POV: Ciel
The house was quiet after he left.
Not the bad kind of quiet. Just… still. The way mornings were supposed to be, before the rest of the day decided what it wanted to become.
I stood in the hallway for a moment longer than I needed to, listening to his footsteps fade down the path outside. They were heavy, familiar. The same rhythm every morning, seven days a week, rain or sun.
My hand was still resting against my stomach.
I noticed it the way you notice you've been holding your breath — suddenly, with a small jolt of confusion. I pulled it away and smoothed the front of my robe instead, as if I'd been adjusting the fabric the whole time.
Strange.
From the basin down the hall came a series of aggressive splashing sounds, followed by a muffled "cold cold cold cold—" and then silence.
"Sylvie."
"I'm fine!"
"You used the cold tap again."
"...Maybe."
I walked toward the sound, bare feet quiet against the wood. She was standing on the little step stool Noel had built for her three years ago — she didn't really need it anymore but refused to let him take it away on principle — with water dripping from her chin and her green hair plastered flat against one side of her face like seaweed.
She looked up at me with those enormous golden eyes, the same ones her father had, and grinned.
The gap in her teeth was gone now. She'd lost the last baby tooth months ago. That still caught me off guard sometimes — looking for the gap and finding a full smile instead.
Eleven years old.
"Mama, do you think Papa actually remembers the strawberries or does he just say that?"
"He'll remember."
"He forgot last time."
"He brought apples last time."
"Apples aren't strawberries."
"No," I agreed. "They aren't."
She grabbed the towel and scrubbed her face with the enthusiasm of someone trying to sand wood, then tossed it vaguely in the direction of the hook. It landed on the floor. She looked at it. Looked at me. Picked it up. Hung it properly.
"Good knight," I said.
She beamed.
---
Breakfast was simple. Eggs. Bread. A bit of jam that Sylvie applied in quantities that would concern a structural engineer.
I ate slowly.
That was normal for me — Noel always said I ate like I was solving each bite individually, which was rude but not entirely inaccurate. But this morning something was different. The eggs smelled... heavier than usual. Not bad. Just present. Like the smell had weight to it, pressing against the inside of my nose in a way I couldn't ignore.
I set my fork down after the third bite and reached for the bread instead.
Sylvie didn't notice. She was too busy constructing what appeared to be a jam sandwich of architectural ambition, layering slice upon slice with the focus of a master builder.
"You're going to make yourself sick," I said.
"No I won't."
"You said that last week too."
"And I was fine."
"You threw up on Clark's shoes."
"That was unrelated."
I let it go.
I took a sip of tea instead. That settled better. Warm, plain, simple.
My hand drifted to my stomach again.
I caught it this time. Stopped it. Wrapped both hands around the teacup instead.
Nothing. It was nothing.
---
The morning unfolded the way mornings did when Noel was at the orphanage and Sylvie had nowhere to be.
Which meant chaos.
Organised, enthusiastic, loud chaos.
She'd decided — without consulting anyone — that the living room needed rearranging. By the time I came downstairs from getting dressed she'd already moved the small bookshelf three feet to the left, dragged one of the chairs halfway across the room, and was standing in the middle of it all with her hands on her hips, surveying her work like a general after a successful campaign.
"It looks better this way," she announced.
It did not look better this way. The bookshelf was blocking the window and the chair was facing the wall.
"The chair is facing the wall, Sylvie."
"That's for thinking. Sometimes you need to stare at a wall and just think."
My eye twitched. I opened my mouth to argue and then closed it, because she wasn't wrong, and because I had in fact done exactly that on multiple occasions.
"The bookshelf stays where it was."
"But—"
"Sylvie."
She held my gaze for exactly three seconds — long enough to test, short enough to not push it — and then sighed dramatically and started pushing the bookshelf back. The bottom scraped against the floor with a sound that made my ears fold flat against my head.
She caught that and winced. "Sorry, Mama."
"It's fine. Just... lift it next time."
She tried. She got it maybe an inch off the ground before her arms shook and she set it down again. She looked at her own hands with genuine betrayal, like they'd failed her on purpose.
"Papa could lift this with one hand," she muttered.
"Papa could lift this house with one hand."
She considered that. "Yeah, probably."
We moved it together. She took one end, I took the other. It wasn't heavy for me — not really — but I let her carry her share because she needed to, not because I needed her to.
When it was back in place she dusted off her hands with exaggerated satisfaction and turned to me.
