Morgan and Lain went back down the hall with their hands still joined. In the kitchen, Grainne had already banked the fire and she was rinsing bowls, passing them to Eamon. She handed him one and he bent to give her cheek a gentle kiss as they chattered quietly before the sink. They both looked up when Morgan and Lain entered.

  Grainne’s gaze went to their hands, then to Lain’s face without comment. She dried her hands on her apron before reaching into the breadbox and breaking off half a loaf. She wrapped it in cloth and held it out.

  “For the morning,” she said to Lain. “If you wake green again.”

  Lain took it with both hands. “Thank you.” She tucked it into the deep pocket of her cloak.

  Grainne bit her lip, though perhaps not in displeasure. “Eat when you can,” she said. “Sleep when you can. And come here any time, if you think you can handle a little extra soup and time with the littles.”

  Eamon gave a rough sound that might have been agreement.

  Morgan said, “We won’t forget your generosity.”

  Grainne snorted. “You forget plenty.”

  Morgan looked at her in that steady way he had when he listened to her rules, and Lain saw again how his attention changed in this room, as if he knew he couldn’t talk his way out of her judgement.

  Eamon dried his hands on a rag. “Walk her back easy,” he said, the words aimed at Morgan. “No stopping to brood at the pier.”

  “I don’t brood,” Morgan replied.

  Eamon’s eyes slid to Lain. “He broods.”

  Lain nearly laughed before she could catch herself.

  Morgan’s mouth twitched, both offended and amused. He squeezed Lain’s hand, a private response hidden inside a public gesture.

  Grainne waved them toward the door. “Go on, then. You’re welcome back any time.”

  Outside, the sea had pulled the last light down into itself, leaving the village in lantern-glow and shadow. Lain stepped onto the packed earth and drew a lungful of salt smell and kelp.

  Morgan kept their hands joined as they walked, their arms swinging in a small arc that felt ordinary, almost careless. It was the first time she’d had to measure her steps against someone else’s, to be sure they matched pace properly. It was strange how quickly her body accepted it, how quickly she began to move as if that contact belonged to her daily life.

  They passed a fenceline where a dog lifted its head and watched them, then lay back down, uninterested. A boat creaked on its rope. Somewhere toward the shoreline, a wave broke and dragged pebbles with it, a sound like a distant applause. Lain’s mind returned to the children’s room, to Finn’s laughter, to Orla’s face as she surrendered to sleep, to Morgan on the floor between the beds, singing with an ease that didn’t match the man she’d met on the Cloudspine.

  Lain’s thumb brushed the side of his hand, traced the ridge of a knuckle, the faint callus there, the mark of work that wasn’t all blood.

  “You were good with them,” she said.

  Morgan’s gaze flicked to her. “You were,” he replied, the answer arriving too quickly, as if he’d been holding it back since the moment Orla touched Lain’s ear.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You did,” Morgan said. “I think Orla will remember you for quite some time.”

  “She’ll remember my ears.”

  Morgan smiled. “She’ll remember your hooves too, no doubt.”

  Lain glanced at him. “You make her sound like a naturalist.”

  “She has the stare for it,” Morgan said, his private amusement sliding across the bond and making Lain brighten with an impulse to laugh.

  They left the last house behind and followed the lane where lanternlight pooled in uneven patches along the packed earth.

  “You look pleased,” Lain said.

  “With what?”

  “With yourself,” she said, nudging him. “Don’t pretend.”

  He made a small sound that landed between a scoff and a concession. “I’ll have you know I’m an exceptionally modest man.”

  “The only room I’ve ever seen you be modest in is Grainne’s kitchen.”

  “In her kitchen,” he said, “I behave.”

  Lain’s laugh surprised her. It came out almost girlish. Morgan looked over at her fully, as if he hadn’t expected it either.

  “You behave?” she repeated, savoring it.

  “You saw it.”

  “I saw you wipe crumbs like a penitent.”

  He gave her a look. “Careful.”

  “Why do I need to be careful?”

  “Because if you’re not, you might start enjoying yourself,” Morgan said, and the words carried a mild challenge.

