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The drake made a low, inquiring sound when he stood, but he soothed her with a murmur and a pat to the neck. She flexed her tail helpfully when he bent to gather Liam up in his arms, and that earned her another “good girl,” as he stood with the boy cradled limp to his chest. Liam’s lashes fluttered, and his lips smacked, but he stayed asleep; Reggie wanted to think that was a show of trust, that he himself registered to the boy’s unconscious mind as a safe figure.
He wasn’t sure why it mattered, nor why the idea was so pleasing to him. He adjusted Liam’s head to a more comfortable angle and resolved not to dwell on it.
Despite being offered a bedroom as general, Connor had taken to roughing it with the men; his tent was up by the house, nestled in amongst all the others, and the prospect of all the noise and revelry that lay ahead soured Reggie’s stomach. He paused at the edge of the meadow for one last look at the drakes.
Alpha and the girls were getting settled for the night, tired from their efforts, satisfied from their meal; they coiled up together, steaming black boulders in the moonlight. Valencia had moved to join them, but glanced back, serpentine neck craned over her shoulder. She made a low, rumbling sound that he thought distinctly fond.
“Good night,” he said in return, and turned to carry his burden through camp.
The path that wove through the tents was an organic affair, worn down by the passage of countless pairs of feet in the past few weeks; it wended and wove and took a circuitous route back toward the house. To his left, a fire leaped high with a sound of broken glass as someone tossed a bottle on it, and someone else cursed him for it. Reggie jumped internally, but held himself steady, clutching Liam tighter; thankfully, he didn’t stir.
To his right, a burst of conversation: “…no, you tit, she had red hair!”
“No, black! Do you think I don’t have eyes?”
“I think you’re both liars, and you snogged each other in the dark!”
Great shouts of laughter.
At the next fire, a camp follower was down to nothing but skin, swaying back and forth to music only she could hear, before one of her slavering audience grew impatient and took her wrist, hauled her down into his lap to the sound of his friends’ jeers.
Reggie’s face heated, and he checked to see that Liam was still asleep. Probably, he reasoned, the boy had been exposed to as much or more before. The Strangers were not a shy nor prudish people. Had he watched his own father at such a thing? A naked woman on his lap, a laughing order for Liam to go to bed? It was far too easy to picture…and far too easy to flush with anger because of it. The boy wasn’t starving, no, but he certainly didn’t receive the sort of careful looking-after a child deserved. His mother hadn’t been much more than a child herself, and Connor had been throwing himself at anything that moved since her death. Doubtless Liam had witnessed things he shouldn’t.
It was an anger that continued to mount, as they passed fire after fire, scene after scene: men drinking, laughing, swaying. The scents of meat roasting on spits was undercut with the musk of sex; there were men fucking camp followers out in the open, under the stars, their fellows shouting encouragements, joining in, waiting for their turns.
It was a gods damned orgy, and passing through it left Reggie uncomfortably stiff in his trousers, and deeply furious.
By the time he reached Connor’s tent, he was boiling, hands shaking where he held Liam, and he wasn’t sure which impulse that warred within him was strongest.
A lively celebration was happening at a cookfire a dozen yards away – no women, thankfully, but plenty of spirits and a rousing card game of some sort that had resulted in lots of shouting – but there was no one in front of Connor’s tent. The flaps were down, though a trickle of smoke through the vent at the top, and the glow of lantern light through the canvas belied its occupation. Reggie could think of only one reason Connor would be squirreled away in his tent, rather than seated around the nearby fire having a drink and a laugh with his men, and it was all too easy to picture him, rumpled and sweat-soaked, mounting a woman begging for his attentions. It was Connor the rake he pictured now, rather than the man with the surprisingly tender touch from the terrace last night.
His flush deepened – his face felt on fire – and a sick twist in his belly warned him away. He should take Liam to the house; tuck him up into the bed that Connor should have used and keep watch, make sure no harm came to the boy during the night.
But the idea of Connor on top of a woman, his feral grin, his swinging, too-long hair…Reggie ducked his head, shouldered through the flap, and took up a defiant stance. As defiant as one could stand while carrying a child.
But the scene that greeted him was far from the one he’d expected.
Larger than those flanking it, Connor’s tent was set up in true general fashion, with rugs laid down, and the furniture at the front laid out for conducting business. A large wood table, laid with maps, carved figures marking their position, and that of the enemy. There were foldable wooden chairs with hide seats, and a sideboard loaded with flasks, bottles, and wooden cups. A candelabra on the table was lit, along with two large hanging lanterns strung from the tent’s ceiling. Beyond, on the other side of a small, crackling brazier, Connor was laid out sideways on his bedroll, lounging up on an elbow amidst the furs and cushions. He had stripped down to his half-laced shirt and trousers, feet long, and bare, and pale from the constant wearing of boots. He was reading a book, one he looked up from at Reggie’s entrance, and then he did a double take and sat upright.
Concern creased his features. “Liam? Is he–”
Belatedly, Reggie realized that he stood holding the man’s unconscious son, a dark scowl on his face. He recovered slowly, knocked completely off guard by the absolute lack of debauchery he’d found here.
“Oh, um,” he said, as Connor rolled to his feet and crossed the tent toward them. “He, uh – he fell asleep. I…brought him.”
Connor reached them, and Reggie could hear the quick, worried rhythm of his breathing…and then could hear the way it hitched and slowed when he saw Liam’s peaceful, sleeping face.
“Ah,” Connor said. “Thanks, then. Here, I’ll take him.”
It was awkward, passing him over; he weight more than he looked, while limp like this, and they ended up bumping hips and accidently gripping one another’s clothes; Reggie got a handful of strong chest, warm, right nub of a nipple digging at his palm – did he imagine the way Connor’s breath sucked in in response? – and his anger flushed hot again that he’d noticed, that it mattered at all. An anger that fizzled and spit like the coals in the brazier as Connor carried his son to the back of the tent, around a series of screens to a second sleeping pallet, one blocked off so that the boy could rest in some semblance of privacy; a touching little detail, a sign of a not-as-poor-as-he’d-thought father, and that only stoked the heat in his belly.
“Thanks,” Connor said again, as he returned. His hair was damp – he’d washed it, and it was drying in the heated air from the brazier, curling on his shoulders. Even clean, his face and neck scrubbed post-battle, he looked like a wild thing, with his stubble, and his tumbling locks, and his open shirt, chest hair on display. He didn’t begin to resemble the gentleman he'd once been.
That was exciting.
And therefore infuriating.
“I almost took him to the house,” Reggie said, surprised by the sharpness of his tone. Connor was surprised, too, if the lift of his brows was anything to judge by. “I thought you’d surely be entertainingcompany.”