"Mama."
"Hm?"
"Can we go visit the orphanage later? Not to bother Papa. Just to see everyone."
"We'll see."
"That means no."
"It means we'll see."
She squinted at me with the expression of someone who had learned, through years of careful study, that adults used the phrase 'we'll see' exclusively as a polite version of 'absolutely not.'
She wasn't wrong about that either.
---
I sent her outside after that.
Not because she was being difficult — she wasn't.
I just needed a moment.
The house settled into stillness again. I stood at the kitchen counter, hands flat against the wood, and breathed.
The nausea from breakfast had faded, but it left something behind. Not sickness. More like... awareness. A low hum at the base of my stomach that wasn't hunger and wasn't pain and wasn't anything I could name yet.
Yet.
I'd felt something like this once before, years ago, in a different life. A friend of mine — another neko, back in the village I'd grown up in — had described it to me when she was expecting her first. "It's not big," she'd said, hands cupped around her tea like she was holding something precious. "It's barely there. Like someone whispering in a room you can't quite find."
I'd thought it was a strange way to put it at the time.
It didn't seem strange anymore.
I pressed my palm flat against my stomach. Held it there.
Nothing moved. Nothing answered. There was no sign, no proof, no certainty. Just that whisper.
Outside, I heard Sylvie yelling something to a bird. Something about territory and property rights.
I pulled my hand away.
Too early to think about it. Too early to name it.
But I didn't stop noticing.
---
Three days later, I couldn't stand the smell of eggs.
Noel cooked breakfast that morning — he always did on the days he didn't have to be at the orphanage early — and the moment the butter hit the hot pan something in my stomach twisted sideways and I had to leave the kitchen.
I made it to the back porch. Leaned against the railing. Breathed through my nose until the world stopped tilting.
"Ciel?" His voice came from inside, confused. "You good?"
"Fine. Just needed air."
A pause. Then the sound of him continuing to cook, because Noel was many things but perceptive about subtlety was not reliably one of them.
Sylvie appeared beside me approximately four seconds later, because she was the opposite.
She leaned against the railing next to me, matching my posture exactly — arms folded, weight on one hip, chin tilted up. She'd been doing that more lately. Mirroring. Not me specifically, but everyone. Watching how people stood, how they held themselves, how they occupied space. Practicing.
She was trying on different versions of herself the way you try on clothes, seeing what fit.
"You look weird," she said.
"Thank you, Sylvie."
"No, I mean—" she backtracked, ears twitching the way they did when she was choosing her words more carefully than usual, "you look like you're thinking about something but you don't want anyone to know you're thinking about it."
I looked at her.
She looked back at me, completely unblinking, with the steady confidence of someone who knew she was right and was simply waiting for me to catch up.
"I'm fine," I said. "The eggs just smelled strong today."
"They smelled the same as always."
"Then maybe my nose is sensitive today."
She considered this. Her own ears twitched again — once forward, once back — and I could see the thought forming behind her eyes, the connections being drawn, the curiosity sharpening into something more specific.
Then she let it go.
"Okay," she said simply. And went back inside.
That was new too. The old Sylvie would have pushed. Would have asked three more questions, then four more, then invented her own answer if mine wasn't satisfying enough.
This Sylvie knew when to stop.
It should have made me feel relieved. Instead it made me feel seen, which was worse.
---
The weeks moved forward the way they always did.
Noel left for the orphanage most mornings. Came home most evenings. Sometimes with strawberries. Sometimes with stories — a kid who'd learned to read that week, a fight he'd broken up, a new family that had come in off the streets with three children and nothing else.
He talked about the kids the way other men talked about conquests. With pride, with worry, with a tenderness he'd never admit to out loud but that showed in every single word.
I loved that about him.
I loved a lot of things about him, actually, but that was the one I noticed most. The way his voice changed when he talked about them. Lower. Warmer. Like the words themselves had been handled carefully before he let them go.
He hadn't noticed anything yet.
The eggs I could explain away. The nap I'd taken on the second Tuesday — unusual for me, I never napped — he'd chalked up to a long week. The way I'd quietly stopped drinking the herbal wine Miss Dena had gifted us didn't register because he barely drank either.
But the body knew.
By the third week my sense of smell had sharpened to something almost painful. The soap Noel used — cedar and something faintly smoky — which I'd always liked, now hit me in waves that made my eyes water if he stood too close after bathing. The candles in the bedroom had to go; I replaced them with unscented ones and told him the old ones were giving me headaches, which was technically true.