  Lain held his gaze, then looked forward again so she could pretend she hadn’t been caught. The lane curved. The inn sat ahead, upper windows glowing with lamplight, saw the promising warmth of it.

  “I might be,” she admitted.

  Morgan’s thumb slid along the side of her hand, a small acknowledgement that traveled straight into her.

  “You seem surprised,” he said.

  Lain considered that. “I am.”

  “Why?” Morgan asked. The question came without mockery.

  Because she was waiting for the world to punish her for wanting anything.

  But Lain didn’t say that. She lifted her chin instead and gave him the safer truth, one that still edged close to the bone.

  “Because I don’t know how to be here,” she said. “In a village. With soup. With children asking for songs.”

  Morgan’s gaze moved over her face with gentle attentiveness. “You do,” he said. “You’ve already done it.”

  Lain felt the bond respond to his certainty, her own mind reaching for it as if she could anchor herself there. A line of warmth ran up her arm where their hands joined, then spread into her core. She imagined Orla’s fingers on her ear again, and Finn's solemn face as he tried to hold his breath like a whale. She imagined the small trust in the room when Grainne told them to come back.

  The images settled into her, impossibly domestic, and the longing that followed them carried its own heat.

  Morgan’s breath changed. His fingers tightened around hers. The bond shifted into a shared awareness that made the night closer, the air heavier, the space between them suddenly full.

  “You’re thinking about it,” he said.

  “About what?”

  He let her have the pretense for half a breath.

  “About a daughter,” he said. “About your hands holding a smaller hand. About Orla letting you near.”

  Lain’s face warmed. It would have been pointless to deny it. And anyway, she didn’t want to.

  Morgan’s thumb traced the side of her hand again, slower this time. The motion read as patience, but also a kind of daring.

  “You want it,” he said.

  Lain swallowed. She remembered what she’d said on the beach. “Yes.”

  Morgan’s focus narrowed until it seemed the rest of the village had fallen away and only the path remained, only their joined hands, only the line of her want moving through her.

  “And,” he said, voice lower now, “you want –”

  Lain glanced at him. “Don’t.”

  Morgan smiled. “Don’t say it,” he amended, as if granting her the boundary while keeping the truth.

  Lain’s heartbeat sped up. The inn’s door waited ahead, and she found herself resenting the few remaining steps because every step drew out the anticipation.

  Morgan lifted their joined hands a little, just enough that her fingers brushed the inside of his wrist where his pulse moved. The contact made her breath quicken.

  “You’re doing this on purpose,” Lain said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re pretending you don’t know what you want,” he said, and the bond carried the quiet pleasure he took in her honesty, the way he leaned into it. “And you know I do.”

  Lain swallowed. She tried to summon a retort and found only the image of him on the floor between two beds, singing as if his voice belonged there.

  She wanted to kiss him so badly it made her bite her lip.

  Morgan’s breathing went slow and controlled. He paused, only steps from the doorway, and turned until he was facing her.

  “You can,” he said.

  Lain’s voice came out unsteady. “We’re in the street.”

  Morgan’s smile held. “Then we’ll be very fast,” he said, and his amusement made her want to slap him and kiss him in the same motion.

  Lain pulled him closer by their joined hands, and as he bent to her she turned until her shoulder was pressed to his. He gasped with surprise as she pulled him onto the inn’s threshold.

  Inside, the common room was nearly empty. The innkeeper looked up, registered them, then returned to wiping down the counter with a bored expression.

  Morgan guided her past the room and up the stairs, and with every step the bond tightened into shared urgency, her body rising toward him as if it recognized home in his proximity.

  At the top landing, Lain stopped, turned, and caught him by the front of his coat.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Morgan went still, surprise flashing across his face, then delight, as if he’d been waiting to see whether she would claim the moment.

  “What,” he said softly, “are you going to do, Lain?”

  She leaned in close enough that her breath brushed his lips. “Kiss you,” she said.

  Morgan’s hand rose to her waist.

  “Good,” he said.

  Lain kissed him on the landing and the world collapsed into the taste of him and the warmth of his hand at her back. Morgan answered at once, his mouth moving with hers in a way that made her knees soften and her grip tighten on his coat.

