He pulled her into his lap, her petite form practically disappearing against his massive frame. She went willingly, melting against him with a soft sigh.

"The others don’t understand," Ivan murmured against her hair, his breath warm on her skin. "They think I’m too controlling, or too possessive."

"They don’t know what I need," Felicity whispered, her fingers playing with the buttons of his shirt.

"No one knows what you need as I do." His hand slid beneath her thin dress, calloused fingers tracing patterns on her bare thigh. "I’ve spent my life protecting things that didn’t matter. Now I protect what matters most."

She arched into his touch, her breath catching. "Show me how much you care.... daddy"

Ivan’s eyes darkened with desire. Thane dropped from the sky like a stone, wings snapping wide at the last second to bleed off speed before his boots hit the cracked asphalt. Dust puffed around him in a lazy circle.

"Not trying to burst your bubble," he said, brushing road grit from his forearm with exaggerated casualness, "but we are standing in the middle of a ransacked town. Looking for a doctor. Remember that part?"

Ivan’s hand was still curved around Felicity’s waist, thumb tracing an absent circle against her hip that made her brain short-circuit every three seconds.

She felt the low vibration of a growl building in his chest, not directed at her, never at her and pressed her palm flat against his sternum, a quiet request, please behave.

The growl didn’t stop, but it softened into something almost like a purr.

Thane’s gaze tracked the movement. A grin split across his face, sharp and delighted and absolutely unhelpful.

"I’m all for you devouring her in the middle of the road, by the way. Genuinely, please. I’ll find a chair, hell, can I join it? no? ok." He spread his hands like a showman presenting an act. "Front row seats, I’ll even applaud."

Ivan’s free hand shot out fast, precise and cuffed the back of Thane’s skull hard enough to knock his head forward.

"Ow, worth it."

Felicity bit down on her lower lip, fighting the traitorous curl of amusement threatening to ruin the stern expression she was aiming for. Her tail swished once behind her. Twice. A dead giveaway.

Thane saw it immediately because Thane caught everything that could be used against someone later.

"Miss Fel’s tail agrees with me," he announced.

"My tail has no opinion," she said flatly.

It swished again.

Thane pointed at it with both index fingers, triumphant.

Ivan’s thumb pressed harder into her hip, possessive, grounding, the kind of touch that said mine without a single syllable. The cedar and iron smell of him flooded her senses every time she breathed, and standing this close made thinking about doctors and missions and ransacked towns feel like a task requiring heroic effort.

"Anyways." Thane rocked back on his heels, folding his arms. His wings tucked neatly against his back, feathers catching pale light. "Bad people. Potential hostilities. Doctor for our girl. These are the priorities." He levelled a stare at Ivan, brave, considering the lion beastman currently looked about two seconds from pinning Felicity against the nearest wall and making Thane’s joke a reality. "So, hands off, just for a bit. If you can manage, can you manage, Ivan? Blink once for yes."

Ivan didn’t blink.

He did, however, dip his head. His mouth grazed the soft fur at the tip of Felicity’s ear, barely a touch, more breath than contact, and the sound she swallowed was embarrassing enough that her cheeks burned hot.

"For now, everyone else has had their day. I want what’s mine." Ivan murmured against her ear.

Her knees did something structurally unsound.

Thane threw his hands up. "That’s the opposite of hands off! That’s literally the opposite! I watched it happen with my own two you know what, fine, fine." He turned on his heel, muttering. "I’ll scout ahead, alone, like always. While the lion eats our healer in broad daylight and nobody stops him because apparently I’m the only one with a functioning sense of — oh, is that a pharmacy?"

He was already jogging toward a half-collapsed storefront three blocks down, attention snagged by a faded green cross barely visible beneath layers of grime and old blood.

Felicity exhaled slowly. Her fingers were still pressed to Ivan’s chest, his heartbeat thudded steady beneath her palm unhurried, certain, like nothing in the world could rattle him.

Except apparently her. She rattled him plenty, if the way his jaw flexed and his grip tightened was any measure. "You’re terrible," she told him, and the words came out breathier than she intended. Mostly because his mouth had been right there. Close enough that she’d caught the faint trace of black tea and something woodsy on his breath, close enough that her lips had already parted on instinct before he’d pulled back.

Because Thane was right.

Admitting that felt like swallowing glass.

Ivan looked down at her. The gold of his gaze burned slow, banked heat behind iron discipline, and her stomach didn’t flip so much as drop straight through the floor. The pad of his thumb traced one absent circle against her hip bone, just one, and her entire body catalogued it like classified intelligence.

"Terrible," he repeated. Low. The corner of his mouth twitched, barely there, barely anything, and yet it rewrote her entire nervous system.

"The worst," she confirmed, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. She could feel the ridged muscle underneath, the controlled rise and fall of his breathing. Controlled. But faster than normal. She noticed. She always noticed him.

His free hand came up. Knuckles grazed the edge of her jaw, feather light, almost reverent — and her fox ears flattened sideways in a way that absolutely betrayed every casual word she’d just said.

Ivan’s gaze tracked the movement. That twitch at his mouth deepened into something devastating.

"Your ears," he said.

"Shut up about my ears."

"They like me."

"They have terrible judgment." Her tail was already curling toward his thigh like it had its own agenda, its own desperate little loyalty, and she wanted to grab it and stuff it in a drawer.