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Chapter Text

“Focus, little bug.” 

Thor is standing across from you in a crouch, and you don’t miss the impatience that flickers across his face as you shake your head a little and re-focus on him. Smiling a little apologetically as you regrip the wooden handle in your hand and square up to him. It’s a coarse replica of a dagger, made of worn wood that’s blunted and soft at the edges from wear. He hasn’t said so but you just know that it’s one of the weapons they use to teach their children to fight, and the knowledge makes you a little indignant as you shift it in your palm and move on your feet to stay across from Thor as he steps over the sand around you. 

You’re out in the clearing and it’s nearing sunset, the air cool as a steady breeze pulls past you and catches on where sweat is staining beneath the arms of your tunic. 

“What if I hurt you?” you ask, and Thor’s expression flattens in such an immediate, ridiculous way that it nearly makes you laugh. 

“You cannot physically hurt me, little bug, though I encourage you to try,” he says. 

Your face crumples, wanting to be incredulous, but you know that he’s right. He’s so serious, walking around you, his jaw set as sweat gathers at his temples. He abandoned his chestplate to lie in the sand an hour back and the sweat that glistens across the broad plane of his chest catches your eye. Makes your gaze go a little distant as you watch the muscles bunch and contract beneath the skin. 

“Focus,” he says, frustrated as he feels your eyes fade a little on the hair that dusts across his chest, and instead of giving you time to recover, he pivots on the ball of his foot and lunges towards you. Faster than the strike of a desert viper, making your lungs constrict on a ragged sound as he closes the distance between you in a blink. 

Every instinct of yours is wrong. Has been since Thor first brought you out to the clearing and pressed the wooden dagger into your hand, and remains so now as your muscles lock in instinctive panic, the dagger left uselessly at your side as Thor nearly bowls you over. Throwing himself into your space until the bare skin of his chest brushes the front of your tunic, spraying sand across your feet. Looking down at you and dwarfing you with the impossible span of his shoulders as the air around you whirls. 

You suck in a gasp, blinking stupidly and staring up at him like a child. The disappointment in his eyes makes you swallow hard. Shame flipping in your belly a little as he frowns down at you. 

“You’re...so serious,” you murmur, frozen in his shadow. You don’t recognize him like this. Haven’t seen him like this since the day you first met him. Steel blooded and fierce and completely untouchable. It frightens you a little. Makes discomfort tighten up the muscles of your shoulders as he looms over you. 

He sees something in your expression then, because you see his jaw clench and then loosen and he lets out a soft breath. Shaking his head a little, softly, before bringing his hand up.

“This is a serious matter,” he says, drawing the flat side of his palm acros the side of your neck in a soft slashing motion. “There,” he says. “Dead.” He does the same across your chest, bumping against your breasts as he draws a slash across your front. “Dead.” He brings up his hand and thumps it against your sternum, a soft thud, but it sends you back into the sand all the same. Collapsing back onto your rear, feeling sand stick to the backs of your arms as you look up at him from the ground. “Dead,” he says, his voice heavy and low. Somber. 

You expect him to help you back to your feet but he doesn’t, stepping away from where you’re sprawled out and motioning for you to stand. 

“Try for me, little bug. Please,” he says, and the strain in his voice snags on something in your heart. Painful and dawning, and it has you pushing yourself to your feet. Dusting the sand from your knees and re-gripping the dagger hilt in your palm. 

You get your feet underneath you with care, shifting your weight to the balls of your feet and feeling sand shift beneath them. You lift the dagger up, the motion foreign and strange feeling, but seeming like the right thing to do, as you watch him. 

He nods at that, as pleased as you’ve seen him look all afternoon, and he begins to circle you once more. Stepping sideways as he settles down into a comfortable crouch that you know allows him to move with with frightening speed. 

“You don’t need to fight,” he reminds you. “I’m not asking you to charge forward into battle. You must only react. You must protect yourself from me.”

He gives you more warning this time, allows you to see him push off from his back foot and lunge at you, but you still can barely draw in a breath before he is there, rushing into your space. Growly lowly in his chest as he gets an arm around you and yanks you to him as if he means to steal you away. Sand sprays beneath his feet and settles as your bodies press together in the late afternoon heat, sweat slick skin pressed to damp linen, his brow drawn as he looks down at you. 

You shudder against him and follow as his eye drops down to the scant space between you and sees the blunt edge of the wooden dagger to where you’ve brought it up. To where the dulled tip is pressed hard into the meat of his belly, digging into the skin there as your hand holding the hilt trembles. 

He lets out a breath, short and hot, and when his eyes find yours, an involuntary thrill rips down your spine at the expression there.

“Davra nayat,” he says, his voice low, pleased, and his hand wraps around your wrist and moves your hand and the dagger. Up, til it’s pressing under the line of his ribs, pushing your hand so the dagger cuts into his skin so sharply it must hurt. “There,” he says, nodding when he drops his hand but the dagger remains, gripped tight in your hand and shoved against the slick skin of his chest. 

Your mind whirls, trying to process too much at once, trying to translate what he just said to you in his native tongue while trying to memorize the feel of where he has you pressing the dagger to him, and he keeps you there. His arm around your waist and holding you pressed against him. Letting you feel the power of the weapon in your hand and how it feels to press it against the full weight of another. 

Something springs loose in your mind, understanding dawning as the words strike familiarity in the distant recesses of your mind, and your heart lurches in your chest when you hear the translation of his words ring in your mind like a struck bell. Good girl. 

“Again,” he says, perhaps seeing the flush springing to your cheeks. Loosening his arm around you and stepping back once he knows your feet are under you, but you can barely hear him over the thunder of your heart. 

Something lights in you, then. Sparking like struck flint in your belly over the rush of blood in your ears and making you turn to face him as he begins to circle you again. He nods in approval, murmurs yes when he sees you bring the dagger up before you, the dull wooden blade edge pointed towards him and your spine tingles. 

When he rushes you again, something compels you into motion. You suck in a quick breath and take a halting step back, swiping the dagger out in a sharp, instinctive arc. 

Thor crashes into you. Not slowing or stopping himself as his body collides with yours, and your free hand scrabbles against his side as your body pitches back hard towards the ground. 

He manages to grab you, his arm getting around your waist as you crash to the sand together in a flurry of limbs and weight. He catches himself as he goes down over you, cushioning the blow of your body against the sand with his arm around you, but he ends up crouched over you all the same. Spots clouding your vision as you rasp in rattling breaths of dusty air and your body thuds against the ground beneath him. 

His face is close to yours as he holds himself over you, his chest rising and falling with exertion, and you watch as his eyes drop down again between your bodies. To where you have the dagger jammed under the line of his ribs, your whole arm shaking with the effort of keeping it shoved so hard against the full bulk of his body over yours. 

His eyes rise to yours, his brows lifting, and you let out a shaky exhale when they meet yours. 

“Dead,” you whisper, breathless, and the grin that breaks across his face is sharp. Thrilled, as he bares his canines at you. 

He does help you up that time. Tugging you to your feet with a little more force than necessary and making you bump against his chest. His face dips down to yours and he nudges his nose along the sweat of your hairline. 

“Good,” he murmurs, and you shiver as you feel his mouth move against your ear, before he pushes you away and you take a few stumbling steps backwards. 

There’s a glint in his eyes now, some fire in his blood, and it makes something simmer in your veins. Feeling a little like prey caught in his gaze as you grip the dagger handle tightly. 

“Again,” he says, and rushes you.

To bathe with any regularity is seen as a waste of water in the clan but Thor seems to determine an exception is in order as he steers Rhaek towards the south of camp as you approach the outskirts of it, his arm steady and sure around your waist as Rhaek slows to a walk and drops his head on a heavy snort. 

There are structures there for that purpose, set up along the quiet edge of the camp for privacy. Stalls of wooden frame with linen sheets draped down on all sides set up around all sides of deep dug well, the stalls coming out from the border of the well like rays from the sun. 

You realize some of the stalls are occupied as Thor helps you dismount, the soft chatter of conversation and sounds of splashing water catching your ear as Thor steps down behind you and begins to unsaddle Rhaek. 

You’ve never been to this area of camp and you find yourself curious, peeking around as the wind plays with the linen walls of the stalls and ruffles against the entrance flaps along the ends of them, giving you a glimpse of the shadowed sand within. Meaning to turn and help Thor tend to Rhaek but getting sidetracked by the long shadows the stalls throw across the ground from the setting sun and shivering as the cool breeze catches on the sweat on your brow. 

You’re filthy, truly, and grateful for Thor’s decision to stop for a wash, your arms and chest slick with sweat from the afternoon spent grappling with Thor and coated in a gritty layer of dust and sand from the gallop back to camp. You haven’t bathed properly since your wedding night and you find yourself buzzing with something like anticipation, lifting onto the balls of your feet as something in your belly heats and fizzles. Such a luxury to you that is treated like anything but, just another day in your life now. 

It’s only when Rhaek walks past you, unsaddled and unbridled, his dark coat glistening from the bucket of water Thor poured over his back and his nose to the ground, nibbling the sand for shoots of grass, that you come out of it. Turning to see Thor approaching you, already reaching under his arms to work at the straps of his chestplate. 

He chuckles when he comes up next to you, sensing your excitement and huffing a little. Warmly exasperated as he touches your lower back and urges you forward. 

“What is it?” you ask, letting him lead you to the nearest stall, and he laughs again, under his breath. 

“The smallest things excite you,” he says, lifting the heavy linen flap at the end of the stall and encouraging you to step underneath it and inside. Letting it fall closed behind him as he steps inside. 

The thrumming energy you feel in your bones does not abate when the flap hits the sand and silence descends between the two of you. It’s a lot of things, you think, all at once. The simple thrill of being able to scrub yourself clean for the first time in weeks, along with the prospect of being stripped bare beside Thor, without the shield of flickering lantern light above and soft bedding below to bolster you. That, and you can’t stop replaying the last few bouts from the clearing in your mind. Haven’t been able to since you started the gallop back to camp. When the dourness had lifted from his expression, eager to see you taking the exercise seriously, and when his eyes had gone dark and sharp as he’d circled you. 

You step into Thor at once for something to do with your hands. Reaching beneath his arm to loosen the straps of his chestplate. 

“As if you’re not eager to have me clean,” you say, remembering after a moment that he had spoken. Feeling a little breathless as your fingers work the leather straps free and Thor ducks his head low to help you pull the chestplate over his head to drop it to the ground. 

When he straightens back up, the look in his eyes makes you shiver as he reaches down at once for the hem of your tunic and draws it up over your head. No hesitation as he bares you to him for the first time outside of your tent. Tossing it to the ground and letting his eyes fall to your breasts, unashamed and open as his eyes linger on the pebble of your nipples in the cool air. Gooseflesh breaks out along your arms and you barely resist the urge to cover yourself from his gaze. Your heart beating hard behind your ribs as his hand lifts and his thumb touches gently to the curve of your breast, before his eyes return to yours. 

“I have failed you, little bug,” he murmurs, his voice pitching low as he lowers his head to yours. Letting his nose drag against your hairline as his big hand closes around your hip. “If you believe I am not utterly captivated by your scent.” 

You laugh, breathless, your head starting to go light, but he proves his sincerity as his mouth opens against your jaw. Tasting at the sweat and dust there, making you shiver as he pulls you closer still. 

“I’m filthy,” you groan, softly, and when you push him away, he lets you. Taking a step back and beginning to toe off his boots, his hands going to the waist of his breeches. 

You follow suit mindlessly, your skin prickling and feeling too small for your frame. Working your feet free from your boots with care and then pushing your breeches down your thighs, biting your lip against the full-body shivers that are wracking your body as you straighten back up and see Thor bared before you. Beginning to feel a touch overwhelmed as his eyes drift over your form like the caress of a hand, heated and sure. 

He looks at you as a beast looks upon a meal. Like you’re something he cannot wait to devour. 

Your belly dips on a hot little whirl, and you wonder if he’ll take you here. Surrounded by linen walls that are rolling gently between the wooden frames in the breeze, trying to keep yourself hushed so those bathing across the well do not hear the sharp intake of your breath. You lick your lips, finding them suddenly dry. 

He takes pity on you, though. Drawing in some measure of breath before stepping past you, his skin fever hot when it brushes against yours and you nearly whine, wanting to follow him. Getting a little cold now, as you stand in the shade of the stall and the wind drifts beneath the linen walls, and knowing that the water he bends low to draw from the well will be colder still. 

When he turns towards you with a bucket filled with water, you do whine, curling on yourself, and he laughs. Audible around a smile that spreads across his face, motioning for you to come to him. 

“Come on now, little bug,” he says, still grinning. Beckoning again with his hand for you. Finding great humor in your shivering and dread. 

“Is it cold?” you ask, stupidly, because of course it is and he shakes his head. Lying, obviously. 

It takes him opening his arm for you for you to step forward into his space. Accepting the peace offering that it is and pressing yourself against his bare front. Shivering at the heat of his skin against yours as he draws you close to him and murmurs what sounds like an insincere apology before tipping the bucket to pour the water down your back. 

You yelp, your body lurching against his, even if the water isn’t as cold as you had feared. He laughs again, his chest vibrating beneath your cheek, as he reaches back to draw another bucketfull from the well. 

“Poor little bug,” he murmurs, meaning none of it as he pours another swell of water down your back and follows it with the broad spread of his hand. Scrubbing the water against the skin of your back, lifting the dust and sweat caked there. 

You groan and shiver and let him wash you, one cool bucket of water at a time. Letting him pull you gently forwards and back, moving you where he needs you as he lets his hands travel over your body. Working the dirt and grime from your skin with broad strokes of the callus of his palm, gripping gently at where you’ve gone soft with the food and care of the clan, exhaling softly when he hears the intake in your breathing from the squeeze of his hand. 

You warm slowly as the air in the stall heats from the two of you but you tremble still beneath his touch. Quieter now, your hands pressed to his belly to keep yourself upright as his hand closes around the weight of your breast and his thumb drifts over a pebbled nipple. Drawing a sigh from between your lips as you lean into it, your eyes falling closed as you allow yourself to seek him out. Your whole body flushing hot as your fingers tense against his hip and then drift in until they brush the trail of hair that travels down his front. 

Your imagination is getting away from you as you lean into him, your closed eyes allowing you to closely track the touch of his hand over your body. Keeping up the guise of washing you still but only just, touching at the notches of your spine and gripping softly at the curve of your rear. Touching slowly, leisurely, to the parts of you he likes. 

Your chest tightens, your breath turning heavy in your lungs, as you grip at him and let him touch you. Let the gentle scrape of the callus of his hand drift over the expanses of your skin as he breathes hot against your ear. Wondering if you’re imagining it, or making it something other than what it is. Too hot and too tight from the simple touch of your husband, when perhaps he means just to wash you. Wondering if he will reach lower still to where you feel you’ve gone hot and wet for him and hoping, distantly, desperately, that he will. Unsure if he’ll tease you for it or shudder with pleasure for the discovery instead. 

You feel nearly drunk with it when Thor finally takes a step back from you, steadying you with a hand when you wobble on your feet. Your skin clean and wet and overly sensitive from his touch, and your eyes drift helplessly to the swell of his cock. A little thick between his legs, beginning to grow heavy, just from his hands on your body. 

You try to clear your mind as you take the bucket from his hands with shaking fingers, pressing your hand against his forearm to keep him still as you walk past him to the well on coltish legs. The distance clearing your head a little as you take in fresh air and lean over the stone wall of the well, wanting to wash him in return. Needing to tend to him, to care for him, even as your core lights in sparking fits of abandoned arousal that are as confusing as they are heady.

You’re bent over the wall of the well, reaching down for the water below with the bucket when you feel movement behind you. Immediate and quick, and then Thor is taking you by the shoulders and pulling you upright. Startling you, making you nearly drop the bucket as he turns you in place, his brow drawn tight on his face. Sudden concern there in his eyes that makes your stomach drop to your feet, confused and lightheaded as he takes the bucket from your hands and drops it to the sand below. Drawing you close to him with hands that are a little harder than before. 

“Have I been rough with you?” he asks, his voice urgent in a way that you can’t understand, your mind whirring uselessly as you try to understand what is happening. What’s gotten into him as he steadies you on your feet and touches you between your legs. Making a soft whimper fall from your lips as you feel his fingers against your sex, where you’ve gone dewy and slick, wanting more of that touch, but he draws his hand back just as quick. Touching you not for the pleasure of it, it seems.

There’s blood on his fingertips when he examines them in the shade of the bathing stall, glistening red, and his eyes go to yours, something edging on frantic tightening the corners of his eyes. “Are you hurt?” he asks, and you manage to shake your head numbly, your eyes locked to the sight of blood on his hand. From you. 

It takes you a moment to understand what you’re seeing. What it means, as Thor holds you upright with his free hand and tries to cut through the sudden roaring you hear in your ears with his voice. 

You’d bled before, of course. Visited the first time by your monthly cycle when you were just thirteen years old, but it had been years now. You’d always wondered if Jakkor had poisoned you somehow, after living under his thumb for years and never bleeding once. Not once, after you made the hellish journey across the blazing sands to his village. You never knew if the absence of your monthly blood was because you were bone-thin and teetering on the constant edge of panic and going dark in your mind or if there was something wrong with you, but you’d been grateful for it, at the time. Knowing his rotten seed would never take root in you for all of his efforts. Knowing that you’d never have to see how he would handle that news. If you’d survive it at all. 

You’d told Thor this, some time ago. A late-night confession whispered into the pillow of his arm, fear roiling in your belly as your words hung in the quiet air between you. The greatest shame a woman could carry in a world where her value depended entirely on her ability to produce an heir. You’d wondered if he would push you from his bed then, or go distant in the morning. His interest in you waning once you’d bared the secret that had weighed heavy on your mind since he’d first brought you to the camp, so buried deep that you hadn’t even allowed yourself to think of it. If he would regret bringing you here, if he would be furious with you for not telling him sooner. 

He had done none of those things. Surprising you even then, when you thought you knew him as a man, by pushing the hair back from your face and kissing the tear tracks on your cheeks. Quieting you with soft, murmured sounds and pulling you close. Shielding you from whatever reaction he had to the news, whatever look crossed his face as he understood what your words really meant, pressing your face against his chest as you shuddered through a thick, emotional breath. 

Now, though, there is no hiding his reaction. His eyes are wide, his brows up near his hairline as he talks to you, his voice a muffled blur as your brain whirrs slowly and tries to process. Tries to make sense of the blood on his fingers and the ache in your breasts you’d felt just days ago and the cramps in your belly that had lulled you to sleep the night prior that you’d given no thought to while bedding down. Unable to connect the dots and decipher the meaning of it all until the evidence was thrust in your face, and even now, struggling. 

You see Thor’s expression change as darkness touches at the edge of your senses, swimming and overwhelmed, the distance in your mind calling faintly to you, and then he’s gathering you close and gripping your hand painfully tight between his. 

It works, the tight grip of his hand shifting the bones in your palm and knocking some of the darkness free, and when your ears clear of the ringing in them, you hear him speaking to you. Urgently, his voice low and stern. Calling you back to him, slipping into his native tongue until he sees you back in your own eyes, and then his hand around yours loosens a touch. 

“Breathe,” he tells you, nodding when you do, and you nod back, getting your claws into your consciousness and not letting go. Refusing to give into the pull of the distance, drawing a deep breath into your aching lungs and rooting yourself to the ground. To the present, with a grit of your teeth. 

You stand there together, Thor still covered in sweat and dust, you shiny and clean and shaking and bloodied, breathing together until you are able to find your tongue again. Feeling too big for your mouth as your lips part, and you manage a quiet, stupid, oh, that hangs on the air between you. 

Neither of you move for a moment and when you manage to meet his eyes again, his entire face is deliberately, fiercely, unbelievably blank. Completely void of expression but rigid, like it’s taking immense effort for him to do so, and he stands. Watching you. His hands tensing at his sides but relaxing when your eyes go to them, letting out a slow, steady breath through barely parted lips. Like it’s taking every piece of him to hold himself back from whatever thoughts are racing through his mind, to spare you from them as you wrench yourself back into your body and force yourself to wrestle control of your consciousness. 

The world feels like it has shifted beneath you, the ground turning beneath your feet as you realize all at once, that what you thought was is not. That you are not broken. That you are not barren. That you and Thor could...that you could…

You bend down and take the bucket on the ground in hand and, for lack of anything better to do as your mind sputters at the realization that is dawning on you like an immense wave, dip it into the well and begin to wash Thor. 

You pour bucket after bucket over him, as best you can reach. Letting your palms scrub down his chest and arms, lifting the dirt and the dust and the sweat from the skin there with the pressure of your hands before rinsing him with another bucket of water. Distantly cataloguing the rigid set of his abdominal muscles as you wash over them, the hard cadence of his breathing. Unable to stop from looking at his cock which has gone achingly, impossibly hard. Twitching like a living, heated thing when your wrist brushes it as you wash down his hips and thighs. 

It takes you a moment to make sense of it. The implications of what has made Thor go still and tense and hard beneath your hand, as you shakily pull another bucket of water from the well, your thighs pressed against the stone wall as you lean down over it. You pause when you come back up, the bucket clutched between your hands as your vision goes distant and your mind comes to life with imagery. 

Of Thor, laying claim to you. Of him filling you up tight and bringing you apart beneath him, with his mouth and his hands and his body and his cock. Of Thor going still over you as his face pinches with the grit of his release, as his cock swells and throbs and spits hot lashes of his seed deep into your sex. Of Thor staying there, over you and inside of you, as your back arches and your breasts ache for his touch. Of Thor filling you, again and again, until his seed takes root. 