By the fourth week I was tired in a way that sleep didn't fully fix. Not exhausted. Not weak. Just... heavy. Like my body was spending energy on something I couldn't see, running a process in the background that took priority over everything else.
I sat with that feeling for a long time before I gave it a shape.
Before I let myself think the word.
---
Five weeks in.
Sylvie was sprawled on the living room rug with a book she'd borrowed from the orphanage library, one leg kicked up behind her, chin propped on both fists. She read the way she did everything — aggressively, with full-body commitment, occasionally muttering commentary at the characters like they could hear her.
"No, don't go in there," she whispered at the page. "That's so stupid. Why would you go in there."
I was in the chair across from her, sewing a button back onto one of Noel's shirts. His clothes went through buttons the way Sylvie went through jam — at an unsustainable rate.
The fire crackled. The house was warm. Outside, rain tapped softly against the windows in that gentle, persistent way that made the world feel smaller and safer.
Sylvie turned a page. Gasped quietly. Read faster.
I watched her over the top of my sewing.
She'd grown again. I could see it in the way her ankles stuck out past the hem of her trousers — we'd just bought those two months ago. Her face was losing the last of its roundness, cheekbones emerging, jawline sharpening into something that hinted at the young woman she'd become.
Her ears — pointed and expressive, always moving — twitched at a sound I couldn't hear. She glanced up, caught me watching, and smiled.
Not the big grin. The quiet one. The one she saved for moments like this, when it was just us and the fire and the rain and nothing needed to be loud.
"Mama?"
"Hm?"
"This book is really good."
"What's it about?"
"A girl who climbs a mountain to find a dragon. But the dragon isn't scary. He's just lonely." She paused. "I think the mountain is a metaphor."
"A metaphor for what?"
She frowned, considering. "Growing up, maybe? Like... the mountain is hard and scary but you have to climb it to find the thing that matters?"
I set the shirt down in my lap.
"That's a good reading, Sylvie."
She flushed pink and immediately buried her face back in the book, but I caught the pleased twitch of her ears before she hid them behind the pages.
Eleven years old and finding metaphors in dragon stories.
My chest felt warm.
---
That night, after Sylvie was asleep — or at least performing sleep convincingly enough that I let it slide — I sat on the edge of our bed and waited for Noel.
He came in late.
Later than he'd promised, which surprised no one. He smelled like rain and woodsmoke and that particular brand of exhaustion that meant he'd been carrying things all day, probably furniture, probably without asking anyone for help.
He sat down heavily beside me and let out a breath that came from somewhere around his boots.
"Long day?" I asked.
"Mmh."
"You missed dinner."
"I ate at the orphanage."
"You ate whatever the kids didn't finish."
"...That counts."
I didn't argue. He leaned back until he was lying flat, one arm across his eyes, chest rising and falling slowly. His shirt was wrinkled. There was a smudge of something — paint? chalk? — on his jawline.
I reached over and wiped it away with my thumb.
He caught my hand. Held it there against his face for a moment. Didn't open his eyes.
"Hey," he said quietly.
"Hey."
"Missed you today."
"You see me every morning and every night."
"Still missed you."
My tail curled once, involuntarily, the way it did when something caught me off guard in a way I wasn't prepared for. I pulled my hand back gently and rested it in my lap.
He opened one eye. Looked at me sideways. "You okay? You've been quiet lately. Quieter than usual, I mean."
"I'm always quiet."
"Yeah, but this is different quiet."
I considered telling him.
Right then. Right there. Just saying it, plain and simple, the way you'd report the weather or confirm a delivery.
But I wasn't sure yet. Not fully. The signs were there — all of them, stacking up like evidence in a case I was building against my own doubt — but certainty was different from suspicion, and I wasn't ready to make it real by putting words to it.
Not until I knew.
"I'm fine," I said. "Just tired."
He watched me for a beat longer than comfortable. Then he nodded, slow, and closed his eye again.
"Okay," he said. "But if something's up, you'll tell me?"
"Yes."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
He fell asleep within minutes. Heavy, instant, the sleep of a man who had emptied himself completely and had nothing left to give the day.
I stayed up a while longer.
My hand found my stomach again in the dark.
This time, I let it stay.
---
Six weeks.
The morning sickness arrived properly, like a guest who'd been circling the house for weeks and finally decided to knock.
