Oh, shit.

She should have known that no deed goes unpunished, that there's no such thing as pleasure without a price. She should have known that she can't just go sleeping with random strangers she meets in the snow without consequences. She should have known that Mother fucking Nature is a bitch of epic proportions, who clearly doesn't get any sexytimes herself and thus has to punish those who do. She should have known.

But she didn't, and now she's pregnant. She isn't showing yet - it's too soon, and no weight will swell her sides for a good few weeks - but she knows her body and she knows when something's amiss. She'd thought she was safe, thought her heat had ended, thought her body would reject the seed of another when it's only just recovered from birthing the twins, but she was wrong. Horribly, horrendously wrong. "Balls, balls, balls," she hisses to herself as she stomps around the Edge, raging and panicked. "Or should I say balls and their contents." She snorts a vicious laugh at her own humour, but it's only a temporary relief from her problems.

And what huge, giant-sized problems they are.

She cannot be pregnant again. She is the General of the World's Edge, and what sort of General gets pregnant so often she cannot fight? Jesus, if they find out they'll shun her, demote her, and they'll have every right to. She is meant to be the queen of the soldiers, boss of the warriors. She is meant to put the herd's needs before her own, and what does she go and do? Get so entranced over the thought of getting the D that she gets pregnant, again. Oh, no, the Edge cannot find out about this. It would be the end of her.

It's this panicked train of thought that leads her to her solution, and when she thinks of it, it floods her with relief. Her mind is irrational, but this solution seems perfect. She will simply lie. She's good at that. How hard can it be? She has the perfect excuse, one that won't be questioned and one that any Edgian of a certain age will know to be possible - she's looking for her father. Last time she was in Helovia, it was apparent how close she was to her sire, so that much shouldn't be questioned. The rest...the rest will flow. This part is all that matters.

So, with steely determination plus a considerable amount of guilt and fear, the soldier wanders to the centre of the Edge. Her companion is alongside her, and although he has sympathy for her plight, he's also bathed in feline smugness. "I told you so," he's said multiple times since she realised her condition, and she has to concede that he had warned her not to go through with banging the handsome grey unicorn. Shut up, is her snarky response to his jibes, but he still looks like the cat who got the cream as he struts alongside her with his head and tail held high.

She lifts her proud head and calls for Tembovu, her elephantine king. She schools her face into nonchalance, sets her stance into its usual lazy posture, and waits with a thudding heart.