Chapter 84

It was Lino who named the triplets.

Rus, Luce, and Lumo.

He chose the names with the desperate hope that all three would live lives as bright and warm as sunlight.

The eldest, Rus, and the youngest, Lumo, were both males. While both were massive, Rus was slightly larger. Whenever he got the chance, Grondil would lightly smack their rumps, grumbling that it was precisely because of their absurd size that Lino had suffered so horrifically.

The middle child, Luce, was female and the smallest of the three. Granted, she was still perfectly average for an Isbergian cub, but because Rus and Lumo were so monstrously huge, she appeared relatively tiny and fragile by comparison.

Lino finally got to meet his babies the day after he woke up. They said young beasts grew at a terrifyingly rapid pace, and it was true—in the mere month he hadn’t seen them, the cubs had already grown as large as Grondil’s forearm. It was almost heartbreaking to realize he had missed out on a whole month of their growth, but they were so incredibly cute and lovable that it made up for it. And their energy levels were absolutely astronomical.

Lino was discharged exactly one week after waking up. No matter how closely the distinguished guest suite resembled a luxury hotel, a hospital was still a hospital. Thanks to Erin’s blood-spitting efforts over that month—she claimed she literally coughed up blood and developed a stomach ulcer from Grondil’s relentless badgering—Lino’s only remaining issue was physical frailty, requiring no further intensive medical treatment.

Returning to Grondil’s palace, Lino spent his entire day confined to his newly redecorated room. He exercised religiously to rebuild his stamina and regain lost muscle mass. Everything that entered his mouth, even plain water, was a rare, medicinal decoction designed to revitalize his body. Thanks to Grondil even dusting his bathwater with literal gold powder, it didn’t take long for Lino’s skin to become infinitely smoother and more radiant than it had been prior to the pregnancy.

Grondil had strictly ordered Lino to focus solely on recovering his stamina and replenishing his lost fat and muscle. He hammered home the point that this was Lino’s only duty now. However, as the parent of three children, Lino’s priorities were entirely different.

This is the family I wanted my entire life. And they were right here under the same roof—three children… no, three cubs he had birthed himself, so precious he wouldn’t mind if they poked his eyes out. After carrying them and then being forcibly separated for an entire month, he felt an overwhelming desperation to bridge that month-long gap right now.

Yip, yip. It was undeniably comical hearing sounds typical of tiny puppies coming from cubs the size of medium-sized dogs, but to Lino’s eyes, they were the most adorable creatures on the planet.

“Rus.”

At the call of his name, a light-gray cub puffed a breath through his nose with a loud snort and launched himself at Lino. The sheer velocity of the charge was so violent that if Grondil hadn’t lightning-fast snatched him by the scruff, he would have headbutted Lino right in the chest.

Dangling helplessly in the air, caught entirely off guard by the scruff grab, Rus let out a pained Yelp! Grondil merely clicked his tongue, calling out the cub’s dramatic fake pain. But seeing the young thing stare at him with big, teary eyes broke Lino’s heart. He immediately extended his arms toward Grondil.

“Give him here.”

“Lino. Their behavior is only going to get worse if you keep spoiling them like this.”

“I’m just going to soothe him.”

Soothe him, my ass. Clicking his tongue again in blatant disapproval, Grondil inevitably deposited Rus into Lino’s waiting arms. Rus, easily the cub who most resembled Grondil, whimpered happily as he was held. Lino had specifically asked Grondil if he could pass down one of his names to the eldest, a request Grondil had readily granted since absolutely no one ever called him ‘Rus’ anyway.

Safe in Lino’s arms, Rus purred with contentment. He dug his snout into Lino’s side like he was excavating a burrow, his thick, elongated tail already thrashing about in a chaotic blur.

“Oof.”

Hooking his arms under Rus’s armpits, Lino hoisted him up. The weight was substantial. With his arm muscles severely depleted by the pregnancy and coma, Lino couldn’t hold him up for long. Still, he managed to gently dab away the dampness under Rus’s eyes with his sleeve.

Whine, whine.

Yip, yip.

While Lino was drying Rus’s fur, Luce and Lumo took turns crying pitifully from the floor. They spun in frantic circles before rearing up on their hind legs to furiously scratch at the bedsheets, aggressively demanding to be brought up too.

