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“Oh, dkaar,” I breathed, my chest aching at her uncertainty.

I’d crossed worlds for her, carried her across half of this one, claimed her sons before my clan, and brought her into my home. None of those things felt extraordinary. They were simply what I did because I loved her.

But mayhap doing something and saying it were not the same.

I cupped her cheek.

“How could ye doubt that I love ye?”

Her lips parted, but she did not answer.

“Ye’re a remarkable woman, Cataline. Of course I love ye.”

She watched me for another moment, then hummed softly and leaned her cheek into my palm.

She did not say it back, and I’ll not deny that I wished she would.

My Kteer wanted something more as well. It stirred beneath my ribs, content with her nearness but not entirely satisfied, waiting for something I could feel but could not yet name.

Still, Cataline had trusted my family with her bairns. She had come here with me, allowed me to care for her, and now rested against my hand as if she might remain there awhile. She’d accepted the comfort and relaxation I’d been able to give her.

I took what she offered me and considered it a good trade.

Cataline

By the end of my first fortnight in Battleborn Village, the bleeding had nearly stopped, I could walk across the village and back without needing to sit down, and my breasts had apparently decided that if the rest of me intended to return to its ordinary proportions, they would compensate by becoming larger and more painful every day.

“They hurt,” I whined to Issa one morning, shifting Edan to my other breast and discovering that this one was, if anything, worse.

“Are we sure he does not have tusks?”

The orc woman, who was sitting across from me in her cottage with Lizzette asleep against her chest, chuckled. She glanced down at Edan’s furiously working jaw before giving me a sympathetic smile.

“He’s half orc.”

As if that explained everything.

“I have noticed.”

Jean was kneading bread at the table. “She means they eat more, lass. Orc bairns are greedy wee beasts.”

Edan made a pleased little sound without releasing my nipple, as if he appreciated the compliment, and I tried not to groan at the thought of another six months of this.

If your breasts become too sore, Maardok will most definitely massage them for you.

I refused to blush at the thought, because Jean would notice, and if there was one thing the elderly human female did well, ‘twas guffawing at anything related to sex with orcish males.

Not that I was considering sex with Maardok. My body wasn’t ready yet. But...that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy sleeping in his arms at night, or stealing away for a soak in the hot springs as we spread soap across each other’s bodies. Mayhap I wasn’t yet aroused by him, but I was…aware.

‘Twas just that I was focused on my new son.

If Edan ate enough for two babes, he was otherwise nearly perfect. He had begun sleeping for longer stretches, and because Maardok saw no reason the fact that he lacked functioning breasts should exclude him from nighttime parenting, he took the babe whenever Edan had eaten but remained determined to keep the rest of us awake.

I would wake later to find Maardok pacing the cottage with our son tucked against his bare chest, whispering about boats or warriors or whatever else he believed a weeks-old babe needed to know.

With Ewan, there had only been me. Richard had been proud of his son, but babies were women’s work, and therefore the feeding, crying, pacing, washing, and wondering whether some peculiar noise meant my child was dying had all belonged to me.

Now there was Maardok, and Issa, and Matthias, and Jean, and seemingly half the village willing to steal Edan from my arms at the slightest opportunity. With the winter nights stretching endlessly and Maardok taking the babe half the time he was awake, I was sleeping nearly as much as Edan.