Chapter 219: My Warm Family (bonus)

Tera woke up to the sound of a heartbeat.

It was surprisingly Xavi’s.

She blinked, still slightly groggy with sleep. She was pressed against his chest.

She then remembered she had briefly been semi-conscious at some point during the night. Xavi had woken up and brought her into his shelter to sleep.

Now, the early morning light crept through the silk-leaf walls, and the shelter was warm and quiet.

Xavi’s arm was heavy across her waist, and his face was relaxed, but she noticed he seemed less stressed. It was a strange thing. She had thought he had always been relaxed while sleeping, but seeing him now, she could notice a slight difference in how relaxed he was.

Tera studied his face, a faint smile on her lips. Her chest ached with fierce tenderness and she reached up to brush a strand of dark hair from his forehead. The gesture made his arm tighten around her waist by a fraction. A low, contented rumble vibrated through his chest.

He was still asleep, but his body knew she was there.

Tera pressed her lips against his collarbone and stayed there, breathing him in.

She drifted into sleep again, and roughly two hours later, the cubs announced their arrival, startling both parents awake.

"PAPMA!"

The shelter flap burst open, and Nadia charged in with the unstoppable momentum of a bear cub who had decided that sleeping hours were over and the world needed to know about it.

Althea followed at a more measured pace, which meant she was only slightly slower than a full sprint.

Nadia launched herself onto the fur mat and collided with Xavi’s back. The impact was enough to wake him, and his golden eyes snapped open with the alert confusion of a male who had been attacked by something very small and very loud.

"Wha—"

"PAPA! MAMA!"

Althea crawled over Xavi’s arm and wedged herself between her parents with the determined efficiency of a cub reclaiming territory that had been occupied without her permission.

Xavi groaned, but the sound dissolved into a quiet laugh as Nadia climbed onto his chest and sat there like she had conquered a mountain.

"Oh, my... Good morning," Tera sighed, pulling Althea closer and pressing a kiss to her face.

Ermin appeared in the doorway moments later, looking like he had been chasing the cubs for several minutes and had lost the race.

"Sorry, I—"

"It is fine." Xavi smiled, patting Nadia.

"Why not join since the whole family is here?" Tera chuckled, holding back Althea, who was very eager to chew off her mother’s face.

Ermin smiled and eagerly crept in, lowering himself onto the furs beside Tera.

Tera immediately let herself catch a bit more sleep as the cubs chatted away.

- ※ - ※ - ※ -

The next two days were very quiet and relaxing.

She just existed with her family.

On the first morning, she took the cubs to the stream. Nadia discovered that slapping the water’s surface with both palms produced a splash large enough to drench everyone within three paces, and she repeated this discovery approximately forty times.

Althea sat at the edge, methodically dropping pebbles into the water and watching them sink with the focused intensity of a scientist conducting research. When she ran out of pebbles, she tried dropping Puff Dumpling in instead.

The creature’s indignant squeak echoed across the stream as Tera rescued it.

"No, Althea. We do not drown Puff Dumpling."

Althea looked unconvinced. "wot is rown?"

That afternoon, Tera lay in the grass near the nursery while Xavi sat beside her, doing nothing but enjoying each other’s presence.

Xavi felt a lot different.

The shift was subtle, but Tera could feel it. So did the other clan members.

Xavi laughed a lot more than he used to. When Nadia fell over her own feet and sat in the dirt looking personally betrayed, Xavi laughed so freely that three nearby beasts turned to look, visibly shocked.

He had been laughing so much today for some reason.

Tera grinned at Xavi, and he met her gaze with that warm, unguarded look that still made her heart skip.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing." She reached over and squeezed his hand. "Seeing you like this makes me very happy."

Xavi considered this. Then he lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to her knuckles with such a natural tenderness that Tera’s chest felt full.

Even Ermin had noticed, commenting on Xavi’s cheery demeanour lately, and it had oddly improved his relationship with the bear beast.

Despite this leisure period, Tera still exercised. Though, it was less vigorous than before.

This time, she did it near her shelter, and her cubs started mimicking her movements. Althea kept toppling on her butt whenever she tried the complicated movements, while Nadia gave up after being unable to bend over after multiple grunts.

But the push-ups were the real disaster.

Tera lowered herself to the ground and started her set, and both cubs immediately flopped onto their bellies beside her, planting their tiny palms on the dirt with fierce concentration.

Tera pushed up. Nadia’s arms wobbled once before her face hit the ground. She lay there, stunned, while Althea fared slightly better. She managed to lift her chest half an inch before her elbows buckled sideways and she rolled onto her back.

Panicked, Tera stopped what she was doing to make sure her babies were okay.

They were absolutely not supposed to do that!

"Don’t scare me like that, jeez!" She pulled them up and dusted them off.

Tera laid on the grass for a moment, then Althea decided that if she could not do the push-up herself, she would simply participate from a higher vantage point. The panther cub crawled onto Tera’s back and sat there like a small, self-satisfied queen on a moving throne.

Tera laughed and pushed up. Althea’s eyes went wide.

She pushed up again. A tiny giggle escaped the cub.

By the third rep, Althea was squealing with delight, her small hands gripping Tera’s top as she bounced with each rise and fall. "Up! Up! Up!"

Nadia, furious at being excluded from this new ride, scrambled onto Tera’s back as well. The combined weight of two wriggling cubs turned every push-up into a genuine challenge, and their shrieking laughter rang through the air.

"WHEEE!"

Tera chuckled, her arms slightly aching, but she kept going because the sound of her daughters laughing was worth every aching muscle.

When she finally collapsed flat onto the grass, both cubs tumbled off her back and rolled across the ground in a tangle of limbs and giggles. Althea immediately climbed back on and patted Tera’s head. "Again!"

Tera groaned into the dirt. These cubs wanted to turn her into their joyride.