“It means everything.”
“It does not.”
“What if I can’t conceive children now? What if I still can but they are weaker than their cousins? You are heir, are you not?”
A sigh escaped him, and familiar smoke trailed from his nose and mouth. “Only time will tell what all has been taken from you—from us—by the mist. Producing bull sons and daughters would bring me joy, but they would also bring with them unending fear. Fear that they do not have a full clan to protect them, that they have enemies waiting for them just beyond the gates. The worldspins waiting for us will be hard enough as is. We do not go to Bathyr for rest, we go there now to prepare for war.”
She shivered and drew her cape closer. “And after this war?”
“We will build our hard-earned home together, and if children do not come, so be it. Dezetus, the eldest of my brothers, will produce the true heir for our tribe when it is time.”
“You seem so sure…”
He turned toward her then and grasped a fistful of her hair, forcing her to face him directly. The firelight cast him in a golden glow on one side, while the other was hidden in deep shadows that swallowed his powerful frame. His tall, vicious horns haloed the light, making her mouth dry up. With their eyes locked on each other, he pressed her head to the ground at his knee. Calavia settled there, relaxing under his hold, his strength, and continued to gaze up at him. Even after he released her to pet her hair, she remained where he’d positioned her.
His harsh face softened after a while, and the contrasting shadows upon his skin morphed together in her mind, making him look like the minotaur she knew.
“I have just won a prize,” he told her, banishing the uncertainty from her heart in one simple, comforting phrase. “I will fight to keep her, die if I must, endure any pain and torment for her, fight a battle without warriors by my side, without hope, just so she will not be alone. I have won a prize that I intend to keep. Whatever might happen between now and until our bodies turn to dust matters not, as long as my hag remains with me.”
Her breaths shallowed. “I will never leave you.”
A low rumble sounded from his throat.
“I swear my undying loyalty to you, Astegur, my champion.”
“Hero.”
The side of her lip curved up. “Hero.”
He leaned down. “You are my other arm now.”
Her smile widened as she raised her hands to grip the base of his horns and draw his lips toward her own. Their mouths brushed in a simple kiss, one without wildness, but with more passion, trust, and commitment than she could ever put into words. A single brush, in the quiet night, before a small fire they shared alone, where no one and nothing could see them, or ever hurt them.
When he looked up to catch her eyes again, to share the same air, the same singular sentiments, she released her hold on his horns, untied her cloak, and spread her legs out beside the fire. He watched as she reached down to raise the layers of skirts up her hips.
Astegur stood up from where he sat and moved to kneel between her bare legs. With a worshipful gentleness she had never seen nor felt from him before, he cupped one of her ankles and ran his hand slowly up the back of her leg. She saw the crux of his loincloth lift up, his huge shaft hardening and straightening beneath it.
Suddenly, as his large body covered hers, with the mountain chill fleeing their presence, she found love. Not the love of gods, not the love of a faith she’d never understood, nor the love of her mother, but a tangible love, a wonderful love, a hard-earned, hard-won love.
She turned her head to the fire as his tongue slid up the inside of her thigh and let her thoughts drift to pleasure, to their existence, and finally, as he rose up over her, to her minotaur and the possibility of a brighter future together.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Astegur stopped before the gates that led into his and his brothers’ home. Calavia stood next to him, looking upon the sleek, black wood with him. On the other side, he could see a faint trail of blisterbark smoke rise in the air, and he caught traces of the smell of food that had been cooked in the earlier hours of the day.
Suddenly, the gates slid open and Vedikus appeared on the other side. His brother stiffened when he saw Calavia at his side, a flash of hatred marring his face.
“You,” Vedikus snarled through gritted teeth.
Calavia stepped forward before Astegur could stop her. “Vedikus.”
Vedikus’s gaze snapped between Calavia and him, and Astegur knew his brother was looking for a reason to kill her, a glimmer of ensorcellment that Calavia might have over him. And if they had encountered each other several weeks ago, Vedikus would have found what he searched for.
Vedikus placed his hand upon his axe hilt. Astegur surged between them and knocked his horns against his brother’s in warning.
He did not want Calavia to kill him.
“We have much to discuss,” he said, his tone exacting. “You know of my mate, Calavia. I have moved her here so she may warm my furs, and may fill my stable with young. A threat against her is a threat against me.”
