Actions spoke louder than words, and the way Noa melted infinitesimally screamed her current state louder than any words would. “And I ain’t for ignoring respect,” she retorted into the leather of his shoulder before he drew her back, and turned those baby blues on her. Bishop saw more than a lot of people, and sometimes she knew that she'd allowed him -among few others- the ability to read between her lines and sort out what was beneath her veneer.
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” she murmured with the same shadow smile from before, the veneer fractured just a hair to allow her some relief. She'd said those same words more than once to Rodeo, thought them just as often; although Bishop was letting the Dog King title die with the departure of their former leader, there was no less stress on his shoulders. She extricated herself from Bishop’s grasp and moved to the bassinet, her fingers hovered over the soft baby down of the boys heads. “They just keep growing, don’t they?” One, she wasn't sure which, stirred, disrupting his brother enough to elicit a soft whimper of noise.
Noa had never been a baby kind of woman, never fawned over children the same way others would. They never made some internal clock start ticking faster, a source of so many fights they’d become too numerous to count. And now she never knew if she’d have any of her own. “You mind?” She still hesitated to disrupt the twins without Bishop’s permission.