You let out a shuddering breath and the bucket nearly drops from between your hands as your entire body flushes hot. An ache sounds from between your legs, sharp and hollow, and your mouth drops open as your eyes fall closed. 

The picture in your mind shifts and swirls, Thor touching at your belly. His hands big across the soft, tender swell there as his mouth opens over your throat and he bites down gently. Making your body tremble against his as he murmurs into your ear praises, adorations, in his native tongue that you understand as clear as anything - worship and arousal and desire all blending into one - 

Hands startle you, though they’re gentle as they come to wrap around you as Thor comes up behind you. His breathing is strained against your ear as he tugs you back against his chest. The bucket does fall then from your deadened fingers, splashing loudly to the water in the well and you let Thor take your weight. Your body feeling molten and boneless as he hugs you tight to his chest. Nearly taking you off your feet with the strength of his hold on you. 

His hand comes around your front and you shiver against him when it spreads over your belly. Gripping at where you’ve gone soft and a little round from the rich food of the camp as his breath stutters from somewhere over your head. You feel something glide down the inside of your thigh as your breath catches in your throat when you realize all at once that it’s slick. From you.

He murmurs something against the crown of your head that you can’t hear, can’t understand, but you feel his rib cage contract sharply when the hand on your belly reaches down between your legs and finds you a bloody, soaked mess there. 

He groans like he’s wounded, his body locking rigid behind yours, as his fingers begin to move against your sex. With sure purpose, the pads of his fingers finding familiar paths and pressing down where he knows it will make you arch against him, your head tipping back on a breathless gasp. 

“Qoy qoyi,” he says against your hair as you feel the scalding, hard press of his cock against your lower back. Sounding a little rushed, his voice hot and urgent. “Do you - do you want - ,” 

You barely hear him over the gallop of your heart in your chest, your entire body alight with sparks of pleasure and want, your mind murking in shapes and colors, but you nod, the back of your head thumping softly against his shoulder. 

Something cuts through the swirl of your senses then, a laugh, bright and earnest, from one of the stalls across the well, and you can’t explain why but your entire body goes molten. Your mouth falls open as Thor gathers you up against him, his breath coming quick as he positions you where he needs you. Until your thighs part at the pull of his hands and the velvet head of his cock slides between the press of them. Nudging through the wet mess of your sex and drawing a whimpered moan from your lips. 

“Thor,” you whisper, your chest heaving as your dizzied mind spins. “There’s - people - ”  

Thor makes a sound behind you, a low grunt that ends in a snarl from deep in his chest as he tips you forward in his arms. Leaning you forward until your shaky hands come to brace against the stone wall of the well, smearing hot, wet kisses behind your ear and against the hinge of your jaw as he nudges your knees apart with his own. 

He murmurs a warning, soft and heated against your temple, and then his hand comes up from below. Touching to your jaw before covering over your mouth, the broad of his palm fitting against the open part of your lips, and you have a split second to catalogue the taste of of his skin against your tongue there before he is pitching you forward once more and pressing the fat head of his cock against your trembling sex. 

You lurch in his arms, a moan ripped from your lungs and through your lips, caught and contained by his palm over your mouth, and your entire body scalds with the scandal of it. At the hard, thick plunge of his cock into you, at your body opening to him and taking him fully. At the way the faint din of conversation from the other stall continues, none the wiser, as he takes you like a wild creature. Filling you from behind with a hard slot of his hips until the flat planes of his lower belly jostle against the curve of your rear, snugged up so tight against him. 

He lets his hand fall from your mouth, allowing you to draw in a rasping breath, and he seems to catch his own then. Stilling inside of you, his cock throbbing hot, hot like a brand, making your eyes nearly roll back as you feel him this way. Taking you like this, feeling him press up against parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. Stuffing you so hot and full that you feel like you could burst from it.

He keeps you from collapsing down to the sand with an arm around your waist, strong and supporting you, and then he draws your upper half up and back. Testing your balance as he spreads a palm over your belly and mouths against the side of your neck as he groans into the heated skin there. Sounding overworked himself, the muscles in his abdomen twitching where they’re pressed against your lower back. 

His mouth opens over your ear, tasting and nipping there and making your entire body roll with shivers, and he murmurs, “Stay quiet, little bug,” an order that’s murmured on thick breath, before he draws himself back and then ruts hard back into you. Knocking the breath from your lungs and making your thighs tremble and shake. 

The abrupt spear of him into you knocks your head back against his shoulder, your lungs seizing tight around nothing. The suddenness of it hits you all at once, the fast rush from heated, lingering touches to the hard press of his cock against the tender walls of your sex, and you find yourself taking a moment to...check on yourself. To touch at the tender edges of your consciousness for a brief moment to see if any panic or fear is lurking just out of sight. To see if there is any darkness swelling and swirling beyond reach, ready to spring forward and pull you under. 

You find none, none of that, and you feel hot tears prick at your eyes as you let yourself go to it. 

The coupling is rough and fast. No time spared for caressing kisses and tentative touches. Thor holds you against the barrel of his chest and fucks you. The great girth of his cock plunging snug into your sex again and again, stuffing you full and then withdrawing in an instant, the push and pull of a churning wave on a great sea. Reducing you to blabbering, useless, breathless sounds that are ripped from your lips with every hard rut of his hips. 

Every inch of your body feels molten. Feverish and twitching and raw as you swallow down a ragged cry and the sounds filling the linen stall wash over you. The hard, staccato slap of skin against skin, the sloppy sounds of your sex, squelching and dripping to the sand below. The gritted, harsh rush of his breathing and the jolting cries wrung from you as he lays his claim with hot mouth and nipping teeth and plunging cock. 

His hands are hard on your body. Gripping you tight, his fingers pressing into the plush of you around your belly and hips, his mouth running against your temple, hot, low grunts and whispered things you can’t make out over the singing in your blood. You make out enough, though, for your scalp to tingle when his mouth opens over your throat and he says, “Anni,” against the skin there and bites down, hard. 

Mine, echoes in your mind, like a shout. 

Your whole body is vibrating with something, something heated and spiking like pleasure, but it’s like none you’ve ever felt before. You’d always felt such pointed pleasure before, brought about by his hands or his mouth against your skin or from his cock moving within you. It had always been isolated and intense, so deliberately bestowed upon you by him, so obviously designed to bring you to the precipice of pleasure and beyond. 

This, your head lolls back against Thor’s shoulder and you let out a lost whimper. This is different. You feel not the intense, forward rush towards release but a broader, fuller feeling. Something tingling throughout your entire body, lush and indulgent. A pleasure that doesn’t originate in your sex but that ripples through you fully, and though it feels nothing like the swirling, building growth of pleasure in your belly that predicates your release, you find yourself going mindless to it. Your nerves firing off in hard rhythm in time with his thrusts, your eyes nearly rolling back into your head as your entire body glows with it. 

You feel when he finds his release in you. Feel it in every inch of you when his hands vice tight on your waist and his cock hardens ever more before jumping and lurching in the plush heat of your sex. Spitting hot lashes of spend deep into your womb and you’re stunned to hear yourself moaning softly at the feeling of it. Clenching down around him as your eyes fall closed, wanting him nearer. Wanting to keep him there as he fills you up with his seed. 

He stays there for some time, his chest heaving behind you. Pressing against your back with every inhale as his face drops to where your shoulder meets your throat and pressing his mouth there in a hot, reverent kiss. Murmuring to you words you only half understand, his hand coming to grip at the soft skin over your belly. Pushing his softening cock against you one last time before finally drawing back. 

You turn in his arms, overwhelmed and feeling your limbs tremble, and he opens his arms to you at once. Nudging his nose against your temple as he catches his breath, his entire body shuddering as he pulls you close to him and holds you there. Your arms get around his waist and you let him rock you gently from side to side, letting you mind drift on the sound of his voice. Hushed and heated as he reaches between your legs and touches at the bruised skin of your sex. Where you’re slick and tender from his mating, and he lets the pads of his fingers linger there. Gathering his spend that’s slowly dripping from you on them and pushing it back inside of you as he shivers on a groan. 

The people across the way chatter on, laughing and splashing water at each other. Oblivious to what just occurred between you and Thor, as you cling to him and let him rock you. Bringing you slowly back to yourself with the strength of his arms around you. 

When you pull back from him a few minutes later, you look down at where your front was pressed against his chest and find it covered in the dust and sweat you hadn’t managed yet to wash from him, and you can’t help the weak laugh that falls from your lips. Looking to Thor helplessly, and then he’s huffing softly too. Looking down to where his chest is cleaner, having rubbed half the grime that remained on him off on you. 

He lifts a hand to your face, his mouth still twisted up in a smile, and tilts your head to his. Pressing a tender kiss to your forehead, before he steps past you and leans down into the well for the bucket. 

“Once more,” he mutters in good humor, and your laugh rings out in the stall. Joyful and bright and not caring who hears it. 

The rest of the night unfolds in a comfortingly predictable way, with Thor herding you back to the tent to change into a clean set of clothes before settling beside the fire for the nightly meal. He seems sated somehow, the frantic edges of the whirlwind of him from before smoothed around the edges as you sit comfortably on his lap, your back settling fully against his chest as the fire in the pit throws waves of prickling heat over the bared skin of your legs, sprawled easily over his. 

He seems content, then, as the night air cools and you feel his heartbeat slow beneath his chestplate. Nudging his nose against the side of your head whenever he thinks to do so, indulgently drawing in whispered pulls of your scent every few minutes, then letting out a rumbling, quiet exhale each time, as if each is as satisfying to him as the last. His hands are large and dry and warm where they rest on you, one resting, curled loosely over your belly, the other touching absently at the linen of your dress over the crease of your thigh. 

You are of two minds as you let yourself recline against him. Your fingers run over the bumps of his knuckles absently, your breathing slowing and steadying as the conversation around the fire ebbs and flows in a distant melody. Letting yourself go boneless against him, letting him support the whole weight of you without effort as the back of your head rests against his shoulder and you look up to the canopy of stars overheard. 

Your mind, though, is not still. Through the meal and the conversation that carried merrily through it, your mind had not rested. Had not stopped circling around this news, this new reality you were suddenly facing. The possibility that you could carry Thor’s child. 

Possibility, you reminded yourself, chewing softly on your lower lip, letting your eyes fall to the embers in the fire before you. 

You’re unable to ignore the obvious proof that Thor is happy. Incandescently, stupidly, utterly happy as he breathes in the scent of you near your ear and lets out another rumbling sigh. His reaction before would have been proof of that enough, the sudden swell of his desire for you and the hard grip of his hands on your hips, but you know now as Thor hums softly against your temple like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, that it goes beyond whatever instinctive thrill Thor must carry from the thought of you heavy with his child. 

Dread is an unwanted thing swirling slow and acrid in your belly that you grit your teeth to tamp down as you let your gaze go distant in the glow of the embers in the pit. You know in the very core of you that you want, too. You’d never really considered the idea, never had to think about whether motherhood held any appeal to you when you were blessed with a strange and unexplained barrenness in your time with Jakkor. You’d had not a thought to spare to the notion, too wholly preoccupied every waking moment with when you’d be granted your next sip of water. If you’d be fed that day or if you’d have to wait until the next, your stomach aching hollowly as the moon rose in the dark sky. 

Now, though, you know. As easy as breathing and as surely as you know your name, you know that you want. It sends a thrill up your spine just thinking of it, your mind dancing around the edges of a dream of a future. Only able to touch faintly at the edges of the thought before your mind drifts away, like you can’t allow yourself to look directly at it for fear of losing yourself in the grandness of your desperation for it. Like the thought of you bearing children of Thor is the sun and you have to look away to save your eyes from the singe of it. 

You catch only glimpses of it as your mind wants desperately to dream but doesn’t dare, the sight of Thor pitching a happily shrieking child up into the air and catching it. The thought of a newborn babe curled up in the span of Thor’s hands, soft and pink and precious and small. The reverent press of Thor’s palm against the swell of your belly, the soft words whispered into your hair as he wakes and turns to you out of sleep-heavy instinct. 

You want, you know. But you don’t know if you can. You’ve thought of nothing else since seeing the tinge of red on Thor’s fingertips in the bathing tent, unable to shake the nauseating, low heating fear that this is a mistake. That it doesn’t mean what you think it means, what Thor thinks it means. That it’s a fluke or an anomaly, that Thor knocked something loose in you with the vigor of his lovemaking in nights prior. That perhaps it signifies that something is wrong with you instead, some injury or disease revealing itself to you only now, when your life has finally settled into something peaceful and warm and good. Taunting you with the promise of something great only to reveal a darker scar beneath. 

When Thor eventually touches your thigh in warning before helping push you to your feet, the fire dipping low and nearly smoldering, you know that you’ll speak to him of it. Tonight, at the tent, knowing you won’t be able to sleep until the pit in your stomach is addressed, not knowing if the conversation will free it or double down the nausea of it, but knowing that you must try. 

It’s not lost on you, as he guides you through the dark of night through the camp in the direction of your tent, that you worry, yes. But...you worry for him. Not of him. It occurs to you as his hand touches lightly to your lower back that the sick twist in your belly is fear of causing him disappointment. Hurting him or, somehow, breaking his heart. The realization that you fear not his reaction but for his heart is an anchor you cling to, some faint assurance that everything will be alright in the end. No matter what happens. It’s a reminder of how different your life is than before. How different a man Thor is from any you’ve ever known. 

Once inside the tent, you step into your familiar routine. Rooting around for your sleep clothes as Thor lights the lantern overhead, unable to stop yourself from turning to look at him while you change. Your chest aching at the light that surrounds him, the soft, faint curve of his mouth as he fiddles with the lantern, emanating a quiet contentment you think his mind does not even consciously comprehend. 

You step into his space when he settles back onto the flat of his feet in the sand, your hands going to the straps beneath his arms. Grateful for the excuse to keep your head low and your gaze from his as he lifts his arms to give you room as you work the leather straps in what has become as familiar to you as the back of your own hand. Thor’s breathing is slow and steady beneath your hands, his chest rising and falling like easy waves on a great sea. When you move to the other side of his chestplate, his chest vibrates as his voice rumbles softly on the night air. 

“Your mind is loud tonight, little bug,” he says. You can feel his eyes on the side of your face as you busy yourself with the leather beneath his arms. You don’t answer, not trusting yourself to speak clearly, and your hands slow as you begin to unfasten the last of them. Not feeling ready to draw back and look up at his face. To have to explain. To have this conversation. 

When you make no move to pull his chestplate off as you usually do, he does so himself. Shrugging from beneath it easily and letting it drop to the ground below on a whisper of leather on sand. 

He doesn’t force your gaze up but his hand rises and his thumb touches gently to the swell of your cheek, where you’re looking down and away from him. Your heart lurching miserably behind your ribs. “What troubles you?” he asks. 

You let out a breath, shuddering and thick, and he waits for you. Blinking slowly down at you in the flickering lamp light, his hand twitching at his side like he wants nothing more than to gather you against him. 

It takes you a moment to raise your face to his and the look on his face has your chest aching anew. Soft and tender around the corners of his eyes, muted concern in the lines in his skin there as he waits for you to speak. You tip up on your toes and reach for him, touching your fingertips to the soft skin beneath his eyes, letting out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding when his eyes drop closed at the gentle touch and his hands come up to touch at the backs of your elbows. Supporting you as you lean up against him. 

“Earlier,” you say, your voice catching in your throat as you settle back down on your flat feet. “Today, I mean…” 

Thor nods down at you, like he expected it was about that. Serious in the draw of his brow on his forehead as something that looks faintly like regret passes over his features. 

“I was...rough, with you,” he says, and the denial is on your lips before he even finishes the words. Rising back up on your toes and placing your hands over his, shaking your head as halting words spill from your lips. 

“No,” you tell him, “No, that’s not - I mean, you were but, I - that’s not what I - “ 

You force your mouth closed, your teeth clacking together as the memory of it roars over you like a flame. Prickling at your skin as you feel echoes of his hands on your hips, the bite of his teeth in the side of your throat. You place your hands flat on his bare chest, as much to steady yourself as to stop his misplaced train of thought. 

“I…” you start again. Struggling almost instantly when his eyes meet yours. “I don’t know...what it means. And I can see that you’re - happy. You’re so...and I want to, I want to, I just don’t know...what it...means.” Your voice trails off at the end lamely and your bottom lip ends between your teeth, your stomach flipping flat and miserable. “I want to make you happy,” you say, a whispered confession, and the smile that touches the corners of his mouth is immediate. Like a reflex, something he can’t control as he lets out a soft, incredulous huff of air. 

He schools his expression into something more neutral, looking down at you like you’re being ridiculous, a gentle tease in the lift of his brow. You hear the words he doesn’t say as clearly as if he spoke them, ringing in the warm fondness of his expression. An affirmation, clear as day. That you do. You do make him happy. 

You find yourself shaking your head though. That’s not what you mean. “I - ” you say, voice halting again, and it makes you want to shake yourself. To just spit it out. “You - want, right? To…” You gesture vaguely at yourself, helplessly. Feeling stupid. 

Thor’s brow lifts in tandem with the corner of his mouth. The back of your neck flares hot, mortified, as his eyes go a shade darker. Delighted, as he always seems to be, of you making a fool of yourself. 

“I do,” he says, eventually. His voice going a little thick, a little heavy as he lets his eyes trail down your front and you feel it like the caress of his hand. 

“Okay,” you say, pushing yourself half a step back from him. Feeling the surge of something in him at the thought, recognizing it from earlier in the day. “But I don’t know if I - if I’m able to...do that. What if I can’t...” 

Thor lets you keep him at bay with your palms on his chest, looking down at where they’re pressed to his skin and then back up at you. Holding himself in place as much as anything, waiting for you to choose to meet his eyes again. 

It takes you a few moments, chewing on your lower lip as your insides war, sickly worry over the conversation grappling with the flint spark of heat from the way Thor is looking at you. He is serious, though. When you finally meet his gaze again. Looking down at you like he wants you to be still and hear the words he says. 

“Life is full of sorrows and joys, little bug,” he says. “You have grieved. You have lost. So have I.” 

It takes you a minute for his words to register in your worried mind. You blink, then look up to him. 

Your face pinches, your brow drawing as you take an unconscious step towards him. Unmoored by the abrupt understanding that there are parts of Thor that you do not know. That he has not shown you yet. Having though, foolishly, that you knew much of what there was of him. 

Thor continues, touching a thumb gently to your cheek before curling his palm around your jaw. Holding you steady. “I do not know what the future will bring any more than you, though joy and sorrow are a certainty.” His other hand comes up to spread softly over your belly, his eye dropping to the span of his hand across the soft curve there. “I do not know if this is in our future. But I’m...beyond...happiness…at the chance to try.”

You stand there with him for a moment, basking in the vulnerability he is allowing you to see in this moment. Unaccustomed to the naked sincerity playing out on his face, no tease or snark to be found. While utterly lovely, it is strange, and you feel something flip in your chest at the sight of it. 

His words hang in the air between you, weighted, important, and you can only stand to look into the openness in his eyes for so long before you feel the need to ease the intimacy of the moment. Nodding to him, so he knows that you heard him, that you understand, before you take a half-step back. 

You move away from him then, still feeling a little jittery, and kneel yourself slowly down onto the bed. Feeling exhaustion from the day tug at your muscles when you feel the soft bedding beneath your body, groaning a little as you settle down onto your back. 

Thor takes his time preparing for bed, and you watch him. He toes off his boots and pushes his breeches down his hips, stepping out of them and kicking them away. Rolling his shoulders like he’s letting some tension go as he makes his way to the bed and eases himself down onto it. 

You watch as he settles down onto the bedroll and something catches your eye. Makes you rise up onto your knees beside him, making his eyebrows lift as he sits upright, his legs stretched out before him. 

You hover over him a little, your fingers touching lightly to the broad expanse of his thigh, tickling the sparse hair there. The wound from the raid on the camp is there, a dark slash as long as your hand, curving around the outer edge of his leg. You touch around the edges of it and find that it’s healing well, the scab dark and secure on his skin as it slowly knits itself back together. You press against it, giving into some strange compulsion to do so, and he has no reaction though you think to yourself that it must still sting. 

He snorts softly. “Do you wish to hurt me?” he asks, not stopping you as you continue to feel around the edges of it. 

You shake your head, your eyes glancing up. “I don’t know I could,” you murmur. “You said so yourself.” Your mind returns to your spar with him earlier in the day. Him encouraging you to hurt him, if you could manage.

Thor makes a dismissive sound and gathers you in his arms. Drawing you up over his legs until he sets you in his lap, your knees touching either side of his hips. “You could,” he murmurs, tipping you forward until you meet him in a gentle kiss. 

You settle deeper on his lap when his hands come up to curve around the thick of your rear and grip it. “Just wanted to see if you’re human,” you say, and you feel his mouth curve up beneath your lips before you draw back. 

He looks pleased when you look down at him and something warm sparks in your belly. Wanting to indulge him a little. Your big, strong husband. 

“What would I be if not a man?” he asks, his hands gripping you down. Drawing a soft little huff of breath from your lungs you hide with a soft smile. Eager to lean into this, this warm, easy thing, and to leave the tension of your previous conversation behind. 

You shrug a little, your hand drawing up to run the pad of your thumb over his cheek. Down the strength of his jaw beneath his beard. “In truth,” you murmur, “When I first saw you..for the first time, I mean. I thought you more a creature than a man.” 

He breathes out, lowly. His eyes shading a little dark. Liking that very much. He hmms softly, prompting you to continue. 

Your spine tingles and you feel the soft gentle of your core settle against his cock. Soft but thick, still, between his legs. “Yes,” you tell him, nudging your hips a little to settle deeper. “I’d never seen a man as large as you. As formidable.” 

