Mabel perked up instantly. “You found something?”
“While you were busy crawling through vents like a wee mouse, I found a cellar in one of the houses nearby. There was a family of raccoons living in the?—”
She stopped abruptly. He nearly jumped out of his skin when she grasped his sensitized hand, gripping it tight. Her eyes were wide when she asked, “You didn’t kill one, did you?”
“Uh…” It took a moment for him to think past the shock of her touch. It wasn’t often that she touchedhim. Giving her timeto adjust was crucial, but that didn’t mean smothering his urges was easy.
Something not helped by the lack of a proper nest,he thought, the beast of his instincts clawing at his insides.
Giving himself a stiff internal shake, he answered, “No, my blessing. I won’t be making that mistake again anytime soon.”
He winced at the memory of their first week, when his rations ran out and he’d proudly presented her with a bird he’d managed to snare. It’d been a very long time since he spent any time with a healer, so it didn’t cross his mind that she might be horrified by the thought of eating meat.
It tended to come alive a little on the tongue, apparently, so he could hardly blame her for wanting nothing to do with it.
It didn’t make providing for her any easier, but Henrik set himself to the task without complaint. It was a privilege to take care of his mate, and it sure as fuck beat day after grinding day on the battlefield. Even sleeping with one eye open to be sure she wouldn’t try sneaking off in the night, he couldn’t remember the last time he slept so well or felt so full of life.
“Well, good,” she replied, pert little nose sticking in the air. He hid a smile, knowing that meant she was feeling a little soft toward him and leaning hard on her armor.
As they neared the office, Henrik hurried ahead of her to open the door. He did it because even decades of soldiering couldn’t wipe out the lessons his clan taught him — but also because her face went all pink without fail.
The fact that it made such an impact on her made him sad, but he couldn’t complain about the results.
Ushering her inside, he closed the door to keep in the warmth. It’d taken some serious engineering, but he’d managed to rig up something like a stove out of an old metal drum and a chimney by routing pipes through a hole in the ceiling. They’d taken apart just about every bit of wood furniture they could findand used it as fuel, and the more the room warmed, the heavier the scent of sugar became.
The smell was in the walls. It crusted every barrel and bit of rusted equipment. It was dark and a little burnt, but it was far better than the shit he’d been smelling on the battlefield. If he never got a whiff of gunpowder or blood again, he’d be a happy man.
And their little home, imperfect as it was, beat the tar out of any encampment.
They’d turned a desk into a table of sorts, which sat near the stove, and at the far end of the room was the nest. Which he hadn’t been invited into yet. Unfortunately.
Henrik slept on a mat closer to the fire — and the door. Seeing as his blessing still occasionally tried to scamper off back to near certain death, he’d set to guarding it. But those attempts had fallen off somewhat over the last week, which he took as a good sign.
Even today’s attempt felt a little half-hearted. She’d made an awful lot of noise for someone so desperate to escape him, but he wasn’t about to point that out.
Mabel settled into her usual seat at the makeshift table with a sigh. He moved to the stove, where a tin that’d once been destined for beet sugar now bubbled with beans and canned carrots. There wasn’t much in the way of seasoning available, but salt did a lot when the only other choice was nothing.
He felt her gaze on him as he carefully ladled out some stew into his soldier-issued tin bowl. She watched him often with that keen, witchy gaze, probably searching for things he couldn’t understand.
Mabel had a tricky brain. She was smarter than him by leaps and bounds, and despite the fact that she had no trouble speaking her mind, she tended to keep a lot of what went on in that sharp mind a secret.
One day he intended to unlock all of those secrets, but for now he’d settle for a smile or two.
Setting his bowl and a far nicer one he’d scavenged from a house in town on the table, he eased into his seat. “Can’t beat beans and carrots,” he announced, flashing her a smile.
Mabel looked at him for what felt like a long time before her gaze dropped to her stew. She was quieter than normal as she picked up her spoon and began to eat. His mate was a talker, which he appreciated even when she was railing at him. Henrik loved the sound of her voice and just how damn clever she was.
Sometimes, when she wasn’t fighting to stay mad at him, she told him all sorts of interesting things — plots to books they didn’t have available in the Orclind, or what it was like to be able to see inside a body with her hands, or even stories from her apprenticeship days. She filled their nest with color whenever she opened her mouth.
But she was silent as they ate.
Henrik’s appetite dwindled as the quiet stretched on. Instinct prickled. They’d been getting on well, all things considered, for the past week. To suddenly have her behavior shift back to what it’d been those first days made him wary.
“You all right?” he cautiously inquired.
Mabel pushed her stew around with the back of her spoon. “Yes,” she answered, not looking at him.
“Really? Because you’d normally be done with your supper by now.”
