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“Smaller.” Maardok considered. “Uglier, mayhap.”

“Can I have one?”

“Nay,” we said together, and Maardok’s face seemed to pale. I wondered if he realized, for the first time, that Ewan might very well have scars like this if we stayed.

If we stay.

I sent Ewan up the ladder to fetch clean rags, mostly so I could have a moment to struggle through those complicated emotions as I laid Edan down on his stomach on the quilt.

Because up until this moment, I hadn’t realized what Maardok’s role as the leader of warriors might mean. I had been touching this male’s scars for weeks. I traced them when he slept. I had put my palm to his cheek the first day, in the mud outside the croft, and had only seen the kindness in his eyes; because a scar is something that has already finished happening, and I had never let myself think about the moment each of them was made.

This one had not finished happening yet.

And if I stayed, I would be here for the next scar. And the one after that.

I did not mind it as much as I ought to have.

I washed the dried blood from his arm and his ribs and the side of his chest while he sat in my chair and let me, his eyes following me as I worked. These days the strange glow had subsided to a green spark in the center of each dark eye that flared at random times in response to whatever he was contemplating.

Somewhere around his shoulder my hands slowed, and I became aware of the width of them, and the water running down over green skin, and the fact that I was standing between his knees with my sleeves pushed to my elbows, and that it had been five weeks and some odd days since I had thought about any of that at all.

My face went hot.

Maardok’s nostrils flared and went very, very still.

“Cataline.” His voice had dropped into something I recognized from another life, in a smaller bed, in a filthier hovel.

My hands shook.

His eyes had begun to glow, green and steady, and he simply reached up with his good hand, fisted it gently in the back of my skirts, and pulled me in.

He kissed me.

Not the way he had kissed me for a month—those small dry brushes against my hair, my forehead, the corner of my mouth, each one delivered and withdrawn so quickly I had begun to wonder whether he was being kind or merely polite.

This was his mouth on mine and his tusks against my cheeks and his hand at my back holding me exactly where he wanted me, and I gasped as little prickles of awareness skittered across my skin. I shouldn’t be able to feel his emotions, which meant everything I was feeling was mine…or mayhap it belonged to both of us.

Because I could swear that I could feel his longing, the need he’d been carrying since we arrived here, in his home. I could feel it, taste it, understand it in the way he groaned against my lips, the way his chest seemed to rumble.

Maardok had wanted me, but he’d never once made me aware of it, not until he knew I wanted him. In my past, I’d never known a male who would swallow down his own desire because ‘twas inconvenient for a female. But this bloodied, scarred warrior…he had. He’d respected my choice without even asking what I needed.

I did not know what to do with how badly that undid me.

When we finally separated, he pressed his forehead to mine and breathed for a moment like a male who had run somewhere.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Issa takes the bairns for the afternoon. Ye’ll come to the springs and scrub my back?”

I got my breath under control with some difficulty. “Is that all I would be doing?”

“‘Tis all I’d ever ask ye to do.” His ruined mouth curled. “I’m no’ a fool, dkaar—I was there with ye the night ye brought Edan into the world. I’ll never ask ye to do aught that would put ye in that position again if ye didnae want⁠—”

I surged forward and silenced him with another kiss that I had to break away from when our son began to fuss.

‘Twas later, when Edan was fed and Ewan was arguing with the ceiling about whether he was tired, that Maardok tipped his head back against my chair and said, “The loft is good enough for this winter with a hide to hang over the gable, but ‘tis drafty.”

Was he expecting my disagreement?

“Aye, ’tis.”