The next morning, barely a few hours after he arrived, Link took the longest shower he'd taken in a long time, having slept in Zelda's arousal pheromones, he didn't need half the castle knowing this. Anyone who dared walk down the hall knew Zelda had spent some time near his room, but they didn't know about the other things she had done in that section of the castle, and Link wanted to keep it that way.

He was somewhat thankful for the window he had cracked before sleeping, most of her smell had dissipated outside and his room smelled faintly of the Princess, but ridding his room entirely would be a much harder business and Link didn't want to entirely get rid of it if he was being honest with himself, It was quite the ego stroke. He just didn't want to be dripping in that smell amongst the others of his own designation, no he definitely didn't want that.

While he greatly enjoyed the thought of the other Alphas in the castle knowing he was being intimate with the Princess, he didn't want them to have thoughts of fucking the Princess. That particular thing was something that made his blood boil at the mere insinuation.

Upon leaving his shower, he found a letter slid under his door, signed from Cassian. Skimming it, it was about returning to his post as soon as possible to relieve his temporary replacement, which Link promptly did, racing to get dressed, strapping the Master Sword to his back and dashing out of his room, hair still damp from his shower.

No less than five minutes later, he was standing at attention at the Princess' bedroom door, waiting for Zelda to wake up of her own accord.

For the half hour he waited, he thought glumly about the mountains of papers that would be sitting on his desk. An impromptu vacation was bound to leave him with a terrible work load to read through, no doubt about that.

Before he could even register the door behind him opening, he felt a weight be flung on him, blinded by the long golden hair that flew around them.

"Link!" She was ecstatic to see him, he was happy to know that.

He nearly fell backwards at the impact, having to brace himself in the nick of time to save the two from crashing into the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted one of the female guards, Dame Caya to be specific, and he panicked, trying to put Zelda down to avoid any strange accusations of impropriety. It wouldn't be good for any of his guards to see him embracing the Princess like this.

She simply froze for a second before turning away and going back around the corner, seemingly pretending like she hadn't seen a thing.

He stood there, confused, staring down the hall where the guard had been.

"I'm so glad you're back! Oh I've missed you so much, please ever leave like that again." She laid the biggest kiss on his cheek before taking a step back and fixing herself.

Her sudden enthusiasm caught him off guard. Sure, missing him was a given, but why was she saying it like he'd been gone for months at a time? It made him wonder just how much had happened for her to be so happy to see him.

"Don't worry, I don't plan on going anywhere for a long while," he promised her.

"You better not, now let's go, I need to go pray."

It was another thing that caught him by surprise. Why was she happy to pray? Usually she'd lament and mope and try to find a way to avoid it or put it off?

Then he caught a whiff as she passed him. She smelled like him. A lot.

Maybe it was the time away from the castle that caused him to finally notice, maybe he'd spent so much time around her that he didn't notice at first, but now he did.

He decided to brush it off as he stepped next to her, in time with her steps as she made her way to the chapel for her morning prayers. He'd need to find a guard to replace him so he could attend to the numerous papers awaiting him so he could spend more time with her afterwards.

"Princess, you must have a bite, please." Impa begged her. It was simple toast on a plate and a cup of tea, but Zelda vehemently refused.

She and the guard they'd taken in hand were sitting in one of the small parlours with the princess. They'd dismissed the maids nearby and told them to leave them be for a few minutes.

They'd been playing this dance for an hour already with Zelda having eaten a few bites but her stomach quickly rejecting the food. The most she had agreed to drink was a cup of lemon water, and even then she made a face a few times and forced it down.

"I didn't realise it would be so difficult to hide…" Impa sighed, putting down the toast.

Hiding the morning sickness of someone so high profile in the castle was much harder than it looked. There was always someone somewhere watching, be it a knight, a maid, a guard or some noble.

"Just let me go back to my room," she whined.

"If we let you do that, it'll only be more suspicious, Princess!"

"But I feel better in my bed!"

"Yes I know you do, but like I said, you're one big nesting red flag! Everyone will know."