His hands drift under your sleep slip, his callus scratching softly against your bare skin. A rumble comes from his chest as he looks up at you. 

“And,” you murmur, your mouth quirking around the edges. “You cut his head clean off. I remember. One great swing of your axe.” 

You watch his jaw tic as it sets, and his hands grip harder. Possessive. “I did,” he agrees, and the heat in his voice makes your belly tremble. “You liked it. I remember that.” 

You nod, your breath catching a little in your lungs. Prompting you to lean down and press a kiss to his lips that he deepens at once. Opening his mouth over yours, his tongue hot and wet when it presses into your mouth. You moan softly, your hands gripping at his shoulders, and feel heat between your legs. 

It is dizzying to sit there on his lap. To let his hands grip and part at your rear, exposing the tease of your sex to the cool night air, to turn your head and breathe out loudly when he tastes along your jaw, following it with nips of his teeth. To know that he will have you tonight. To know where this is going and to seek it out. 

“You saved me,” you tell him, breathless, your hands finding his hair when he sucks on your throat. He growls in response, finding the hem of your slip and tugging it up over your head. Tossing it to the side and drawing you back against his chest at once. His nostrils flaring in the flickering lamplight when he feels your nipples catch on the bare skin of his chest, pebbled up and hard. 

One of his hands drifts up and between, seeking, and you let out a stuttered sound when his broad fingertip finds you soaked there. Your brow dipping on your face as you nudge your nips back against his hand. Your core pulsing on a hollow ache, needing it to be soothed. Knowing, now, what you need. 

“I’m bleeding,” you murmur against his cheek, flushing hot at the realization and hotter still when he lets out a low snort. 

“You are my wife,” he says, forcefully into the overhot skin of your throat, and then one of his fingers presses thickly into you. 

“Ahh,” you breathe, sinful, pressing your face against his. Closing your eyes to the feel of his finger that’s quickly joined by another. Pressed alongside the first, making you body shudder at the delirious fill of him. 

Your hips begin to move, perched over his lap. Unable to stop your upper body from tilting against his and your rear lifting into the air. Nudging back against the press of his hand as he begins to fuck you with his fingers. Soft, wet squelches filling the night air that make you flush hot beneath your skin. Knowing that you’re covering him with your slick. With your blood. 

“Davra nayat,” he murmurs, and you feel his cock beginning to fill beneath you. 

His thumb finds the crest of your sex, practiced and sure, and he moves across it in tandem with the plunge of his fingers into the wet plush of your sex. Making the muscles of your back lock and then shiver, your mouth falling open on a quiet moan. Already beginning to feel overwhelmed. Overworked, between the press of his hand and the hot smear of his mouth on your neck. 

You feel the first tingles of your pleasure in your belly, and you tell him so. Whimpering against his cheek that you can feel it. That it’s there. Just there, and he begins to murmur things to you that your delirious mind cannot make sense of. Asking you if you’ll let him taste you. Telling you with a voice pitched dark like tar that it’s all he’s thought about. All he can think about, the taste of you on his tongue, and it takes you a moment to understand before you entire body is blistering on a swell of heat when you realize he means to taste you there. Between your legs. 

“O-oh,” you breathe, your hips rocking against his hand. Sweat begins to break out under your arms, prickling the skin there. 

“Would you let me?” Thor asks, his nose nudging beneath your jaw. Nipping at the bone there and soothing it with a kiss when you whimper and lurch against him. “I want to eat you.” 

Shivers wrench down your spine, confused and hot, and you find yourself shaking your head even though you don’t mean to. That’s not - something you’d ever heard of. Ever thought of, and you try to imagine it. How one would even - 

“How?” you whimper against him as he draws you closer and closer with each pump of his hand. “I don’t - understand - ” 

And he rumbles against you, his thumb working the crest of your sex. “I’ve thought of nothing else,” he says, sounding almost pained. “I want to lay you back and rest myself down between your legs. I want to kiss you there. Want to smell you soaked in my beard.” 

Your hand spasm on his shoulders, gasping weakly as your head thunks forward. You’re close. So close. 

“Please,” you whimper, rucking your hips back harder, and he takes pity on you. Plunging his fingers deep and pressing his thumb over that little nub hard. Nearly pitching you against his chest with the force of it, and it brings you apart. 

You wail softly against him as your pleasure rushes over you, cresting in your belly and then surging outwards. Making your mouth run stupid, mumbling words in his native tongue that you don’t think make sense, and then you feel him moving you. Rearranging you in his lap, and your lungs seize on a moan when you feel the fat press of his cock against where you’re pulsing, and he slowly sets you down on his cock. 

“Thor,” you whine, clutching him close. Clinging to him as the thick spear of his cock alights your pleasure anew. A white hot burst of it flaring over where it had started to fade and you wail for him as you realize that he’s brought you to pleasure again, stronger this time as your body sinks onto his cock and clenches rhythmically around it. 

He curses, low and hot and unknowable, and then his hands settle on your hips, and he begins to take you there. Helping you to rise and fall, the aching throb of your sex taking him again and again as you get your knees beneath you and give into the wild feeling of it. Chasing something you can’t see, something burning bright behind your eyelids as your veins burn with heat. 

His breathing is ragged as his hips begin to lift from the bed to meet you halfway, the sound of skin slapping beginning to fill the air, and your entire body wracks on trembles as he pounds against places within you that have never been touched. The angle different, sitting atop him like this. His cock slicking tight against your walls, pressing against something that makes you gasp with every firm fuck of his cock. 

One of his hands moves from your hip. Sliding in over your bare belly and spreading there, and when you look down, you see that his hand is smeared with blood. Yours, and your body ripples with something, with shame, with excruciating pleasure, at the sight of it. 

You feel when his release comes over him. Feel his body go rigid beneath yours, feel his cock harden and burst. Feel the lashes of hot spend that coat your insides as he grits his teeth in a furious snarl and fucks the mess of it up deeper into you. His cock bumping against your womb and making you cry out. Broken and shivering, from the chill of the night air and the feeling of his eyes on you. Looking up at you like you’re a temple and he’s come to worship. 

You shift, once he goes quiet beneath you, breathing deeply, but he stills you with hands on your hips. Gentle, but keeping you there, his cock going soft where it’s still inside of you, and a strange little thrill tremors in your belly from the feeling of it. He likes the weight of you perched atop him, it seems. Likes the way you look from his vantage point below, his fingers spreading around your hips and gripping a little. 

He lets you down when wind slips beneath the canvas wall and makes you shiver again. Groaning softly, sounding tired, while he helps you down to lay beside him. Covering you with his body at once, the furnace of his skin a welcome reprieve that you burrow your face against. 

You don’t remember falling asleep there, but you do. Quickly, faster than you expect. Lulled under by the radiant heat of his body and the thud of his heart in his chest, quieted by the possessive curl of his arm around your waist. He joins you, his breathing going deep and slow, and the two of you remain so, intertwined and breathing together, until morning. 

The height of the afternoon heat finds you sweating out in the sun. Squinting into it and wiping your brow with the back of your hand as you cock your head a little to see where your arrow stuck in the bark of the towering palm. It stuck, which is something, you think, even if it landed well below the circle Zhaf had drawn on the rough bark with a white, powdery chalk a few weeks prior. 

Zhaf is sat beside the palm, resting in the shade with her legs stretched out on the sand before her. She’s chewing on a hunk of bread, having taken to spending her lunch hour watching you improve your way with the weaponry needed to be a hunter. Improvement is slow, but…

“You struck it,” Zhaf says, her eyebrows lifting on her face as she turns to her left and examines the tree trunk. She sounds as surprised as you feel. “That’s well done, zheana.” 

You blow a hot exhale up your face, the hairs that have come loose from your plait lifting from your face from it. “I didn’t hit the target,” you say as you bend down to the quiver resting on the sand at your feet and draw out another arrow. 

Zhaf snorts a soft sound and tears the bread in her hand with her teeth. “You’ve improved,” she says, ignoring your frustrated groan as you let a second arrow loose and it whizzes past the trunk. Embedding into the soft dune of sand several feet beyond it. 

Barely, you think, but don’t say. She’ll get after you for being too hard on yourself if you voice every thought that pops into your head during these sessions. 

“If you keep sitting there, I might kill you,” is what you say instead, as you stoop down to pull out another arrow. 

She grins at that, her teeth bright behind her lips, and rips another piece of bread into her mouth, undeterred. 

You’ve been at this for weeks, now. It had taken a few sessions with the array of weapons Zhaf was able to scrounge up for your use to find what felt best to you. You found the spear to be too bulky and had serious concerns about accidentally jabbing your horse with it mid-gallop, and you figured a sword would require you to be much closer to prey that you were likely to ever actually get. The bow and arrow seemed the obvious choice at the time, but after weeks of daily practice, you’d only just managed to strike even the general vicinity around your target. 

You have to get your aim down to perfection on foot before you can even think of trying to shoot from stationary horseback. And you have to get your aim down to perfection on stationary horseback before you can even think of trying to shoot from horseback in a slow walk. And you have to get your aim down to perfection from horseback in a slow walk before you can even think to try to shoot from horseback at any sort of speed…

Your commitment to joining the dikfonak has not wavered, but it is taking longer than you expected, and it’s hard to not get frustrated with the slow progress of it all. 

You turn the arrow between your fingers, feeling the light weight of it, before notching it into the tight string of the bow. Letting your eyes catch on the red, angry skin of your fingertips, worked tender from pulling the bowstring taut, before lifting the bow up before your body and drawing back. 

You let your eye travel down the length of the arrow and beyond, to the target painted on the palm trunk. You let out a slow exhale, your bow arm trembling with the weight of it, and loose the arrow. 

It cuts through the air with a soft hiss and thunks quietly into the palm trunk. Over the target this time, and to the right of it. But still, stuck. 

Zhaf cheers through a mouthful of bread and it draws a laugh out of you at last. You make your way over to her, your sandalled feet slipping on the soft sand, and examine the trunk more closely. Letting out a quiet breath at the relief the shade brings from the sun overhead and bringing your face close to the bark to see where the sharp arrowhead has embedded into it. 

Your last shot is better than the earlier one, you think, grasping the arrow near the head and tugging it loose with a gentle back and forth motion. You hadn’t hit the target but the arrow dug in further into the pulp of the tree and it takes a little effort to draw it out. 

“You’ll be slaying great desert beasts in no time,” Zhaf says from below you, and when you give her a look, she laughs again, as easy as always. 

When you kneel to pull at the other arrow in the tree, she begins to push herself to her feet with a soft grunt. “I suppose that’s enough rest,” she says as she stands to full height and dusts sand from her rear. Her gaze travels past you and the corner of her mouth turns up. “And it looks like you’re wanted.” 

You follow her gaze and see Thor there, at the edge of the camp, and you can’t stop the smile that spreads across your face. He seems content to wait for you there, so you yank the first of your arrows from the trunk and grab the other arrow from where it landed in the sand beyond the tree. Zhaf retrieves your quiver and hands it to you, stretching her arms over her head as you fall into step beside each other and begin to make your way back towards camp, to where Thor is waiting. 

She and Thor exchange pleasantries in their native tongue, spoken so quickly that you don’t even bother to attempt to translate it, but his eyes fall to you and your heart warms at the expression that settles over his face. 

“I’d like to borrow her,” Thor tells Zhaf, who snorts in laughter. “Is that alright?” 

“I suppose,” she says, letting out an exaggerated sigh before bumping you with her hip and moving past you. “I need her back tomorrow afternoon, though.”

Thor watches her disappear into the maze of tents and shakes his head. “I swear you’d replace me with her,” he says, and that makes you laugh as you fall into step beside him.

“Perhaps I would,” you muse, teasing, letting your arm curl around his. More to slow down the great length of his walking stride than anything else, but the contact feels pleasant all the same. 

The camp is the same as it ever was as you walk through it, arm in arm, but you can’t shake the feeling of some difference as you step over hard-packed sand alongside him. People are busy around you, moving down the roads and alleys of the camp with arms full of produce or timber or linen, paying neither you or Thor any mind as they go about their day and the tasks contained within them. 

Still, you feel more...aware of yourself, in a strange way. More aware of Thor as well. The simple act of walking arm in arm with him across the camp feels a little scandalous, somehow, as if you haven’t done so routinely since your wedding weeks before, and prior even to that. You wonder, as people turn to slip by you as they pass, if they can see it in your face. In your body, in the way your hand wraps around the thick muscle of his arm. You wonder if they know that you’ve been atop Thor, your knees spread around the bulk of his body. Gripping at him, pulling him close. Begging for him in the most sinful way, as he touched your body apart and put you back together again. You wonder if they know he’s tasted your skin and touched you close and made you his, and that you’ve done the same to him. 

Thor is quiet beside you as you walk, though you don’t miss the occasional glance he tosses down at you, and you feel the back of your neck prickle with something of a tingle. A shy smile touching at the corners of your mouth, holding your little thrill of a secret close as you walk with Thor towards the eastern edge of camp. 

The smell of livestock begins to thicken on the air as you approach the pens where the camp meets the desert, and you follow Thor as he touches at your lower back and begins to lead you through them. Passing by small herds of goats lounging in the shade and flocks of chickens that dart from underfoot as they peck at the sand for bugs and grub. You haven’t spent much time over on this side of the camp, and it has you looking up at him a little as you go. Curious, of what he has planned for you. Wondering if it has to do with Rhaek, or something else. Perhaps he plans to assign you a role as an animal keeper until you manage well enough with a bow to go hunting. 

He brings you to a small paddock made of split rail fencing and approaches it, leaning his body against the wooden top rail and encouraging you to step up next to him with a wave of his hand. You end up standing on the lowest rail and wrapping your arms around the top one to see, your head in line with Thor’s, and then you turn to look at what’s captured Thor’s attention. 

A horse is in the far end of the paddock, sniffing at the ground, it’s ears swiveling loosely atop its head. It’s a mare, the color of the faint gray of an early morning sky and covered thick with tiny brown specks, her mane long where it drapes over her neck. There’s an elegance to her that is unmissable, an age and grace as she steps over the sand, and you know that while she is not a young horse, she is surely a lovely one. 

When she sees you and Thor, her head lifts from the sand and a soft nicker rumbles from her belly. She approaches the both of you, ears pricked pleasantly forward as she does, and it has you patting down your pockets. 

You have a treat for her, an old date you’d forgotten in the pocket of your breeches a few days ago, and she lips it gently from your outstretched palm when she’s close enough to take it. Letting out a content-sounding sigh as she chews it and sidles up to the fence dutifully to receive whatever scratches and pets you feel willing to impart. 

You’re smiling, you realize, as you let your fingertips dig into the mane at her withers. Charmed by her as she lets out another sigh that tells you she’s happy to stay there as long as you’re happy to keep spoiling her. 

You feel Thor’s gaze on your face and you look over at him. The corners of his mouth are lifted a little, in the way you’ve learned means he’s trying not to smile at you but can’t quite tamp it down. 

“What do you think?” he asks you, and your brow dips a little in a moment of confusion. 

You shrug. “She’s lovely,” you say, meaning it, as you let the flat of your palm smooth down her shoulder. “Is she one of the breeding mares?” 

Thor nods, reaching through the fence and letting his hand pet down across her ribs. “She is. She’s mothered many of the great horses of the clan. Her name is Feldi.” 

“I can tell,” you tell the mare, tipping your head to address her and laughing softly when she turns back to look at you. As if to listen intently while you speak to her. “You are quite strong, I bet. Fast, too.”

Thor huffs a soft laugh, and you feel his eyes on the side of your face again. 

“She’s been on many hunts, as well,” he says. “She’s retired from that now, but she spent many years galloping with the dogs and hawks.” 

Something in his tone makes you look to him. Something significant, like he’s giving you some kind of hint you shouldn’t miss. You don’t want to misunderstand something that feels so...important, so your brows lift at him as your mind turns. 

Thor looks back at you evenly, amusement touching at the corners of his eyes as he watches you work it slowly out. 

“Is she - ” you ask, your hand halting on her shoulder. Your heart kicking to life in your chest at the mere thought. “ - for me?” 

It feels sacrilege to even ask such a thing, your skills on horseback so terribly wanting in spite of all of your practice, but Thor’s face cracks in a smile then, and he tips his head a touch to the side. 

“For now. If you want her.” 

“Truly?!” you ask, your breath coming from you in such a rush that Feldi flicks her ears back and steps away from the fence. Your scratches not pleasant enough to be near boisterous shouting, apparently. 

Thor laughs softly, sounding a little perplexed, but pleased. “She’ll be a much easier mount than Rhaek.” 

You chew on the inside of your cheek to try desperately to rein in your emotions that are lighting off in you like kindling. You stay where you’re perched up on the fence, bouncing on the balls of your feet, feeling your insides thrum with something that makes you want to shout. 

Thor can’t take his eyes off of you. “Little bug?” he asks, and you hmm? and look up at him. Your mind positively racing as you swirl in the feeling of receiving the first proper gift of your life and barely being able to contain yourself for it. 

He grins at you then, like he knows the answer already. “Are you happy?” 

You nod mechanically, not trusting yourself not to throw yourself at him and further upset Feldi who has wandered across the paddock. 

He laughs then and takes a step towards you. Plucking you from the fence and gathering you in his arms, and you go to him. Wrapping your arms around his neck and pressing your face to his as you feel something warm and bright and joyful bloom between your ribs. He gets his arms beneath your thighs and holds you there, and you feel his smile against your cheek when he asks, “Do you want to go gallop?” 

You can’t stop the sound that comes out of you then - a delighted, strained little squeal, and he tips his head back and laughs again. Pressing a hot, affectionate kiss to your cheek and setting you carefully down. Laughing still as he leans back from you and brings his fingers to his lips. Letting out a piercing whistle that you know will bring his stallion thundering forth. 

You spend the day that way. A shroud tied over your nose and mouth, squinting into the desert sun and wind. Your heart soaring with every pound of Feldi’s hooves on the sand, carrying you over dune and plain with effortless grace. 

Thor is there beside you, as at home astride Rhaek as he is anywhere. Your attention stays forward, looking ahead, always, still carrying a slip of fear when in a gallop that you could pitch off at a moment’s notice, but you see him, out of the corner of your eye.

He spends the day watching you, his eyes blue and bright above his shroud, and you think, as you gallop on together, side by side, that you’ve maybe finally become what he imagined. What he’d hoped you’d be, when he first stole you away from your old life, and the realization has you swallowing past some clump of emotion in your throat as you spur Feldi forward, across the vast expanses of sand. Lighter than air and freer than you’ve ever felt. 

As Thor becomes more acquainted with your body, nights spend mapping your skin with his mouth, touching at every trembling span with fingers sure and true, so you become more aware of it. It’s been weeks since he’d taken you in the bathing tents and nearly every night since had been spent in his arms. His passion for you from before growing seemingly with every passing day. Brought about surely by his desire to fill you with his children but also by your steadily increasing need for him. Whispered whimpers of want first murmured into the skin of his throat, then said more openly as he teased your body together and then apart beneath the light of the flickering lamp overhead. 

Thor delights in the change brought about in you. Slowly at first, then more with every subsequent coupling. His eyes flash dark the first time you ask for him, rolling to him in the early morning, your body still fevered with the last flickers of a dream. When you lick your lips and take his hand in yours and bring it towards your center. Your voice thin and raspy as you whisper his name, your core aching and slick and needing the sure press of his hand. 

It awakens a part of you you’ve never known. A part of you you’d just assumed didn’t exist. A part of you that wants. A part of you that desires, and the intensity of that piece of you only grows with the passage of time. The more of yourself you offer to Thor, the more of you he learns and knows and tastes and touches, the more you want to give to him. 

He learns to read you, over time. Learns your body, yes, but your mind as well. Recognizing when a flash of something flickers over your expression, blinked back in an instant but unmissable to him, that all but screams that you’ve felt a syrupy twist in your belly. That tells him that you’ve seen something or felt something or smelled or tasted something (him, always him), that has heat coiling there. That tells him that if he stepped into your space and felt between your legs, he’d find you wet and wanting. And, more often than not, when privacy and time allow, he does exactly that. 

You know that it can’t actually be changing you, but it feels as though it has. You are unaccustomed to being desired, to being so consistently, urgently sought after, but you can do nothing but accept this truth when Thor demonstrates it to you, again and again and again. It has you more aware of yourself, More in-tuned with your body and it’s reactions. More aware of the shape of you and how the fit of certain garments draws and darkens his eye. Makes you realize that you can draw him to you, just the same as he draws you to him with nothing more than the sight of the broad set of his shoulders or the rough scrape of his palm against your skin. 

Jakkor would not recognize you like this, you think. No one from your former life would. If he had survived, somehow, if Thor had simply snatched you and fled and left Jakkor’s head on his shoulders, you would carry no fear that he would find you. Practically, of course, protected by the unforgiving expanse of desert and the clan of warriors that surround you, but also because you know you could stand before him, just as you are now, and his eyes would pass over you without a thought. Because he would see absolutely nothing of the you that you were in you that you are now - there would be nothing left of the you that he knew for him to know. 

The thought is a strange one, a bitter edge to it though it warms you all the same, and it’s one you revisit often when you’re listening to the beat of Thor’s heart as sleep calls to you late in the night. Knowing that you have been remade, wholly and completely, into something completely new, and reveling, utterly, in the knowledge of it. 

It becomes part of your daily routine to slip out into the desert with Feldi. Early, usually, before the sun has lifted past the horizon and before Thor has so much as stirred. You slip through camp to the stables and soon, she learns to greet you at the gate with pricked ears. Eager for the treat you always have stashed for her in your pocket. 

