction building—not the slow, rolling waves of before, but sothing sharper, more urgent. His body had learned what to do now, had rembered the rhythm of pushing and breathing and letting go, and it was not going to wait for him to catch his breath.
"Already?" Sally’s voice was high with alarm. "She’s not even two minutes old—"
"They’re not waiting." Alex’s voice was strained, his hands gripping Naga’s coils as the pressure built. "They’re ready. They’ve been ready."
Lucas was already moving back into position, his large hands steady despite the tension in his shoulders. "Then we’re ready too. Breathe, Alex. You’ve got this."
The contraction crested, and Alex pushed.
This one was different from the first. The first cub had co with a burning, stretching intensity that had made everything else fade to white noise. This one—this one ca with a certainty, a knowledge, as though the second cub had been watching and learning and was now ready to follow its sister into the world.
The pressure built, peaked, broke.
Another slick, wet sound. Another thin, furious cry.
But this cry was different. Not the high, sharp protest of the first cub—sothing lower, more resonant. A sound that seed to co from deeper in the chest, from lungs that had been waiting to fill with air and were now making up for lost ti.
"A boy," Sally breathed. "Alex, it’s a boy. Another lion."
Lucas lifted the second cub with the sa careful reverence he’d shown the first, and Alex’s heart clenched at what he saw.
This one was darker—his fur a deep, rich gold that caught the light like burnished copper, like the color of Leo’s eyes when they caught the morning sun. His muzzle was slightly broader than his sister’s, his paws furrier, and when he opened his eyes—blinking against the sudden brightness of the world—they were both the sa color.
Golden. Pure, bright, unmistakable gold.
Leo’s gold.
Alex heard Leo make a sound he’d never heard before. Not a word, not quite a cry—sothing between a laugh and a sob, raw and unguarded in a way the harpy prince had never allowed himself to be.
"Two," Leo said. His voice cracked. "Two of them."
"Two so far," Naga corrected, his coils tightening around Alex’s shoulders. "There are more. I can feel them still moving."
Alex wanted to rest. His body was screaming for rest, for a mont to catch his breath, for the space between contractions to last longer than the contractions themselves. But the pressure was already building again—not the sharp urgency of the first two, but sothing deeper, sothing that seed to be gathering strength from sowhere far below.
"The third one’s taking its ti," Lucas observed, his hand resting on the still-prominent swell of Alex’s belly. "Not like the first two. It’s positioning itself."
"They’re all positioned," Alex said through clenched teeth. "They’ve been positioned. They’re just—" He stopped, gasping as another wave of pressure rolled through him. "They’re different. The first two wanted out. The third one wants to make an entrance."
Sally, who had sohow managed to wrap both lion cubs in soft furs while also keeping an eye on Alex’s face, made a sound that might have been a laugh. "Dramatic. It’s definitely Leo’s."
Leo didn’t argue.
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