“Yours.” She trembles under me, tearing at my clothing as if desperate to touch my skin. “All yours!”
I thrust into her again, my cock buried deep inside her, my spur sliding along her folds. She cries out as I do, and I lean down to give her another claiming kiss. “I am going to take you hard, my mate,” I tell her. “Hard and fast.”
She nods, eager.
I stroke into her once more and begin to pump with quick, decisive movements. It is as if her permission has freed me, it has also stolen my control. Over and over, I pound into her, Stay-see’s little cries fueling me. I claim her with swift ferocity, and when her cunt begins to clench hard around my cock, I feel a near brutal satisfaction as she cries out her pleasure.
Mine comes but moments later.
Afterward, she caresses my face with her small hands and cold fingers, as if marveling at what we have just done. A happy smile plays on her mouth, and I press a kiss to her bountiful breasts, feeling lazy and content. Her hands move to my mane and she plays with my hair, then touches my broken horn. “You’re sure the fall earlier did not hurt you?”
“Not at all. I am sorry it frightened you, though.”
“I just thought…I thought it was happening all over again.” She shudders underneath me. “That I was going to lose you once more.”
“Never. You will never be rid of me.” I wrap my arms tightly around her torso. “Every day I will bury myself so deeply inside you that your khui will send its regards.”
She chuckles, her fingertips grazing over my brows. “As long as you are in my furs every night, that is fine with me.”
“Every night,” I agree. I slide my hand under her bottom and stroke the pale curve of flesh. “No tail here,” I murmur, patting her backside.
Stay-see stills under me. “You…did you remember?”
“Remember what?” I look up at her.
A flash of disappointment crosses her face, but is quickly gone. “Nothing. I guess it’s not important after all.”
“I did remember something earlier,” I tell her. “That you used the word ‘fuck’ when Pacy was being born. And that you did not tell me of this when you shared the story of his birth.”
Her smile widens. “It wasn’t my most ladylike moment. You really remembered that?”
I nod. “I did. I think the memories will come back in time, if you are patient with me.”
“Of course,” she says, and touches my mouth with her soft little fingertips. “You and I are forever.”
I like the sound of that very much. “I agree.”
She gives a contented sigh. “And I wish we could stay right here, like this, forever.”
I squeeze her bottom again. “I would wish that, too, my mate, except you need to make your mate and your son an egg.”
“An egg?” Her brows draw together. Then she sits up so quickly that her head almost bangs into mine. “Oh my god. You saved the eggs?”
“They are frozen and the shells are hard,” I tell her, rolling off of her soft body. I lie on my back and tie my breeches, tucking my cock back into my clothing. “I have two of them for you.”
Her squeal of delight warms me down to my toes.
EPILOGUE
STACY
Two months later
“Da da da da!” Pacy bounces on his hands and knees, tail flicking. Across the room, my mate sits on the floor, cross-legged. He waves his fingers at his son, indicating he should come forward.
“You can do it, Pacy,” Pashov calls out. “Come to Da Da.” He uses the English word—or a bastardized version of it—since Pacy seems to be able to say that easier than the sa-khui ‘father,’ which has a lot of swallowed syllables.
The baby plants one foot on the ground, then the other, his bottom wiggling in the air. Then he stands upright. I stir my egg while it slow roasts on the fire. After endless experimenting, I’ve figured out the best way to cook the frozen dirtbeak eggs: crack open the top and let it scramble in its own shell, occasionally stirring it. It makes a mountain of perfect, delicious scrambled eggs that go amazingly well with a bit of not-potato and is my favorite go-to meal when I’m tired of dried meat. Pashov has taken to eating the eggs, too, but he prefers his as more of an omelet peppered with chunks of meat and roots. They’ve helped save my sanity so far in the brutal season, when there’s plenty to eat, but most of it is dried, smoked meat. The hunters filled our storage coffers as much as possible before the weather got bad, and the women harvested a lot of not-potato, and now we’re just riding out the blizzards above, snug in our little nook in the ground below. I have an entire storage area full of frozen eggs, and we’re all being extremely careful to make them last. We should be good through the brutal season after all, and the men only go out to hunt on the days that it’s not pouring snow. Since most days are so cold that it hurts to breathe and the skies are so dark they look like a bruise, the hunters stay home with us a lot of the time.