I made it to the basin before anything happened. Barely. My ears rang and my eyes watered and I gripped the edges of the porcelain until my knuckles went white, and when it passed I sat on the floor with my back against the wall and my knees drawn up and just breathed.
The door creaked.
"Mama?"
Sylvie stood in the hallway in her nightgown, hair a disaster, Mister the rabbit tucked under one arm. She still had Mister. She'd never once considered getting rid of him. At eleven, she was old enough to know that was unusual and young enough not to care.
Her eyes were wide. Worried.
"I'm fine," I said, and my voice sounded steadier than I felt. "Bad tea. That's all."
She didn't believe me. I could see it in the way her ears went flat — not fear, not anger, just that sharp, focused attention she'd inherited from Noel. The look that said I'm watching you and I'm going to figure this out whether you help me or not.
But she didn't push.
She walked over, sat down on the floor beside me, and leaned her head against my shoulder.
We sat there for a while.
She smelled like sleep and the lavender soap she'd recently decided was her favourite because Lea used it and anything Lea did was automatically the correct choice.
"Mama?"
"Hm?"
"If you were sick, you'd tell me, right?"
"I'm not sick, Sylvie."
A small pause.
"But you'd tell me."
"Yes. I'd tell you."
She seemed to accept that. She squeezed Mister a little tighter, pressed her face into my shoulder for a second, and then stood up with the abruptness of a child who had decided the emotional moment was over and it was time to move on.
"I'm going to make you tea," she announced. "The good kind. Not the bad kind that made you sick."
"Sylvie, you don't need to—"
She was already gone. Bare feet slapping down the hallway. Cabinet doors opening. The sound of water being poured with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
I sat on the floor and listened to my daughter make tea, and something inside my chest cracked with warmth again.
Just the feeling of being taken care of by someone who was too small and too young and too fierce and too good.
---
Seven weeks.
I went to see the healer.
Not the one in the main district — too many people, too many questions, too much risk of running into someone who'd mention it to Noel before I was ready. There was a quieter one, an older woman on the east side who worked mostly with demi-humans. Discreet. Professional. Kind.
She confirmed what I already knew.
I sat in the small wooden chair across from her and listened to her explain timelines and changes and what to expect, and I nodded in the right places, and I asked the right questions, and I walked home afterward through streets I'd walked a hundred times before, and everything looked exactly the same.
But it wasn't.
I stopped at a fruit stand on the way back. Bought strawberries. Not because anyone had asked. Just because I wanted them.
The merchant — a weathered human woman who'd sold me things a dozen times without once commenting on my ears — looked at the strawberries, then at me, and smiled in a way that was a little too knowing.
I paid quickly and left.
---
That evening, Noel came home with paint on his hands and a story about Tommy — who was apparently fifteen now and still finding ways to end up on roofs — and Sylvie launched herself at him the moment he walked through the door, hanging off his arm the way she'd done since she was small enough to dangle.
She was too big for it now. Her feet almost touched the ground. But neither of them seemed interested in acknowledging that.
"Papa, Mama was sick this morning."
I froze at the kitchen counter, my back to both of them.
"Sick?" Noel's voice shifted immediately. I could hear him turning toward me without looking. "What kind of sick?"
"She said it was bad tea."
"Bad tea?"
"I made her good tea after. She drank all of it."
There was a pause. Then footsteps. Then his hand on my shoulder, warm and large and careful.
"Hey."
"I'm fine."
"Sylvie said—"
"It was just tea, Noel."
He studied my face. I could feel it — that searching look, those golden eyes trying to read something in me the way he read tracks in a forest, looking for the thing that didn't fit.
My tail gave me away. It always did. The smallest twitch, curling inward toward my leg, the way it did when I was holding something back.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. But he didn't push.
"Okay," he said softly. Then he kissed the top of my head, the way he always did, and went to wash the paint off his hands.
From the table, Sylvie watched the entire exchange with the expression of someone taking very detailed mental notes.
---
Eight weeks.
On a Saturday — clear sky, cool wind, the kind of autumn day that smelled like possibility — Lea came to visit.
She did this every few weeks. Not on a schedule, just whenever she felt like it. She'd appear at the front gate like a force of nature in a long coat, and within thirty seconds Sylvie would materialise from wherever she'd been and attach herself to Lea's side like a barnacle made of green hair and opinions.
Today was no different.
"LEA!" The shriek came from the second floor. I heard a window slam open, followed by the sound of someone who was absolutely not using the stairs.