She is quick to saddle, her tack lighter than Rhaek’s and the height of her withers reaching only to your eye level, so you’re able to heft it over her back without issue. You stand on the lowest rail of one of the paddocks to lift your foot into the stirrup and swing on, and once you secure the shroud at your temple, you’re off. 

She is silent as you steer her through the outskirts of camp, her hooves whisper soft on the sand where Rhaek’s pounded like thunder even at a walk. Once you make it past the last rings of the settlement, she perks up. Her head lifting, a quiet snort falling from her muzzle as she sees nothing but open desert ahead of her. You think it makes her remember her past life - galloping through the sands with the dikfonak - it makes something in your chest warm to see her so visibly excited to return to it. 

It becomes clear to you at once why Thor was so bemused by your insistence on learning to ride on Rhaek. Feldi is...easier. In every way. Her gait is less tectonic, her trot easier to sit and her gallop less rocking. You can stop her on a dime with a gentle pressure back on the reins. A gentle nudge of your heels against her sides sends her forward. 

Perhaps there was some sense to it, you think, as you stare out over the dunes glowing gold in the rising morning sun. Learning on Rhaek taught you to be bold and brave, by necessity. There was no option to learn him slowly so you were forced to learn him all at once. To use every muscle in your body to control him, how to sit deep in the saddle to keep yourself from flying off from it. 

Now, on Feldi, you are sure. Confident and comfortable as you steer her out past the first of the dunes and squeeze your knees together. She snorts, tossing her head, and steps into a trot, and then, when you pulse your legs again, into a rolling canter that has you gliding over the sandy ground as easy as breathing. You stand a little in your stirrups and let the saddle sway beneath you, drawing in a deep breath through your shroud and relishing in the cool whip of the breeze across the top of the sand. 

Your bow rests across your back, secured there with braided leather that stretches over your chest. Thudding rhythmically against your spine as your body moves with the motion of her canter as it slips easily into a gallop. You won’t draw upon it today, not nearly ready to have any sort of accuracy when firing from horseback, but the pressure of it around your chest is satisfying. It reminds you, as you practice in the crisp early morning air, of why you’re there. What you’re working towards, what you’re seeking. It helps you push yourself up from the sand when you practice a sharp turn and the whipping speed of Feldi rips you from the saddle and dumps you down to the ground. 

Out there in the sand and the air, with nothing but dunes and desert sun for a thousand miles, is where you remember your old life the most. Oddly, perhaps, memories from that previous time flashing through your mind as you squeeze with your knees and push Feldi farther. Faster, and she tosses her head and surges forward with delight. 

There is no sorrow attached to them, any longer. Those memories. When they flicker through your mind, distant pangs of unyielding thirst and hollow, aching numbness, they bring instead a strange surge of satisfaction. Warm and swelling and thick in your throat. 

Because that life is no more. Those memories, distant and warped already with the passage of time, will remain just that. 

Now, you have this. You have open air and miles of sand and a mount between your legs that lives for that freedom same as you. You have food and you have shelter and you have Thor and you have belonging. 

You have...everything. More than you deserve and more than you could have ever dreamed of or wanted. 

Those early mornings spent in the desert are your solitude and your heaven. Your heart beating in rapid sync with Feldi’s when you finally turn her back towards camp, where you’ll tend to her with a cool bath and another handful of treats. Where you’ll return to your people, to your home, and where everything you could have ever needed in your life will be waiting for you to find it. As steady and sure as the rise and set of the sun. A certainty. A promise, that you carry curled around every hard beat of your heart. 

The sun has begun it’s descent in the sky when you make your way through the camp, your feet soft on the sand beneath them. You’re done with your work in the hadaen okre for the day, having been released from grinding grains and chopping root vegetables an hour prior, and you find yourself pleasantly aimless as you meander through the rows of tents. The nightly feast won’t start for another hour and to stretch the muscles in your legs after spending the day sitting cross legged with a bowl in your lap feels good. 

You have no real plan, gone a little into your own mind as you wander, nodding greetings for those who pass you and offer you the same. The day was a cooler one, and as the sun begins to dip in the sky, the breeze that tugs past you and ruffles the linen of your dress catches the sweat at your temples and brow and makes you shiver contentedly. Tonight will be cooler than usual, you think, and you can’t help the little stir in your belly at the thought of what that will bring. Thor hasn’t kept himself from you many nights in the last months, but he’s been particularly unwilling to on nights when the temperature drops and he gathers you close to shield you from the cool breeze that wisps beneath the heavy canvas of the sides of your tent. 

You hear shouting and cheering, jovial, communal sounds, and you steer towards them without much thought. Heading towards the edge of camp, you realize, and your head lifts when you pass through a last row of tents and see a crowd of people gathered just up ahead. 

You join the throng, moving to the edge of it so you can see over the impressive height that everyone in the clan but you seems to carry, curious to see what’s captivated them all so. 

Before you is an open space, the sand kicked up and scuffed around by footfall. And on it, circling carefully, is Thor. 

Your chest thrums warm, instinctive and automatic, at the sight of him for the first time since he pressed a kiss to your cheek before rolling from the bedroll that morning. He’s bare chested as he circles over the sand, his feet moving him silently in an arcing circle, the skin of his shoulders gleaming with sweat in the light of the descending sun. His hands are out in front of him, held in loose, easy fists, a fighting position if you’ve ever seen one, and it’s only then that you realize that there’s someone else there, too. 

It’s a child. A teenager, more accurately, likely in his thirteenth or fourteenth year, his hair just long enough to be secured back at the nape of his neck. His size is impressive, considering, weedy and tall like he’s just undergrown a spurt of growth, his shoulders not yet broad to counter the height of his frame. He is circling too, and in his hands is a wooden dagger, the edges blunted off with time and wear.

A chuckle falls from your lips and you scrub your palm down your face with a little dry humor. It’s the same one Thor had used with you, weeks and weeks ago. When he taught you to fight, out in the clearing. Thor had avoided the question when you’d posed it back then but you’d known then and now know that it was the same weapon. He’d taught you with a child’s toy. Your shoulders shake a little as a silent little laugh shakes you, before it dies out when your eyes track a sudden move from the teen. 

He’s quick. Faster on the sand than you would ever be, juking hard left and then lunging forward, dagger thrust at the center of Thor’s gravity. So quick that the crowd watching murmurs, a little surprised. 

There’s a grapple, the sound of sweat-slicked skin against skin, and then they separate, the boy’s chest rising and falling as he puffs out hot breaths. Dagger still in hand, having not landed a fatal blow. After another full circle, him and Thor moving in mirrored tandem, he lunges forward again. 

This time, you watch Thor. He moves effortlessly, like he always does. In a blink, so quick you can barely track it, but with effort, you can see that he’s parrying the boy’s moves without responding. Every time the boy lunges, he absorbs the move, ducking or dipping his body, shoving the boy’s body away with hard, aimed hands. He never counters. Never strikes back, and when the boy slows, after the fifth or sixth strike, looking visibly winded, Thor beckons him once more with a wave. 

The boy strikes again, a strangled yell ripping from his lungs as he propels his tired body over the sand, closing the distance between them in a breath, and you watch, as clear as day, as Thor reacts, ducking instinctively, but then lurches. Locks still, his body going rigid mid-movement. 

The dust settles and people squint against the setting sun, and the crowd erupts in cheers when they see that the boy has managed to press the blunt edge of the wooden dagger against Thor’s throat. They stay like that for a moment, pressed together, both of their shoulders heaving from effort, and then Thor palms heavily at the back of the boy’s head and pushes him off. A gentle looking crossing his face when he says something to the boy that you can’t hear, but when the boy trots back to the crowd, who greets him with cheers and shouts, he is beaming. Grinning from ear to ear, as those in the crowd slap him on the back and crowd around him in joy. 

Your eyes return to Thor and stay there. Feeling some level of anonymity in the crowd which allows you to look your fill of him without any tingling sense of embarrassment that you get whenever others see you gawking at him. 

You weren’t lying to him before, when you’d told him he was monstrous. That when you’d first seen him, stepping into the throne tent in your old village, you’d thought him more creature than man. You haven’t truly accustomed to the size of him, not even after all the time you’ve spent with him. 

Everyone in the clan is large, something in the genes you assume, but he stands above them all. Broader in shoulder, with a barrel chest that’s as thick as three of you. Arms strong and banded hard with muscle, tenons beneath the skin that jump and flex absently, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, as he watches the crowd accept the boy into the mix, the look on his face a little fond. 

He’s sweating, his skin glossy in the heat of the setting sun, and you feel a little thrill in your belly as you recognize the impulse in you to lick at the slicked skin at the hollow of this throat. You look around you, casting your eyes quietly left and right, feeling like someone must have heard that thought, must have sensed it for how it trickled down your spine, but no one in the crowd is paying you any mind. Which is just as well. You take your lower lip between your teeth and a breath escapes around it. Airy, letting out some of the tension that’s built up in you at the sight of him. Your husband, tall and strong and smiling at something stirring at the edge of the crowd. 

The next contender stumbles out from the crowd and your legs nearly give. Your hand actually comes up to press against your heart, at the sudden, painful ache you feel there, when the figure trotting out across the bumpy sand to meet Thor, the wooden dagger gripped between two hands, is a little boy who can’t be older than four. 

The crowd cheers him on and the effect is immediate. The boy looks back and grins, white teeth flashing behind his lips, looking like he’s laughing a little, before he turns back and charges bravely out to where Thor is waiting to meet him. 

Your hand remains pressed against your chest, your heart strangling tight in an ache you feel down to your toes, as Thor dips smoothly down to his knees, and raises his hands in a fighting stance. 

What follows is the most absurd, adorable thing you’ve ever seen. It’s something between play fighting and gentle instruction, with the little boy jabbing at Thor with the dagger and Thor guiding him with careful hands. Catching him when he trips and righting him on his feet, directing his arm when the boy lunges forward on a little roaring sound, encouraging the blade to slash harmlessly across the broad span of Thor’s forearm. 

He’s speaking to the boy, you can’t hear it but you can see his lips move even from your distance, and you can see the boy trying. Stumbling, then getting to his feet with Thor’s help, and lunging again. Giving a valiant little scream every time he does, sometimes missing Thor all together but often getting close enough that Thor can guide him into making successful contact with the edge of the wooden blade. 

You watch it play out from what feels like a great distance. Gone into yourself at the sight, your heart aching painfully in your chest at the grin that lifts the corners of Thor’s mouth when the boy manages a halfway decent strike. Your mind swirls a little, returning to what has become a frequent fantasy of yours with practiced ease. Thor, holding your newborn baby in his big hands, speaking to it in his native tongue, his voice dropped low in adoration and reverence. Thor sleeping with your baby on his bare chest, nodding off together when the sun dips low. Thor teaching your child to fight and to ride, Thor carrying your child around by its ankles while it screams and cackles in delight. Thor waking in the night to check on the child when you’re too exhausted to stir in the early morning hours. 

It all comes rushing back to you, that ache, that yearning want, and your hand drops to your belly in spite of yourself. Nothing there, you know, but you palm the little curve of fat and muscle there all the same. Wanting, so badly it makes your eyes burn a little in the light of the setting sun. 

The boy tires quickly, expectedly, and Thor ends up carrying him back to the crowd, his dramatically limp body stretched across Thor’s forearm as Thor brings him back to those waiting for him, who greet him with a warrior’s welcome, same as they did the teenager. 

From his place near the edge of the crowd, Thor’s eyes find yours, and you feel it like a physical thing. He stills at once, like he hadn’t known you were there, and you feel that stillness stretch in the space between the two of you. Private and quiet, just the two of you as you stare openly back at him, unable to stop the utterly, stupidly fond look that settles deeply on your face.

You think that will be the end of it, and you think Thor does too, because there’s a vaguely surprised look on his face when someone calls his name across the ring and he turns to find a man standing there, his face bright with something that looks like a fight. It’s Davrro, one of his riders, and you can’t miss the utterly delighted look that crosses Thor’s face when Davrro raises his hand and shows that he has a wooden dagger too. Ready, it seems, for a proper spar. 

The crowd murmurs with approval, excitement carrying through the people there like a wave, and Thor tosses you a look, teasing almost, and jogs to the edge of the circle at once. The wooden dagger shifting in his hand, the hilt twisting there as he goes to retrieve something. 

He stands to full height and you watch as he lifts his chestplate over his head with one arm, slipping his head through and letting it thud heavily onto his shoulders. He secures the straps beneath each arm with one hand, rolling his shoulders as he returns to the ring, and now the crowd is properly excited. People are murmuring, jostling each other a little as more people crowd to the front. Eager to see a proper bout between two grown fighters, and your chest tightens a little with the excitement around you. 

The shift in Thor is palpable. His movements grow sharper. Quicker, as he and Davrro begin to circle each other, foot stepping over foot as they move around each other like viper’s preparing to strike. The expression on his face simmers in your belly a little. Darker, more serious. Harder, with a sharp edge to the lift of the corner of his mouth as he says something to Davrro you can’t hear. He lives for this, you realize, watching him. His blood is singing for this, thrumming with the promise of a good fight, as he and his rider circle each other, eyeing each other hard. 

Davrro feints, a step left and then exploding to the right, and you can’t stop the gasp that rips from you when they collide. Their bodies slam together, their chest plates cracking together like thunder, and there are grunts, curses, and traded blows before the two of them separate. Stepping back in a sort of gentleman’s agreement, back to the outer edge of the ring, where they begin to circle once more. 

Thor has transformed before your eyes, and you can’t quite believe the sight. The gentle curve of his shoulders from before, the soft call of his voice to the boy he knelt before is gone. His expression has gone a little wild, his lip lifting in a touch of a snarl, as he grips and re-grips the wooden hilt of the dagger in his hand. His eyes working, sizing up his opponent, and you know his mind is whirling too. Thinking, strategizing, and before you can blink, they’re rushing forward again. 

Another crash, another slam of bodies, and you watch, your mouth flushing a little with saliva as they grapple. Thor isn’t holding back. You can see it in every part of him, from the grip and bulge of the muscles along his arms to the sounds ripped from him, gravel and deep, as he and Davrro struggle together. Arms shoving, legs sweeping. Gripping, swiping, jabbing, in dizzying whirl of a dance, before they separate once more, both of their chests rising and falling with exertion as they circle each other again. 

This is Thor at his truest, you think. Heat sparking up in your belly at the sight of him like this. In a way you’ve rarely seen - feral. Sharp, like a predator. Showing his teeth to his opponent, daring him, challenging him, to come at him. The muscles in his arms and his neck jumping eagerly beneath the skin. This is Thor the warrior. Thor the fighter. Thor the monster and the creature and the leader and the man. 

Memories from your previous life return to you then, watching as he and Davrro clash again. Your mind going a little fuzzy as you get swept up in the excitement of the crowd, who are beginning to cheer and call out around you. You remember Thor stepping into that tent that day, a black shroud tied around his face. You remember the size of him - his height and breadth, the way he towered over Jakkor, even perched up on his throne. The ease with which he lifted his battle axe and swung it in a great arc - the way he ended that former life in one, swift strike. 

The reality of it hits you then. Differently, somehow, from the times you’ve thought on it previously, and there had been many. Seeing Thor like this, his full strength on display, his teeth bared and hearing roaring snarls fall from his lips, and pairing it with the memory of the day of your salvation, trying this Thor, that you know as well as yourself, to that Thor, that dark, impossible savage of a man, has your knees feeling weak with the enormity of it all. 

He saved you. You know this. You’ve known this, for months, but it takes on new meaning now, watching Thor grapple and spar and fight before your very eyes. He saved you, and he’d do it again. You know, watching him, seeking his chest puff with breath and fighting rage, that he would rip the world in two, if it meant saving you. If he needed to. He would burn it all down, raze every standing structure. Destroy himself, destroy everything, if it meant keeping you safe. If it meant protecting you. His wife. His moon and his stars. His little bug. 

The rest of the fight goes on before you but you barely see it. You’re too aware of yourself, too wrapped up in the sensations of your own body, to be able to track the explosive movements and the crashing bodies. You feel like you’re floating, a little. Drifting, even though your feet are rooted to the ground, as your body thrums on some ripple of heat. Some deep, dark pull of possession and desire that has your hands balling nearly into fists at your sides as the swell of it washes over you. 

It’s not until the crowd cheers, some satisfactory ending of the fight reached, and when Thor suddenly appears before you that you fully return to yourself. You blink up at him, brought around first by the smell of him, like musk and sweat and pumping blood, and then by the feeling of his presence. 

He’s grinning, sharp, his eyes lit up like a fire, but when he looks down at you, you see his expression shift, as plain as day. It softens, for a moment, like he saw the vacancy in your eyes before you came back to yourself, but then his eyes track down your form and he sees the flush to your cheeks that’s begun to travel down your throat. He sees the flare of your nostrils as you breathe, the dark pools that your eyes have become as you’ve watched him scrap and fight. And his expression turns, then too. Goes more heated. Gathers an edge back to it, in his eyes, as he understands. As he knows. 

He takes your hand and makes it three strides of you stumbling after him, before he turns and hoists you into his arms. You scramble against him, groaning softly, grateful, as your legs wrap around his waist and you go to him. Throwing your arms around his neck and finding his mouth with yours. Gripping at the braid at the back of his head, damp with sweat, and crying softly into his mouth when his teeth close around your lower lip in a hard, possessive tug. 

He carries you through camp, completely blind. Occupied by the hard press of your mouth to his, the smear of your lips against each other. Finding his way by some base-level instinct, managing to avoid knocking into anything too important, and you’re sucking on his throat desperately, whining, writhing in his arms by the time he gets you to a place that’s abandoned. No one in sight, no sounds of conversation or activity. 

He soothes you, curls his hand around the back of your head and presses hot, open-mouthed kisses to your cheek, to your jaw, murmuring that he knows, he knows, he has you, as he ducks you into a lonely tent out at the end of one of the rows. One used for storage, great stacks of crisp, folded linens piled up into columns that come up to your waist, and it’s here that Thor sets you down. Leaning down to suck at your tongue when the loss of his arms around you makes you whimper pathetically. 

His hands on you are greedy. Taking, searching. Groping at the curve of your breasts until you gasp against him, your center pulsing achingly down as his other hand grips tight at your rear. So hard that he spreads it in his hand and you feel a rush of cool air down between your legs, where you’re soaking. 

He’s hard and you can’t keep yourself from him. Your hands feeling at him desperately through his breeches, both of them, curling around the shape of his cock, feeling the burning heat of it, as you pant against his mouth. Desperate, begging silently, needing, needing, needing. 

Your head whirls when he turns you in place. Pushes you up against one sturdy pile of linens until your hands come up to grip at it. His hands find your waist, and you groan, sinful, too loud, when shoves the linen of your dress up over your ass and shifts closer, his other hand working at his waist. 

You pant there, facing away from him. Your forehead pressed against scratchy linen as you tilt your hips back against his hand, presenting yourself, reedy and hollow for him, waiting for him, dripping down the inside of your own thigh - 

His breath gusts from him when he shoves himself close and his cock glides thickly through the folds of your sex. You groan, loud, breathless, and nod, frantically, your feet shifting apart on the ground as he pushes closer still and takes himself in hand. Grunting out a wounded sound, his breath puffing hot over your ear, as he presses his cock against where you’re trembling and wet and shoves into you with one hard rut of his hips. 

Your head falls forward, your entire body wracking on a tremble, as he seats himself fully. Both of his hands gripping tight around your waist, positioning you where he wants you, and then he fucks into you. Draws back and then fucks forward, so hard that the sound of slapping skin echoes up between you. 

“Thor,” you moan, delirious, teetering close to the edge already, pleasure a buzzing, writhing thing in your veins, and then his cheek presses to the side of your head and he groans your name, and then gives himself over to it. 

It is fast and rough. Hard slaps of hips together, gasping, staccato breaths forced from your lungs with each thrust, filling the air of the tent with the sounds of your joining. With the force of his claim over you as he fills you again and again. Gritting out ragged sounds beside your ear, murmuring to you as he catches his breath. Promises that make your toes curl against the sand, gusting hot against your hair. Words of heated possession and fierce adoration, ripped from him like they’re painful, as his cock spears into you over and over. 

Your entire body is alight as he fucks you. Nerve endings firing off, flaring hot like fire embers, burning you from the inside as you gasp and shake and come apart at the furious plunge of his cock, that hard, steady fill that knocks deep inside of you with every jerk of his hips. You’ve lost to it, your head dropping forward, cheek resting on the stacked linen beneath you. Jolting with every rut, your slick dripping obscenely down your legs, wetting you, wetting him, making your skin slip and slide when it comes together. 

The knowledge that he is close draws you closer, too. Come together like one being, racing towards a devastating finish. He can’t last - not with the fire pumping in his blood from the fight and that it’s the first time he’s taken you like this. Bent you over and staked his claim deep and hard, driven by instinct and blinded by a roaring desire and riptide of want hurtling through him. You know because his hands vice tight on your hips and his teeth close around the shell of your ear. Hard, on a soft grunt, hard enough to make you yelp and jerk against him, your body leaking more slick that he fucks out of you with every thrust. 

He groans your name, catching thick in his throat, and you find yourself nodding frantically. Out of your mind, wanting, needing him to find his release. To bury it deep in your sex where it can take root and grow into something more. 

He stills behind you, his entire body locking rigid, and you feel molten inside as his cock hardens and bursts within you. Lurching deeper into your core, shoved as far as you can take him, as his cock spits lash after hot lash of seed deep into your womb. He groans and shakes as he goes, his hands nearly trembling where they’re gripping your waist, and you can’t breath, can’t even think, his hands on you the only thing keeping you upright - 

He draws back from you a little suddenly. Sooner than you expect. Making you lurch softly between his hands, a delirious whisper falling from your lips, confused, but then he’s groaning hotly against your ear and his fingers find you there. Plunging deep into the tight pulse of your sex and making your body shiver against him, your knees knocking together weakly as he shoves two of his thick fingers into your sex and his thumb presses hard against the crest of it. 