“You’re tiring out your father. Get down.”

Instead of lifting the other two up, Grondil callously grabbed the pampered Rus by the scruff and unceremoniously tossed him off the bed.

“Ah!”

Seeing Rus go flying through the air, Lino panicked and tried to leap up, but his sapped strength failed him, causing him to instantly collapse back onto the mattress. Contrary to Lino’s terror, Rus executed a flawless mid-air rotation, landing on the floor with feather-light grace. Proving he was indeed a beast cub, he displayed spectacular balance and agility.

“Grondil… They’re still babies.”

“They’re also my b—… ahem, my children. You could chuck them out that window right now and they wouldn’t get a single scratch. So drop the useless worrying and focus on your own recovery.”

“…”

Lino desperately wanted to argue, but since every word Grondil spoke was biologically factual, he simply snapped his mouth shut. They had already gone through this exact argument over ten times today alone. Consequently, though it wasn’t even noon yet, Lino’s arms were trembling violently, and his lower back felt like it was snapping in half. The triplets, however, possessed no concept of their mother’s frailty. After being separated for a month, they were solely driven by the primal urge to thoroughly drench themselves in the scent of the parent who had carried and birthed them.

Soon, Rus joined his siblings on the floor, initiating a perfectly synchronized, three-part harmony of desperate whining. Interspersed with the whining were Grondil’s constant groans of disapproval and aggressive tongue-clicking. Despite the sheer opulence of the bedroom, housing four fur-covered beasts aggressively growling and whining at each other made it feel more like an animal enclosure.

“…Please just put them all up here.”

“Dammit.”

Ultimately, Grondil was forced to haul all three whining culprits onto Lino’s bed. However, he drew a hard line at letting all three pile directly onto Lino’s body. He only permitted Luce, the smallest, to curl up on Lino’s chest, while Rus and Lumo were relegated to his sides.

The second they were settled, all three cubs plastered themselves against Lino, their noses twitching frantically as they inhaled his scent. Bathed in the maternal pheromones they remembered from the womb, the deafening three-part whining ceased as if by magic. Moving his aching arms, Lino stroked their heads and backs. Having only two hands, he couldn’t pet all three simultaneously, but thankfully, Luce seemed perfectly content just having the prime spot directly beneath Lino’s face, lying quietly without needing to be pet.

All three cubs sported a silver-gray coat reminiscent of Isberg’s snowfields, varying only slightly in shade. Their black spots were so distinct that anyone looking at them would instantly recognize them as Grondil’s offspring. It was an inevitable outcome given how overwhelmingly dominant Grondil’s genetics were. But there was one exception: their eyes were carbon copies of Lino’s. It was the sole, desperate mark Lino’s genetics had managed to leave amidst the tidal wave of Grondil’s traits.

Truthfully, until the triplets opened their eyes, Grondil viewed them exclusively as the parasitic culprits who had nearly killed his mate. Even when Erin and Enoch brought them to him, urging him to hold the young lords, he refused to spare them a single glance. He genuinely believed that merely refraining from strangling them to death—while Lino lay comatose because of them—was the absolute maximum extent of his paternal duty. That is, until…

Lord Castillion. The young lords have opened their eyes.

When Erin delivered the news, he had fully intended to scream at her to get those things out of his sight. But the second he saw three pairs of vibrant, utterly familiar eyes peering up at him from the massive basket, his intended roar died in his throat. Moving entirely without conscious thought, he turned and approached the basket.

My smaragdos.

Amidst the overwhelming sea of his own physical traits, three pairs of Lino’s exact green eyes sparkled back at him. Perhaps once they learned to shift into human form, he might find other resemblances, but in their beast forms, they were literal copy-pastes of his own childhood self. Because they looked so much like him, his fury had been doubly intense—furious that it wasn’t just him, but these miniature versions of him that had hurt Lino.

But the moment he locked eyes with those perfect replicas of Lino’s gaze, Grondil had to forcefully suppress the sudden, burning heat pooling beneath his own eyes. With a voice that sounded like it was being violently squeezed from his throat, he gave Erin an order.

Leave the basket and get out.