“What’d you lose?” My eyes swept over him anxiously, looking for missing pieces in the dark. He glanced out into the field of death.
“Once this dies down, I’ll have to go hunting for my ear.”
“Fuck, Theo—”
Before I could express any concern or sympathy, he curled over me, crashing his lips against mine. His arms swallowed me in their protective cage. The message was clear; he needed this more than he needed to be healed right now. His touch was desperate. The catharsis of making it out of today’s horrors together flavored our kiss with salty tears.
This was all sofucked. We were in the middle of a warzone. An ambush. A killing field. The sounds were grotesque and unignorable. The visuals would be even worse once the creatures' dark fog lifted. The damage was severe and would need to be tended to. But I threw my arms around his neck as best I could, having to stand on my tip toes while he crouched. I leaned into him, allowing my tongue to join our lips in their tangle. I loved my mate feral as much as I loved him domestic.
“I’ll dispose of the bodies tomorrow,” he murmured against me. “I just need to be with you tonight.”
“Deal, but I don’t think you’ll have to do much ‘disposing’.” Our pets never left a bone behind. “You can help me paint over what isn’t washed away by the rain in the morning.”
“It’s a date,” he murmured, kissing along my jaw. “I have the feeling we won’t be interrupted again anytime soon.”
He might be right. In a world where armies were seen as an archaic extreme, we’d taken theirs down in anafternoon. With a little help from the grove creatures after sunset. We almost killed their leader; he would never look pristine and untouchable to the public again. And finally, I’d almost offed myself, which would’ve wasted their whole reason for the trip. The mission had been an utter failure for them no matter how it was looked at. And, just maybe, we’d pissed off Gable enough that now hedidwant me dead. If that was the case, the field wouldn’t let him in even if he did have the balls to try.
Despite that knowledge, I felt compelled to ask. “Are you okay staying here? Because if you don’t want to, I’ll follow you wherever you go. You’re my heart’s home, and how you feel matters to me.”
He pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead. “My wild Little Goddess, there is nothing I want more than to continue building our home with you in your field. I’m proud to be the guardian of you and everything you love for as long as I live. You will never have to leave here again, if you do not wish to. I will dedicate my life to making sure you never need to make that sacrifice.”
“Everything I love—” I breathed, pulling away from Theo’s shower of kisses. “Nurghle!”
I turned on my heels and immediately froze in place when I was met with a grove monster, only a few steps away on theother side of the border. How long had it been there? Was I making out in the rain while a man-eating creature…observed?
Theo pulled me against him and I swallowed thickly.
“What?” I asked softly, as if it could reply.
Two bony, clawed hands emerged from the dark mist. And within them…
“Nurghle?!”
Cupped within monstrous palms, my cat looked utterly petrified, but unharmed. His fur was too wet to stand on end, although his wide eyes told me if he could be puffed up as big as possible, he would be.
The creature’s skull tilted towards him as if to say “look, here, safe”. It hadn’t eaten him. Just as I’d instructed.
I hesitantly stepped forward, ignoring Theo’s grunts of objection, and took Nurghle. Those skeletal arms promptly disappeared back into its mist, giving that limbless effect the grove creatures always seemed to have.
My kitty clung to my shoulder, his claws sinking into my back for added security. I winced, but pet his fur anyways, just grateful he was safe.
“Th—Thank you,” I said slowly to the monster that still stood there.
It tilted its skull at me as if to nod, then turned and disappeared back into the increasingly quiet mist concealing the clean-up crew.
“Let’s get you inside, assess the damages, and decompress,” Theo suggested, a hand wrapping over my shoulder. “And if my nurse would be so kind, I have some injuries I’d like tended to.”
He didn’t know how drained I was from the excessive healing, and I wasn’t about to tell him. My war-torn guardian was asking for help—telling me what he needed—and I would scarf down just enough food and water first to get us through that with a smile on my face.
“I’ll take Nurghle inside,” I nodded. “Can you see well enough to find your ear?” I turned back to him and squinted at the clover around our feet. I could still barely see through the dark and rain.
“I can,” he confirmed, planting a kiss on my forehead. “I’ll be right there to remove the body from the cabin.”
“Please be careful,” I warned, still wary of the horde of grove monsters. Even if one did bring me my cat.
The cabin was a bloody mess. The dead body took up most of the kitchen space. Shifting Nurghle to one arm, I grabbed our lantern and climbed up the ladder to our attic—away from the gore.
I’d use the time it took Theo to find his ear to dig through some of the food we had in storage. Plan a good meal for our recovery and “yay we’re alive” celebration tonight. Nurghle quickly found a corner to curl up in. Ignoring the hole in the floorboards from the missed gunshot, I was perfectly happy to wait up here until the dust settled and Theo was ready to be fussed over.