"I don't care anymore, let them find out."

"Three days and you already don't care. Wow." Impa chose to shut her mouth then after hearing the princess go at it again.

Zelda shot her friend a glare before sitting back, trying to catch her breath and wipe the tears that had formed in her eyes.

"I don't get it," the guard muttered, patting the Princess' back. "Captain is back, why isn't she getting better?"

"It's probably what Purah did." Impa sighed. "She essentially made a double-edged sword here."

"How so?"

"First off, they spend so much time together, their scents are nearly indistinguishable if you don't know the subtle undertones." She explained. "So when the Council could smell Link on her, we had to find a way to essentially reverse that, but here's the problem. That was what was keeping her pregnancy symptoms at bay, so what happened is Purah took away the protection she already had to give her a different kind of protection."

"So it's a lose-lose situation then." Caya said.

"Precisely."

"Take away one shield and give her another."

"Now, instead of relying on their noses, they have to rely on what they see, which for them isn't ideal because these two know how to hide their private lives."

"This doesn't seem very well hidden, Lady Impa."

"Obviously it's not." She gestured to the trash can. "I'm starting to think we chose the wrong option here. At least we could lie our way out of the Princess smelling like Link, we can't lie about this for long."

"So what do we do in the meantime?"

"We do what we've been doing since we found out. Keep our mouths shut and let Purah do her thing."

"And her thing is?"

"Coming up with some sort of plan."

The guard didn't seem convinced with that answer and just raised a brow. "What would that plan be?"

"Just trust the process!" Impa deflected and she rubbed her hand on the princess' back.

Zelda finally recovered back into a seated position, her skin pale and flushed. "I would also like to know what this plan is. She just took my blood and ran away with it yesterday." She shook her head and brushed the shorter strands of hair out of her face. She tried to take a deep breath, only to stop abruptly and gag, pushing the trash away a few inches and plugging her nose. "Someone please open a window?"

The guard was on her feet immediately, cracking open one of the larger ornate panes to air out the room.

"Lady Purah knows medicine?"

"Before she got obsessed with Ancient Technology, she was meant to be a healer, thus she has many skills she doesn't use," Zelda explained. "Purah can't use magic, so she can't heal in the same way Sheikah doctors can, so she focused on the physical aspects of medicine."

"It was also to help Her Highness to present, Checking hormone levels and such before Doctor Finri took over. It was His Majesty's orders," Impa said. "While I wouldn't trust my sister with a needle near my skin, she experiments on herself enough that I trust her somewhat to know what she's doing."

"Ehh? She does it to herself!?"

"She's designed suppressants specifically for herself. She aims to hide all signs of her designation in her everyday life. She claims it helps lower the amount of comments directed at her." Impa poured a cup of water and passed it to the Princess. "Her only obstacle is the fact she can't brew the stuff herself due to the complicated brewing process so she delegates it to a local brewer."

"I've seen the recipe formula, some parts of the process are very speedy down to the minute and others are down to hours and specific temperatures. As fantastic as she is, those tiny details are not a strength of hers when it comes to execution." The princess suddenly lapped a hand over her mouth and nose, reaching for the trash once more. Before going down, she pointed to the window and wretched as the guard stood up again.

"What happened?!"

"I don't know what they're doing, but it's disgusting." She muttered as she took a mouthful of water and spit it back out.

"Ah," the guard looked out the window and down below, she could see the gardeners tending to the plates with what looked like a bucket of compost and what he assumed was likely manure from the faint smell that reached her. "Fertilising the flowers, it seems, Your Highness." Caya was surprised that the princess could smell the gardeners from how far away she was and how close the trash was as well.

"Princess, do you think you can eat a bit now?" Impa attempted, grabbing the plate and offering her the toast once more. "We do need you to eat, it's too hot to go without breakfast."

She glared at the plate for a moment. "I'll try but it'll probably come right back up."

