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Daevon is still brutally cold and snowy when the mountain passes open in the spring. If Aiden had his way, he’d never venture so far north, but that’s the trade-off to spend more time with Lambert.
He waits in their usual tavern and inn, at his usual table. Brenfred topped up his ale several times before disappearing into the kitchen to prepare the day’s meals. It took a few years of Aiden or Lambert staying each spring, but Brenfred knows the inn will come to no harm under their watch.
The fire from the hearth is warm at Aiden’s side. The harsh, longer-than-usual winter was not kind to him, and a week of adapted training in the midst of a city won’t save him from Lambert’s judgement or concern.
The main door swings open and closed, but he doesn’t glance up from the cards he has spread across the table, laid in careful lines of alternate colors. This time of day, most patrons head straight up to the rooms, and there’s no point watching the door when it could be a week or more before their timing aligns. The inn has little enough business when it snows that Brenfred doesn’t mind renting him the room without an exit day in the books so long as Aiden keeps paying.
The smell alerts him first—well-kept leather, sword oil, and something Aiden’s only ever labelled as Wolf witcher.
Not his Wolf witcher though.
He takes the top three cards from the deck in his left hand and flips them onto the table. He’s not expecting to go unnoticed, but there’s something to be said for staying calm and confusing a potential enemy. The top card fits onto the furthest column, and he moves another stack on top of it, nearly completing the set.
The chair across from his pulls out.
It’s bold, and while he doesn’t do anything obvious like glare, he can feel the first hint of concern bubbling in his gut. He pushes upright, uncurling gracefully, and lifts his chin to the three Wolf witchers staring down at him. He flicks his eyes from one to the other to the last.
“Mind if we sit?” the gray-haired Wolf asks, though it doesn’t truly sound like a question.
Aiden gives a broad wave to the chairs and grins with all his teeth. “Be my guest.”
The oldest one, who must be Vesemir, slips into the chair directly across from him. The white-haired Geralt of fucking Rivia sits on the table’s short-side to Aiden’s left, his slightly weaker side, though from Lambert’s stories he knows not to underestimate the biggest witcher, Eskel, settling to his right.
Aiden allows them the silence to start whatever conversation is about to happen here, but when they don’t take it, he flips over the next three cards in his deck and studies the layout. “Lambert alright?”
Geralt makes a soft questioning hum, but Aiden doesn’t elaborate. He’s not stupid. All of the remaining Wolves show up at his usual meeting place without the one he’s supposed to be meeting, the one he’s been meeting for more than a decade in an inn the others have no reason to give a second-glance.
Hells, according to Lambert, Vesemir doesn’t bother with the passes out of the mountain while there’s still snow at all, which means Lambert told them where to find him rather than coming himself. There are startlingly few reasons he would do that when the Wolves hadn’t known about him in autumn, and none of them are pleasant.
“He’s… unharmed,” Vesemir says too carefully.
Aiden lifts his eyes and meets his gaze, blank and unblinking. Vesemir matches his intensity.
“He is,” Eskel insists.
Vesemir cuts a sharp look in his direction before refocusing on Aiden. So there’s a plan, of some sort. Aiden can work with that.
“And he simply decided to let you all come talk to me on your own? Gave you directions and offered to wait until you’re finished?” Aiden snorts.
Maybe, maybe Lambert would let them have this conversation if wintering together at Kaer Morhen were on offer, but it wouldn’t have been an ambush. It’s far more likely they want to make sure he leaves and doesn’t come back.
He wants to believe it won’t work, that the only way he’d leave is if Lambert told him to go, but if daggers are drawn, he’s honestly not sure what he’ll do. This is Lambert’s kin. That matters too.
“Actually,” Vesemir says, “he was adamant we not do this.”
This? Aiden narrows his eyes, clenching the deck of cards. “Yet here you are.”
“Here we are,” Vesemir agrees.
The repetitive swish of a broom on the wooden floors upstairs scrapes against Aiden’s nerves. He looks down at his game, flipping three cards from his deck. If they’re after something, they’re going to have to say it outright or draw the first knives.
The next flip finishes the deck, and he picks up the unused stack to start going through it again.
Eskel breaks the silence. “Lambert said you met on a hunt.”
“Yeah, probably a decade, decade-and-a-half ago now,” Aiden agrees easily. If Lambert’s been telling tales, he won’t mind Aiden confirming the details.
“And you travel together every year?”
Aiden looks up. Eskel seems genuinely interested, at least to Aiden’s superficial assessment. “We didn’t for the first two years, but since then, yes.”
Geralt makes a thoughtful sound. “Then you were with him, with that vendigo.”
