Page 27 of Night's Bride

“If you are tired, maybe you should go back to the nest,” she suggested, suddenly worried that he was overexerting and exhausting himself. “Maybe Vikt should retrieve the healer and?—”

Nash chuffed and shook his head. “It is not necessary. You are worrying for nothing. I have suffered far worst wounds in my life. I will regain energy quickly, and then you will be complaining for when I must make up the lost time rutting you.”

She rolled her eyes at his words, but a fond smile tripped her lips. “It seems that we let a rogue into our den, after all,” she teased.

He grinned in response as he lay back against the cushions piled against the wall. The den was built much like a cabin, except that the front half of it was built within a large, dug out area supported by stones and various plants to keep the rainfall from washing inside. It created a sort of illusion of a den dug out from a hill, as the rest of the den was built in the traditional manner, carved out from earth. It was surprisingly cozy. The ceiling was low to comfortably contain the heat, but it was high enough that Nash could straighten to his full height and still had an inch or two of spare room above the tips of his ears. There was even a stove installed in a constructed kitchen area, as well as a central hearth that kept the whole den warm despite there being numerous sub chambers to be filled with whatever they wished to store… and a growing family.

“Heal quickly then instead of talking about it. You are not the only one who misses rutting,” Vikt commented from where he sat beside the fire, supervising the roasted rabbits—or hoppers as her mates called them—that he had skewered there. His ears twisted back playfully as he glanced up at her. “Our mate is cruel in insisting that we all behave so not to make you suffer.”

“Be glad that at least the worst of the Withering Days were over when the huntsman attacked,” Vrel commented wryly as he entered the room, four wooden figures cradled gently in his hands. “It was bad enough that the human had us at a disadvantage by attacking when he did while we were still drunkwith hormones, but at least we did not have to suffer in the aftermath.”

“Speak for yourself,” Vikt grumbled but his ears pricked to his twin. “Are those them?”

Vrel nodded shyly as he approached the mantle, and Emily smiled as she left Nash’s side to join him. Vrel glanced down at her, love brimming in his eyes as his thumb stroked over the small image in his right hand. Mother Ewa.

“I made these asking that Mother Ewa always bless you and the Dark Fathers protect you, rya. Before, I would have felt devastation and loss when our den burned down, taking with it all the hard work that we poured into it to make it our own, but you gave me a new sense of home beyond those simple things. Because home is in you, and our triad,” he rasped. “And I will ever be thankful for having this gift in my life. So these… they are for you.”

One by one he placed the figures on the mantle, and while his previous carvings had been beautiful, these that he had constructed for it were even more so as they seemed to smile with utter benevolence and love. Vikt and Nash rose from their places, the latter with a painstaking grunt but he waved off the other male’s assistance as they joined Vrel and Emily to look upon the small statues.

“Now it truly feels like our home is complete. Good job, brother. This is your best work yet,” Vikt said, and Nash grunted in agreement.

“The gods surely blessed me to have brought me all the way here,” Nash observed quietly.

“They blessed all of us,” Emily corrected, her eyes tearing sentimentally.

She dabbed her eyes quickly with the hem of her sleeve and sniffed. Her bottom lip quivered as she mentally tallied the days. If she was not wrong, it was New Year’s Day. Vrel’s timing, asalways, was impeccable. It truly felt like they were moving into a new beginning—together. Bowing her head, she whispered a prayer to the Mother, the memory of her mother’s hands moving over her prayer beads filling her mind as she thanked the goddess who could only also be Mother Ewa, for all the blessings she had received.

They gave her the family she never would have sought or thought she wanted. And she would forever be grateful for the day she was chosen to be their Withering Night’s bride.

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Six years later

Emily groaned, her hand going across her bulging stomach as she narrowed her eyes on the mischievous little monster grinning at her from where he pretended to hide behind his father’s bulk.

“Dral, don’t make me come over there and shake those cinnamon twist cookies out of you,” she threatened. “Who told you that you could eat them? Those cookies were for our New Year’s feast, not for you to gobble up, you little fiend.”

“It wasn’t just me,” he protested with a little giggle. “Daddy Nash also ate some.”

The male in question, having been betrayed by his own offspring, flattened his ears as he turned a look of shock to Emily. “I would never?—”

“Wait,” she commanded, holding her hand up as she squinted at her mate. “Is that cinnamon on your muzzle?”

Vikt and Vrel stumbled to an immediate halt as they entered the room, identical looks of guilt crossing their faces as her eyes shifted to them and widened at the evidence of the sweet powder that she used on her special sugar bomb cookies coating not just their muzzles but the fur of their chests.

She gaped at them as she recalled the missing sugar bombs from the day before that she assumed were just a miscount. “All four of you… traitors!”

“Now, rya,” Vikt cajoled, his four hands lifting to her in a silent entreaty. “It is not that we are betraying you. Your cookies are simply too difficult to resist. And you like to hide them,” he pointed out in what he obviously thought was spectacular reasoning. “So we were obligated to eat some of them to tide us over to the feast.”

Emily shook a finger at them in exasperation. “You three are supposed to be setting an example for that one,” she said, gesturing to their rog. “You wish to raise an entire den full of cookie thieves at this rate!”

“But you enjoy making cookies,” Vrel interjected with a sweet smile. “And you love it especially because we are always happy to help—particularly Nash,” he added, to which her big mate nodded in agreement. “We are only thinking of you to give you a reason to make more and so that you know we appreciate them.”

She stared at her mates and choked on her laughter. The whole lot of them were devious and naughty as rogs themselves when they wanted to be. Even after six years together, they never failed to keep her on her toes and laughing. Even little Dral, who was the spitting image of Nash despite his nearly black fur thanks to her own coloring she liked to imagine, was just as precious and precocious. Life was never boring, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Despite the incident with the huntsman years earlier, and the rising threat from the citadels that eventually forced Evelyn toshut down communication with them, life was peaceful in the northlands. Trish had gone from a nervous, unhappy woman to a strong voice within the community as well as an accomplished huntress and surprisingly… a blacksmith. A trade that she had apparently picked up out of pure curiosity in her youth. They had also become close friends as the woman ended up settling within a den dug out not too far from their own territory so that the house could be available for one of the newer brides.

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