She was brave with the first bite, but overconfident with the rest of the piece. She was calm, seemingly level headed and it seemed safe when eating the first two bites, but by the third and fourth, they saw the tell-tale signs of another fit. They immediately saw the displeasure on her face as she slowly reached for the can once more, giving up and accepting her unfortunate fate.

Just as the princess wretched once more, the door clicked open, revealing Link in his Champion's tunic.

However, they were not surprised to see him rush to the princess' side without even announcing himself first. One hand immediately took over from Impa to hold her hair, his other pulling the hairband from his hair and using it to tie hers back.

He pushed aside her tiara away from them before anyone could potentially step on it and started rubbing her back, trying to sooth her. Neither of the girls knew what he was mumbling to the princess, but they could see her nodding and hanging her head low.

Just as they thought she was finally done, she bent over one more time into the trash.

"Zelda, are you alright?" Caya was baffled at the fact that no one batted an eyelash at the lack of formalities.

The princess nodded glumly, holding her head in her hands. Link looked around briefly between Impa and herself before stopping on the Sheikah.

"Impa? What in the world happened while I was gone?!" He all but shouted at her. "I've been gone a week, a week, and I come back to this?" He turned his attention back to the princess. "Let's get you to Finri-"

"No!" Everyone exclaimed, cutting him off. His eyes went wide and he froze, surprised by all three women shouting at him.

"Um… Why not?" He looked to Impa and the Princess,

The two shared a glance before looking back at him. "We just can't," Impa lied.

"Can I just rest in my chambers?" the Princess shared a brief pleading glance at the captain before he sighed and nodded.

"Let's go." Without another question, he brought an arm under her knees, watching for her dress, and hoisted her up into his arms.

"You don't need to carry me… I can walk on my own."

"I want to." He adjusted her comfortably in his arms before glancing back at the other two. "I need to talk to both of you in my office. Be there in half an hour." He left the room, kicking the door shut behind him and leaving the two alone.

"Is Captain not worried about how he'll be seen?"

Impa shrugged and laughed. "You'd be amazed how often he's carried her through the halls like that. You just haven't noticed it."

She felt significantly better after leaving that room, cuddling up into the things she'd taken from his room over the last two days, starting with the pillow then his blanket the next night. They comforted her greatly and her sickness diminished enough to the point she felt confident enough to stay in bed without some sort of trashcan nearby. The night before, she had taken to rearranging her bed, fixing the sheets and pillows until it pleased her, and now she reaped the rewards, but it still felt strange to tell the maids not to go into her room under any circumstance out of fear they would see it, touch it, or say something to someone.

It was clear the bedding wasn't hers originally, but she also wasn't going to tear apart her masterpiece and hide it every day, only to remake it hours later and spend an inordinate amount of time fixing the little things.

When Link finally returned from the talk he had with Impa and the guard, he seemed to be in a conflicting mood, which put Zelda on edge once more. She needed him in the best mood possible if she was going to tell him she was pregnant.

He'd seen her be sick, he'd given her such a teasing little chuckle when he dropped her off in her room after he spotted all of his stolen things.

Zelda thought of the books she hid under her bed, she thought of the words Impa and Purah had repeated to her over the last three days.

You have to tell him. You can't hide it.

So by the time Link returned to her, she had paced her room over a hundred times, creating a trail in her carpet. How was she going to tell him? There was no way she could hide it any longer.

Try as she might, he was suspicious and it seemed he was only one clue or two away from figuring it out on his own. She felt as if the moment he heard any word relating back to baby or pregnancy and he'd guess.

She tried to take a deep breath but found it difficult due to the lump in her throat and her heart rate wildly picking up in her chest.

"I…" She tried to get the words out but found they were locked in her throat. "Link-"

"Zel, are you ok? Is everything alright?" She could feel his worry setting in through the bond, sitting in her stomach heavily. She tried to choke down the nerves, but found it just replaced itself with nausea instead.

You have to tell him. Zelda, get the words out.

She swallowed thickly, trying to get the block to go away. She didn't understand why she was so nervous. Everyone told her and reassured her that Link would never turn tail and run, he wouldn't get mad, but a betraying doubt in the back of her mind seemed to win over all the supportive whispers.