Pleasure spikes through you, so sudden, so sharp that you nearly shout from it. Jerking against him, your head tilting back, and it only takes one, two, three hard plunges of his fingers in you, his thumb rubbing hard at your sensitive nub, before you’re tumbling down after him. Your sex pulsing down hard, angry almost, around his fingers as you gasp out, leaning against him as your body ripples with the force of your release, from the top of your head down to the soles of your feet. 

He lets you slump forward, once the strongest waves have ripped through you. Lets you go a little boneless against the stack of linen before you, gasping, shaking, and you realize on a weak, trembling moan that his fingers are still inside of you. Pushing deep. Gathering the hot gobs of his spend that gravity has drawn down and pushing them back inside of you. His breathing hot and a little ragged over your ear as he does. Massaging the walls of your sex, rubbing his seed deeper and deeper, as you whimper softly and let him. 

When you’ve caught your breath, you turn to him, supported still by his hands on you, and he crowds you at one. Leaning down low and gathering you to him. Pressing his lips to yours as he pushes your hair back gently from your face. Whispering against your cheek, your jaw, “Qoy qoyi,” nearly trembling with the feeling of it in his lungs. Blood of my blood. 

For the urgency of before, there is none now. He rocks you gently side to side as your brain comes back to you. As you regain the ability to speak, to think a single, comprehensive thought. Your entire body is buzzing. Thrumming hot still, and you seek soothing from his hands, which he gives freely. Holding you close and running his palms down your arms. Over your shoulders and down your back, murmuring affections into your hair as he feels you shiver and press against him. Needing him now, in this too. 

You eventually gather yourself enough to step out of the tent, your hair put back into place, your dress tugged back down til the hem lands around your knees. He looks no worse for it, still slick with sweat from the fight but centered, somehow, as he takes your hand and guides you from the tent and out into the cooling night air. 

The sun has set since you’d entered the tent, twilight stretching out over the night sky up overhead. The smell of roasting meat filters through the air and you know at once that the nightly feast has already begun in earnest, and you force your shaky legs to keep up with Thor when he sets off towards the camp center. 

There are no knowing looks passed around the fire when you join late, hand in hand with your husband, at least none that you can see, and for that you are grateful. You settle down in your usual place in Thor’s lap and recline against his chest at once. Exhausted, now that you’re seated and the fire is casting warm waves over you. 

Thor’s arm settles around your waist, comfortable and customary, and you only stay conscious enough to take the bites of food he presses to your lips every time the food platters pass. Letting the rest of you drift, blissed out and hazy, as the moon rises in the sky and the stars come peeking out of the inky black above. 

Thor’s palm settles around your belly, gentle but spread, and it makes your heart beat. Hoping, with everything you have, for the promise of it. Of your future, with him, and whatever else it may bring along with time. 

It takes weeks for you to get comfortable enough with Feldi to even consider carrying your bow in hand, let alone shooting it, but you get there eventually, though not without some persistent pushing from Zhaf during your daily training sessions over her lunch rest. 

You’ve improved at what feels like a snail’s pace, but she insists you’ve come far. You suppose she’s right, because you’ve gone from no previous experience with either weapons or horseback riding, to being able to hit a target at fifty paces while astride Feldi in motion. Well, most of the time you’re able to hit the target. Some of the time. While Feldi is walking painfully slowly and snuffling at the ground for shoots of grass in the sand. 

You’re in the middle of one such session today - Zhaf laid out in the shade of the palm with her upper shoulders and head resting against the base of the trunk, risking life and limb while she dozes directly beneath the target you only manage to sometimes hit - while you slowly guide Feldi back and forth across the open space. Managing to loose two or three arrows with each pass, sweating in the afternoon sun, blinking hard against the sting of it when a drop falls from the corner of your eyebrow and glides directly into your squinting eyes. 

Feldi notices the approaching figures before you do, lifting her head and turning to see, her ears swiveling atop her head, and the suddenness of the motion almost has you toppling from her back even though she retains her glacial pace. You grip at the mane on her withers for security, because now your heart is pumping a little, and when you turn to see what’s caught her attention, it kicks even harder in your chest. 

There’s a group mounted on horseback approaching, and you recognize them at once as a flare of something like embarrassment rips up the back of you. 

It’s the dikfonak, headed out to the desert for a hunt. Approaching at a leisurely pace, the shrouds tied around their noses and mouths flirting in the wind, dogs trotting between the horses, already panting in the heat. 

Khali is in the lead, her hips swaying atop her mount. She’s unmissable, her presence palpable even at a great distance, and even after the months you’ve spent assimilating to life in the clan, she’s never stopped sending you into a quiet stupor whenever she’s around. She’s been polite to you, in the times you’ve crossed paths, if a little disinterested, and you can’t really blame her, because she seems like one of the most intimidating people you’ve ever met in your life. And you’re, well. You’re you. 

You give a little pressure on the reins, just a squeeze of your pinky finger around the braided leather, and Feldi stops dutifully.Letting out a long sigh as her head drops back to the ground to sniff. They’re headed your way and you want to watch them when they spur into the desert, not over that sight still, of the horde ascending into a grouping gallop, so you wipe your palm over your brow to wipe at the sweat beading there, and wait. 

Instead of turning out towards the dunes, though, you watch Khali touch the reins to her horse’s neck and the group turns towards you instead. Moving silently and easily over the sand, riders and horses and dogs alike light-footed and primed for the hard ride and hunt ahead of them. 

You think they can’t possibly be coming to you specifically, and you cast a nervous glance over your shoulder to Zhaf, who is snoring in the shade of the palm. No help to you, then. 

When you turn back, they’re closer still, and you realize they must indeed be coming to you with some intention, because they’ve shown no signs of changing course. 

Nerves prickle at you immediately, aware all at once how childish it must seem to them. To see you out here in the afternoon sun, sweating and practicing and failing at shooting a bow from horseback, something they could all likely do at the tender age of three years old. You realize, as your mind begins to race, that you never asked Thor exactly how one becomes a dikfonak, you just assumed you’d be invited to join if you were suited for it, and the assumption sits queasy in your belly as they approach. Maybe it was presumptuous of you to assume you could ever...that they’d ever…

You’re a second away from taking the reins in hand and spurring Feldi on, turning back towards camp and abandoning Zhaf to her nap, to avoid whatever this is, whatever interaction is about to happen, but then Khali raises a hand in clear greeting and you have no choice but to lift one back to her. 

So you turn Feldi in place to face them, your bow feeling like it’s made of stone in your grip, all too aware of the number of arrows that litter the ground surrounding your target palm, versus the few that are stuck in it’s trunk. 

Khali pulls her horse to a halt a few feet away, and the rest of the group follow silently suit. You feel your heart beating on your tongue and you nod to her. Unsure of what she means to do. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, expecting, somehow, for the group to burst into laughter at the sight of you playing hunter all alone at the edge of the camp. 

“M’ath,” she says to you from behind the fabric secured over her nose and mouth. Her voice rings crisp and cool on the hot air. The group behind her nods, as if joining in the greeting. 

“M’ath,” you return, your belly turning. Your grasp of the language has come a long way, but you’re still not fluent. Especially not without Thor or Zhaf at your elbow to guide you when you get lost. 

She must be in a charitable mood, for when she speaks, it’s slower. More deliberate than you’ve heard her speak before. “Yer lajilat fonat. Ahna tihat asshekh.” 

Your mind scrambles. Translating as best you can, words pinging around in your skull. 

You’ve been training to hunt. I see you out here every day.

You nod, after a pause that’s a touch too long. 

“Sek,” you say. Swallowing past the nervous lump in your throat. “Ahna kis.” 

Yes. I’m trying.

Her eyes are sharp as they assess you across the space between your horses. Not unkind, but revealing nothing of whatever thoughts are in her mind. Her eyes drift to the palm tree. To Zhaf passed out beneath it, then back to you. 

“Yer okkat kohol.”

You chose a bow. 

Your grip tightens around the sturdy wood frame of it in your palm unconsciously. Feldi sighs beneath you, bored. 

You nod. “Sek. Ahna ven kohol.”

Yes. The bow is most natural to me. 

Her eyes remain on you, the color of amber shining in the sun above her shroud. There’s a pause, one of consideration, and then she speaks again. 

“Vatterat.” 

You blink, nearly doing a double take as your whirling mind manages to translate the word. 

Continue. 

Your mouth lifts in a nervous smile, one you’ve grown accustomed to offering when you can’t understand something said to you in their native tongue. 

“Anhe vo tiholat.” 

I don’t understand. 

Her shoulder lifts up and down in something of a shrug and the fabric draped over her nose and mouth shifts, like the corner of her mouth lifted too. She knows you understood her. 

“Oveethat.” 

Shoot your bow. 

Your heart thuds so hard against your ribs that you can taste the reverberation on your tongue. You stare at her, a little dumbfounded as she watches you evenly. It’s a challenge, though you cannot tell from her expression whether she means for you to succeed or fail. 

You wait for a lingering moment, your palms sweating. Your eyes darting from her, to the women behind her, then back to her face. Looking for some sign that she isn’t serious. Some sign that you can weasel your way out of this conversation with an apologetic smile and deference. 

You find none, and when it becomes apparent that she’s willing to wait as long as it takes you to do it, you swallow the nerves in your throat and reach behind you to the lone arrow resting in the quiver across your back. Your heart roars in your ears and something not dissimilar to fear drives you as you turn in the saddle and draw the arrow forward. Letting out a practiced, exhaling breath, letting your eyes settle on the palm trunk a few dozen paces away. 

Then, in one smooth motion, you notch the arrow, raise the bow, draw the string taut, and loose it. 

The arrow hisses as it flies from you, the string twanging softly in the hot air, and you almost cannot believe your ears when you hear the solid, telltale thunk of an arrow burying itself deep into the bark of the palm. 

You lower the bow, looking, because there’s no way, but indeed there is. The arrow is there, stuck deep just over the top and to the right of the circular target Zhaf had drawn over the bark months prior. 

A sound falls from your lips before you can stop it. Nakedly shocked and a little pleased, as you blink across the distance. To the evidence of one of the best shots you’ve taken. 

Khali doesn’t share your amazement, when you turn back to her. She’s watching you as evenly as before. Appraising, not even bothering to look at where the arrow is embedded in the palm, and you have half a mind to ask her.

Did you see it? Did you see?

There’s a murmur among some of the women in the group, not audible to you as anything more than a mumble, but you see Khali nod all the same, and the group settles back into silence. 

“Yer jadat fonakasar ahhaz,” she says, and the words cut through the ringing in your ears like a knife. 

You may just join the hunting party soon, she said. 

Breath rushes out of you. You fear you misunderstand, because she’s watching you impassively, for having made what, to you, is such a grand statement. You shake your head, your tongue feeling far too large for your mouth. 

“Anhe vo tiholat,” you say again, that nervous smile returning with the words like they’re paired in your mind and body. “Affin?” 

I don’t understand. When?

Khali nudges her mount, then, a quiet little pulse of her knees, and the horse steps forward at once. Turning back towards the expansive desert behind you with the light pressure of the rein on its neck as Khali steers it away from you. The group follows, and though she speaks again when she’s moving away from you - towards the vast dunes of the desert and the hunt that awaits them there - you hear her as if she was right beside you. 

“Affin yer hethkat.” 

When you’re ready. 

It’s not an answer, not really, but that doesn’t stop your entire body from feeling like it’s levitating off the saddle as you watch the horde slip forward into a trot, and then into a gallop. Thundering across the sand and away, the sun gleaming off the flanks of their mounts. 

You sit there. Stupefied, as silence falls around you again. So thoroughly wrapped up in the moment that you full-body startle when you head a voice behind you. 

“I can hear your heart racing from here, zheana.” 

You whip around in the saddle and find Zhaf still lounging against the palm, a lazy grin stretched across her face. 

You can’t help it. You want to scream. Your cheeks ache from the smile stretched across them. “Did you hear?” you ask, a little breathless. Wanting nothing more than to dismount from Feldi and throw yourself across the space at her with the joy that’s brewing inside of you like a fount. 

She stretches her arms over her head, stifling a yawn as her joints crack. Shifting, like she means to finally stand. “I did,” she says, nodding. The grin on her face matches yours and you feel it in your chest. “You speak like a child, still.” 

You can’t even bring yourself to be embarrassed, to rise to the teasing barb, because you’re too busy feeling like you’re flying. Wiggling around in the saddle like a child, your body still whirling from the utter whiplash that entire interaction gave you, the tension at first, your anxiety spiking high from having no one to help translate for you, then the cold water fear of being asked to perform, followed by the utter elation when Khali invited you to join the dikfonak. Sort of, at least. At some point. 

It’s a win and it feels like one, and Zhaf lets out another chuckle at the expression on your face when she pushes herself to her feet and dusts the sand from her rear. Walking out into the blazing sun to meet you, her palm coming to rest on Feldi’s neck that’s begun to darken with sweat. 

“You did well,” she tells you, sincerely, and your chest aches with excitement as you look down her. “I told you so.” 

You nod, agreeing, thankful beyond words in the moment that she kept coming out to this spot on the edge of camp to spend her lunch rest with you, day after day, for months. Encouraging you, calling out whatever tips she was able to offer. 

You open your mouth to say so, to thank her, but she must sense your direction because she waves you off with an easy smile. “No need, zheana. Let’s get out of the sun. You’re starting to burn.” 

You did burn, you’ll find out later that night when Thor pokes at your pink shoulders with more than a hint of amusement, but right now you can’t feel a thing. Too elated, too stupid with happiness to think of anything else but the future that awaits you. Imagining the wind in your hair and the sand disappearing beneath Feldi’s hooves as you gallop across the dunes in a pack of wild women. 

Free, free, free. 

Your feet are a little heavy as you make your way back to the tent after the feast, leaden with the wine you’d perhaps over-indulged in, taking deep pulls when the leather flask was passed around the fire. You feel fuzzy with it, warm around the edges, and it means Thor keeps his hands on you as you walk beside him in the dark. 

He drank too, but kept his wits about him, and you wonder dimly to yourself as your gaze lifts to the moon shining bright overhead, how much he’d have to drink for him to be properly touched by it. Your stupid, tipsy mind supplies the vision of a great sea of dark wine, waves white-capping in the wind, and you snort softly to yourself at the thought. 

You can feel the humor in him beside you, his arm a loose cage around your waist to keep you upright as you trip a little, and it’s that warm edged feeling when he’s making fun of you a little, in his mind at least, but out of some strange fondness rather than actual spite. Perhaps you should be embarrassed to be leaning on him like this, a little slurred when he’s perfectly together, but you can’t bring yourself to be, because he’s seen you far, far worse and kept you at his side anyway. 

Inside the tent, you go to the bed at once. Walking blindly forward until the edge of it nudges your shins and then collapsing down onto it with a heavy sigh. Rolling onto your back with what feels like immense effort, your body heavy and blurry, when the lantern overhead lights and Thor’s arms drop back to his sides. 

You feel a distant little pulse in the core of you. A twist of something warm that you recognize as some premonition of want, and you give him what you hope is some alluring look from where you’re sprawled across the bedroll. 

You’re not sure what your face actually does but it makes him snort, his brows lifting on his face, as he toes off his boots. The shame that would usually tickle the back of your neck is nowhere to be found, your mind too swirly and nice, so you just make whatever face you’re making at him harder. Because surely, that was the problem. 

It makes him laugh. His shoulders shaking in a huffing chuckle as he looks down at you on the bed, his expression a twist of incredulity and something maybe a little warm, a little affectionate, and then he mutters, “What will I do with you?” to himself as he strips out of his chestplate and breeches. 

You’re undeterred when he finally settles himself down on the bedroll beside you, sure now that the feeling that’s simmering in you is desire, and knowing, in the very heart of you, that you can ask, and he will give it to you. 

You shift onto your side so you’re facing him, licking your lips because your mouth feels a little dry when his eyes drop to yours. You read him plain as day, seeing the little flicker across his face. As you watch him recognize that look in you, too, his eyes shading a little dark. Knowing you so well, now, that you rarely have to ask aloud. 

He breathes out a sigh, tipping his head towards you. His hand coming up to touch gently at your cheek, his eyes tracking it when you lean into the touch. A little greedy for it, nudging your face against his palm. His thumb touches at your lower lip, presses gently on your teeth behind it, and the strength in his hand makes you shiver against him. Let out a quiet, shuddering breath as you feel heat in your cheeks. 

“You’re wound tight, little bug,” he observes, sounding pleased. The tip of your tongue touches at the pad of his thumb, a shy little touch, and that makes a sound rumble out of his chest. “What would you like for me to do to you?” 

The question is simple but feels anything but to your mind that’s syrupy with drink and the growing heat of the moment. Anything, you think. Everything, and you don’t think you say it out loud, but your lips must mumble it, for his eyebrows lift on his face like he heard you. 

He shifts his body against you, rolling a little closer, and the sure spread of his hand over the curve of your hip has you sighing softly. A little bit of tension released, just like that. From the promise there in that touch. That quiet, unspoken assurance that he knows what you need and that he will provide for you, as he always does. 

You can see in his face when an idea comes to him, just a passing blink of a look on his face, and then the corner of his mouth twitches up and he rolls his body over top yours to kiss you. Humming softly in his chest when your lips part for his at once, your hands coming up to touch at the backs of his arms needily. 

He takes his time. Whatever inspiration struck him requires no urgency it seems, as he kisses you long and deep. Holding your jaw in his hand and tasting into your mouth. Nudging his nose against yours as his hand drifts beneath the hem of your sleep shift and lifts up, the pads of his fingers dragging gently across the sensitive skin of your belly. 

You breathe into his mouth on a low sigh when his palm curves around the weight of your breast, your mouth going distracted and slack against his when your nipple pebbles up against the rough skin of his palm. His hand pulses there, grips you a little, and it draws a sound from you that has him humming to himself again. Lowly, pleased as he presses his teeth to the edge of your jaw and feels your body arch softly against his. 

By the time he lifts your sleep shift over your head and discards it, you’re breathing heavily. Your chest rising and falling in deep breaths that you feel down in your toes, your fingers carding in his hair as his mouth closes around the bud of your nipple and he teases it with his teeth. A soft little nip, chased by the sooth of a hot tongue, and if you felt delirious before, you’re in a full on haze, now. Drifting within your own body, your senses all narrowing down to singular, sharp points where his body is touching yours. Feeling it, all of it, in your very bones, as he smears his mouth over your sternum and his hand finally begins to drift lower. 

You sigh again, your head tipping back against the bed roll. Your legs parting around the bulk of his body as he moves down you, your eyelids fluttering as you wait for the familiar search of his fingers against where you can feel you’ve gone feverish and wet. You wait, your mind bleary and pleasured, but then a sensation makes you jolt. Makes your head lift up, your eyes finding his. 

His mouth is on the inside of your thigh. Teeth testing the skin there, sucking a little, and heat ripples through your body. Makes it arch and shiver, unable to tear your eyes from him as he runs his nose along that tender skin, making it twitch under the hot fan of his breath. 

“Anything?” he murmurs, his eyes still on yours. Molten, in the flickering lantern light. Bringing you back to before, the words you hadn’t meant to whisper but had all the same. 

Your mind sparks a little, heat spooling in your belly as confusion and a touch of apprehension coil with arousal at the look in his eyes. You nod, a little breathless, but you are not prepared for what happens next. 

He hmms to himself, another pleased sounding rumble that you feel in the air, and then he is leaning down. Ducking his head between your thighs until you feel the hot puff of his breath against your sex. 

You flinch. Full-bodied, a startled gasp falling from your lips, and only the bulk of his shoulders keeps your thighs from clamping around his head as your legs spasm instinctively. 

“Thor,” you murmur, rushed, not able to understand what you’re seeing. What you’re feeling, but you feel his lips brush faintly against you as he murmurs a soft assurance, and then your body is vicing off the bedroll when you feel his tongue against you. A firm, wet slide of his tongue from the bottom of you to the top, all up the seam of you, and the sound that rips from you is choked.

“Affa,” you feel him murmur, a quiet soothe, and then he shifts closer to you still and curls his arms around the hinge of either of your thighs. Holding you tightly, snug to him, as he lowers his head again and opens his mouth against the hot, slicked mess of your sex. 

Pleasure burns through you. Rips through you like a current, sharp like a bolt of lightning, and your thighs do clamp down then. Restrained by the curl of his arms around them as your chest stutters and heaves. Overwhelmed, drowning in it, in an instant. Your hands flailing over the rumbled bedding beneath you and gripping down there tight, as your hips lurch between his hands. To move away, to press closer, you don’t know. You can barely breathe, your lungs aching, can barely see as your head shoves back hard against the bed. 

He reminds you to breathe, his nose pressing against the crease of your hip and you do, sucking in a hot, rattling gasp when you feel that his nose and mouth are soaked from you. Smearing hot slick against your thigh before he moves back down, opening his mouth againt your sex like a kiss. His lips heated and soft, tasting at you there. His tongue touching out to drag through your folds, chasing the dew of you there with a soft, deep groan, and it hits you like fire, scorching, when you force yourself to look down between your legs at him, and you see his face. See the fan of his lashes on his cheeks, his eyes closed, as he feasts on you, like you’re the finest thing that’s ever touched his tongue. 

“Thor,” you moan, your blood hot and thick, pumping sluggishly in your veins as you try to grapple with the sensation. So different than the press of his finger or the plunge of his cock. 

