Page 138 of Bound

And his arms came about her.

“I’ll stay off the roof,” she murmured.

And if this was a quarrel, it wasn’t so bad after all.

???

“Braum, you have to go.”

His mouth twisted. The argument was growing thin. He thought it settled. Wren, obviously, did not.

“If you are to live here,” she began anew, and he raised a brow at her.

“If?”

Her lips thinned, and her eyes briefly rolled toward the ceiling. “Since you are to live here, you should have your belongings.”

“I am fine.”

Wren plucked at his shirt sleeve, her nose wrinkling. It was his turn to roll his eyes, but he did his best to make it less obvious than she had. “My clothing has been washed, I assure you.”

She grimaced. “Well. Still. I can manage on my own. Truly. Not so bad at all now.”

He reached out to put his hands on her shoulders in case she felt the need to make any sort of physical display of just how well she could manage in his absence.

Her head tilted as she looked up at him, and he watched a delicate line appear between her brows as she regarded him. “I’ll still want you to come back,” she added, her voice a little gentler than it had been. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

His throat tightened. His grip too, if only marginally. “Braum,” she murmured, her hand coming to rest upon his chest. “Really?”

As if it was so absurd that she might change her mind. As if it was so beyond the realm of possibility that it had all been a plea of desperation, not at all applicable when she was mending.

Her wing was still bound. It was the bruises only that were turning from their blackened state to a sickly yellow that looked somehow even more painful than they had before. “You’re sleeping on the floor,” she continued in that soft way.

He’d offered to take her upstairs for her convalescence, but she preferred what autonomy she could find by remaining in her alcove behind the hearth. He could hardly argue with that, and she’d insisted he stay upstairs. In her bed.

Alone.

“Not without you,” he confessed, just as quietly.

He hadn’t wanted to say it. Hadn’t meant to say it now. But she was looking at him that way, and being so... so gentle about it all, it slipped out without his least intention.

He loosened his grip, so she was free to step away from him. To tug at her braid and look at him worriedly—even with accusation. As if he’d confessed some of those intentions she’d feared between mates.

It wasn’t that. It was simply...

“That is your room,” he continued. “Your place. It feels... very wrong to simply take it over. I am more than fine by the fire. I promise you.” She’d given him blankets. Pillows. Or at least, directed him to the trunks that housed some of each. He slept far better regardless. For her to be only a room away from him. That he could wake and stand at the doorway and tell himself it was all right, he wasn’t going in, he simply needed to hear her breathing.

Then he’d settle back beside the fire, prodding it every so often to make sure the house did not grow too cold.

Even Merryweather chose him on occasion—he’d wake to her warm body curled at his hip, his hand coming to stroke her dense fur as she rumbled a mild protest at being woken.

Then show her underside for rubbing, so perhaps it was not much of a complaint after all.

Wren shifted slightly. He’d brought her handiwork. She’d skill with a hook and yarn, and it brought to mind his mother, hands always busy even as the rest of her was still in her favoured chair and footrest. Would Wren like a footrest? He hadn’t seen one in the house, and surely she’d be more comfortable if she had one and...

“I didn’t see it as taking over,” Wren argued. “I saw it as... keeping it warm for me.” She glanced upward. “I’ve spent my whole life up there. I don’t think it would know how to be your room alone, even if you tried.”

It was a room made of wood. Nothing more. And yet she spoke of it as if memory itself had seeped into the timbre itself. A part of her.