Her eyes landed on one of the books she managed to get a hold of thanks to her guard's personal task yesterday.

She clenched and wiped her hands on the skirt of her dress, hoping for her nerves to calm down.

If you can't tell him, show him. The thought flashed briefly into her mind and she swallowed one last time before standing up.

"Zelda?" He watched her from his spot on the bed as she moved to her writing desk and plucked up the book.

She held the book in her hands, looking over the title in the front, the words pregnant and baby being very clear against the brown book cover. Her hands trembled and sweat from the nerves.

Just give him the book. He'll know. You won't need to say a thing.

As if he read her thoughts, he stood up and approached her, looking at the blank backside of the book as if asking if he should take it.

He won't run, he won't leave, she tried to remind herself as his hands took the book from hers slowly. The moment the book left her hands, she couldn't stop herself from turning away, unable to look at him.

Steadying her breath was harder than she thought as tears gathered in her eyes. One small slip of self control and the tears began to flow freely rushing down her cheeks as she released the heavy breaths that begged to be let go.

This was a mistake. No, why did I do this? Her mind screamed at her to take the book back, to kick him out of her room and to be alone. It ordered her to do anything in her power to stop him from finding out her secret, she wanted to bury her face in her sheet and never come out, never to face anyone ever again.

"Zel?"

He's mad. Oh no, he's mad. Why did I tell him? Goddesses, why am I so bad at this?

"Zelda? Can you look at me?" Though her mind told her he was mad, his tone was anything but.

He's mad, you can't let him see you like this. No one likes a crying princess, least of all him. Don't let him see you, don't look at him.

"Please?"

She shook her head erratically, just wanting to be alone. Her arm flinched hard when his hand came to gently hold hers.

"You need to calm down." She didn't notice him walk around her through her panicked state. "Zelda, calm down. Deep breaths." She opened her eyes and avoided his worried face to the best of her abilities, but she was mostly unsuccessful.

Through her peripherals, she could see the lines of worry in his face and his eyes wide with panic.

"N-No," She choked out, turning away from him again. "I've ruined everything," a series hiccup erupted between her cries as the tears fell uncontrollably. "I've ruined everything we've worked for and it's all my fault. I didn't give you a choice in all of this and now you're mad and-"

"Deep breaths, come on." He brought his hands to cup her face, wiping away the tears as best he could with his thumbs. He guided her through unsteady deep breaths, doing the exercises with her. "You didn't do anything, nothing is your fault, Zelda." He said to her softly. "I need you to calm down for me, ok?"

She nodded through another choked sob. She was sure her skin must be red and puffy, unattractive, and she couldn't stop her runny nose from going.

She tried to wipe the tears frantically with her sleeve. "I-I'm sorry, I'm such a mess-"

He took her hands and stopped her. "There's nothing to be sorry for, don't apologise." He pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed it where her tears still flowed. "Just focus on breathing, please. I'm not mad." He tried to reassure her. " I am not mad ." He punctuated the words firmly to her.

He's just saying that. Who doesn't get mad when they find out their partner is pregnant?

Another hiccup broke out into another sob, this time quieter. "I-I'm sorry-"

He pulled her into a hug, wrapping his arms around her tightly. "Stop apologising. You didn't do anything wrong."

They stood there for a long time, Zelda in Link's embrace, as her sobs slowly became faint sniffles.

He didn't relent on his words of kindness and affection, he told her he missed her, he told her he loved her, he reminded her he wasn't mad in the slightest, he asked her to breathe in and out, and he deflected every apology with the same words as earlier.

Don't apologise, you did nothing wrong.

When he was finally sure that she had stopped crying, which had taken a decent bit of time, he picked her up and brought her to the bed where he sat in her sheets with the princess cuddled into his chest, his arms still wrapped around her protectively.