It feels...like a caress. Wet and warm and teasing, a hint of pressure, just a taste, making your hips twitch against his face of their own accord. Seeking it out, as the back of your hand comes to rest over your brow. Watching, like you’re removed from yourself, as your body responds to him over the twisting whirl of your mind that is still, somehow, struggling to process this. 

Thor grunts softly against you, affirming, when your hips begin to nudge against him. Tilting against his mouth, feeling the first syrupy pulls of pleasure in your core and leaning into it. Wanting more, and like he read your mind, Thor’s mouth drifts up, his breath painting hot along your entrance, and then his tongue presses flat and wet across the crest of your sex. 

“Uhn - ” 

Your entire body lurches like it was shocked, your fingers vicing in the bedding as your back arches again and your hips jump against him. He holds you steady, his arms secure around your thighs, and when the muscles there begin to tremble, he takes pity on you. Draws back, a breath gusting out of you from the release of that hot pressure, and then begins to lick at you there. Soft, gentle caresses of his tongue, alongside that little bundle of nerves. On either side of it, making sparks skitter up your legs and down your arms with each pass as you breathe like you’ve run a great distance, rasping weakly for air. 

He alternates between these - gentle, off-set licks and then the hot, wet pressure of the flat of his tongue against that twitchy little nub - his eyes casting up your body every time he switches, like he’s watching your reactions very closely. 

When he’d mentioned this to you before, murmured whispers of want that had made your body ripple in the heat of the moment, you couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t even summon a picture of what it would look like, or what it would feel like in your mind. You’d thought, even then, that the act must be a strange one to partake in, something to endure, for who would want to taste you there. 

Looking down at Thor now, though, you see in his eyes the hottest, darkest edge of possession in his eyes that you’ve ever known. His cheeks are flushed in the dim light as he breathes through his nose, his mouth pressed tightly to you, and you know, from the hard grip of his arms on your hips, that he’s drowning in want for you as he does this. That no force of heaven or earth could wrench him from you now. You know, as you reach for him with a shaky hand and touch your fingers to the sweat-darkened hair at his temple that you’ve somehow given him a great gift, to allow him this. 

“O-oh,” you breathe, your hips rocking gently against his mouth, when the steady press of his tongue makes heat begin to well inside of you. Lapping at you like waves on a shore, growing, slowly, steadily, with every moment that that slick pressure remains, and then you’re exhaling when he draws back. His eyes dark on you as he feels you shudder when he returns to his gentle licks, like he knows. Like he knows precisely what he is doing to you. Like he’s guiding you down a narrow path that he knows as well as the back of his own hand. 

He keeps you like this. Letting pleasure begin to tighten in your belly, letting heat begin to fill you like a haze each time he presses his mouth to you and rests there, loosening his grip on your thighs to encourage you to push your hips back against him. To deepen the pressure, to light sparks deeper along your nerves, as the swirl of it builds and tides within you. 

And then, just as you feel it begin to rise, when your pleasure begins to draw up sharply, he withdraws. Watching you, his eyes drifting up the expanse of your body, as you tremble with something like disappointment, as he returns to drawing his tongue up and down around the crest of your sex. 

You realize, after what feels like an hour, a lifetime, that he’s doing it with intention. Something he’s never done before, where you’ve grown accustomed to him drawing your pleasure from you with practiced skill and deliberate intention. Taking none of it for granted every time your sex would clutch and pulse around him, pleased with every ripple of release he managed to pull from you. 

Now, though. Now he has you between his hands. Malleable and honeyed, drawing you gentle up towards a precipice before letting you drift back down. Keeping you suspended in this blissful, drifting place of sustained, delirious pleasure. Not the sharp spike of your release but a steady, pulsing thrum of something deeper. Something fuller bodied and rooted in the very core of you, as he rocks you between the sensations with the gentle guidance of his lips against you. 

You breathe out his name, your thumb touching to the side of his brow, overwhelmed with sensation but grounded thoroughly to him as he presses his tongue to you, and you feel your pleasure spike up in your belly. Faster, now. Responding to him quicker, more urgently, as if your body is begging him to move this along. To let you edge closer and closer to the promise of something that will wring you of everything you have. 

He hmms again, you feel it against you and it draws your eye, though they crumple shut again immediately when he shifts and you feel something. The flat pad of his finger, caressing the slit of your entrance with a tough that’s lighter than a feather, and your entire core pulses down at the feeling of it. Clenches down rough, on a wounded sound, almost painfully, as the realization of how empty you are sears through you. 

You whimper, thrashing a little against the bedding, but he doesn’t make you wait. He breathes out through his nose and presses close against you. Pressing the flat of his tongue against the crest of your sex as his finger slips easily inside of you. Making you keen softly, your head jerking to the side, as you wait for him to move. To begin to fuck you with his finger, to add more. To fill you up tight and claim you, like he has each time before. 

Instead, his finger presses deep inside of you, gliding easily through the hot, slick channel of your sex, and then he presses it down. 

Your mind shorts out. Flashes hot and white in a blinding instant, because you know it’s just one finger, you know it’s not his cock, but when he presses that finger down against the floor of your sex, your body seizes with the feeling of being stuffed full. Fuller even than the press of his heavy cock within you, full like you might just burst with it, and your entire body jerks against him, reflexively, feeling like you’ll suffocate from it. 

“Thor,” you gasp, your body writhing like you’ve been possessed by something otherworldly, “Thor - ” 

He grunts, deep in his chest. Shoves himself against you as hard as he can, his mouth and tongue a fevered, wet press against your little bundle of nerves and his finger splitting you open, stuffing you to your throat, and you have no time to even register the feeling before your release spikes up through your belly like a blade of molten iron. Sharp and merciless, scouring through you, building, building, and then bursting within you like the shattering of something deep and heavy and fire. 

You’ve felt nothing like this in all your years. It’s all you can do to cling to him, your body twisting, fighting, as pleasure tears through you. Shreds you, ripping along every bone and muscle and nerve, until you finally collapse back against the bed. Only distantly aware of the wail that had wrenched from your lungs, loud, far too loud for the hour, but you can’t bring yourself to muster an ounce of shame as your hands drop to the bed on either side of your body and your entire self begins to shake. 

He holds you through it all. Releasing the pressure of his mouth when you whine and push at his face, but remaining there, watching you. His nose and mouth shining in the low light, red and puffed from his effort, his beard soaked dark with your slick as he sees your pleasure rip itself from you and out into the night air. 

Your mouth is running when you come back to yourself. Slowly, in bleary, swirling pieces, and you realize that you’re speaking a slur of your language and his. Some senseless, mindless jumble, words interchanged, as your wrought mind sputters and sparks weakly, as the last of it finally begins to ebb from you. 

There’s movement between your legs, and you let out a trembling moan when you see him lift up to his knees there. His body towering between your thighs, his chest shining with sweat and heaving with labored breath.

You watch as he takes his cock in hand, red and fat and achingly hard. You wonder, for one fuzzy, anxious moment, if he’ll take you like this. If he’ll settle close and spear himself into you, and the thought makes your lungs constrict so hard it hurts, knowing, somehow, that if he does, you’ll cry - but he just breathes out lowly. His tongue coming out to run over his lips, to taste what remains of you there, as he works himself in his hand. Hard, gripping pumps over his cock, prespend drooling thickly from the head as his eyes rove over your body. Where you’re utterly wrecked and spread out beneath him, gasping as you try to bring your senses back on line. 

He doesn’t last, and in some future time that fact will ripple through you when you realize that he drew himself so very close to his release simply from pressing his mouth between your legs. You watch the muscles in his belly bunch and clench, and you nod to him weakly. Murmuring his name, wanting him. Wanting this, and then he presses himself close to you on a deep groan. Guiding his cock to the sopping mess of your entrance and resting it just there as his cock kicks and spurts in his grip. Shooting seed into you, his brows collapsing on his face as he shudders through it. 

You don’t have the strength to do anything but lay there and he seems to know it. Seems to revel in it, if you can read him at all through the blur of your vision. He stays with you a few moments longer, there between your legs, and you feel his fingers against you. Pushing what spills of his seed back inside of you, until you’re whimpering his name and he takes it for the summons that it is. 

He cares for you more thoroughly than usual, this time. Ends up helping you sit up and bringing a water pitcher to your lips, encouraging you to take deep pulls of the cool water in a low, murmured voice that curls around you like an embrace. He arranges your body down on the bedding with care when you’re satiated, his hand pressing over your sternum as if to check the beat of your heart. To make sure it still beats steady and true. 

By the time he settles himself down beside you, you’re already close to gone. Hazy, feeling like your mind has been stuffed with cotton, your entire body echoing on a warm, pleasured thrum. He says something to you as his weight dips against the bedroll but you can’t hear it. Can’t understand it, but your hand finds him anyway. Bumping blindly against his chest before your palm spreads out and rests there. An assurance, to him, the only one you can manage, that you are well. That you are more than well, here in his arms. 

You drift away to the sound of his voice. The rich timbre of it that you feel as it vibrates from his chest, reaching for sleep like an old and trusted friend. Knowing that he has you, here, and that you can allow yourself to sink slowly down into the bed of comforting pleasure he so delicately crafted just for you. 

Your sleep that night is dreamless and deep, guarded from the cool night air by the press of his body, as safe and secure as you’ve ever been in all of your years. Home, truly, in body and mind and spirit, as the moon passes bright overhead in the inky dark of the night sky.

So much time passes from when you’d first joined the clan to now without Thor ever departing for a raid with his riders that you almost forget that that’s how you came to the camp in the first place. You settle so thoroughly into life here, working at the hadaen okre and practicing with your bow with Zhaf and Feldi, coming back to Thor in the evening time for the feast before bedding down together, that the fact that the clan is one of raiders completely slips your mind. 

You’re reminded, in a nauseating rush, one night at the feast, when you lean back against Thor’s chest and your palm comes up to find his bearded cheek. Reaching up behind yourself to curve your fingers against his jaw, and you ask him in a quiet voice, what has the mood of the feast so...uneasy. You understand enough of the conversation around you now that you know something is different, though no one is putting words to exactly what has the air around the fire a little tense. A little jittery, as everyone passes the food around to each other and partakes. 

You feel Thor hum behind you, his chest plate vibrating with it, and he turns his face to press his mouth to the center of your palm. His voice is quiet in your ear when he speaks. Just for you. 

“We ride at dawn,” he says, and it takes you a long, lingering moment, to understand his meaning. 

Your heart jolts, skittering behind your ribs when all at once you realize that he doesn’t mean like normal, he means a raid, and it takes all of your willpower to keep from spinning in his lap and griping at him. Demanding more answers, more information, but you know, somehow, that the atmosphere around the fire is balancing on a delicate knife’s edge, and you let out a stiff breath between your lips, so as not to disturb it. 

“A raid,” you say, needing to confirm, and Thor nods against your palm. You drop your hand to your lap, nerves instantaneous and bitter in your throat, and Thor’s hand moves to cover yours. 

You sit in silence for a few minutes, Thor’s fingers tracing the bumps of your knuckles. You decline a platter of meats and soft cheese of goat’s milk when it’s offered and it gets passed beyond you, suddenly sure you can’t keep anything else down. 

Thor seems to know that you need time, because he gives it to you. Breathes steadily beneath you, waiting, for your inevitable questions to follow. 

There’s a little skirmish in your mind as you sit there on his lap. Part of you, the sensible, rational part, feeling stupid for being so surprised by this. By being so afraid of this. It’s how you came to the camp, after all, and another raiding clan had tried to take the camp just a few months prior. Thor came through both no worse for the wear, save a new scar or two, so the reasonable part of you pushes back hard on the part of your mind that wants, stupidly, embarrassingly, to cry. 

“Why?” is what you manage to get out eventually, clenching your jaw around a wobble in your voice. You stare into the flames of the fire before you and feel his thumb continue to trace the knuckles along the back of your hand. 

He lets out a breath that sounds a touch like a sigh. Not impatient, but steadying instead. His arm is heavy where it’s draped over your thigh, and you focus on the feeling of it, to keep yourself from feeling like you’re drifting away from him. 

“It is our way of life,” he says, and the gentle tilt in his voice has you scrubbing over your face with your palm. Grousing at yourself to get it together so he doesn’t have to be so tender with you. “We take, or others take from us. There’s no other way, living out here.” 

You let his answer sit with you. Knowing it to be truth, knowing it to be right, but feeling your lungs thicken with some grip of emotion all the same. 

You know Thor, near as well as you know yourself. You’ve seen him fight. You’ve seen him ride and lead and defend. You know he is strong, more than, and capable. You know that he has returned home safe from every raid he’s undertaken, to be resting beneath you now. That doesn’t stop the icy touch of fear from touching at your spine. Having so much to lose, now. So much at risk, with a life this content. 

“Are you eager?” you ask him. Murmuring, your eyes going distant in the glowing embers at the base of the flames. Not sure why you ask because you know his answer. 

You’re asking him if he prizes the fight, the hard ride, the battle, over you. You’re asking him if he’s willing to risk everything for it. You’re asking if he’ll leave you out here, widowed and alone and wailing, in the desert, if his mount comes back to camp without him astride it. 

It’s not a fair question, and you open your mouth to withdraw it, to take it back, but he speaks before you can. His voice measured on the cool air. Diplomatic, deliberately, his hand pulsing softly around yours. 

“I will return to you, little bug. You need not fear.” 

That’s all there is to be said, really, and you nod after a long moment. Breathing out, letting your weight rest back against his chest. The back of your head leans back against his shoulder and you look up at the stars. Counting them in your mind, tracking the milky sweep of them across the dark blanket of sky. Promising, to yourself and your aching heart, that you’ll be back doing just this in a week’s time. Sitting with your husband and looking up at the constellations together. Living and breathing and being, together, and you promise yourself that all will be well. 

All will be well because it simply must, and that is the thought you cling to as the night fades and passes around the both of you and the quiet life you’ve built together. 

He doesn’t wake you when he leaves, and you wake the next morning to an empty bed. The bedding is cold beneath your fingers as your hand darts out to touch it, and you barely manage to scramble out of your tent before you fall to your knees and wretch. Your body lurching as your stomach empties itself out onto the sand. 

The camp is silent around you, the sun having only just lifted up beyond the horizon, the riders long since departed. The air is chilled, not yet warmed by the sun, and you swallow heavy around the painful lump lodged solidly in your throat. 

You wrap your arms around your belly, your whole body trembling with churning nausea and grief, and you let silent tears drip down your cheeks uninterrupted, because there’s no one there to see them fall anyway. 

Zhaf comes to you first thing, lifting the flap of your tent and finding you curled up on the bedroll where you’d managed to drag yourself after losing whatever remained of your dinner from the night before. She is patient with you, giving you time to drag yourself out of bed, her mouth a sympathetic, frowning line on her face as she sees the redness of your eyes as you get dressed for the day. 

She doesn’t rush you, but she does insist that you join her, and you’re grateful for it as soon as you step out of your tent, where hopeless anguish had felt oppressive on the air, and into the camp that is already bustling with activity as the sun begins to rise in the sky. You follow her to her tent like a puppy, miserable and hazy feeling, and she ends up setting you on a cushion in the corner with a messy pile of linen to unwind and fold into neat strips. 

You pick at your lunch, managing to keep a few dates down, and spend the rest of the day in your own mind. Checking out of the conversations Zhaf has with those that visit her tent for healing or company, letting your eyes go distant as the strips of cloth grow steadily with your work. 

You think of nothing but Thor. Unable to turn your mind to anything else, though you are at least able to direct it to thoughts of yearning longing instead of dreadful, worst case scenario hypotheticals. You’re not sure it’s much better, because the sickening turn in your belly is the same when you picture him in your mind’s eye. Greedy, clinging to the memory of him a little too tightly, like you’re afraid it will slip away from you if you don’t. Recalling the smell of him, heavy and a little musky, spiced from the sun and his sweat, and the feel of his body beside yours. 

The day passes slowly, too hot and not enough tasks to properly occupy your mind, and when night falls, you force yourself to attend the nightly feast. Refusing, even as your insides sour and twist, to let on to your fellow people how Thor’s absence is affecting you. 

The tone around the fire is a little muted, you think, and you find a small consolation in that as you pick at the food passed around. The conversation you catch feels a little tense, a little forced, as everyone sits around the fire and behaves as if the absence of the riders around it doesn’t feel like a gaping, empty wound. 

You stay there, sitting for the first time in Thor’s seat yourself, swimming in the broadness of the wood of it and feeling vaguely ill, until others begin to stand and retire for the evening. 

You find your way to your tent in the dark without conscious thought, your feet knowing the way by now, and you don’t bother to light the lantern within the tent once you step inside to the darkness within. 

Instead, you trip heavily until the edge of the bedroll bumps your shins, and you let yourself fold weakly down onto the bedding without any real grace. Not bothering to change out of your clothes, not bothering to even kick off your sandals. Laying on the bedroll on your side, staring in the darkness at the empty space where Thor isn’t, feeling the loss of him like a hand pushing down steadily against your chest. 

Sleep comes for you, eventually, and when you dream, you dream of empty, aching, abandoned nothingness.

This goes on for three long days. 

You spend those days following in Zhaf’s shadow, not able to summon the strength to do much else. Exhausted from sleeping in your empty bed, your sleep restless and fleeting without him beside you, your stomach turning constantly sour from the ache of the absence of him. Waking without him is particularly awful and you grow accustomed to losing your dinner from the night prior as tears prick at your eyes, your knees sinking slowly into the sand beneath you as you heave and force yourself to breathe. 

Zhaf watches you through it all, quiet and still, like it worries her, and you know she must have a hand in what happens on the fourth day. 

You’re sitting in the corner of her tent on a cushion, as has become your home the lately, grinding some herbs for a tonic absently, when her voice rouses you. 

“You have a visitor, zheana,” she says, and when your head lifts, you see Khali there. Tall and dark and stunning, always, standing in the doorway to Zhaf’s tent and looking down at you with an expression you can’t read. 

She’s dressed for a ride, boots and breeches and a light tunic, and her brow lifts when she sees the state of you. Unkempt, probably, a little thin and pale. Miserable and hollow. 

“Yer hethkat?” she asks, after an appraising moment. 

Are you ready?

Your mouth feels dry. You swallow, and answer her, stupidly, in your own native tongue. 

“For what?”

She doesn’t wait for you to correct yourself. To translate into her language, seeming to understand the confusion heavy in your tired voice. 

She looks at you, evenly, and you feel your spine stiffen in spite of yourself. In the sureness of her gaze. The stillness of it on you. 

“Kashi fonat. Jadat.” 

It’s time to hunt. Come. 

You blink, your mouth agape. Staring up at her from the ground, feeling it shift beneath you as your foggy mind manages to translate her words. 

Your voice stutters a little, confused, overwhelmed, all at once. “S-sekosshi?” 

Are you sure?

Khali gives you a look that edges near impatience, her brows dropping down on her face a little flatly, like you’re testing her. She turns to go but you don’t miss her words. Can’t, for how they ring crisply on the air as she leaves. 

“Esemrasalat qisi. Ma che, oma yer.” 

We leave soon. With or without you.

Silence descends as her departing steps rasp softly on the sand, and when you turn to look at Zhaf, she’s watching you with an expression you can’t quite read. Cautious, almost. Guarded, as she looks to see your reaction. 

“Uhm,” you say, tongue feeling too heavy in your mouth for the thoughts whirling around in your mind. 

“Do you...wish to - ” Zhaf hedges, delicately, and you barely manage a pause, and then a frantic nod, before she’s rushing to you and pulling you to your feet and dragging you out of her tent with a delighted sound. 

It’s only with her help that you manage to be ready in time. Adrenaline flooding your body, the first life you’ve felt in days, and the shift is utterly dizzying, as you stuff your legs into breeches and jam your feet into your riding boots. She has Feldi saddled and waiting when you all but sprint towards the eastern edge of camp and the stables there. 

She speaks to you rapidly when you rush up to her, your bow banging against your shoulder blades where it’s secured across your back, like she’s sucked into the excitement of the moment just as you are. Of the urgency of it, of the chance you’ve been offered. 

“Breathe, zheana,” she says, though she’s out of breath herself as she checks the girth for tightness and touches at the water flasks secured to the saddleback to be sure they’re full. “You do not need to fell a beast, you only need stay with them. Do not fall and do not faint.” 

You want to scoff at her, to tell her you’re not going to faint, but your knees knock together pathetically beneath you, your heart thundering in your chest as she leads Feldi forward a little and beckons you to her, so she can boost you up. 

You go to lift your knee, so she can throw you up into the saddle, but her hand on your arm stills you. Grounds you, as she digs around in a pocket and comes up with a large square of linen. Black, with long ties at the edges. 

You stand there, trembling with adrenaline and sucking in tight breaths, as she steadies you beneath her hand and reaches forward. Placing the shroud over your nose and mouth and reaching back to secure it behind your head, tucking the excess fabric down into the collar of your tunic. 

The sound of hoofbeats on sand lifts on the air, and then Zhaf is moving quickly beside you. Bending down to take your lifted ankle and counting to three before pitching you up and over her head until you drop heavily into the saddle. Feldi’s head lifts sharply, her ears twitching back, a complaint, and you apologize to her on a breathless exhale. Gathering the reins and nudging her forward with a squeeze of your knees. 

Feldi barely eases into a trot when other riders appear. Coming from behind a line of tents and startling you, your heart leaping in your chest as you grip tightly, nervously at the braided leather of the reins. Feldi snorts, her head jerking up and foot stomping down on the sand at the sight of the dikfonak, and you swear you feel her heartbeat kick against her ribs beneath your legs. 

