Page 56 of Tamed for Her Pleasure

More guards storm the room. My chest is fucking burning. I am fucking feeble. I hate it. But I no longer feel like I might die.

My doctor enters, puts his bag beside me, and pulls out a familiar vial.

“No,” I wheeze. “No more of that. It knocks me out.”

“Good,” the doctor says. “That is why you are on the mend.”

“Please, Alfred, take some more for me. Those who tried to poison you have been taken.”

My hand shakes as I lift it to cup her cheek. “My fierce little princess. You have been very naughty, putting yourself in danger. Don’t think I shall forget.”

She smiles, takes the vial from the doctor, and holds it to my lips, encouraging me to drink.

I gulp it down, and it eases the fire in my throat and lungs.

Her lips lower to my ear. “I don’t want you to forget. I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Wish only to feel your big hand against my deserving bottom every day until we are called to the Goddess’s side. May there be many years and children before that comes. Now rest, my love. I shall watch over you.”

It is a pretty picture she paints for me, one of loving discipline and a brood of children. One filled with hot rutting in the furs… maybe not furs, but I will make do with these overly soft beds they seem to favor in her world, for her world is now mine.

Chapter Nineteen

Alfred

The wood splits with a satisfying crack under my axe.

My breath makes a cloud before me as I work. It is still fucking freezing, but the snow does not settle here in the way that it does in the clan lands, which are higher up in the foothills of the great mountain range.

I line up another log on the chopping block, heft my axe, and swing.

My lungs ache a little. The doctor said it might take a few months before that goes away, but there is no reason I should not make a full recovery.

Exercise is good for me, and my body is used to training.

Crack.Another log splits, and I line up the next before swinging the axe.

We have people who can do this, but I enjoy good, honest work, and I suspect I always will.

I pause, lean up, and look out across the rolling lands. The wood stores are set a little distance from the main home on the edge of the woods that curves protectively around the north ofthe house, a rambling two-story brick building that can only be described as a mansion.

Ellerdene. Our new home and the estate that was gifted to me by the king to go with my knighthood and title of lord.

It has a pretty name to go with a pretty land, even at this time of year when it is fucking freezing, and the frost sparkles across the grazing lands, melting under the bright morning sun.

Lining up another block, I resume my chopping.

I am an alpha and a barbarian. It is fair to say I come with a greater than average measure of pride. My role as a protector is deeply steeped in who I am. As the eldest of five brothers and a sister, my protectiveness toward them was instinctive. As first a warrior, and then the clan king, that extended beyond my family and covered all.

It is a role I am familiar with, one that fills me with purpose. So it is a strange turnaround of events that I find a tiny, but deadly, Hydorian lass has turned protector of me.

It is hard for a man like me to accept weakness. My body had other plans in the wake of the poisoning.

It has been a humbling experience.

At Penelope’s insistence, the wedding was delayed, and we traveled many miles to the south and east of the Pershore to our new estate and home, where I could rest and recuperate.

The castle and city are imposing, and while I can appreciate their beauty, there is a large gulf between them and the simpler clan village I am used to.

My new home, Ellerdene, where we will likely live for many decades to come, bridges the gap. The rolling farmlands for grazing or crops, the large swathes of forest, the pretty river that runs through it, and the half a dozen villages that make up the estate have beguiled me as much as my fierce princess.

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