Keric
Three days ago, I turned feral after a mercenary tossed a scent bomb at my face. Moments later, I threw Anna over my shoulder and raced off with her into a cave in the mountains. My cousins tracked me down and arrived with chains, ready to drag me back to the commune.
Today I watch my Bride calmly make tea in our kitchen like it’s the most normal thing in the world, and I can’t stop staring. We both mainly enjoy coffee, but some days she also likes tea and I’m learning that I like tea too.
I woke up this morning with Anna in my arms, her soft body pressed against mine, her hair spread across my pillow.Mypillow.Ourbed. I no longer sleep on the couch because there’s no reason for that anymore. Anna is my Bride and we share everything now. The bedroom, the blankets and the quiet moments before dawn when I reach for her and she’s already reaching back.
This morning, I woke before she did and just watched her breathe. Felt the rise and fall of her breasts against my arm. Marveled at the fact that this is my life now. Every night I get to fall asleep beside her, every morning I get to wake up and see her lovely face near mine. I can reach for her and put her under me and slide inside her wet heat whenever our need arises, which happens often.
Three days, and I’m still not used to it. I hope I never get used to it.
I keep thinking about what she said in that cave, standing in front of my cousins with her chin lifted and her eyes fierce.I chose you because I love you, Keric.She said it out loud, in front of Kelt and Urdan and Whelan, like she wasn’t embarrassed at all. Like she wanted everyone to know.
I love you so much it hurts.
I’d barely been able to speak and when I finally managed to tell her I loved her too in return, my voice came out wrecked and raw. That night, after we’d returned to the commune and finally had a moment alone, she’d whispered it again in the darkness of our bedroom, her body soft and warm beneath mine.I love you.And I’d said it back, punctuating each word with a kiss until she was laughing and crying at the same time.
When we first returned to the cabin after the cave, I wasn’t sure what we’d find. Our battle with the mercenaries had left behind not only bodies, but broken furniture and shattered windows. My bedroom door was ripped clean off its hinges where I’d torn through it in my feral state. But the commune had already mobilized. Whelan and Kelt and a dozen others descended on my cabin while we were still in the mountains, hauling away bodies to hand off to human authorities, they’d also scrubbed blood from the floors and started replacing windows.
By the time we arrived, escorted by Rogan himself, the worst of it was handled. But not all of it. There were still boot prints tracked through the kitchen. A lamp shattered in the corner that everyone had missed. My claw marks gouged into the doorframe.
Anna saw those marks and went quiet for a long moment, and I wondered if she was afraid of me. She wasn’t. She traced the gouges with her fingertips, then turned and wrapped her arms around me and held on tight. “You came for me,” she said against my chest. “That’s all that matters.”
We spent that first night cleaning the last of it together. Sweeping glass, scrubbing floors, putting the cabin back to rights. It felt important, reclaiming our space, making it ours again. And when we finally fell into bed, exhausted and aching, she curled into me like she belonged there.
The harder part came later. On the second night after our return, my female woke gasping from a nightmare and I held her while she shook. She’d killed a man. Pulled the trigger and watched that human fall. I know that weight because I’ve carried it myself, more times than I like to remember. So I held her and let her talk it out, let her cry, let her work through the horror and the guilt and the strange, shameful relief of still being alive.
“You defended yourself,” I told her. “You defended us. There’s no shame in surviving.”
“And you did the same for me,” she’d responded, because my Bride is always trying to care for me in the same way I care for her.
Now she moves around the kitchen with ease. She knows where everything is, reaches for the honey without looking, pulls down two mugs and hums something under her breath. Her things are scattered throughout the cabin. Anna now has books on the shelf beside mine, her clothes in the closet, her toiletriescontinue to crowd the bathroom counter. She’s moving in, fully and completely.
There’s something else, too. Something I haven’t told her.
Her scent has changed.
It’s subtle and so faint that I might have missed it if I wasn’t constantly breathing her in. But it’s there. A sweetness underneath her usual warm honey scent, something new and tender and unmistakable. I noticed it yesterday morning when I buried my face in her neck and again last night when she fell asleep in my arms. She doesn’t know yet. It’s too early for her to know. But I can scent it, and the knowledge fills me with a fierce, quiet joy that I carry like a secret treasure.
My female is pregnant with our first offspring. I want to roar with approval every time I think about it, but I’ll wait and let her discover it herself and have that joyful moment of realization. And when she tells me, I’ll act surprised and let her see how happy it makes me.
Dinah winds between Anna’s ankles, chirping for attention. Anna laughs and bends down to scratch behind the kitten’s ears. “You already ate,” she tells the kitten. “Don’t give me those eyes.”
The cat gives her those eyes anyway.
I lean against the doorframe and watch them both. My female and our cat, in our kitchen, in our home.
“You’re staring,” Anna says without turning around.
“I’m admiring.”
She glances over her shoulder, a smile tugging at her lips. “Admiring what? Me fighting with your ancient kettle?”
I glance down to the perfect curve of her ass, then back to her face. “The kettle is not ancient. It has character.”
“It has rust.”
“That’s the character.”
