Inside was a bone carving. Small enough to fit in her palm, pale and smooth—a mountain cat in miniature, its body curved in a protective arc, its head lifted as if watching for threats.
"I know it's not—" He stopped. Started again, his voice rougher. "My mother was the carver in the family. My hands were always better with blades than with fine work. The lines aren't as clean as hers, and the proportions are a little—"
"Ralvar."
"Ijust wanted them to have something. Something from me, before they're even born. So they'd know—" His jaw worked. "So they'd know I love them already."
Delia lifted the carving to the firelight. He was right that it wasn't as refined as his mother's work. The totem around her neck had a precision this one lacked. But the love in it was unmistakable. Every line carved with intention, every curve smoothed by hands that had spent hours getting it right.
"It's perfect," she said.
"It's not—"
"It's perfect because you made it." She set the carving carefully aside and reached for him, cupping his scarred face. "Our child won't care about clean lines. They'll care that their father loved them enough to make something with his own hands."
He leaned into her touch, and she felt the tension drain out of him.
"I keep thinking," he admitted quietly, "about all the ways I could fail at this. At being a father. I know how to command warriors and patrol borders and kill enemies, but this—"
"You'll learn. We both will." She stroked her thumb across his cheekbone. "And you won't be doing it alone."
"No." He turned his head, pressed a kiss to her palm. "I won't."
She pulled him up toward her, and he came willingly, his mouth finding hers with the ease of long practice. The kiss started gentle but deepened quickly, heat kindling between them the way it always did.
"Thessaly said—" she managed between kisses.
"I know what the healer said." His hand slid down her side, tracing the new fullness of her hips, the swell of her belly. "She said to be careful, not to stop entirely."
"And you've beenverycareful."
"Too careful?" His lips moved to her throat, and she felt his smile against her skin. "You could have said something."
"I'm saying something now."
He laughed and lifted her from the chair like she weighed nothing. The trip to the bed was short, and then she was sinking into familiar furs with his body a welcome weight beside her.
They undressed each other slowly, no urgency tonight, just the pleasure of rediscovery. Her body had changed in the past months, and he traced every difference with his fingers and his lips like he was mapping new territory.
When he finally settled between her thighs, propped on his arms to keep his weight off her center, she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him closer.
"I love you," she said.
"And I love you." He pressed his forehead to hers. "Both of you."
He moved slowly, careful of the life growing between them, but no less thorough for it. She'd learned his body as well as he'd learned hers in these months. She knew exactly how to shift her hips to make him groan, knew the pace that would draw this out until they were both trembling on the edge.
When she came, it was gentle waves of warmth rather than the sharp peaks of their earlier urgencies. He followed moments later, burying his face in her neck, and they stayed tangled together as their breathing slowed.
Outside, the night had fully fallen. Somewhere in the outpost, voices were raised in evening song—a hymn to the mountain, Ralvar had told her once, sung as the first snows came. The melody drifted through the shuttered windows and wrapped around them like a blanket.
"We should probably eat," she murmured eventually.
"Probably."
Neither of them moved.
Delia reached for the bone carving where it still sat on the bed beside them and held it up to the firelight again. The little mountain cat seemed to glow, pale against the dancing shadows.
