The Beauty's Hidden Beast

Yaya's POV

Three months later....

I extended my finger and gently poked the baby wolf sprawled on the pelt. Cheeky Pea's leg twitched, and he kicked my finger, mumbling in his sleep. He had been cranky since he was born and didn't like to have his space invaded by an annoying parent who thought it was funny to bother him in his sleep.

Smiling, I extended my finger and gently touched the smaller pea next to him. Sweet Pea was snuggled between his pillows, his fluffy ears twitching as he dreamt. His silver-blue tail was wrapped around him, keeping him warm.

It should have been Romeo's turn to have a cub before Bart, and the sad smile he made when he found out we couldn't have one was heartbreaking. He wasn't a pureblood beastman, which meant he couldn't fertilize just any egg, not to mention the bunch of cells I could offer him.

The idea of paying the world with magic a visit was immediately dismissed when I brought it up to the boys. It was decided that Vick would take over the mission next year not only to help Romeo, but also Kase. He had the most knowledge in this field after me, and had the experience in infiltrating foreign realms and returning safely.

He didn't like the idea of being weaker than Karrak and me, and wanted to keep up. The imperial army also needed to be reminded that their boss was a beast with a heart of stone, not a beast with a stacked wallet.

I didn't protest. My Peas were growing too fast, and I was afraid that I would miss out on a lot of their firsts if I left.

Normally, I'd be away for half a month at a time, handling some of the Empire's matters or researching the beast world realm, while nurturing Little Pea inside my womb. But after Little Pea's birth, I was never absent for more than three days.

Glow Pea, Cherry Pea, Chill Pea, and Peanut hatched from an egg like regular mermen, snakemen, hawkmen, and scorpionmen would. With a twist of their own.

They let their mama incubate them, and within a week each, they saw the light of the day, which would have been sweet if not for the broken shells and shell fragments they had left behind.

The whole pregnancy took a toll on everyone, enough for the Papas not to want any more Peas of their own, and for me to agree. The drugs were gone from my body, and it took a chunk of my mass with it.

Everything suddenly seemed too big, too huge, and too bulky. My glow down caused my boys to treat me with extra care. Like a doll, whose height could barely hit their chest, with tiny hands and feet.

I felt like a shrimp, no, an amoeba.

Curtis made me wear a red onesie with a snake-shaped hoodie and black wings on the back, making me look like a baby dragon. Vick crafted me a pair of horns and attached them to my head, which made me look extra cute.

I wasn't complaining. Mama Yaya was matching her cubs today. Plushy, my baby Peas, and I were in sync. We were the cutest bunch in the manor. No one could tell me otherwise.

I walked around the pelt and stopped Peanut from crawling out of his enclosure, pinching the wings on his dragon onesie and lifting him in the air.

He was a natural climber, and always ended up in the highest possible place in the room, and then cried his lungs out, not knowing how to get down.

"Shhh, we are going on a secret adventure. Do not wake up your brothers," I said, walking around the dark nursery toward another enclosure.

Peanut released a series of excited giggles, his stinger wiggling in rhythm. A smile stretched across my lips as I picked up the silent Cherry Pea by his wings too, of course.

The wings protected them from being crushed by their Mama's fluctuating strength and made it easier for me to carry them around.

The cherry baby was staring at me from behind his stuffed fruit toys. His onesie only had four holes, for his head, arms, and the little snake tail at the back. The fabric dropped over his tail as he slithered around.

I placed them inside a basket, lifting my finger to my lips.

The baby boys copied my action, their tiny fingers pressed on their lips. Peanut didn't know what a secret was, but he liked to copy others, and it was a good enough reason to go along with whatever I was doing.

We passed by Glow Pea, who had been sleep-swimming inside his fish tank, and as his nickname suggested, he was glowing in the dark. His eyes were slightly open, and his tail moved from side to side as he sucked on his pacifier. He tended to chew on his tail, which was why he had one.

I walked out and closed the door behind me. The luminescent pearls in the hallway lightened up the way. It was not that we needed them, but they were pretty to look at.

Cherry Pea and Peanut grabbed the edge of the rattan basket and peeped at everything around them with their beady, cute eyes.

They didn't make a sound, which was the exact opposite of Chill Pea, who had a powerful set of lungs. If he woke up, he would make sure the whole manor woke up with him and would make all the nearby birds sing together to his songs.

We went to collect some flowers from the garden and I let them feel different textures with their hands. Their little fingers explored and touched everything they could reach, and then their mouths followed. They chewed on everything just to spit it out.