“That’s right,” you tell her as you urge her forward, towards the group of riders that are trotting out towards the desert dunes. “It’s time. Are you ready?” 

She nickers loudly, a young, breathless sound, slipping into a trot before you even cue her to. Clearly not wanting to be left behind as the group moves as one towards the edge of camp, dogs visible and slinking between the flashes of horse legs. 

Khali leads on her mount, a spear gripped solidly in her palm and resting across her thighs, and she tosses one look back over her shoulder, her eyes finding yours even at your distance, before she turns forward again and urges her horse forward with a shouted yip. 

They’re off in an instant, the horses in the group leaping from a quick trot to a canter in a blink, hoofbeats thundering over the sand, and you feel Feldi begin to tremble beneath you. Moving forward in a rush and a little sideways, her head raised high. Ears pricked forward intently as she watches the group gallop away, feeling like a bundled mess of power between your legs as she jerks her head and tugs at the reins gripped panic-tight in your hands. 

You let out a halting, shaky breath, and when you ease on the reins, a fraction of pressure yielded as your hands drift forward, and she lets out another excited, shrill whinny, and explodes forward into a gallop. 

It’s a rush. Sudden and whirling, as Feldi surges beneath you in a way you have never felt. Leaping ahead into a hard sprint, the wind instantly whipping past you as she gallops towards the group that are clustered in a tight bunch just ahead of you. It’s all you can do to hang on, to keep yourself centered over top of her, and you end up gripping a fistful of her mane in your fist to keep you from bowling off of her backwards from the force of her motion. 

It takes a breathless, winded minute for you to get yourself settled again, to sink your weight into your heels and to lift yourself from the saddle. Hovering your rear above it, letting the saddle whip back and forth in time with Feldi’s sprinting footfalls beneath you, as you suck in a ragged gasp and force yourself to breathe. To think, as Feldi closes the gap between you and the hunting party with breathtaking speed. 

Any concerns you may have had about your inexperience rush from you, ripped from your body on the wind, as Feldi makes clear to you that she knows precisely what to do. That all you need to do is to hang on to her, and she will carry you through this. Relief takes its place in you, adrenaline still throttling through your veins, as you give her her head. Letting the reins pull further between your fingers and letting her surge ahead, until she fits nearly into the back end of the formation of riders as they gallop on. 

Here, just an arm’s length from the other riders, the power of the group feels like a living thing. Nearly crackling in the air between you, and when you dare a glance to the riders around you, you find them, to the one, staring intensely forward. Squinting into the wind and the sun, their shrouds whipping in the wind, their expressions set hard with the knowledge of what they are there to do. What needs to be done to accomplish their aim. 

You cling to Feldi’s mane, devoting every ounce of your strength and attention to simply staying on her as the group moves ahead. Covering vast amounts of ground with explosive speed, moving as one unit. Hooves crashing on sand, dogs weaving easily in and out of the spaces left between the mounts. 

You’re focused so singularly on this, on staying centered over Feldi’s back, that it nearly startles you when the riders around you begin suddenly to drift. The tightly bunched group of riders beginning to fan out on no command from Khali you were able to catch. You suck in another breath, looking to the left and the right as the riders guide their horses with reins against neck, and feel a spike of worry, of fear, as you realize you don’t know what to do. You don’t know what’s happening. 

Feldi knows, though. She throws her head, yanking the reins farther through your hands, and surges to the left. Following the three pairs who have peeled off that way, sand kicking up beneath their pounding hooves, and it takes you a moment, but you realize the group is spreading out into a long, spaced line of riders, now. Your spot will be at the end, you realize, when you dare a look over your shoulder and see that the rest of the riders have gone the opposite way, and you shout praise to Feldi as your heart swells in your chest, thudding hard against your ribs, and she moves the both of you effortlessly to your spot. Last in a long, stretching line of riders, just one rider on her bay mount galloping to your right and none on the left. 

It’s only then that you manage to look forward, your breath burning in your chest as your lungs gasp in desperate, rattling inhales and exhales, and you see. 

Ahead, so nearly the color of the sand that it takes you a moment for your eyes to even catch them, is a herd of gazelle. Traveling over the sandy ground in great bounds, so far ahead that you only see the hazy shapes of them as they appear briefly over the horizon on a leap up and forward, before coming down and leaping again. 

There’s a shout to your right and when you look, you know it to be from Khali. The sound is sharp and wild, not lost on the wind, and your heart stutters when you see every rider in the great, spanning line of horses bring their weapons to the ready. Steel glinting in the sun as bows and spears and swords are drawn, the line thundering forth at a breathtaking pace. 

You can’t - you know before the thought even properly roots in your mind that the prospect of removing your bow from your back alone is more than you can handle, let alone notching an arrow and letting one fly, so you re-adjust your grip in Feldi’s mane and duck down a little over her neck. Feeling her surge beneath you, the prey in her sights now too as the line of riders rushes forward. 

The dogs appear, then. Slipping between the horses and pushing past the line and ahead, their lithe, long bodies suspending over the sand as they lock onto the herd before them with fire in their eyes.

The distance is closing between the line and the herd. Quickly, so quickly you almost can’t believe it when you look forward again and can suddenly see the dark lines that trace the gazelle’s haunches, can see the spiral of their horns and the glassy fear in the creature’s eyes as they feel the incoming horde approach. 

Another shout rips from the line, from a rider near the far right end, and it ripples down. Riders, women all, letting out a roar from behind their shrouds as their weapons point out and ahead at the object of your hunt, sharp and lethal and reflecting sunlight bright. 

It’s a chorus that you feel inside of you, a rippling surge in your chest, and you can’t stop yourself from joining in. Throwing the reins forward, your palms sliding up Feldi’s neck. Giving her her head, giving her room and space to go, to run. 

The sound that rips from you is a wild thing. Rooted in joy and thrill and adrenaline as you join your sisters in the thundering power, the blinding chase, the electrifying pulse of the hunt. 

Whether the hunt lasts an hour or five, you could not say. Losing all sense of time in the whirling riptide of the experience, only able to string a coherent thought together, to notice that the sun is far across the blue desert sky and descending, when the group finally slows their mounts from a gallop, to a canter, and then down to a trot, and a brisk walk. 

You’ve no idea where you’ve been or how long you’ve been gone, delirious on excitement when you realize that ahead in the distance are the faint outlines of your camp, the tented structures hazy figures on the horizon. 

You force yourself to breathe, to try to ground yourself and to attempt to get a grip on the light headedness that hasn’t left you since the first surge of the group. Feldi is breathing heavy beneath you, her gray and dappled neck soaked dark with sweat, and you let the reins slip between your fingers to allow her to lower her head as she catches her breath in time with you. 

You spread your palm over her neck, feeling the heat of the sun and her pumping blood beneath the surface there, and can’t help your mouth from running. Just to her, in your native tongue because your mind is too swirled to even bother attempting to translate. Breathless words of gratitude to her, of praise. Telling her that she is the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen, to carry you like she did. To guide you through your first hunt so effortlessly. 

You know not whether she understands your words, but her ears flicker back when you speak, so you know at least that she hears them, and for you, that’s enough. 

The group makes its way back towards camp on a brisk walk, horse heads bobbing with exhaustion and effort, nostrils flared and breaths snorting heavily as every participant works to catch their breathing and rein in the frantic pound of their heart. 

The hunt was good - four gazelle felled and two desert hare snatched by the dogs - and though you never even managed to draw your bow, the feeling that’s rushing through your veins as the camp approaches is that of immense, deafening, consuming pride. 

Your mind goes to Zhaf, waiting for you in the camp, and you decide to find her at once. To tell her that you didn’t faint and you didn’t fall. That you did it. You did it. 

The edges of the camp are oddly vacant as the group guides the horses through the structures there, and even over your exhausted, sweaty delirium, it strikes you as odd. The stables would usually be bustling at this time of day, gathering the animals into pens for the night, but there is not a soul in sight as the group makes it’s way past the outskirts of the camp boundary. 

Khali must find it odd as well, because instead of dismounting there like she typically would, like you’ve seen her do in the past, near the stable well where everyone can rest and water their horses, she presses on. Urging her horse forward, through the roads created by the rows of tents, the group, including you and Feldi, following behind her. Silent, save for the heavy breathing of the horses and the panting of the dogs. 

You fuss with your shroud, leaving the reins to rest on Feldi’s withers as you reach back with both hands to tug at the knot there. Having to work it for a minute before you get the knot loose and manage to pull it free. Dragging in a deep breath of clean air when you ball it in your fist, greedy for it, but then you hear something up ahead. The sound of a crowd. Of people milling about, voices bright on the air, sounding joyful. Celebratory, as they drift over the air to you. 

Someone murmurs something to your right, one of the riders, and you don’t catch what they say but then the group is moving forward. The horses stepping easily into a trot, and some unknown anticipation tightens in your gut like a noose. Your heart pounding still, not recovered yet from the thrill of the hunt, and you don’t understand what’s happening, what’s going on, until the group and their mounts step into the camp center and fans out, and your eye finds him. 

The riders are there. Returned. Still mounted, their horses breathing hard and frothed with sweat, like they’ve just gotten in. They’re all there, a dozen of them, their faces split into grins as they greet the people rushing around them. Taking their prizes, their spoils from their raid from their hands so they are free to dismount, cheers rising up sharply over the excited, murmuring din, and at the center of it all, is Thor. 

He’s atop Rhaek, sitting broad and proud, and the sight of him has every ounce of air rushing from your lungs. There’s blood on him, sprayed across the leather of his chest plate, but he seems unharmed. His skin slick and glistening with sweat, his hair pulled back, his grin sharp when he speaks to the people gathering around him, looking up at him like he’s a savior. 

He feels you though, because his head lifts and turns, and then his eyes find yours. Across the clearing, through the crowd, and the weight of his gaze locks onto you like a physical force. 

You can’t breathe. Can’t think, can’t even get your body to move in any sensible way as you all but throw yourself from Feldi’s back. Collapsing over the side of her and crashing down to the sand with a hard thud, your ankle barely slipping from the stirrup in the last moment, keeping you from hanging yourself up in the saddle. Feldi steps sideways on a snort, disturbed, and you manage one passing, apologetic pat against her neck before your body stumbles forward. Driven by the singing in your blood, deafening, blinding, because he’s here. He’s back. He’s home. 

He dismounts, must, because he manages to catch you when your feet trip on the sand and your momentum carries you forward towards the ground. His knees digging into the sand as his body takes the weight of yours, your chests colliding, knocking whatever breath you’d managed to gather from your lungs, but it doesn’t matter - it doesn’t matter - because he’s here. 

His voice is a deep rumble in your ear as he scoops you up. Gathers you in his arms and stands to his feet, lifting you pressed hard to his chest like you weigh nothing at all, and you feel yourself choking on a sudden pressure in your lungs, on a ripping swell of emotion, when you hear him say your name. The sound of it on his tongue enough to make your entire body ripple and shudder as your arms wrap around his neck and you cling to him. Pressing your cheek to his and shaking, overwhelmed utterly by the turn this day has taken. 

The smell of him washes over you. Heady and ripe and spiced, and you suck it in greedily. Drawing in deep lungfuls of it, feeling it wash over you, like the last bit of truth you needed to know, deep in your soul, that he’s returned to you. 

He turns you around, once, then twice, before he sets you back down, supporting your weight fully when he feels your leaden feet wobble uselessly on the sand. 

He draws back and looks down at you and you feel as if you’re looking up at the sun when his hand comes to curl around your jaw and you see the grin on his face. Bright and edged and everything, as he steadies you between your hands and lets his eyes rove over you. Over your breathless face, turned up to him, tears prickling at your eyes that you can’t even bring yourself to blink away. 

“Thor,” you say, like a cry, and he rumbles back, “Little bug,” as his thumb smoothes itself over your cheek. 

You are whole. Soaring, flying, complete, once more. The other, ragged half of you suturing itself closed and shut as the presence of him envelops you fully and soothes every frayed ending, every ripped and raw nerve that has plagued you in his absence. 

His other hand finds your face, warm and broad and strong, and when he tilts your face towards him, you go. Lifting up onto your toes and pressing against him until his mouth meets yours in a kiss that has your insides burning hot. 

You know, when you pull back and look at his face, that the fight is still thrumming strong in his blood. Still coursing through him, making his heart beat like a war drum, making his grip on you a touch rough. It thrills you, a shudder tripping down your spine when his eyes drink in the sight of you between his hands like he can’t get enough. Like he’ll never be satisfied, his eyes molten and dark, his tongue coming out to touch absently at the sharp point of his canines. 

“You’re here,” you manage, your voice coming out a little strangled, and his eyes gleam in response. His thumb touches at your lower lip, pressing down and moving it over your teeth. 

“You were hunting,” he counters, sounding honeyed and low and pleased as he looks down at you between his hands. His eyes glancing over your shoulder at something, and it occurs to you, at once, Feldi, and you turn in his arms. Looking for her, knowing she needs watering and a wash and to rest, but someone is leading her away when you finally catch a glimpse of her on the far edge of the clearing. 

“Let them,” Thor tells you, sensing the pull in you to go care for her. He scoops you up in his arms before you can protest too much, though you turn to look over your shoulder until she’s lead out of sight, another person with Rhaek following immediately after, and when you’re satisfied, you turn back to him. Feeling the strong band of his arms beneath your thighs, holding you against his chest like you weigh nothing at all, and you shiver when you look down at his face in spite of yourself. 

“You’re back,” you say, again, shaking your head softly. Like you still can’t quite believe it. 

He’s looking up at you with an expression that has goosebumps prickling at your skin, even in the desert heat. Not distracted by the horses like you’d been, well accustomed to the routine of others tending to them after a long ride. Still staring at you like he’d like to devour you, even as people mill about you on either side, cheering and shouting and chattering amongst themselves. 

He jolts you a little, his eyes flashing on something. Jostling you in his arms and making you lose your balance a little. Catching yourself on his chest with your palms, your head dipping down towards him, and he meets you there. His mouth finding yours, his tongue slipping into yours on a breath, and you find yourself nodding quickly. Your hands coming up to cup his cheeks, nodding to him as you suck on his tongue and shiver against him, until he turns and begins to walk you towards your tent. 

He knows the way blind, which is just as well, because you give him no room to see. To breathe, even, feeling a sharp ache in your chest at the feeling of him again, alive and warm and strong, his blood singing hot with a hard right and a battle won. Desperate to keep him now, to not lose him again. To keep him here, in your hands, his teeth snagging on your lower lip on a grunt, making you whimper softly into his mouth. 

The walls of your tent are rolled up for the day, to prevent hot air from trapping inside, so he steps beneath the threshold of the tent, into the shade and the cooler air, and drops you down onto the bedroll with a surprised little yelp. 

You bounce, landing on your back, and you have just a moment to register the gleam in his eyes before he follows you down. Shouldering his way between your knees, his body covering yours as he cups your cheek and turns your face to him. Searing your mouth in a kiss that has you gasping, gripping at his arms, widening your thighs so he can shift closer to you. He huffs hotly against your mouth, his lips dragging down against your jaw where he tests his teeth, a nip that has you gasping and lurching against him, and then his mouth descends to your throat. 

He sucks at you there. Latches his mouth around the thunder of your pulse and pulls, drawing blistering heat into your belly and lower with every hard suction of that tender skin. Making it tender and red beneath his teeth as he moves closer still, until his hips slot against yours and you feel him. Feel the hard, thick line of his cock between your thighs, and it makes your head tip back on a moan. 

He mutters something to you, low, that you don’t catch, but then his hands are working at your waistline. Tugging at it, ripping your tunic free from where it was tucked, and your head darts to the side, your eyes widening. Gasping a little, your hands clutching at his elbows. 

“Thor,” you murmur. Looking through the very open walls of your tent and into the camp beyond, where people are moving this way and that. Paying you no mind as he ruts his hips into yours on a rough sound. “People can - see - ”  

“Let them,” he breathes, and hearing those words again with this meaning has crackling heat gripping down your spine. Making you press yourself against him, your eyes squeezing tightly shut, so you stay here, in the moment, with him. 

Your breeches get tangled around your knees, catching on your riding boots, and when he rears up over you, impatience hot on his face, making his eyes sharp and his teeth glint where they’re bared in his mouth as he works your boots from your feet one at a time. Tossing them over to the side when they’re free, letting them fall to the ground, before ripping your breeches down too. 

Your hands are at your own throat. Gasping, drawing in hot, desperate breaths as you look up at him. Seeing him like this. Wild between your legs. More animal than man, and the rush of cool air at your center has you realizing that you’re soaked, there. A sopping mess that you need him to touch, and you can’t help the sigh of relief that falls from you when his body lowers over you. Covers you again, his mouth pressing against the hinge of your jaw as he murmurs hot words into your ear. Possession and claim, muttered lowly. Making the hair on your arms stand on end as you feel him reach down between you and work at his breeches. 

You feel his cock spring free. Feel it slap against your thigh, smearing feverish prespend against your skin, and your head presses back against the bedroll on a desperate, breathless sound. Your core pulsing down, aching, needing, and then his mouth covers yours and he guides himself to you. 

It knocks the breath from you when he roots himself in you. When he ruts his hips hard, slotting deep into your sex, feeling like he’s in your belly, like he’s in your throat. He breathes against your throat, breath hot and puffing, and then he groans lowly and begins to fuck you. 

You can’t get enough of him. Can’t pull him close enough, can’t feel enough of his skin against yours. Can’t satiate yourself on the taste of his mouth or the sound of his grunts. All you can think, as your head rolls back against the bedroll, is that you need all of him. That you have to keep him like this, with you, so you never, ever risk losing him. 

The sound is obscene but you’re too far gone for any shame to prickle at your senses. Skin slapping skin, the plunge of his cock into where you’re a sopping mess, fills the air, spills out of the tent and into the camp beyond, but no one is there to hear it. Those that still wander by are occupied, focused on a task or simply minding their business. Paying no heed to the sight of their leader with his breeches shoved down. Biting at the jaw of his beloved, fucking her like an animal in heat. Groaning lowly in her ear and telling her, telling her that he missed her while he was away. That he missed her like he missed a part of him, and that now he’s whole once more. 

The sensation is too much for you to process. The rush, the slide of his skin against yours. The hard grip of his hands on your hips, the shove of his cock into you, again and again and again. The loss of him swirling with his return, a mess of heavy emotion that feels suffocating on your chest, all still coursing through your veins on the adrenaline from your first hunt. From your first taste of real freedom, galloping across the dunes, panting with exertion and screaming as you urged Feldi forward. 

If you were in your own mind, you wouldn’t recognize yourself like this. Spread open and wanton, gasping, begging, your hands gripping tightly at his arms as he moves over you. In you. Fills you deep and tight. Given yourself over to the pull of your pleasure and the force of his claim over you. At home, here. In his arms, beneath him. Taking him again and again and again. 

“Qoy qoyi,” he groans, his teeth nipping so hard at your throat that you flinch and moan, and then he stills against you. Shoving his body against yours hard as he stares down at you with molten eyes, getting as deep as he can as he spills inside of you You feel it. Feel his seed, hot and thick, and your eyes flutter closed as your mouth drops open. 

His hands gentle on you then. Consciously, like it only just occurred to him, and his palms spread over your hips in an unspoken apology. His chest rising and falling, blood still sprayed over his chestplate, dried and dark, looking like every bit the warrior king he is as he stays between your legs. Reaching for your face and taking it in his palm. Softer now, the edge slowly bleeding out of his expression as he looks down at you with a strange reverence. Touching at your mouth, parted, breathing, with his thumb. Groaning softly and closing his eyes when your mouth closes around his thumb instinctively. 

If he had his way, he’d remain like that for some time. Basking in the glow of it, staring down at you like he needs to commit every part of you to his memory, but then someone shouts in the distance, and awareness utterly rips back to you. As your head slowly turns and you realize that he took you like this, where anyone walking by could see. 

You groan, low and miserable, and cover your face. Feeling heat in your cheeks that spreads down your throat, and he takes pity on your then. Chuckling softly, sounding a little too pleased with himself, before pushing himself to his feet, one hand on the waist of his breeches. Holding them up around his thighs, his cock soft and wet with you between his legs, as he turns and unties the linen straps that hold the tent walls up. 

They flap heavily to the ground, kicking up dust and bating you in a murky gray as sunlight filters through the canvas. The air thickens at once, the sex on the air, the heat from your bodies feeling damp and oppressive, hard to breathe, and you groan again, dropping your hands from your face to wave a hand at him. Flapping it at him, drawing his eye. 

“One open,” you mutter, and he chuckles again. Giving you one long, lingering look over before he goes to the far wall and bends low to roll it back up. Securing it over his head with ties, and the breeze that rushes in is immediate and refreshing. Makes you sigh in relief as you let yourself slump back against the bedroll, feeling where sweat has sprung up 

By the time he joins you in bed, you’ve stripped out of all your clothes. Suddenly overheating, your heart still racing, pumping hot blood through your veins, and the cool air on your flushed skin feels like heaven as you allow yourself to lay back and breathe. He’s bare too when he collapses down next to you. Long lines of sweaty skin that’s gritty with dust from the desert wind, and when he turns and grabs to pull you close you groan softly. 

“We should wash,” you complain, feeling the slick skin of his belly slide against yours. 

“Fine,” Thor murmurs, his face pressed against your throat. On a sigh, one that sounds like he’s settling in for a good long while, and you groan again then when he makes absolutely no move to stand. 

You lay there, tangled up in each other. A mess of sweat and slick, both of you filthy from your hard rides and the rush that followed. Breathing together until your heart rates begin to finally slow, shivering when the breeze catches on the dew of your bare skin. 

