"Okay, dummy, Dimitri."
Dimitri leaned next to Voss and lowered himself, even though they were both in their beast forms, Dimitri being the alpha and a huge level gap between them; he was obviously bigger than Voss.
Voss grumbled at the loss of carrying her, but took pride in the fact that she always preferred he carry her rather than anyone else.
Dimitri carried her the entire way. His stride never faltered. His breathing stayed even, and when the gates of Bowral appeared through the trees—the sandstone walls, the wild gardens, the jacaranda trees heavy with purple blooms, Felicity felt something loosen in her chest that she hadn’t realised was clenched.
Lucan padded alongside Dimitri, his black tail lashing once with the particular irritation of a man who had already lost an argument no one else knew he was having. "I never get to carry her," he muttered, low enough that it wasn’t quite a complaint and just loud enough that everyone heard it.
Then they saw him.
A single tiger, waiting just inside the gate. His coat was striped gold and black, his posture carefully neutral, his head slightly lowered. He was big, not as big as the men around her, but big enough to be formidable. Level 85, her instincts whispered. But not strong enough.
Tim.
She remembered him from the road, the random tiger who’d travelled with them for a stretch, quiet and watchful, his eyes lingering on her a beat too long each time she spoke. She’d thought nothing of it then. Women were rare. Staring was common, and she thought he was with Alice anyway.
Dimitri saw him next.
The roar that tore out of him was not human. It was territorial, primal, a sound that vibrated through the ground and made the jacaranda blossoms shiver from the trees. Dimitri’s silver fur bristling, his teeth bared.
Tim dropped. Immediately. His belly hit the dirt, his head pressed low, his ears flat. Submission. Complete and unmistakable.
Felicity didn’t move. She watched from Dimitri’s back, her hands still buried in his fur, her tail curled tight. This wasn’t her fight. This was pack hierarchy, dominance and submission, and she understood with the sharp clarity of a woman who had learned the hard way that intervening would make it worse.
Tim stayed down. His voice, when it came, was measured and respectful.
"I want to join Snow Team."
Dimitri’s growl deepened.
"I respect what you’ve built," Tim continued, his head still pressed to the dirt. "I enjoyed travelling with you. I don’t- I don’t expect to level here. I don’t expect to accomplish anything worth mentioning. I just want a place."
Felicity’s ears twitched. She could hear the lie in the careful words, the thing he wasn’t saying. His scent gave him away that particular sharpness that meant desire, that meant fixation, that meant his eyes had been tracking her since the road, and his body was still angled toward her even now, even with his belly in the dirt.
The men could smell it too. She could feel Dimitri’s hackles rise beneath her. She could see Lucan’s tail lash once, twice. could hear Exile’s low hiss. But none of them moved to attack. Level 85 was nothing to men pushing Level 100. Tim was strong by ordinary standards. By themselves, he was manageable.
Dimitri held the silence for a long, deliberate moment. Then he shifted back not fully, just enough to speak clearly, his jaw still heavy with fangs.
"Pope, Legend, come here"
Two figures detached from the group, Pope’s lean Lynx form and Legend’s snow leopard’s shoulder frame. They moved to flank Tim without being told.
"You take him to the house," Dimitri said. "The one on the property. Not the manor. You watch him, and you feed him. You report to me."
"Wait, why us, I mean, yes, sir," Pope said.
Tim rose slowly, keeping his head below Dimitri’s line of sight. His eyes found Felicity’s for one brief, burning second, and something hungrier beneath it, and then he was being led away, flanked on both sides, his tail low.
Felicity exhaled. Her tail uncurled. She pressed her forehead to Dimitri’s neck and breathed him in, the smell of safety, and let the tension drain from her shoulders.
"Home," she whispered.
Dimitri carried her through the gates.
The manor doors burst open before they’d cleared the garden path.
Frost came first, his small paws churning up the grass, his ears pinned back with the pure velocity of a cub who had been waiting too long. "Uncle Dimi! You’re back!"
Tommy caught him by the scruff before he could barrel into Dimitri’s legs. "Hey. Hey." He flicked Frost’s forehead lightly. "That’s your dad."
Frost went still. His ears swivelled. He looked up at Felicity with enormous, genuinely puzzled eyes, his nose working. "Daddy Dimi?"
Luna had already climbed Dimitri entirely, with no hesitation, no announcement, simply a small, determined body scaling his fur until she found a spot near his shoulder, close to where Felicity sat. She pressed her face into his mane and announced, with great authority, "Good job, Uncle Dimi. Daddy Dimi. We loved you before you loved Mumma, so we win, haha."
Dimitri’s chest rumbled. The sound started low and became something that was almost a laugh, warm and unhurried, and his great head turned toward the cubs with an expression Felicity had never seen on him before.
"No, little ones," he said. "I loved her first. But thank you."
The sight of her fierce, untouchable new pack head, the man who had just effortlessly bent the entire Snow and Leaf Team to his absolute will, being thoroughly climbed and ordered around by a tiny cub was pure reader gold.
Tommy finally let go of Frost’s scruff,
Frost, finding his paws again, the little male cub scrambled right over Dimitri’s paws, his small claws digging and climbing up Dimitri’s snow leopard legs until he reached Felicity’s lap, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed the fresh, unmistakable scent of Dimitri’s alpha claim bonded tightly to his mother.