Sylvie hit the ground from the porch railing — a drop of about six feet that she landed perfectly, knees bent, already running before she fully straightened. She slammed into Lea hard enough to make even the Legendary Stalker take a half-step back.
"You're here you're here you're here—"
"I'm here." Lea's voice was warm. She ruffled Sylvie's hair with one hand, the same way she always did, and Sylvie leaned into it like a cat being scratched behind the ears.
I watched from the doorway. Lea caught my eye over Sylvie's head and nodded once. I nodded back.
Then Lea's gaze held for a fraction longer. Her eyes dropped — just for a heartbeat — to where my hand was resting.
Against my stomach.
I moved it.
Lea said nothing. Her expression didn't change. But something shifted behind her eyes — recognition, maybe, or understanding — before Sylvie grabbed her hand and started dragging her toward the house.
"You have to see what I did with my room. I reorganised EVERYTHING. Mama said the bookshelf was in the wrong place but I think she's wrong—"
"Your mother is rarely wrong about anything," Lea said mildly.
"She's wrong about bookshelves."
"I find that hard to believe."
I stepped aside to let them in. Lea paused beside me as she passed and said, very quietly, so that only my ears could catch it: "You look well, Ciel."
That was all.
But the way she said it told me she already knew.
---
Noel was at the orphanage. He usually was on Saturdays, handling the things that piled up during the week — supply orders, repairs, the endless logistics of feeding and housing six hundred children. He'd mentioned something this morning about a broken pipe in the east wing and a shipment of blankets that hadn't arrived, and I'd kissed him goodbye and told him to come home before dark.
He wouldn't. He never did on Saturdays.
Lea settled into the living room with the ease of someone who had been here enough times to know where everything was. She accepted tea and Sylvie wedged herself onto the couch beside her with a proximity that suggested she was trying to merge with Lea's coat through sheer force of will.
"Lea."
"Yes?"
"When are you going to teach me how to fight?"
Lea raised an eyebrow. "You want to learn how to fight?"
"Obviously."
"Why?"
Sylvie sat up straighter. "Because Papa fights. And you fight. And I'm eleven now and I think that's old enough to at least learn the basics. Emma's older brother started training at ten. That's a whole year younger than me."
"Emma's older brother," Lea said carefully, "is training to join the city guard. Is that what you want?"
"No. I want to be strong enough that Papa stops worrying about me."
The room went quiet.
Lea looked at Sylvie for a long moment. Then she looked at me.
I gave the smallest nod.
Lea turned back to Sylvie, and something in her expression softened. Not the big-sister grin. Something deeper. "We'll talk about it. But not today."
Sylvie opened her mouth to argue.
"Today," Lea continued, "I came to see your father."
That caught both of us off guard. Sylvie's head tilted. "Papa? Why?"
Lea's mouth curved. "He's been dodging a spar with me for months. I thought I'd stop asking politely."
---
When Noel came home that afternoon — earlier than expected, which meant either the pipe was fixed or he'd given up on it — he found Lea sitting in his favourite chair, one leg crossed over the other, drinking his tea, looking extremely comfortable.
He stopped in the doorway.
"No," he said.
"I haven't said anything yet."
"You're in my chair. That means you want something I'm not going to like."
Lea sipped the tea. "Spar with me."
"No."
"It's been over a year since you've had a proper match. You're getting soft."
"I'm not soft. I'm busy."
"Soft and busy aren't mutually exclusive."
Noel looked at me. I was sitting at the table, mending another button — his shirts destroyed buttons the way storms destroyed fences — and I offered nothing. Not a word. Not a look. Just the steady pull of thread through fabric.
Sylvie was less restrained.
"DO IT, PAPA." She was practically vibrating. "I want to see you fight Lea. I've NEVER seen you fight Lea."
"There's a reason for that."
"Because you'd lose?"
Silence.
Noel's eye twitched.
Lea set the teacup down with a soft clink.
"The field behind the orphanage," she said. "Tomorrow morning. No weapons, no abilities. Just hands."
"Lea—"
"Unless you're afraid."
That was dirty.
It worked anyway.
---
I'd seen Noel fight once.
It was early in our courtship, before we were married, when I still didn't fully understand what he was. He'd taken a hunting job — something about a creature that had wandered too close to the farming settlements — and I'd been nearby when it happened.