“You’re back,” you murmur, staring distantly up at the ceiling. Your fingers working their way into his hair, sure he’s long asleep. Reveling in the feel of him pressed against you, feeling like the aching wound of his absence is finally, finally closing. 

He nods against your throat, and sighs. 

“Did you shoot your bow?” he asks, sounding delirious. Like all of the life has been sucked out of him, teetering on the edge of exhaustion. You wonder if he’s slept, since he left camp days prior, and your arms tighten around him. 

It takes you a moment to understand his meaning, referring to your hunt, and it draws a huff of laughter from your chest. 

“No,” you tell him, petting at his hair. Feeling the hammer of his heart against yours. “But I didn’t fall off.” 

He hmms then, like that’s just as well, and your cheeks ache softly from trying to hold back a smile as you stare up at the top of the tend and let the weight of him against you ground you in the now. 

You’ll stagger together to the washing stalls later and bathe each other down with cold water and scratchy cloths, but for now, you simply lay there. Bodies settling against each other like they’re remembering how to, breathing in the smell of each other and feeling your hearts call out to each other in the heavy thump-thump of their beats. Home, together, and whole. 

You’ve taken to sleeping through the night again, now that Thor has returned, so it’s with a bleary sort of surprise that you blink awake one night and find the lantern overhead barely flickering with flame, the tent cast in the dimmest of light in the late hours of the night. 

It takes you a moment to realize what’s brought you around, reaching to Thor’s space instinctively until your hand smacks hard against this chest on accident. You blink, squinting up, and realize that Thor is who woke you, his hand still heavy and warm on your shoulder. Looking down at you, his expression unreadable in the faint light. 

“Is something wrong?” you ask, pushing yourself upright and feeling your chest clench in a tumble of nerves, but he shakes his head and murmurs to you softly to soothe you.

“Nothing wrong, little bug. Do not fear,” he says, voice husky with sleep, and you can’t help leaning on him as you shake your head in an attempt to clear it. You had been in a deep sleep and it clings to you. Makes your vision dark around the edges as your eyes adjust to the light. 

You scrub your palm over your face and bite back a yawn that nearly cracks your jaw. “Why are we awake?” you ask, voice squeaking when a yawn manages to make it through, and you can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks next. 

“I have something to show you.” 

It takes you a minute to get out of bed, your feet heavy and slow with sleep, wrapped in a heavy pelt because you can’t bring yourself to change into non-sleep clothes and the desert air is cold in the night as Thor takes your hand and leads you out into the dark. 

The camp is still sound asleep, the sky overhead inky dark, still, and you allow yourself a moment to look up at Thor as he guides you through the maze of tents and pathways. You’ve no idea what he means to show you, though the intrigue of it all has your heart twittering in your chest a little as you make your way across the camp. You don’t have the wherewithal to guess, to dream up hypothetical scenarios of what is coming, wrapped too thoroughly still in sleep, so you’re content to hide another yawn behind your hand and let him tug you gently along. Trusting in the guidance of his step and the quiet assurance that whatever he is leading you to will be a thing that is good. 

The smell in the air tells you that you’re headed east, towards the stables, and that does finally manage to pique your interest. Has you gripping a little tighter at his hand when you come around a row of tents and see that the open structure of the stable is lit with flaming torch, casting flickering orange light over the sand around it. 

You look to Thor and swear you see the corner of his mouth lift as he leads you on. 

He brings you to one of the paddocks to the immediate north of the stable, lit with the ambient light enough that you see the horse inside of it at once. A mare, it looks like, the color of freshly turned earth, pacing slowly along the far end of the fence. You approach the fence of the paddock with him, your hand touching at your throat a little as you peer between the wooden rails. 

She looks uncomfortable, the mare. Her head is hung low, swinging slowly while she walks, and she seems to do so restlessly. Without any particular aim, and it has you turning to Thor, who has come to stand beside you. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask, your voice coming out a whisper, afraid of the answer before the words even pass your lips, but Thor shakes his head at once. Assuringly, though he doesn’t answer, and you turn back to the paddock to watch her pace along. 

Others join you. People you recognize distantly as workers in the stables. Coming and going in your peripherals, carrying buckets of water and clean swatches of linen, seeming to be checking on the mare, and truly, you blame your sleep-addled mind for not making the connection for a solid few minutes before the mare stops in place, shudders, and a gush of liquid pushes forth from beneath her tail. 

It knocks a little sound out of you, surprise, and worry, and then, for some reason, you understand. 

You turn to Thor again, your eyebrows jumping on your face. “Is she - is she in labor?” 

Thor snorts softly, teasing you a little for taking so long maybe, but he nods, and you can’t stop the amazed breath that slips from you when you turn back to watch her. Your trepidation from before evaporated at once as you hear her breathe heavily and step forward once more to continue her slow, restless march. 

Horse labor is slow going, though, and as excited as you are to finally see it, you end up standing on the lowest rail of the fence and leaning your entire weight back against Thor, whose arms have come around you on either side and are holding the top rail of the fence. Supporting you effortlessly as you doze, drifting in and out. Rousing when you hear movement, people ducking through the rails of the fence to check on her, murmuring soft praise to her in the faint light and offering her water, then drifting off to a light sleep when silence descends again. 

Thor wakes you with intention, finally, nudging his cheek against yours, and when your eyes flutter open you see him nodding forward. The sky has lightened overhead, the sun still hours from touching over the horizon but the first streaks of gray finally beginning to filter through the night sky. You follow his gaze and find the mare at the far end of the paddock, though now, she’s laying out on her side and her chest is rising and falling in great, puffing breaths. 

Something in your chest aches, sharp and sudden, because she’s clearly in pain, but then Thor nods towards her again and you see the faint light of the lanterns in the stable catch on something white and glistening, and you realize that you’re seeing her foal, already halfway out of her. 

“Vojjor,” you murmur, a breathless little curse in amazement, and it’s not until you feel a quiet rumble in Thor’s chest that you realize you spoke in his native tongue without realizing it. 

It’s excruciating to watch, in truth. The mare struggles and groans, rocking up on her side and then back down, breathing heavily as pushes and pushes, but Thor is solid behind you. Unyielding, still shouldering most of your weight, and you allow yourself to just slump against him while you watch the dark, spindly shape of a foal, wrapped in a creamy membrane, slowly emerge. 

Sleep is gone from you now. Replaced by a bundling twist of excitement and nerves, and you end up pressing your cheek to Thor’s arm where it comes around your body to hold onto the fence. Bracing yourself against him as you watch, as your belly lurches with fear and hope, not knowing exactly how this process is supposed to look but utterly stunned at how visibly hard it is on the mare. 

You feel it like you’re birthing the foal yourself when it finally pushes free in a rush of liquid, relief flooding you as you breathe out, the back of your head thunking weakly on Thor’s shoulder behind you before you manage to lift your head again to watch. 

The stable hands are there too, you realize. Waiting along the railing of the paddock, watching the mare closely. Ready, if needed, it seems, but they seem content to give her time, as she manages to roll herself up a little and lean her nose back to sniff gently at her baby. 

The figure on the ground shifts. The membrane parts and splits, and you see a tiny little head emerge. Ears pricked as the foal reaches blindly, instinctively for it’s mother, and you feel a little pinch of emotion clutch at your lungs as you stand there and watch them meet for the first time in a tender touch of noses. 

The people waiting outside of the paddock move in eventually, when the sun is first starting to cast golden rays into the early morning sky, and you can finally see the scene clearly when they approach the mare slowly. Hands low and out, speaking to her in soothing tones, though she seems to have no fear of them. 

With their encouragement, you watch the mare push herself to her feet. Groaning, like it must take incredible effort, and your entire body aches in sympathy for her. She turns towards the foal at once and sniffs along it’s back, nuzzling at it’s ears, while the men check her to be sure she’s passed all she needs to pass and that there is no uncontrolled bleeding. They offer her water but she has no interest, nudging her nose against the hip of one of the men in what might be a touch of affection before she turns again to her foal. Content to ignore them and the rest of the world as the morning light finally begins to cast over the two of them. 

You watch, feeling your heartbeat in time with Thor’s. Utterly transfixed at the sight as the foal staggers, haltingly, to its feet, it’s gangly legs trembling as it holds itself up from the ground within an hour of being born. The mare nudges it gently with her nose, lipping at the ridge of its neck and letting out a heaving sigh, like now, she can finally rest. 

When Thor speaks, you feel the vibration of it along your back, and you tilt your face to see him. 

“She’s amazing, don’t you think?” he asks, his eyes on the mother and daughter as the foal tests out it’s first, wobbling steps. 

You nod, your eyes drifting to the mare. “She is incredible,” you agree, watching her snuffle at the ground like she’s looking for shoots of grass. Keeping an eye on her youngster but looking, largely, like she’s already recovered from her ordeal already. “Her strength is...unbelievable.” 

Thor huffs softly and nods in agreement. His voice is softer when he asks, “And the filly?” 

It takes you a moment and you look to Thor, then to the foal. “You know?” you ask, a little mystified. No of the attending stable hands had mentioned the gender of the foal. No one had even seemed to check. 

Thor shrugs, like it’s nothing but that yes, indeed, he does know, somehow, even at your distance from the pair, and you accept it with a soft sound and a nod. 

“She’s beautiful,” you say, finally. In answer to his question. In the dawning light of morning, her coat has begun to dry from birth and shines brilliantly. Her body a bright, coppery brown, her muzzle and mane and legs black like they were dipped in wet ink. She’s found her footing now, walking slowly and shakily around her mother as she ducks beneath her in search of her first meal. “I can’t believe she’s on her feet already.” 

Thor nods, then says, almost thoughtfully, “She’s Rhaek’s.” 

You nearly turn in his arms to face him, feeling something warm shudder in your chest. Something fond and affectionate. “Truly?” you ask. “She’s Rhaek’s daughter?” 

You can see him, in an instant, when you look back at the filly. The elegant arch to her neck, the richness of her color. You know in that moment that she’ll grow to be powerful. Tall and strong and more than a little wild, capable of carrying a warrior into crashing battle. 

You watch as the mare appears to grow bored and slowly steps away, ambling towards the edge of the paddock where the stable hands are bringing a few flakes of dried grasses, and your heart flutters like a child’s at the sight of the filly stepping shakily, determinedly after her. Each step looking like a herculean effort as she balances and sways, not yet adjusted to the equilibrium outside of her mother’s womb. 

“Will she go to one of your riders?” you ask, unable to take your eyes off of her, now that you know. That she carries a piece of Rhaek within her, and strangely, somehow, a piece of Thor then, too. 

Thor is silent for so long that you wonder if he even heard your question, and you’re happy to let it lie. Perhaps it was a silly question and he’s sparing you a teasing retort. Maybe the riders only accept stallions as their mounts, you think.

When he speaks again, his voice has a richness to it that you feel down into your toes. “She’s yours, little bug.” 

You blink, and then turn in his arms to face him more fully. “Feldi is mine,” you correct, slowly. Confused, even as your heart beats behind your ribs like the wings of a bird. 

Thor huffs a soft smile, his eyes still on the filly and the mare across the paddock. “Feldi is yours until this little one is grown,” he says. “You’ll work with the filly every day until she’s ready to carry you. Then she’ll be yours.” 

You feel tears prick sudden and hot at your eyes and your lungs constrict a little in a swell of some emotion. 

You blink the tears back, your mouth contorting down into a wobbly line. “I - ” you try. Swallowing heavily around the lump in your throat. “I will help raise her?” 

The corner of Thor’s mouth lifts and his eyes finally meet yours. Warm blue in the early morning light. Knowing, and sure. “How do you think we bond so closely?” he asks. “She will be an extension of yourself, as Rhaek is of me. She will be your shadow. Your other half.” 

Tears do well over and spill down your cheeks then and you turn towards Thor on a watery little laugh. A little embarrassed but mostly overwhelmed, as you wrap your arms around his neck and cling to him in a warm embrace. Sucking in and letting out shuddering breaths as the reality of it all slowly settles around you and you realize that, finally, you are one of them. One of the clan. A horse to call your own as proof of it. 

You stay there for another hour before Thor tugs you along. Murmuring something about getting something to eat and promising that the filly will be there when you return when you drag your feet a little at the prospect of leaving her. 

His hand over yours is warm and strong and dry as he leads you through the maze of tents, the alleyways beginning to fill with people waking and stepping out into the morning, and you pass a greeting to every one that you pass. Giddy as you follow Thor and your belly rumbles faintly at the prospect of a morning meal. 

It’s not until the hadaen okre appears around the corner that something occurs to you, and you turn to Thor, your mouth dropping open in a soft little huff. As Thor’s word’s from before finally sink in and register in your mind.

“Thor,” you say to him, tugging hard on his hand to get him to stop. He turns and looks down at you, the corners of his mouth twitching, like he knows the fire in your tone. Like he knows what you’re about to say. “You consider Rhaek your other half, not me?” 

Thor’s face contorts in some flash of expression he tries valiantly to hold back, but when you slap an offended palm against his chest, he can’t stop himself from tipping his head back on a laugh. 

He doesn’t answer you, his grin sharp as he steps past you to where others are lining up for a meal of melon and fresh bread, and you let out an undignified squawk as you follow him. Beaming, feeling like you’re glowing, as you fit yourself easily in the space beside him, and give him another gentle swat on the belly for good measure that only makes him chuckle again. 

You end up with a bowl full of melon, more than your fair share from the hadaen okre but the workers there know you well and hand it over with a smile when you explain the situation, still a little breathless from the excitement of the morning. 

You end up tugging Thor back towards the paddock, like a child but not able to bring yourself to care. He’s got the bowl of melon slices tucked under one arm and is indulging you with the other as you drag him behind you back towards your filly, taking huge, gulping chomps of a melon slice so you’ll have a prized treat - the rind - to offer to the mare when you get back to them. An offering of peace to the horse you now realize you owe a great debt to, having brought your filly into the world. 

Thor sighs as you pull him, like it’s an imposition, but it’s one he doesn’t mean and you revel in the strength of his hand around yours and the cool, crisp drift of the morning air as you head back the way you came with your husband in tow. Delighted and determined to make a good first impression when you meet your future other half, the little blood bay filly that somehow already has your heart. 

The midday sun shines bright overhead, merciless as always, and the drifting breeze is a pleasant relief where you’re stretched out under a towering palm tree. Full from your midday meal and nearly nodding off in the cool shade as your fingers pet mindlessly at soft, fuzzy fur. 

Titha is stretched out on the sand beside you, her head resting in your lap. Lashes long, ears twitching at invisible flies as she dozes. Named for the sunrise she was born under and growing like a weed, you’d spent the cool hours of the morning getting her accustomed to the feeling of a rope hanging loosely around her neck even though she’d pitched quite a fit for the first hour. Ever Rhaek’s daughter, dramatic as anything. 

Now, she’s deep in sleep, recovering from her ordeal, while her mother, Ori, grazes in the shade of the next palm over. The three of you had been inseparable over the last month, with Ori graciously tolerating your constant presence and Titha becoming attached to you at the hip, following you like a puppy, curious and bright eyed, as long as you stayed within a certain radius of her mother. 

This afternoon is a moment of peace that you relish, reclining against the palm trunk and letting your eye cast outwards, to where Thor and a few of the other riders are taking stock of the great collection of weapons held by the clan. Testing the sharpness of blades against the pads of their fingers, holding spears out to check for curves to the handles. Counting bows and spreading them equally between leather quivers, setting aside any that need mending or care. 

Your eye follows Thor as he moves, tracking him naturally, instinctively, like he’s the only thing in the world as your fingers scratch softly over the fur on Titha’s neck. Lost deep in thought, your mind drifting as aimlessly as the breeze over the sand, when you feel it again. 

A flutter, deep in your belly. A delicate thing, like the wings of a butterfly, but it has your hand lifting at once. Spreading gently over soft curve of you there, as your eyes follow Thor, watching as he bends down to pick up a small hatchet from the overflowing pile of weapons scattered on the sand, your mouth lifting in a soft smile. 

You’d thought, when your blood had failed to return a second month, that the worst of your fears had come to pass. That you’d bled that once because of injury or illness, some kind of fluke or accident. You hadn’t spoken of it and neither had Thor, processing whatever grief you carried silently, and life had gone on. Thor had gone on his raid, you had your first successful hunt, and now you had Titha to occupy your days. Watching as she discovered the world, your heart aching every morning when she met greeted you with a high little nicker and a happy trot over to where you waited with a treat on your flat palm. 

But then, last week, you’d felt something. Faint, at first, so light that you nearly missed it. A quiver, whisper of something, that had you pausing where you were folding linens in Zhaf’s tent, your brow drawing down on your face a little. Wondering if you’d eaten something off when you felt the same little twinge later that same day. 

You’d thought nothing of it then, but now, a week later, you know. You know in the very soul of you, as surely as you know your name, that it means. Other signs had since accompanied it, your breasts swelling a little and growing tender to the touch, your touchy appetite from the weeks prior turning ravenous instead, and you just...you know. You know. 

Your belly flutters again and you rub your palm over it soothingly, the first heartbeat whispers of your child and Thor’s, chewing on your lower lip to try to tamp down the smile that settles over your face every time you feel it. Thor keeps looking to you, glancing up from his work to check that you’re still stretched out in the shade. Still resting, still okay, and you know if he catches you with a dopey grin on your face, he’ll come over to investigate. 

You haven’t yet told Thor. Too worried, at first, that you were misreading the signs. Terrified of making a promise to him that you couldn’t keep, of getting his hopes roused before dashing them upon the rocks when it turned out you just had a bout of indigestion. 

Keeping it from him has been no pleasant feat, and you know, when his head lifts and his eyes catch yours again across the distance between the two of you, that you’ll tell him tonight. After the feast, once you’re bedded down with him. You’ll take his hand and spread it over your belly, and you know that he’ll know. 

Titha lets out a deep sigh, her eyelids fluttering in some dream, and you see Ori’s head lift for a moment to watch her there in your lap, before she returns to her grazing. You understand her more now, you think, or you’re beginning to, as you child flickers in your belly and you scratch gently between Titha’s ears. You understand the trust she’s endowed to you, every time she doesn’t chase you away from her filly with pinned ears and pounding hooves. 

You realize, as your eyes lift from the filly’s ears, covered in coppery fuzz around the edges, back to where Thor is testing the grip of a sabre, checking the balance of it in his hand, that in this moment, you have it all. You have everything. Anything and everything you could want or ask for is before your eyes in this very instant. Sitting in the middle of a rugged desert, reclined in the shade of a great palm. One hand on your growing child and the other on your future partner, your future other half. 

Ahead of you, Thor claps one of his riders on the back, a rough, physical goodbye, and turns to make his way over to you. His bare skin shining with sweat from the heat, his hair pulled back at his nape. His steps long legged and sure as he makes his way across the sand that separates you. 

You shift, sitting a little upright, and Titha grumbles quietly in her sleep before settling back down. You take your hand from your belly and reach behind you to a flask of cool water, holding it out to him when he finally steps into the shade and looks down at you with a grin. 

“Isn’t this a sight,” he says, his gaze drifting over Titha in your lap before he pulls the cork from the flask with his teeth and takes a long drink. Wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand when he finishes, his eyes returning to yours at once, like they were pulled by gravity itself. The expression that settles on his face is one that is warm and fond and you feel it in your very bones. 

Even in the shade, you have to squint up at him a little. “Are you finished?” you ask him, your head tilting to the side, and he nods after a moment, sighing a breath before taking another drink of water. 

He gives you a skeptical look when he lowers the flask and sees the look on your face. The flirty one, that means you’re about to beg for a little indulgence. His brow lifts, waiting, and you bump his booted foot with your ankle in a little tease. 

“Sit with us?” 

He has things to do. You know this, know he has very important leader tasks to attend to, so it never stops thrilling you when he lets out a sigh, like he’s doing you quite the favor, and folds himself down on the shady sand beside you. 

He reclines his body back, stretched out. Folding his arms behind his head and letting out a breath that sounds tired. You turn to look at him, because his eyes are closed and you can, and you can’t keep yourself from touching softly to your belly when you feel it flutter again. 

“Thor?” you ask, and he hmms quietly in response. His eyes staying closed, his lashes dark against his cheeks. Resting over the soft lines in his skin there from the sun and his years.

A thousand questions come to mind, for some reason. Staring down at him beside you, his chest rising and falling slowly, seeing he’s a breath away from dozing off just like that. You want to ask him if he’s happy, like this. If this is everything he imagined when he thought of his future when he was a boy in the clan. You want to ask if he knew it would end this way, when he offered you his hand or a merciful death by his axe, staring down at you like a creature of the desert. You want to ask him if he would do anything different, if he would change anything now, or in the past. If he could want anything besides what he has right now, laying here beside you. 

You watch as his expression softens and you know that he’s drifted off, and the questions die on your tongue. Soothing into nothing as you watch him breathe and feel your heartbeat sure and quiet in your chest. Content, then, to just be here with him. With him and with Titha and with your little one, cooling in the shade as the afternoon drifts slowly by. 

You know he’s gone under, his breathing going steady and even, but you look down when you feel a nudge and realize his hand has bumped softly against yours. The palm upturned, fingers gently curled. 

Something shudders in your chest. Something warm and full, and you slip your hand quietly into his. Squeezing it gently as your fingers find their place against his and listening to his quiet sigh in response. 

Your belly flutters once more, and you let your head tip back against the trunk behind you. Staring out into the endless plains of the desert before your eyes slowly fall closed. 

Wanting, in that moment, for nothing and having absolutely everything, right there. 

The breeze curls past you, crisp and cool, and you let yourself drift under too. Knowing that there is nowhere for you to be other than precisely right where you are, surrounded by everything you have ever loved, and finding your own heavenly peace in that fact.