  When they broke apart, Morgan kept his forehead near hers, breathing with control he had to work for.

  “You’re smiling,” Lain whispered.

  “So are you,” Morgan said. His voice carried wonder and triumph together, as if he couldn’t believe the two of them would ever have been capable of this.

  Lain pulled him the remaining few steps to their door.

  Morgan opened it, guided her inside, and shut the world out behind them.

  The room had a freshly trimmed lamp, clean linen, and the faint soap-smell of an inn that prided itself on its upstairs guests. The bed had been made again while they were out, corners tucked tight, pillows fluffed.

  Lain stood in the middle of the floor with her hand still gripping his coat, as if she’d carried him into the room by that handful of cloth. The kiss had lit her up. The heat of it still lived in her mouth, in her hands, in the place inside her that wanted to keep choosing.

  And then the other part rose.

  A flash of Morgan’s palm across her cheek, the jolt of it. The way her body had learned to obey danger before she could name it. There was a cot, and a narrow room, and his rage arriving through the bond as a flood.

  Morgan felt it hit her. His breath changed. He went still in the way he did when he chose control for her sake and not his own.

  “Lain,” he said, checking in.

  She could have lied. Or tried to. She’d been trained for that, too.

  Instead she stayed where she was, chest rising too fast.

  “I still want you,” she said, and hated the way it came out of her, with some strange desperation.

  Morgan’s eyes held hers. The bond carried his answer before his mouth did: desire, yes, and a deeper care.

  He opened his arms.

  It was an invitation. Or an offering. A surrender, even.

  She caught his shirt at the front and yanked him down into her space. The motion startled a small sound out of him, an unguarded exhale, and Lain kissed him hard enough that the careful part of her vanished. Her mouth took what it wanted. Her hands clutched and pulled, and the kiss turned messy, hungry, more teeth than skin. She felt him answer with that same raw need. It arched through him, and he wrapped his arms around her, and drew her in –

  She flinched back with a gasp.

  He dropped his hands at once, then lifted them again, gasping, and she hated that her skin still remembered him as danger even while she wanted him so badly she could have climbed into his ribcage.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She did, through the bond. She sent it all to him. The fury that he was making her do this and the fury that she needed it. She remembered when he didn’t stop, when he’d tried to shut her mouth with her own blood, every sick second when she’d been trapped under him while his need stampeded over her fear.

  Then she took him by the shirt again, and pulled him in, and he did not retreat. He leaned into the bond like he was wading into cold water on purpose.

  “Give it to me,” he said as she pulled him against her mouth.

  This kiss was cruel, and he let her have the cruelty, pulsed his hand at her shoulder like a nod when she bit him. She wanted to shove him away, and climb him like she had the Cloudspine. She wanted to make him feel all of it.

  “You hit me,” she said, and that pulse of feeling came hot and molten in her chest.

  “I did,” he said, even as she tore at his jacket, even as her own cloak tumbled to a pile on the floor. “I hurt you.”

  “You trapped me on that cliff – there was nowhere for me to run –”

  She dug her nails into his back, then with cat-like fury she shoved her hands beneath his shirt so she could draw blood from him in earnest. He let her, flinching, but didn’t pull away.

  “Yes,” he said, gasping as if at confession, feeling her pain, feeling her feel his pain as she clawed him.

  “You want me to punish you,” she said, pushing his head aside with her own so she could bite him hard on the jaw.

  “I want you to stop carrying it alone,” he said. “I want you to put your hands on me –” and she did, she scored his flesh with her teeth– “–And know I won’t turn it back on you. Not ever again.”

  He turned his head more deeply aside and offered his throat, a wolf at heel to a shepherd.

  She bit him.

  He gasped, but didn’t pull away, even when his muscles grew taut and his neck bruised. She tasted the salt of his flesh and the pliant skin and thought for all of a moment of filling her mouth with his blood, the way she’d done when he’d bound her as his Veinwrought slave.

  She shoved him.

  Morgan let it happen. He didn’t brace, or catch her wrists. He gave her his balance like a gift. He sat when his legs hit the edge of the bed. He looked up at her from that position, eyes bright, face open, a weal blooming on his jaw and larger on his neck, the bond singing with want and trust braided together.

