Chapter 411 - 410 - Gwen’s a Disturbance
Viktor controlled his expression with the ease of long practice.
The wives had arranged themselves around him by now in the natural geometry of people who had been doing this for weeks. Bella pressed herself against his left side with zero ceremony, her temple against his shoulder, tail wrapping once around his thigh. Mira stood slightly forward and to his right, green eyes already watchful. Helena arrived at his back — because Helena always arrived at his back, it was her preferred position for exactly the reason he was about to be reminded of — and her hands settled on his shoulder blades with the warm proprietary ease of complete ownership.
The pressure of her against him. Her belly against the small of his back. Her breasts against his spine.
Viktor’s cock, which had been behaving, filed a formal complaint.
He looked down at his pregnant wives. At the soft curves of their bellies. He reached out — first to Mira, palm settling against the round warmth of her abdomen — and rubbed slow circles. Mira went still in that particular way she went still when she wanted to seem like she wasn’t affected. Helena’s hands on his shoulders tightened. He moved to her next, reaching back and around, feeling the firm swell of her under his hand, the twin weight of it, and something in his chest did a thing he didn’t have vocabulary for.
’Mine.’
’All of it mine.’
"I could live like this," he said, to no one in particular.
"Then stay," Mira said immediately.
"You said that last week."
"I’m saying it again."
"And the week before."
"Viktor." Her green eyes found his. The shrewd woman who had maneuvered him before he’d known he was being maneuvered, and who still tried, still calculated, still believed she could make the calculation work if she found the right angle. "Where are you going."
Not a question. She already knew. She was asking so he had to say it out loud, which she’d decided made it more real, more discussable, more something she could apply leverage to.
"The capital," Viktor said.
The walkway’s temperature dropped three emotional degrees.
One after another, they all started talking.
Bella’s ears folded. "But you just—"
"What about the tower?" Kaida said. "The dungeon floors still need—"
"And the delivery timeslime for the north merchant route," Elara started, pink eyes wide.
Helena said nothing. She pressed her forehead between his shoulder blades and breathed out, slowly, the exhale of someone who had known this was coming and had been dreading it with the quiet dignity she brought to all things she couldn’t stop.
Viktor let them speak. When the first wave subsided he said, calmly, "I already told Mira and Helena."
Four heads turned toward Mira.
Mira looked at the garden below with great interest.
"When?" Kaida said.
"Two nights ago," Mira said, without looking at them.
"’Two nights ago’—"
"He told me first." A pause. "I am the senior wife."
The sound Kaida made at that was a masterpiece of compressed feeling. Viktor stored it for later.
"You can come to the capital," Viktor said. "Whenever you want to. Come visit. Come live there if you want. I’ll arrange it." He looked at Mira and Helena. "But you two are staying until the births."
"Viktor—" Helena started.
"The births," he said again, with the specific weight of a man who had decided this and was not entertaining alternatives. "Both of you. I’ll be back before they happen. You have my word."
Mira’s jaw worked. She was calculating. He could see it. Running every angle, every piece of leverage, every theoretical argument that might pry an exception out of him, and arriving at the conclusion — the same conclusion she always arrived at eventually — that this particular thing was settled.
She clicked her tongue.
"Fine," she said.
"Fine," Helena echoed, smaller.
They hugged him. One at a time and then all at once — Bella burrowing in from the left, Kaida pressing against his right with her characteristic lack of ceremony about it, Elara’s arms coming around his waist from behind Bella, Helena’s chin on his shoulder and her arms around his neck, Mira’s hands flat on his chest as she pressed her forehead to his jaw. The weight of them. The warmth. His cock had given up filing complaints and was simply present, enthusiastic, a fact everyone in this huddle was aware of and choosing not to address for the sake of the moment.
Viktor stood in the middle of all of them and felt something that he also didn’t have vocabulary for.
’Not peaceful,’ he thought. ’But close.’
The huddle broke apart slowly. Viktor looked toward Vivian.
She had watched the whole thing from six feet back, arms crossed, expression cycling through emotions in the way of a woman trying to process something that didn’t fit any category she’d prepared. She met his eyes. Looked away. Then, with the quiet resolve of someone who had made a decision she wasn’t going to explain out loud, she stepped forward.
Her arms wrapped around him from behind.
Her breasts pressed against his back. Full. Heavy. ’Warm.’
Viktor’s spine went straight. His cock made a decision very quickly.
"Thank you," Vivian said, her face against his shoulder blade. "For allowing Gwen to accompany you." Her voice was soft and genuine and Viktor could feel the weight of weeks in it — weeks of fear and running and relief and things that had no name. "Truly."
Viktor looked forward at the garden. He thought about her wider hips.
"Of course," he said.
"MOTHER."
Everyone looked at Gwen.
She stood at the edge of the group with both hands in fists and an expression on her face that suggested she was considering several courses of action simultaneously and discarding all of them. Her eyes moved from her mother’s arms around Viktor’s bare torso to Viktor’s face to the general situation to the sky, as if the sky might provide her with an appropriate response.
"’Mother.’ He is ’naked.’ You are—" She made a gesture. "You are ’hugging’ the naked—"
"Gwen," Vivian said, muffled against Viktor’s shoulder.
"He is— they are— ALL OF YOU." Gwen turned the full weight of her glare across the assembled wives, who watched her with the collective expression of women who knew exactly what was going to happen to her eventually and found it endearing. "You’re all completely insane! He’s standing there with his— his ’thing’— just, ’out’, and you’re—"
"It’s a nice thing," Bella said helpfully.
"’Bella.’"
"It is! It’s very—"
"STOP TALKING."
Viktor looked at Gwen.
She was vibrating with the specific frequency of a person who wanted to be right about something and was surrounded by people who had decided, collectively and without consulting her, that she wasn’t.
Her ears were back.
Her bow was in her hand.
Her eyes, when they met his, were furious and bright and doing that thing they always did — that thing where the fury was the top layer and underneath it, just barely visible, was something that looked like a locked door behind which someone was pacing.
Viktor looked at her for a moment.
Then he said, "Can you bring your new bow and arrow before we leave?"