Despite his ancestry, Cherry Pea didn't see his Papa's female in me. To him, I was someone completely different. Someone who brought Sweet Pea and the others into the world. Someone who kept him warm and safe inside my womb, kept his hunger at bay, and made sure he came into the world safely like the rest of his siblings.

My face did kick up his memories, and he would instinctively cover his butt sometimes, but that was it. I just looked too different at the moment.

He was too young to understand the complexity of my relationship with Curtis. He didn't inherit Curtis's feelings towards me, and the things he saw were both brutal and tender, confusing. He saw his Mama slashing him and also saw him slashing his mama. He saw himself kissing Mama and Mama kissing him back. The touches, the caresses, the sounds were vague, only the images were clear.

I told Curtis to pass down his mirror to Cherry Pea, and when the little guy saw his reflection and compared it to his memories and his Papa's, he saw a difference. He recognized the mirror, but not the reflection in it. He saw a cute snake hatchling wearing a dragon onesie, not a big redhead.

Everyone teased Curtis that our Cherry Pea would fall in love with Nivi if he let him outside on his own and let him meet her, but my boy didn't find it funny. He was already planning to pass down his work, retire, and spend the rest of his life by my side like the other boys.

Much to my dismay, my boys never intended to throw their offspring into the wild. I wanted our cubs to grow up like their Papas, and their breaking of tradition made me nervous about our peas' futures as beastmen. We could just watch them from the shadows, you know?

"That's exactly how you chase your kids to do exactly what you don't want to and make them resent you," I mumbled, watching Cherry Pea and Peanut play in the grass, "Do your papas want you to end up like me?"

Peanut tried to copy Cherry Pea and slithered on the grass. When he realized that he wasn't a snake and that his stinger was stuck to the mud, he began to whimper.

This resulted from various species growing up together, and why there were many tribes of the same race in the beastmen world. A bird cub would never try to learn how to fly if he grew up around fish, the same went for other species.

I plucked a grass stalk and tickled his stinger, causing him to yank it out of the mud. His warm, dark-toned skin was still soft and sensitive, unlike the thick layer he would develop later.

Cherry Pea curled around a flower and tried to drag it to himself, looking very much like a cherry himself, with the flower being the branch.

There were a few predators in the garden, primarily mice and insects, which could threaten the smaller cubs. They weren't allowed to wander off alone yet.

The ones keeping a watch on the cubs were the various snakes, birds, wolves, and scorpions, who lived in the manor and made it their home. They wouldn't eat the cubs and were trained to alert us if something happened.

· · ─────── · ⊱❈⊰· ─────── · ·

I felt someone's gaze on me and turned around to see a giant red snake slithering toward us, "Shouldn't you be on watch duty right now?"

The red snake hissed at Cherry Pea and Peanut, and they wriggled toward the basket filled with flowers as if understanding his intent.

I held the basket with our cubs so Curtis could lift me with his tail, placing us behind him. He gave us one last look and took us on a small adventure through the woods, and up the high mountains.

I pulled the hood over my head and buttoned up my onesie, showing only my eyes. If anyone asked, I was Curtis's cub, who just reached adulthood and returned from the wilderness. Not a shrimpy madam who was having a teen phase.

Props for having such a beautiful husband like Curtis; I could easily pass for a boy, and the oversized onesie helped a lot.

I've traveled far enough and learned a lot to ensure that my family would not be an easy target and that I had enough knowledge to keep them safe.

Our Peas posed more of a problem if others discovered their existence and the fact they came out of madam in such a short time? Nobody should find out. It was decided our peas couldn't go out in public until they learned how to shift into their beast forms.

Madam loved to collect lost cubs, and there were also the guests' cubs. Nobody would find it odd if a few more ran around our territory, right?

Curtis stopped when we reached the top of the mountain, lowering us down to teach our peas how to shift. Their papas were always in their human forms, so they had no clue what they were missing out on.

He slowly shifted into his human form and gently patted their heads to catch their attention. He held their hands and tried to demonstrate the shifting process.

╔═══ Author's note ════╗

So much fluff. 🥺😩

Little Pea - Vick's cub

Cheeky Pea - Skaris's cub

Sweet Pea - Bart's cub

Glow Pea - Gold's cub

Chill Pea - Muir's cub

Cherry Pea - Curtis's cub

Peanut - Mitchell's cub

Joy Pea - Romeo's cub (not yet born, but everyone assumed the cub would bring lots of joy with its arrival like his Papa)

Grim Pea - Karrak's cub (not yet born and no explanations needed)

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