  The sight hit her like wine.

  Lain straddled his lap, centering her weight upon him. It felt obscene for a heartbeat, her body remembering old scripts, old uses, and then she forced herself to stay. To choose this version. To make it hers.

  She took his wrists, and pulled them behind his back, and pressed herself into him, kissing his mouth again. He kissed her back, fueling his consent with every shared breath.

  “Say my name,” she demanded, and heard her own need in it, the need to make this personal and real, the need to keep him from vanishing into Veinwright hunger.

  “Lain,” he said, and her heart flared with triumph, because he had never learned her true name. It wasn’t his. She wasn’t his. He still said it with a reverential ache, as if this scrap of what she was was the only prayer he still knew.

  Morgan kissed her again like a man drowning, and she left his hands behind his back, and he did not bring them forward. She ground her hips into him, and he thrust toward her in kind, eyes fluttering shut for a beat. She almost recoiled from his passion.

  Instead she grabbed it. She kissed him again and again, hungry and toothy and gasping for breath, and he tried to follow her lead without stealing it, tried to hold himself under her like he was offering up his throat and his heart at once.

  Lain pulled back, panting, and saw the hunger in his face.

  “You want to touch me,” she said.

  Morgan’s laugh broke out, raw. “Yes.”

  “You’re going to ask,” she told him.

  Morgan held her gaze. “May I,” he said, voice shuddering, “put my hands on you?”

  Lain felt the question arrive with the surge of old fear – how many times had she said no to him, and he found a way around her no, by force or coercion or some other cruelty?

  “No,” she said, and sat very still, and glared in challenge.

  Morgan nodded. He left his hands behind his back.

  She ground against him. She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled herself closer, into his growing heat, and he groaned, but did not lift his hands, did not bring his hips up into her, and something about this made her slow, as if to tease him out, until he stretched his face toward her, his lips bruised from her teeth but still offering them as sacrifice.

  She brought her hands to his face and kissed him.

  It was gentle, barely the brush of a butterfly’s wing.

  She ran her fingers lightly across his jaw. Her tail flexed and coiled around his calf. He returned her kiss with only the smallest movement of his lips.

  “Ask again,” she whispered.

  “May I touch you?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  She unbuttoned his shirt, tugged it off of him. He let her, his arms rising only to help her take it off. He lifted his hips just enough so she could pull his shirt out of where it was tucked into his trousers, and they both gasped at the pressure of him against her, but he didn’t take advantage of the moment, didn’t press a second time.

  She ran her fingers down the soft feathers at his chest. They shimmered blue-black like a crow. He kept his silvery eyes on her, let her touch him, let her feel the way the feathers flexed at his skin as she pushed up, then down. She leaned forward, and took one of his arms, where soft feathers like down traced the back of his arm down to his wrist the way her scales traced her own skin. She brought his arm close to her face, and blew on the feathers, and he shuddered beneath her in obvious pleasure.

  She filled with sudden aching tenderness for him, and her throat made a strange broken sound, furious at herself for feeling tears in the middle of want.

  Morgan felt it all.

  “Don’t leave,” he said quietly.

  She shook her head, gasping now. “Ask me again.”

  “My love.” He leaned gently forward, and tucked his head into the space where her shoulder met her throat. “May I hold you?”

  Lain’s mouth trembled. She nodded.

  He brought his hands to her waist. Morgan’s fingers curled carefully, holding her like a man holding a bird he loved too much to crush.

  “I was so scared of you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You knew I couldn’t escape. You knew what I was feeling.”

  “I knew,” he said. He brought his arms more fully around her shuddering frame, and pressed his feathered chest against hers, and put one hand gently to the back of her head. “I knew. I did it anyway.”

  “I hate you for it,” she said, the words breaking like a blister from her throat.

  “Of course you do,” he said.

  “What am I supposed to do with that feeling now?”

  He leaned back. “If you want to strike me, do it. If you want to shove me down and kiss me until you can’t think, do it. If you want me to hold you while you curse me, do it.”

  The invitation lit the animal part of her again, the part that wanted to invert the story.