It’s a good thing Geralt isn’t asking because Aiden’s mouth goes dry at the memory of that gods-awful hunt, of Lambert two days hexed with the vendigo’s curse, Aiden injured and half out of his mind with panic so close to Cat Madness as they emptied their supply of dimeritium bombs and moon dust on the creature until it was very, very dead.
The deck of cards slips out of his hand, spilling across his game. Aiden stares down at the jumble. “He told you about that?”
“It took his bodyweight in White Gull,” Eskel says, “after a week of screaming night-terrors to get there, and still he never slipped up, never hinted he wasn’t alone.”
Aiden squeezes his eyes shut. He’d spent that winter in an isolated hunting shed as far south as he dared go, sunning himself during the day as if the heat would keep him from clawing himself during his own nightly terrors.
Vesemir leans forward, and Aiden snaps his head up, too fast, too openly wary, but Vesemir doesn’t comment. That stoic gaze flicks over him, though, assessing like a trainer ready to correct the smallest issues with his form, and Aiden won’t tolerate being condescended, let alone by someone who didn’t even know he existed half a year ago.
He frowns and tilts his head. “Why now?”
Vesemir hums a question.
The sound alone trips Aiden from frustrated to angry. “I’ve been with Lambert for fourteen years. I’ve left you alone, never coming any closer to the mountains than this, never asking any questions about you or your school or what you all get up to in the winters. And apparently you’ve never asked what Lambert does the rest of the year, so” —he leans over the table far closer to Vesemir than is probably safe, but no one moves to stop him— “why now?”
For a moment, there’s nothing but the rasp of the broom upstairs and Brenfred back in the kitchen scraping a bowl with a spoon over and over, then Vesemir dips his chin and nods. “Lambert’s pregnant.”
Aiden’s jaw drops. “That’s…” Impossible, for so many reasons.
Lambert should sterile.
Aiden should be sterile.
Lambert’s male, through and through, unless that’s changed since their ‘I’ll miss you’ sex in Hagge some five months ago. That’s not something that changes without a powerful mage or very few cursed objects that certainly shouldn’t be in Kaer Morhen, and even then, the odds of actually being fertile are unimaginable.
“Congratulations.” Vesemir’s smirk is sharp. “You’re going to be a father.”
“Oh.” Aiden swallows. Right. Pregnancy ends with a baby. He and Lambert—
Eskel lets out a nervous laugh. “Geralt got a mage to look him over before we left. They’re both fine, and she’ll reverse the spellwork once she gets the baby out in a few months. She seemed to think it’d be simple.”
“And she’s investigating,” Geralt adds with a shrug. “Who, when, why.”
“Sure,” Aiden says faintly. That’s probably important.
Was it a targeted spell or a mistake? Is someone after them or did they stumble across something powerful on accident? Is this his fault? It doesn’t sound like Lambert sent them to chase him off while he’s too… too pregnant to do it himself.
Not that Lambert would have someone else do it for him. His Wolf’s never backed down from a confrontation, even when he thought it might not go his way, maybe especially then, which means…
“Where is he?” Aiden demands.
“He agreed to stay in Kaer Morhen until he has the baby,” Vesemir says.
“He can’t do The Killer right now anyway,” Eskel adds.
Vesemir nods. “I need do a supply run in Ard Carraigh, but you’re welcome to come back with me.”
Aiden huffs and shakes his head.
That’s why Lambert finally told the Wolves about him.
That’s why the three of them had ambushed him, not to condescend Lambert’s life choices by threatening to kill him if he doesn’t stay away, not to uphold some outdated grudge against his school, but to see if they should invite him back to the Keep.
As if they could keep them apart.
“Did you leave Lambert in the dungeons?” he asks. Vesemir looks appalled. “Drug him? Leave him shackled to the bed?”
“No,” Eskel says with horror. “Of course not.”
Aiden nods. “I give him till supper then.”
Geralt hums, mouth twitching in the hint of a smile. “Nightfall, in his condition.”
It’s shockingly easy to imagine Lambert trotting through the woods to stay away from humans, his rounded belly leading the way, cursing the other Wolves for making him chase them, cursing Aiden for his part in this situation, grumbling under his breath every time he doesn’t compensate for his new weight distribution.
It’s endearing.
“It’s Lambert,” Geralt explains.
Eskel curses. Vesemir pinches his nose, closing his eyes and shaking his head. Aiden throws back his head and laughs.
When Lambert does arrive, midway between supper and nightfall, Aiden folds his hand of cards, grabs the bowl of stew Brenfred passes over, and lets Lambert’s winter-chilled hand lead him up the familiar stairs. In their usual room, Lambert pulls him close, pressing their foreheads together despite the protruding belly squashed uncomfortably between them and says, “Why are you so thin?”
Aiden cuts off his own laugh against Lambert's mouth.