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He doesn’t look convinced. “What were you dreaming about?” he asks with the same gentle tone. I’ve never heard this level of softness from him before.
I close my eyes again, taking several deep breaths to calm my emotions. “Just my mother.”
My muscles tense. He doesn’t like it when I talk about my mom. It reminds him of the fighting between our people. Is he going to get mad?
Instead, he considers me before speaking. “Do you miss her?”
I choke a little on the laugh that wants to escape. Do I miss her? No way, no how. Why would I miss cruelty? “I miss her like I’d miss a dagger twisting in my chest.”
His eyes shoot down to my chest where my wounds are visible. He studies them, looking like he wants to run a finger along them, but he doesn’t. “You don’t like your mom?”
He seems shocked, which makes sense given the way shifters live. Family seems to mean something to them. I imagine their mothers are sources of comfort and love. Their moms probably feel like home, while mine feels like battle. She feels like these wounds left by the bear shifter on my chest: jagged and painful. But I can’t tell him that. How awful will I sound? He already hates me, adding mother slander to it won’t help.
Plus, I don’t even understand my feelings either. I want her to love me, even though I don’t know if I love her back. Just the idea of her putting more of her focus on me honestly terrifies me.
“Come here,” he says, his voice husky and deep, but still soft.
Soft. Drogo. Soft to me?
Is this a dream?
“Why comfort me?” I ask, confused, even though all I want is to be in his arms.
“I know loss,” he says simply.
He does. That’s one thing we have in common.
Our eyes meet, and he wraps his huge arms around me as I turn so he can pull me against his body from behind. I press my body back against him, feeling strangely content, until I feel his arousal at my back. I turn to face him, eyes wide, and he rolls his eyes and adjusts himself.
In my mind, I picture Prince Rinan stroking himself until he came. Is Drogo going to do the same?
“Ignore it,” he says, with gravel in his voice. He shifts his body, so he’s not stabbing me with it, and tells me to just go back to sleep.
Following his directive, I nestle myself against his hard body and do as I was told, falling asleep faster than usual and sleeping better than I have since I've been here.
SEVEN
Tara
“How is a dagger your favorite weapon?” I laugh and ask Rivet as we stand in his shop. We've been making weapons and chatting all morning, and it's the lightest and happiest I've been in a long time.
I miss Baldemar, but this helps. The smells of the forge. The feeling of the metal all around me, and a gentle ear to talk to.
“Don't judge me, but I like the idea of jabbing close to an enemy, having to put effort into my knife breaking their skin. It gives me a rush.” He shrugs, imitating jabbing and stabbing someone.
There’s no way this guy has ever stabbed someone or even wanted to stab someone.
“I think I have to judge you.” I giggle at just the thought of this meek man describing how he would want to kill someone. “Have you ever even been in battle?”
Looking down at my dress, I open the big shirt Rivet had loaned me when I’d dumped a cup of water all over the top of my dress when a shifter kid had jumped out at me in the forge. Luckily for me, the material was drying in the hot room. I wouldn’t look too much a fool when I had to walk back to the castle, and it was no longer terribly see-through.
“No, I’ve never been in battle exactly, but my weapons are my contribution to many a fight,” he says, grinning and pointing out all the weapons laid on his worktable.
Unable to help myself, I reach out and touch his huge blacksmith arm. “No offense, but these aren't the arms of a warrior anyway.” I’m teasing. He could obviously pass for a warrior.
“Princess Tara!”
I turn towards the gruff-sounding voice and see Prince Arlys and the other princes glaring in my direction. All three are dressed in their finest, dark slacks and well-made button-up shirts. Their hair has been done nicely too. A girl could get used to having such fine husbands, if they didn’t always sound irritated.
