Page 85 of Season Warriors & Wolves

I buttoned up my trousers. “Thank you.”

“Most welcome.”

“From now on,” I said, kissing the tip of her nose and adjusting her night gown to cover all her pretty tits now covered in my marks. “Always run with me. Walk with me. Go places with me. Decide with me. All the madness you can think of, but with me by your side.”

She had finally caught her breath, but decided to hold it at my last words. “How long will you hold that against me?”

“I’ve not decided on a date just yet. Perhaps a calendar year, perhaps two.”

She bit her lip and peered up at me under her thick lashes so innocently she could make the dead fawn right back to their graves a second time. “Forgive me?”

“Forgiven,” I said, and her face broke into the most radiant smile she had given me since her return. “So forgiven,” I repeated, kissing her mouth. “Do you feel better?”

She stretched like a cat. “Oh, I feel fantastic.”

“Snowlin Castemont.”

“Yes. Much. I think I just needed to realise that I could run.”

The sigh I breathed out lessened some weight from my chest. I bent and hoisted her up on my shoulder. “Let’s go, so I can perform some husbandly duties.”

She wiggled her feet. “In the bath. Let’s fuck in the bath.”

“I was thinking of feeding you, my missus,” I said, smacking her bottom. And before she could say something that I knew she was going to say, I added “Food. Feed you food.”

She sighed and sagged on me. “I’ve become predictable. My end is near.”

“Believe me, I don’t think you will ever become predictable. You will always find a way to startle me to a young death.”

She pinched my backside. Definitely still unpredictable. “They are so perfect from this angle,” she said in awe, fondling my buttocks. “No wonder Cai turned to your side so quickly after being an adamant hater of yours. I want to bite them.”

I might have laughed a bit too loud because all the curious folk who had carefully left their homes to spy on our conversation retreated back at the speed of light. “An adamant hater of mine, you say?”

“Oh, gods, we used to have such heated conversations about you and your stupidly handsome face.”

“Hm. Was that before you fell in love with my stupidly handsome face or after?”

She cleared her throat and hesitated a bit before saying, “Blood is rushing down my head the way you are holding me so I might be a bit…befuddled about it.”

I grinned to myself and pulled her down, wrapping her bare legs around my waist as I carried us further inside the forest. “Better?”

“Might have been both,” she said quickly, resting her cheek on my shoulder. “Before and after. You were such a prick.”

I bit her soft cheek, her neck, her shoulder just to see her writhe and giggle again. “Good thing I was such a prick. Look what it got me.”

The noise of people and horses grew closer and so did the edge of Fernfoss village. The tavern closest to the forest was already full.

People ate, drank, laughed and danced as if they were clueless to the war ahead. But they all knew. They all knew well. Most of those sitting around us were soldiers. Adriatian. Olympian. Hanaian. Even a few odd Red Coven Crafters.

I pulled her to a table hidden behind a wooden pillar that concealed us from the rest of the room. Surely, an Isjordian soldier or two would be looming over the area and reporting back to their king. Snow and I would be recognised in an instant. How long it would take him to dispatch his minions and turn this village into a graveyard.

The young server’s eyes doubled when he noticed Snow and his body almost instantly folded into a bow, had she not kicked his shin. He yelped, clutching his leg and Snow sneered at him. “Where is your father?”

The boy blinked at both of us and leaned in to whisper. “Gone over to White Bridge for some supplies. It’s been only me and ma for a week now.”

Snow frowned. “Whitebridge?”

He nodded. “Eldmoor and Hanai cut trade with the continent because…because of…the Winter King. We have been cooking with barely any salt. Most of our dishes are boiled now because we have no oil either.”