He should have come home sooner.

Honestly, what was the use of tracking your heat cycles if it ended up slipping his mind anyway? Ajax had been so consumed by the whole fiasco in Liyue that he only remembered when one of the Fatui recruits he had tasked to keep tabs on you notified him.

His eyes immediately zero in on your bed as soon as the door clicks shut. He can barely make out your curled, shaking form under the nest you’ve created with his belongings. His shirts, his coats, his towels, everything—his. The air is thick with the suffocatingly sweet scent of your pheromones, dizzying him the moment they hit his senses.

“Oh, precious,” Ajax murmurs, leaning down to plant an apologetic kiss on your sweat-dampened temple. Your flushed, pained expression tears at his heart a little more. “I’m here now, shh… I’ve got you. Always got you.”

All this is just from a few days in. He doesn’t want to think about what would have happened had he rushed back to Snezhnaya any later.