  Lain’s palm rose.

  She hesitated for a breath. Morgan didn’t move.

  Lain struck him, hard enough that her hand stung and his cheek flushed.

  Morgan’s eyes closed for a moment, and when he opened them, tears sat at the lower lids and didn’t fall.

  “Again,” he whispered, the bond carrying the need to let her put the violence somewhere that would not destroy her from the inside.

  She grabbed his face instead, and kissed him, fierce and desperate and alive. That kiss carried everything, the hate and the want and the grief, the jagged hope that a new memory could grow over the old one and make it survivable.

  Morgan kissed her back.

  He held her.

  She guided him to ease her from her clothes, and then stripped him of his, too. She guided herself onto him, and he let her take and take until her breath turned ragged and her body began to tremble. When it was more than she could bear he lifted her hips for her, and told her he was there, with her, and brought her down onto him, over and over, chasing her wanting. He kissed her hairline, soft, then her sweating throat, and he pulled her forward, and pushed her back, and pressed his hand to her until she gasped and pleaded with him to keep going, to carry on until she shuddered and cried out against the wound she’d left at his neck.

  “Do you want me,” he asked, rocking her faster upon him. “Do you want this?”

  Her eyes snapped open. “No,” she said.

  He stopped in an instant, gasping, and she could feel the shudder as he held himself back, and could feel, too, the way he suppressed that rising tide inside him.

  But he nodded, and swallowed hard, and she felt his heart pounding mercilessly at his chest.

  “Alright,” he said. He moved as if to lift her from him.

  But she planted her hips, and pressed down. He groaned at her throat.

  She began to flex against him again, torturously slow.

  “Say you want me,” she said.

  “I want you,” he gasped.

  “Ask.”

  “Lain. May I have you?”

  “No,” she said. She rocked above him. “No.”

  “Lain –” he groaned once more as she picked up speed. His hands flexed around her, and he tried not to grip down. She could feel the strain in it. “Please –”

  “Please what?” She said.

  “Please stop,” he said. “If you don’t want this –”

  “No.”

  “Lain –”

  “Be strong, Morgan,” she gasped, and rode him with vicious abandon, knowing exactly his feeling, knowing exactly the torture of having to hold off, hold back, sit and remain still against every temptation and instinct to do otherwise.

  And he did grip down, once, firm at her lower back, but she felt his concentration, his fight to stay with her and keep his greatest desire at bay.

  “You’re mine, Morgan,” she said.

  He nodded furiously. “Yes.”

  “Then give yourself to me,” she said. “Ask again.”

  “Please, Lain,” he begged. “Please.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He buried his face in her neck and cried out as he let himself go, as he filled her with all he’d been holding back. He shuddered with relief, and kissed her again, and a tear tracked down his face at the effort of it.

  Finally his shoulders dropped, and he panted for several breaths, his heart fluttering hard inside his feathered chest like the heart of a bird. He held her close, not trapped in his arms but secure, safe in his wanting.

  “Tell me,” he said, straining with relief. “Tell me what you want now.”

  Lain stared at him, raw and shaking. She knew, deep in her heart, that no power on earth could keep him in a place like this, with her, to lead a simple life until the day he died.

  “I want to bring my daughter to a beach,” she said. “With you carrying our lunch in a pack behind us.”

  Morgan’s mouth curved, tears still there, eyes bright with love and hunger and remorse all braided together.

  “Daughter?” he laughed. “You sound very confident.”

  “A mother knows.”

  He sighed, and put his hands to her hips, and pulled her closer, laying a gentle kiss at her neck. “Well, if the first veers toward the masculine, you can always try again.”

  Try again? Now there was a thought.

  One for another time.

  “Let’s see how I manage the first time around,” she muttered.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  Once they’d washed, and Lain had spent a fair share of time tenderly cooing over the places she’d bitten him, they curled under the blankets. To his surprise, she turned him to his side, and held him, with her chest to his back, feather to scale. She drifted knowing she shouldn’t be doing any of this, that she should run, and that Morgan’s shadow loomed ever-present over her, and she dreamed of bloodwyrms, writhing in shallow water like eels.