"Youpacked the basket?"
Torion just nodded and shrugged. "Easiest way not to make a great fuss over a picnic. And I don't think the keep has quite learned to treat me with the same deference as my father."
"Because you don't ask them to," I pointed out, pulling out a hand pie and stuffing it directly into my mouth. Now that Torion had pointed out the time, my hunger made itself known—loudly, I noted wryly, as my stomach growled.
"Should I, do you think?" Torion asked. He caught my free hand in both of his, resting it over his chest, fondling and tangling our fingers.
The feel of his heartbeat under my palm steadied my mood. I'd come out to the garden to do exactly that, to get away from that which unsettled me, and instead it was the man himself who seemed to make the nerves and worries and tempers subside.
I'd given Malcolm this power over me when I was young and hadn't known any better. I'd let him win it back after he'd broken my trust, wanting to believe what had existed between us once might be repaired, recovered.
It was madness to let another man do the same.
But feeling calm was such a relief, and the day was lovely, and Torion was still sweet, still earnest.
"Do you want the staff to treat you like a king?" If he did, I might have to rise to the occasion, be more than the woman digging in the dirt in an old dress.
Torion's nose wrinkled, and I could've predicted his simple, "No."
"For what it's worth, they do respect you. But you grew up here, and many of them have known you your whole life, so they know you're the sort of man who packs his own picnic and doesn't want a procession of servants to wait upon him in the middle of an herb garden."
Torion lifted my hand to his mouth, kissed the back of it, and then turned it to kiss the palm too. "Well, when you put it like that…"
I smiled as he trailed off, settling my hand back to his chest, his gaze studying the clouds as I helped myself to more of the food he'd brought. It was peaceful, pleasant, but something more than that too.Comfortable.
My lips quirked at the thought. When I'd been a girl, "comfortable" had been the last thing I would've considered desirable in my future partner. Malcolm had made me giddy, nervous, and desperate. During our courtship, I had wept at night after dinners where he'd been less than constantly attentive and then awoken again in the morning, delighted by the depth of my obsession with the man. It had been torture and rapture andnevercomfortable.
Torion's heartbeat was steady beneath my palm, his breathing a reliable rhythm that I found myself matching. Crumbs fell from my fingers down to his forehead, and he laughed and grinned up at me. My heart flipped in my chest at the sight. I fed him the ripest of the strawberries, and he sucked the juice from my fingers, my body throbbing in want. And through it all, desire and affection and safety, I was comfortable here with this man.
This dreadfully dangerous man.
"Allow me to take that,Omega Feargus.”
I blustered, but the pile of bedding was out of my arms before I could form a protest, and the maid hurried ahead of me.
"Do I look so useless?" I groused to Maggie at my side. The keep staff had done well cleaning and restoring the estate while Torion and I had been…occupied with one another.
"It's just deference. It's not just to be expected. It's what you'reowed," Maggie said with a shrug.
I wrinkled my nose. "They weren't deferent when I arrived a month ago."
"You weren't likely to be carrying the alpha's heir a month ago."
I froze, staring down at the bustling keep, one hand hovering in front of my stomach. I clenched my fingers into a fist and forced my hand down to my side.
"That's the expectation," I said.
Maggie turned to me, eyebrows raised. She looked better than she had in years, as if the elevation of her position had brought some of her youth back to her. Now she didn't have to run from cellar to rafters all day, able to order others to do the running for her. She had a comfortable chair in a small but cozy office, and everyone seemed to like her even when she was correcting their work. I expected or at least hoped that it would be a long time before I had to find a replacement for her as our housekeeper.
"Of course it is." Her brow furrowed for a moment, and then her eyes widened slightly. She drew me back from the railing,away from where sound carried, and tucked her chin in close to whisper. "Should it not be?"
I shook my head. "They're exactly right. I just…hadn't given myself a moment to consider…"
I'd been avoiding the thought, in fact. There were too many risks. Early labor, the many lives of women lost in the delivery of a dragonkin son, and that was only if I managed to stay pregnant. I hadn't made it more than a few months last time before my body had failed the child.
And I hadn't told Torion that. I hadn't told anyone.
All at once, I felt sick, at the brink of tears, the hallway going dark at the corners of my eyes. What if I lost another child? Torion claimed indifference about producing an heir, but how would he feel when the idea became a reality? How would he feel if I stole the promise away from him, just when he'd realized how much he wanted it to arrive? I'd gone back to Malcolm's bed in want of a child, but I hadn't realized how much it would mean, how desperately I would love them as they grew inside of me.
