Page 223 of Fated or Knot

“I’ll remind you she perfumed for me first,” Marius said.

“Aye, and you mishandled it. I’ll get her to perfume this time,” I said.

His eyelids fell to make a smoldering look at her. Whatever he said in her mind must’ve been lusty, as she shifted and her body temperature warmed. Still no perfume, though.

She tugged at the lapels of my jacket, then mewled. I took it off and teased, “First my mask, now my jacket?” I draped it over her shoulders and she pulled it around her body, purring rustily as she inhaled and made a blissed face.Aw, stars.She could absolutely keep it. “I’ll give you the rest of my clothes too. Just say the word,mo stór.”

She didn’t respond, and my brothers rolled their eyes at me. It was worth a try.

The rest of the ride home passed in a blink. Of course, when I got the chance to hold our purring omega, it went quick. I left the carriage last and carried her out. Since she didn’t make so much as a peep of complaint, I carried her all the way back to her suite while Kauz went to the infirmary for his stitches and Marius and Tormund split off to clean themselves off quickly in their own rooms.

That left me to take Lark to her rain room and care for her wounds. This felt familiar, except I wasn’t able to hide how faesteel-hard my erection was once I stripped us both naked and started cleansing her skin. Her eyes tracked my movements and watched my face, but she still hadn’t formed a word since we left the forest behind.

“Are you all right?” I murmured, hoping we could at least do simple yes or no questions.

She smiled slightly and nodded.

“Are you in heat?”

For a moment, she had that same lost expression as the face she’d made during our last dance. Then she shook her head.

It was just close, then. This might be a taste of caring for an omega in heat, except she wasn’t in the pack bond yet for me to sense her needs. I washed her head to toe but saw no sign of her mark manifesting.

Once I toweled her off and applied some salve to the cut on her neck and along her scrapes, she went to her nest. What echoed out from that room could only be described as a squeal of outrage.

I came running, just to see her standing with her hands on her hips, staring at the unmade bed and piles of clean nesting materials next to it, along with some heat supplies. She turned to me and gestured at the scene with absolute pique. “Iknow,” I said in exaggerated agreement. She could blame my father, who had the house moths cleaning up everything Marius and I touched to be rid of our “stink.”

Lark started in on the blankets, picking out one from the middle and scattering the folded pile in the process. She unrolled her selection and whipped it flat, before laying it on the bed. I watched her curiously, until she turned my way and make a questioning squeak. She picked up a pile of pillows and trotted over to me, placing them in my arms.

“Got it. I’ll help,” I said. I went and placed a pillow at the head of the bed. She was in the midst of folding in a cushion into her creation and looked up, scowling at what I’d done. She came over to pick up the pillow and whipped it away, tossing it to the far side of the room. “Stars, okay. That was a very offensive pillow placement. I apologize.”

She dove into her pile of blankets and emerged with a new selection. Her head turned toward where I’d placed another pillow in the center of the bed. I was curious to see what she’ddo this time. She stomped her foot and snatched it up, this time placing it where I’d put the first one.

Hmm, puzzling. But all I knew about an omega’s nest was…well, nothing. I watched her go, increasingly baffled by her frenzy of folding, kneading, placing, tossing, and nodding in approval before she went back to get more fluffy stuff to add.

Marius rushed into the room a few minutes later. She made a sound of relief and they had a brief feral back and forth, before he stripped off his newly donned shirt and handed it to her. As she tucked it into her nest, he turned to me. “You don’t know how to nest build. Get out.”

I smacked my lips. “Rude. I could always learn.”

He tilted his head when she made a soft chatter. “She says you can stay after you go get your jacket,” he said.

I put the pillows down to do just that, and returned to see that he’d lifted a good assortment of her nesting supplies so she could rifle through them. She paused and rubbed a blanket’s fabric over her cheek before purring for a moment in approval and tugging it free to add to the nest. When she saw that I had my jacket, she took it from me and added it to the nest too. Well, I guess I really wasn’t getting that back.

“Your only job in nest building is to offer her things. She decides what goes in and what doesn’t,” Marius told me.

“Was that so much harder to say than ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’?”

“I could just throw your ass out. Help or leave.” He punctuated this with a warning growl.

I opted to help, holding armfuls of heat supplies and pillows that she occasionally investigated. All the while, it sounded like she and Marius were having a full-blown conversation in feral noises. “What are you two talking about?” I eventually asked.

He glanced at me, his pupils fully blown. It took him a moment to respond, “It’s mostly reassurance that it’s a good nest. Don’t talk. You’re going to ruin her concentration.”

“So you’renottalking about this evening?”

“Shut up, Fal,” he said through gritted teeth.

Lark had been kneading on a pillow with a determined furrow between her brows. She paused and looked down at herself, pawing at one of her bare breasts. “What…? Oh. Oh, stars!”

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