I grunt and gather up my cloak.
“Funny thing,” he continues, leaning against the battlement and settling in like a man with all morning to waste. “Tomos swears he heard a wail coming off this west tower around midnight. Reckoned it was a ghost. Wanted to fetch the priest.”
“Wind,” I say.
“Aye, that’s what I told him.” He scratches his beard thoughtfully. “Powerful gusty, this tower. Strange how it’s only gusty on the nights you stand the watch.”
“Are you wanting to relieve me, or are you wanting my fist in your mouth?”
“Now, now. No call for that.” He holds up both hands, the picture of innocence. “I’m only saying, if a certain lass from a certain cottage by the stables should come wandering up a certain stair of a night, that’s no business of mine. A guard minds the wall, not the steps behind him. That’s the code.”
The code. Unwritten, but held to more faithfully than half the King’s laws. A lass on the steps means a guard finds somewhere else to patrol, and nothing is seen, and nothing is said. It has served every man on this wall at one time or another, so no man breaks it.
Carl, naturally, treats thenothing is saidpart as more of a suggestion.
“Anyway,” he says. “You’d best get home. I hear a man’s wife likes to know he’s thinking of her.” A pause. “Though I’d wager she knows already. Half the estate knows. Rosa in the bakehouse had it before the bread proved.”
Gods preserve me.
“There a point coming, Carl? Or is this you courting a transfer to the midden watch?”
“No point at all.” He grins, wide and shameless, and takes up his post with his back to the wall. “Give Bea my regards.”
I give him the two-fingered gesture and take the stairs.
But there’s no heat in it, and the bastard knows as much. His laughter follows me all the way down—and truth be told, my own smile lasts longer than it has any right to.
Home. To my mate—wifeas she sometimes taunts me to get a rise—and my son and, if the gods are good, a bit of breakfast.
Chapter Seven
Bea
Iwake before the dawn, warm beneath the blankets, deliciously sore in a way that makes me smile into my pillow.
The cottage is quiet. Aiden sleeps on. And though my body begs me to stay abed, there is bread to be made and a husband due home hungry from his watch.
I dress and pad out, raking the fire up and setting the kettle over it. And on my way to the flour crock, my feet carry me—as they have been wont to do of late—to the little alcove beside our bedroom door, where the cot stands with a folded blanket over its rail.
We set it aside when Aiden graduated to his big-boy bed, an occasion he met with tremendous self-importance. I ought to have stored it in the loft long since. Somehow, it has never made its way there.
I rest my hand upon the worn wooden rail. Abel sanded and oiled every inch of it while I was heavy with Aiden, grumbling that the joiner’s work was not fit for his son—and then spent anevening carving a small, crooked bird into the headboard that no joiner would have dared charge for. I trace it now with one fingertip.
Soon, little bird.
My other hand settles over my belly, where something new sparks, quiet as a held breath.
I catch myself smiling like a fool at a piece of furniture, and take myself off to my bread-making before I lose the whole morning to daydreams.
I am busy preparing food for the day ahead, making the most of the quiet time before my son rouses—between yawns and stray thoughts of what happened on the battlement… which is when I hear the door to the cottage open behind me.
My husband—mate, as he insists—and the father of our son. I recognize his scent instantly, even before I turn to peek back over my shoulder to find him standing in the doorway. I take in the features of the man I love. He is handsome. Steady and calm. A good father. And I have never once regretted my decision to lie with him that very first time, nor the night he claimed me.
As I found out then, and as he made it clear that night, there is no going back when one bonds with an alpha. They commit wholeheartedly. They do not change their mind. Further, they demand the same commitment from their chosen mate.
It is a little unnerving, truth be told, to be the subject of such unwavering adoration… one I see reflected in his deep blue eyes as he pauses at the threshold, the door still held within his hand. His gaze slides from me to the bedroom door, behind which our little boy lies sleeping, before shifting back to me.
His lips curve up the tiniest amount in a familiar smirk that brings a sweet ache to the center of my chest and a flutter to my belly. He closes the door behind him carefully, lest he rouse Aiden. When no wail or patter of footsteps comes from the bedroom, his grin grows.