He moved like weather. Like something inevitable. There was a weight to him that had nothing to do with size and everything to do with intent.
When he hit something, it stayed hit. When he stood his ground, the ground thanked him for it.
I'd watched him break a beast twice his mass apart with his bare hands, and the thing that stayed with me wasn't the violence.
It was the calm afterward. The way he'd stood there breathing, covered in filth, and the first thing he'd done was check to make sure no one else was hurt.
That was who he was. Under the scars and the muscle and the reputation.
I'd married him knowing what he was capable of.
I'd married him because of what he chose to do with it.
---
Morning. The field behind the orphanage.
Half the children had somehow found out, which meant all of them knew within minutes. They lined the fence like sparrows on a wire, chattering and nudging and placing bets with whatever currency children used to trade with. Chalk, probably. Or favours.
Sylvie had claimed the best spot — center fence, front row, Mister the rabbit tucked under one arm and a look on her face like she was about to witness history.
"This is the greatest day of my life," she whispered to Mia, who had her fox ears pressed flat in nervous anticipation.
I stood off to the side, arms folded, watching.
Noel stepped onto the field first. He'd rolled his sleeves up past his forearms, which were thick with the kind of muscle that came not from vanity but from years of hitting things that hit back. His expression was the one he wore when he knew he was about to regret something but had committed too deeply to turn around.
Lea stepped out after him.
The children went quiet.
She'd removed her coat. Underneath she wore plain clothes — fitted, practical, nothing decorative. Her hair was tied back. She looked almost ordinary.
Almost.
There was something in the way she walked onto that field. Like every part of her was exactly where it needed to be, doing exactly what it was supposed to do, and the rest of the world was the one that was slightly out of alignment.
I'd felt it the first time I met her. That presence.
Noel felt it too. I could see it in the way his shoulders reset — higher, tighter. The way his weight shifted forward onto the balls of his feet. His body knew, even if his pride wouldn't say it out loud.
He was outmatched.
They faced each other across fifteen feet of open grass.
"Rules?" Noel asked.
"Don't die," Lea said.
"Funny."
"I thought so."
Noel moved first.
It was instinct — Arthur had trained it into him, that forward pressure, that refusal to give ground. He crossed the distance fast, faster than the children expected, fast enough that a few of them gasped.
His right hand came forward — not a haymaker, not the wild swings from his brawling days, but a clean, direct strike. Technically sound. Arthur's teaching showing through, even after all these years.
Lea tilted her head.
That was all. A tilt. Maybe two inches to the right.
His fist passed her face close enough to move her hair.
She didn't counter. Didn't step back. Just stood there, in the space between where his punch had been and where he now was, and waited.
Noel reset. Faster this time. A combination — left, right, a low kick to test her movement. Good footwork. Clean transitions. The kind of sequence that would end most fights before they started.
Lea moved through it like water through fingers.
She didn't block. She didn't parry. She simply wasn't where his strikes arrived. Every punch found empty air. Every kick swept through a space she'd already vacated. She moved with a minimum of effort so precise it almost looked like she wasn't moving at all — a step here, a lean there, her feet barely lifting from the grass.
The children were dead silent now.
Sylvie's mouth was open.
Noel tried again. Harder this time. I could see the frustration building — not anger, but that grinding disbelief of a man who knew he was good and was discovering it wasn't enough.
He threw combinations that should have landed. Angles that should have worked. Feints that should have opened her guard.
She didn't have a guard. That was the terrifying part. Her hands stayed at her sides. She moved her body and nothing else, reading his strikes before they finished forming, occupying the gaps in his rhythm like she'd memorised him.
A minute passed. Two. Three.
Noel hadn't landed a single hit.
"You're not even trying," he growled.
"I'm giving you time to warm up," Lea said. And for the first time, I saw a flicker of something in her expression. Affection. The way an older sibling watches a younger one struggle with something they've already mastered.
It made Noel furious.
He surged forward with everything — real speed now, the kind that cracked the ground beneath his boots, the kind that sent a shockwave rippling through the grass. The children grabbed the fence. Mia squeaked.
His fist rocketed toward Lea's center mass with enough force to level a wall.
Lea caught it.
One hand. Open palm. Her fingers closed around his fist and she held it there, arm extended, absorbing the momentum without moving an inch. The shockwave blew past her, flattening the grass behind her in a wide fan, and she stood in the middle of it like a stone in a river.
Noel's eyes went wide.
Then Lea moved.
