Inside, the air was humid, smelling of rich soil, blooming tomatoes, and rare medicinal herbs. Clara, the blunt, practical human woman who ran the entire agricultural sector of Bowral, was busy pruning a massive vine of mutated berries.
"I’m telling you, Fel, your men are going to give themselves an ulcer," Clara said, entirely unimpressed by the two massive beast-men staring through the glass doors like death sentences. She tossed a trimmed branch into a wicker basket and looked at Felicity’s massive stomach. "You look like you’re about to pop. Quadruplets? In a few weeks? Jesus. I hope those seven husbands of yours have already started building an extension on that manor, because four cubs are going to tear that place apart."
Felicity had met Clara a few times earlier, when she was coming back to Bowral from the doctor, another female as a friend, finally, she couldn’t replace Rose, never, but having someone to talk to was important. She had begged her husbands to let her come see Clara for this meeting, and for some reason, they were on edge.
Felicity smiled softly, cradling her stomach as she sat on a wooden stool Clara had lined with a clean burlap sack. "Lucan and Ivan are already arguing over the teething rails. Lucan wants to buy out the entire textile market for velvet blankets. It’s chaos."
"It’s sweet," Clara countered, her expression softening just a bit as she wiped her dirty hands on her apron. "But you need to be careful, Fel. This town... it isn’t like the road. Ten thousand men to a hundred women means the air here is always heavy with stupid, desperate energy. And Maddie? That snake-in-the-grass is losing her absolute mind over the fact that you have the manor and the quads."
Felicity’s fox ears perked up, a slight frown crossing her face. "Maddie? She hasn’t come near the manor since Victor... well, since the incident on the lawn."
"Because she can’t pierce your perimeter," a new voice chimed in. Alice stepped out from behind a row of towering lemon trees, her stitched ragdoll ears twitching as she adjusted a crate of preserved herbs. Her large, button eyes locked onto
Felicity with a look of quiet seriousness.
"Alice?" Felicity blinked, surprised.
"The bitter one has been busy, fell" Alice said smoothly, leaning against the wooden framework of the greenhouse. "I watched her yesterday. She spent the entire afternoon slinking around the outer guard outposts, talking to the unmated tiger guards. She’s planting ugly ideas in their heads. Telling them you’re a parasite. Telling them that if they help her lock you in the central cells, your husbands will have to submit, and your next heat will be theirs to share."
Felicity’s blood ran completely cold. Her hands tightened over her belly, her defensive fennec instincts flaring instantly. Lock her in a cell? Take her cubs?
Clara’s jaw dropped, her face flushing with pure, protective rage. "She said what? That delusional, bitter bitch! The tiger guards are supposed to protect women, not trap them!"
"Desperate men don’t care about duty when a hyper-fertile female is dangled in front of them like a prize, Clara," Alice said, her tone clinical, almost detached, though her tail swished with a rare spark of irritation. "The General is out of town today. If I were you, Felicity, I would get back to your manor right now. The outposts are shifting. The air outside smells like a trap."
Before Felicity could even process the terrifying weight of Alice’s warning, the glass doors of the greenhouse flew open with a violent, shattering crack.
Voss and Ivan stepped inside, their expressions entirely wiped of any domestic warmth. Their ears were pinned flat, their bodies rigid, their nostrils flaring as they caught the sudden, shifting scent of aggression rolling across the agricultural sector.
"Felicity," Ivan rumbled, his voice low, vibrating with a terrifying, bass-heavy frequency that made the greenhouse glass rattle. He didn’t ask questions. He walked straight over to her, his massive arms lifting her off the stool with effortless, sweeping speed, tucking her securely against his broad chest. "We’re leaving. Now."
"Ivan, what’s wrong?" Felicity gasped, clutching his shoulders as she felt the rapid, tense heartbeat against his ribs.
Voss stood at the doorway, his dark eyes tracking the perimeter outside. The calculating look behind his sharp eyes had turned entirely lethal.
"The tiger guards on the eastern ridge just deserted their posts," Voss said, his voice dropping to an icy, clinical whisper. "They are mobilising toward us now, at least twenty-three, three of them, all tiger-class, all unmated. Level range forty to fifty. They’re moving in a staggered formation, cutting off the eastern and southern exits."
Felicity’s heart slammed against her ribs so hard she felt it in her throat. Twenty-three. Twenty-three tigers, and she was nearly nine months pregnant with quadruplets, her belly so swollen she could barely stand without support. Her fox ears flattened completely against her skull, her tail curling tight against Ivan’s arm, her entire body going rigid with the primal, electric surge of terror.
"Ivan, I want to go home, but I cannot help," she whispered, her voice shaking.
"No." Ivan’s arms tightened around her, his voice absolute. "You are not fighting, Voss, you’re up."
Voss was already moving. The air around him shimmered, warping as his spatial magic began to compress, the greenhouse walls buckling inward like a closing fist. The glass panes trembled, the metal framework groaning as he pulled the entire structure into a tactical pocket, a defensive box that would crush anything trying to enter through the doors.
But the doors never opened.
Instead, the eastern wall simply dissolved.
Not shattered. Not cracked. It melted away like smoke, the glass and steel frame evaporating into a fine, silvery mist that curled outward into the humid air. Through the gaping hole stepped a single figure, a lean, wiry man with no visible beast features, no ears, no tail, just dark eyes and a thin, unremarkable face. He wore a simple black coat, and he moved with the quiet, unhurried confidence of someone who had been paid very, very well.