Felicity's Beast World Apocalypse-Chapter 168: KBBQ In Orange

Then Felicity saw them seeing her.

Her steps faltered not from fear but from awareness, aflush rose quickly across her cheeks, and for the first time since bounding out of her space she seemed to remember that she was not just wearing a shirt she was wearing Victor’s shirt.

Her gaze flicked to him, then down and then back up again, with the most adorable lack of strategy in the world, she shifted half a step behind Victor like he was a wall she could hide in.

Snow Team took visible emotional damage from that.

Tommy recovered first, because Tommy always did. "What’s for dinner," he asked loudly, as if his voice hadn’t gone a little strange at the start of the sentence.

Felicity peeked around Victor’s arm, still pink. "KBBQ."

Tommy stared at her, then at the trays coming out and then at the fire pit Lucan was currently shaping into something far more elegant than any apocalypse fire pit had a right to be. "You know what, actually, I love civilization."

Sarge barked out a laugh. "You love meat."

"I contain multitudes."

Leaf Team saw her a second later.

Snow Team was already wounded in places they knew how to hide.

Leaf Team had not had practice. Richard’s grip tightened around the side of a cart. Dawn went absolutely still. Thane’s wings dipped hard enough overhead that Kai flinched and looked up. Exile froze so completely it looked unnatural, his tongue stopping mid flick, his entire body arrested by the sight of her standing there, smiling uncertainly, dressed in another man’s shirt, bright and alive and real in a way no amount of scent had prepared him for.

Even Dimitri looked affected, not visibly, not if you didn’t know what to watch for, but there was a slight, dangerous shift in the line of his gaze when it traveled over her and registered what he was seeing.

Felicity, oblivious to the depth of the damage she was causing, smiled brightly anyway, "Hi."

No one on Leaf Team answered immediately, which was probably smart, because anything they said in the first second would likely have come out wrong.

She took another step, arms full of plates now because at some point in the excitement she had grabbed more than she should have been carrying again.

Victor noticed it first. "Felicity.." too late.

Her foot caught on a shallow crack in the ground, it wasn’t even a real fall, just a stumble, a sudden little lurch forward that she would have corrected on her own in another second, but around her, nearly ten men reacted.

Felicity, somehow catching herself at the last second with the plates miraculously still in hand, just blinked and straightened with a small breathless laugh "whoa, oops." She smiled immediately, bright and unbothered. "I’m okay, no worries."

The silence that followed was catastrophic, because no one was worried about the plates. No one was even properly worried about the stumble they were reacting to her. To the idea of her falling to how little it took to make every instinct in a hundred meters go feral.

Felicity either didn’t notice or chose not to. She just kept moving, cheerful again by force of nature, and started directing people where to put things.

"Those there. No, not there, that’s where the sauces go. Tommy, you are not allowed to open anything yet. Marx, if you eat the meat raw I’m banning you from dinner."

Marx actually looked offended. "That happened one time."

"It happened twice."

"It only counted as twice because the package was very easy to open."

Voss stepped in smoothly, taking a stack of plates from her before she could overburden herself again. "Give me that."

She let him, which pleased him far more than it should have.

Damien moved past them with the grill trays, still quiet, still watchful, the set of his mouth suggesting he had made some private peace with the entire situation and hated that peace a little.

Ivan stayed close just always one step from being able to catch her if the world tried anything stupid.

Lucan, meanwhile, was one upping everyone without appearing to try.

The fire pit he had built looked ridiculous, broad and deep and properly ringed with stone, already catching flame in a clean controlled way that made the whole thing look less like rough survival and more like deliberate hospitality. Felicity saw it and beamed at him.

"Lucan, that’s perfect!"

He looked at her and said, "I know."

Voss nearly choked.

Victor’s gaze slid to Lucan and stayed there for one second too long, just complete composure and the kind of confidence that only made the quiet jealousy between the higher ranks worse because it was impossible to call him out without acknowledging they felt it.

Tommy, because he lacked survival instincts around emotional landmines, muttered, "This is the weirdest barbecue I’ve ever been to."

Kai said, "You’ve never been to one where three apex predators are silently trying to kill each other with eye contact?"

"No," Tommy said. "My childhood was tragically normal."

That got a laugh from Shadow. Even Draco’s heavy body shifted like the beginning of amusement.

Then the cubs arrived. Luna and Frost, who had apparently decided the horse brothers had served their purpose for the moment, rolled inelegantly off one of them and hit the ground with the determination of small creatures who feared nothing because they had never yet paid the price for that confidence.

"Mummy," they shouted together.

Every adult in the immediate area softened around the edges in real time.

Felicity turned at once, all her attention leaving everything else, and crouched with her arms open just as they barreled into her. She scooped them both up with effortless affection, despite the fact that one was already getting too big for that to be practical, and pressed a kiss to each fuzzy little head.

"Hello, my babies."

Luna made a pleased little sound and burrowed against her shoulder. Frost licked her chin. Felicity laughed, bright and warm, and every man watching had the exact same impossible thought at once. Mine.

The problem, increasingly, was that none of them meant it the same way anymore.

Snow Team knew how to stand inside that possessiveness without pretending it was simple.

Leaf Team was just beginning to understand what that actually required that was obvious the second Dimitri’s people were made to wait outside a space they could not enter, with only scent, sound, and imagination to fill the gap.

Dimitri stood with the cold patience of a man who disliked uncertainty but would rather die than let it show. Richard had made peace with waiting in the practical way larger men often did, his attention shifting between the perimeter, the carts, and the slow movement of Snow Team preparing food like this was a normal social interaction and not something that could turn politically catastrophic at any second. Dawn stood still enough to make the air around him feel occupied, the pressure of him subtle and deep, while Thane circled lower and lower until finally settling on a broken section of wall because constant motion had stopped helping. Exile was doing badly and everyone knew it. The anaconda’s body had gone through several stages of visible effort already, from pacing to stillness to tightly coiled restraint, and none of them had solved the actual problem

Richard took it best, that was probably because he had enough structure in him to sort reaction into categories quickly. He saw, processed, and did not visibly unravel. Instead, he let out a low breath through his nose and said, almost conversationally, "I see the issue."

Dimitri’s gaze remained on her as she passed into the loose circle of camp and warmth. "Yes."

Dawn was not fine, he kept his posture together, and if someone did not know him they might have assumed he was simply evaluating. But the air around him had thickened. It was subtle, pressure and saturation turning his space a little heavier, and that alone gave him away.

Thane was doing worse, though in a more internal way. His expression had gone oddly still, his gold eyes focused too hard, like if he looked away he might miss a path changing in real time. He had seen things. That much was obvious. Whether those things were helping him was less clear.

Exile had stopped pretending entirely, the first full look at her out in the open hit him like a direct blow. Not just because she was there and real and softer than his body knew what to do with, not just because she smelled like Lucan beneath fresh air and Victor’s shirt and herself, but because she had looked around that gathering with open happiness before ducking into protection she trusted. He saw the way she took cover behind Victor and held Lucan’s sleeve anyway. He saw the shirt and he saw the little shorts, he saw the smile, he saw all the ways she fit into that structure already.