One step. Her free hand pressed flat against his chest — just a touch — and Noel left the ground.
He flew backward across the field, hit the grass hard, rolled twice, and came to a stop near the fence with a thud that shook the posts.
The children erupted.
"OH MY GOD—"
"DID YOU SEE THAT—"
"SHE BARELY TOUCHED HIM—"
Sylvie was screaming. Not in fear. In absolute, unfiltered amazement. She was gripping the fence so hard her knuckles were white, eyes huge, bouncing on her toes. "THAT WAS THE COOLEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE."
Noel lay on his back staring at the sky.
Then he started laughing.
Not bitter. Genuine, helpless, slightly-in-pain laughter that shook his shoulders and made him wince at the same time.
"Okay," he said to the clouds. "Fair enough."
Lea walked over and offered her hand. He took it. She pulled him up like he weighed nothing.
"Same time next month?" she asked.
"Absolutely not."
"I'll pencil you in."
Noel dusted grass off his back, still half-laughing, and caught my eye across the field. I was leaning against the corner of the building, arms folded, the smallest smile on my face.
He pointed at me. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking it."
"I was thinking several things."
Sylvie materialised at Lea's side like she'd teleported, grabbing her arm with both hands. "Can you teach me that? The catching thing? Where you just—" she mimed catching a punch and flicking someone away, "—please? Please please please?"
Lea looked down at her. Then at me. Then at Noel, who was rubbing his chest where she'd touched him and pretending it didn't hurt.
"We'll talk about it," Lea said.
Sylvie's ears shot straight up.
"That means yes," she whispered to Mia.
"It means we'll talk about it," Lea corrected.
But she was smiling.
---
That night.
The house was dark. Sylvie was asleep — actually asleep this time, not faking it, because the excitement of the day had burned through even her seemingly infinite reserves. Mister the rabbit was tucked under her chin. The carved wooden figure from her sixth birthday sat on the shelf beside her bed, right next to the pendant, both of them watching over her like tiny sentinels.
I stood in the doorway of her room for a moment longer than I needed to.
Then I closed the door gently and walked back to our bedroom.
Noel was already in bed, one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling the way he did when his body was exhausted but his mind was still running laps.
I slipped in beside him and pulled the blanket up.
"Your ribs?" I asked.
"Fine."
"You winced when you sat down."
"I wince sometimes. It's a personality trait."
My tail flicked against his leg and he made a sound that was almost a laugh.
We lay there in the quiet for a while. His breathing slowed. Mine didn't.
"Noel."
"Mm."
"I need to tell you something."
His eyes opened. He turned his head toward me. In the dark, his golden eyes caught the faint moonlight from the window and held it, and for a moment he looked exactly the way Sylvie did when she was paying full attention to something that mattered.
I reached for his hand under the blanket.
Found it.
Placed it against my stomach.
Held it there.
He didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
His fingers pressed gently — so gently — against the fabric of my nightgown, and I felt the exact moment he understood. Not because he said anything. Not because his expression changed. Because his hand began to tremble. Just slightly. A vibration so small that no one else in the world would have felt it.
But I felt it.
"Ciel," he whispered.
"About two months," I said quietly. "I wanted to be sure before I told you."
Silence.
His hand stayed.
Then his forehead pressed against mine, and his breath came out in a long, shaking exhale that carried something I'd never heard from him before.
Something too big for the room. Too big for the house. Too big for any word I knew in any language.
"Two months," he repeated, like he was tasting it. Learning it. Making it real.
"Two months."
His hand pressed a little firmer. Still gentle. Still trembling.
"I'm going to be—"
He couldn't finish. His voice cracked in the middle of the sentence and he pressed his face against my shoulder, and I felt the dampness there before I heard the sound.
Noel Xerlectus.
The Boar.
The man who had fought a seven-foot armoured giant for four hours without shedding a single tear.
Crying into my shoulder because I'd placed his hand on my stomach and told him he was going to be a father.
I held him.
I held him the way he'd held Sylvie all those years ago — carefully, firmly, like something precious and breakable that was also the strongest thing in the world.
And in the dark, in our small house, in the life we'd built from nothing and everything, I closed my eyes and let myself feel it too.
The whisper that had started in my stomach two months ago.
It wasn't a whisper anymore.
---
AN
also lea is stupidly broken lol i told yall
sylvie stanning lea is never going to stop and thats a fact
as for the news... well.
more on that next time
lmk what you think
cya