"Feeling better?" He cautioned, tilting her head to look her in the eye. She didn't answer, but she nodded. It was good enough for him. "Can we talk about this now?" She buried her head into his uniform. "Zelda, I'm not mad, I'm just worried about you."

"You're not lying?" He heard muffled through his clothes.

"Not lying, I swear it on my mom's head."

She cautioned a peak up to his eyes. "We can talk…I guess."

"So, when did you find out?"

She lifted three fingers.

"Three days? Weeks?" No, if it was weeks, he'd have likely seen this exact scenario play out much earlier. "Three days then?"

She nodded against him.

"Have you confirmed it yet? Seen anyone?" Her fists clenched the fabric beneath her.

That was a dumb question. He remembered his sister ranting vividly about this exact thing almost a year ago.

"Actually, don't answer that."

"So you know about that then." She looked away from him, causing a small pang in his chest.

He wasn't quite sure what to say to that. "I don't know all the details, but I know about it." He tried.

"Fair enough, I suppose."

"Is that to say you've put thought into this?"

"Mhm, some," she mumbled quietly. "Can't really do much without you here, my hands are pretty tied."

Fuck the council, Link kept repeating to himself. The Council, it was always the damn council of idiots thinking they knew better than the entire population of Hyrule. If anything, their laws made everything harder on everyone rather than make it easier. He didn't see how it was supposed to make it easier and simpler on his end, the people he knew had to go out of their way and 'help' with errands that their perfectly capable partners could have easily done on their own in much less time.

He was going to somewhat ignore Zelda's comment there, knowing he shouldn't take it personally. "I mean, what did you want to do?"

She sat up and shifted out of his arms, settling in his side rather than on him now. "As Princess and sole heir, it's my duty to carry on Hylia's bloodline-"

He stopped her. "I think you misunderstood me, I want to know what you want to do. What does Zelda want to do, not what the Princess or the Blood of the Goddess wants. Duty can wait, but what do you want to do?"

"I only just found out a few days ago…" She started quietly. She chanced a glance to his eyes and found only affection there. "Impa and Purah have been helping me figure things out, but I really have no clue. Do you know what I should do?"

"Listen, forget about what I want. Focus on what you want. Forget about everyone else."

"But-"

"They're not the ones growing a child. They're not the ones who are carrying it."

"But what about you? You're still the father, you should have some say."

She caught the subtle shift of a smile. "It feels so strange hearing that directed at me," the silent chuckle gave Zelda warmth. "We're both pretty young, we're busy people. I'll figure out how to make things work if you wish to go through with this. No matter what you choose, I will defend your decision regardless of who has a problem with it."

"Even if it's my father?"

"I will throw him into the moat myself if he dares say anything disrespectful."

"Link-"

"I'm serious. I dare him to try something." She couldn't ignore how serious he was. "He doesn't get to have a say in what you want to do here unless you want him to say something, and I'll make sure he knows that."

Hearing those words eased many of her worries, more than she could say, knowing that she wouldn't be alone. She knew he wasn't lying when he said those words, but she knew a confrontation was bound to happen between the two, her father was nosy and assumed her business was his as well, even if it was private.

"You know… You might lose your position and your job doing that…"

"I've been aware of my unstable position since the day I realised I had feelings for you." Link brushed it off. "Besides, he needs me for this, doesn't he?" He lifted the legendary sword by his side with a grin. "If I was him, I'd be nervous about his precious princess and hero vanishing into thin air. It'd be a real shame if we just happened to be on a trip when the Calamity struck, don't you think?"

She had never seen that side of him before, the side that was willing to manipulate and even blackmail to assure her safety. Sure she had seen people try to manipulate her father, that wasn't new. Who wouldn't want to try to win a favour from a king?

But what Link was doing was different. He was forcing her father's hand, forcing him to play nice unless he wanted to lose his two most important keys to defeating the Calamity.

Link was more than willing to put his job and life on the line to go toe-to-toe and force her father, the king of his country, into a corner for her.

Just to protect her and her baby.

She couldn't help but smile, knowing she'd be just fine.

She knew then what she wanted to do.