Chapter 128: It’s Ok Not To Be Ok.

"Edrik—"

"Let me finish." It’s not sharp, just pleading, and she closes her mouth, nodding against his chest. He exhales, long and shaking. "I didn’t think I got to have this. Any of it. I watched men who’d been in this life twice as long as me die alone in rooms nobody came to clean out after. Men who never had anybody wonder where they were if they didn’t come home. Men who worked themselves into the ground for people who didn’t care if they lived or died past what use they were, and they never once got held by somebody who meant it. I used to think about that a lot. More than I probably should’ve. Lying awake running numbers on it, like — how many of us end up like that. Didn’t seem like good odds."

His hand comes up, threading into her hair, not pulling, just resting there like he needs to feel she’s actually solid and present and not something he’s about to wake up from.

"I made peace with being one of them," he says, quieter now. "Told myself it was fine. That it was just how it went for men like me. And then you were just — there. Looking at me like I wasn’t something to be scared of. And I didn’t know what to do with that. I still don’t, half the time. I keep waiting for the part where it goes wrong, where you realize what you’ve actually gotten yourself tangled up with."

She shifts, pressing closer, feeling the unsteady rhythm of his breathing against her own chest.

"I love you." It comes out plain, unguarded, stripped of every performance she’s ever heard in his voice before. "I don’t think I was built to say that to anybody, and I’m saying it to you, and I mean it more than I’ve meant anything in my entire goddamn life. I was so scared of this. Scared of you. Scared of needing something this much when I never let myself need anything, because needing things gets taken from you in this life. But I don’t care anymore. I’d rather have this and lose it than die one of those men who never got it at all."

She doesn’t say anything right away. She can’t, not with the way her throat has closed up around everything he’s just handed her, raw and unpolished and more honest than she’s ever heard a man be with her in her life. So instead she moves. She pushes up just enough to reach him properly, and she presses her mouth to his hair, right at the crown of his head, where it’s starting to go a little damp from however long they’ve been lying tangled together like this.

She holds the kiss there for a long moment, feeling the shape of his skull under her lips, feeling him go very still beneath her like he doesn’t know what to do with being touched like this, so gently, with nothing expected in return.

"Don’t worry," she says, and her voice comes out rougher than she means it to, thick with something she’s not bothering to blink away. "I love you. Forever. However long that ends up being, that’s how long I’m loving you for."

She feels him swallow, the motion of it traveling through his chest where her hand is still resting flat against him, feeling his heart doing something fast and uneven under her palm.

"And your past doesn’t scare me," she says, pulling back just enough to look at him, to make sure he’s actually hearing her and not just letting the words wash past like he’s done with every kindness anybody’s probably ever tried to give him. "None of it. Not the rooms nobody cleaned out, not the men you watched die, not whatever you did or didn’t do to survive this long. You hear me? I’m not here because I don’t know what you are. I’m here because I do."

His eyes are wet. She watches it happen, watches the way he tries to blink it back like it’s something shameful, something that doesn’t belong on a face like his, and she just keeps looking at him, keeps her hand steady against his chest like an anchor, until he stops fighting it.

Edrik’s fingers trail idly along her spine, tracing nothing in particular, just touching her because he can, because he’s allowed now, and she feels the drowsy pull of sleep tugging at the edges of her mind despite the lingering ache between her thighs, despite the mess of them both that she knows she should clean up before it dries uncomfortable against her skin.

"Stay," she murmurs against his chest, not sure if she means for the next five minutes or forever, maybe both.

"Not going anywhere." His voice rumbles low under her ear, sleepy and content in a way she’s never heard from him before. No caution in it, no careful distance. Just him. Just this. "Told you. I’m yours too now."

She smiles against his skin, presses a slow kiss there, right over the fox marked into him, and lets her eyes fall closed, listening to the steady thrum of his heart and, somewhere beyond the door, the faint restless creak of someone who hasn’t moved from his spot in far too long.

She placed her hand against his chest beneath the open collar, the mark formed over his heart. Dove looked at it, then at his face, and the seriousness there caught her harder than the change in his skin.

He bent his head toward her, stopping close enough that she could choose the last inch. She kissed him, felt his arms close around her only when she leaned in, and let herself stay there without planning how to make the feeling smaller.

Thorne’s hand touched her shoulder when she reached for him. She turned and kissed her first husband too, laughing when he reminded her that somebody still needed to eat the potatoes before they went cold.

Sprout waited until she asked. There wasn’t another thousand-Favor first-bond reward, because this wasn’t her first bond. The daily mate extra remained one, Sprout confirmed, not one for every husband she collected. What appeared instead was a new Household Merchant shelf, priced at one hundred twenty normal coins to open.

Dove left it unopened. For once, she wanted to enjoy a choice before deciding what it could buy.

Today’s delivery held four packs of sturdy folding hand fans. Selling three paid twenty-eight normal coins. Twelve fresh Favor would unlock an eighty-eight-coin shaded travel awning. She kept one pack for four Favor and sold the other three to travelers stopping for directions and clean water.

Their trades brought sealed food, dishcloths, and a sound lantern. She stored all three. Gentle practice and the morning’s active work completed her exercise, bringing her normal purse to six hundred forty-three. Twelve Favor from the day’s affection and happiness, plus the mate extra and minus the kept fans, left six hundred eighteen.

Before she closed the shop, Dove stepped outside with Thorne while Edrik washed the dishes. She caught her husband’s hand and pulled him down for a kiss that wasn’t hurried by somebody else’s turn.

"Still you," she told him against his cheek.

His arm settled around her. "I know. I like hearing it anyway."

She smiled and stayed there until he relaxed against her. Choosing another man hadn’t made her marriage something she could stop tending. She wanted Thorne to feel loved in ways he didn’t have to infer from the fact that she came back to bed. When they went inside, she took his hand with her.

Edrik watched her put the stock away. "Are you finished working?"

"Depends. Are you about to make being finished interesting?"

His expression made her face warm before he said anything. Thorne laughed from the doorway, and she pointed at him for encouraging a man who clearly didn’t need help.

They arranged privacy without making it a competition. Thorne took the front watch after Dove asked, with a meal and the next turn to rest agreed on. Edrik stayed with her in the office. The door closed, and she reached for the man she’d chosen while he waited for her to set the pace.

Later, Dove sat beside Edrik with her clean shirt on and her hair loose. He looked at her as though he still couldn’t quite believe being allowed to stay felt this different from simply refusing to leave.

She caught his hand before Sprout could interrupt. Then the shop’s closed Household shelf lit again, showing a small battery fan among its first available comforts. Outside the office window, the evening air had stopped feeling cool at all.