Chapter 42: My Body Hurts, And I Have Soup To Make! 1
Neve woke up in his bed.
His actual bed. With the mattress and the pillow and the lamp still glowing softly on the bedside drawer. He stared at the ceiling and took stock of his body like he was already expecting something to be wrong. Especially after what happened last night. And he was damn right.
Everything ached.
He wasn’t injured, just aching. The specific deep muscle aching of a body that had been put through something it had not previously experienced and was now filing a formal complaint about it.
He moved his arm.
His lower back cracked impolitely, making him lie still for another moment.
He had almost forgotten he had a bed last night. The mating had started in the cave since that’s where Cael chose to start, which had felt reasonable at the time. He could imagine his new bed breaking after all that creak and leopard strength of his. Especially with the way Cael had mercilessly claimed him like a starved animal.
He was glad about the floor decision in retrospect.
He yawned and covered his mouth with his hand, and then stopped when he saw it.
The mark.
It was on his wrist. Clean lines, dark against his pale skin, the same pattern he had felt on his neck after the night at the trade city, but now on his own body. He turned his wrist over and looked at it.
’It had happened. The second mating was finally over.’
He felt his face go warm as he thought about how last night’s mating was.
He waved it off immediately. He was not going to lie here and think about last night because he had things to do, and thinking about last night was not going to help him do them. He was especially not going to think about the specific way Cael had grabbed his waist and pulled him closer so he could thrust...
He waved it off harder.
Several notifications were waiting in front of him.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION!
{Mate Bond: 2/10}
Two. The dragon mark from the trade city and now Cael. Two down, eight to go. He looked at that number and felt the weight of it settle somewhere practical in his chest. It was still a lot. That means he would go through this hell eight more times.
{STATS UPDATE — NEVE}
Pheromones: 45%
He exhaled.
Forty-five. It had gone down from ninety-five. His body had apparently used the heat and the bonding to burn through most of what had been building, and the result was that he felt less like a disaster waiting to happen. More like himself. Manageable. He didn’t even feel the heat that much, thanks to what happened last night. Besides, he was supposed to go insane if it reached 100, but it didn’t.
The next notification is loaded.
{New Mission: Be Recognised by the Dragon King at the Winter Festival.}
{Reward: Beast Language — Advanced Upgrade. Host will gain full comprehension of all beast world dialects, historical and current.}
Neve stared at the reward.
Full comprehension of every dialect. Historical and current.
He could understand everyone. Every tribe, every accent, every old text he couldn’t read. The implications of that moved through his head in a chain reaction of possibilities that he would have spent an hour on if he didn’t have something more immediate to deal with.
Isabella and the bet between them.
He had told her in front of both tribes that the dragon king would recognise him.
’Fuck!’
He cursed quietly and moved to get up, and his lower back cracked again.
He cursed slightly louder and adjusted.
He knew about dragons. Not beast world dragons... book dragons, mythology dragons, the ones from his old world’s collected knowledge.
They are prideful, territorial and easily provoked by perceived disrespect. The kind of creature that could be standing right next to you and decide you weren’t worth acknowledging if you hadn’t made an impression.
He had a dragon lord’s mark on his neck, and he didn’t even know what the man looked like. He had dark hair and broad shoulders and hands that were long and huge enough to jack him off during his surprise heat and a voice that had asked Neve if he needed help with it, and that was the full extent of Neve’s knowledge of Vaelthorn.
This was a problem.
He was sitting in the middle of this problem when the sound of the cave entrance changed.
Cael walked in, holding a bowl of stew
The stew was warmed up with steam rising. He held it carefully in both hands as if it were something fragile. He crossed to the bed and knelt in front of Neve without standing to full height, the bowl held out, his eyes doing something that Neve had not seen them do before.
Worried. Genuinely, quietly worried, in the way of someone who had been waiting outside and checking on him repeatedly.
"Are you alright?" he asked. His ears had dropped slightly. "I was... did I hurt you? Tell me if I did. I should have been more careful, I know I should have, I—"
"Cael," Neve said.
Cael stopped talking and looked at him.
"You didn’t hurt me," Neve said.
"You’re wincing."
"I’m not wincing."
"You winced when I shoved into you."
"That’s just—" Neve stopped. Looked at him. "You didn’t hurt me. It’s just sore. That’s different."
Cael’s ears were still low.
Neve took the bowl and ate a spoonful. It was good. He had warmed it properly, not overheated, still the right consistency. He looked at Cael kneeling beside the bed, looking like a very large animal that had done something it was reconsidering, and Neve felt something ridiculous happen in the centre of his chest.
The person in front of him right now and the person from last night were the same.
He was still slightly unable to fully process that.
Last night Cael had been... he had been territorial and certain and completely without any of the restraint he usually kept on everything, and Neve had discovered that Cael’s restraint was doing a great deal of heavy lifting in terms of keeping Neve’s composure intact because without it Neve had had absolutely no composure left within the first twenty minutes and had stopped looking for it somewhere around the second hour.
He ate another spoonful.
"It’s perfect," he said. "Thank you."
Cael took his free hand, turned it over, and pressed his mouth to Neve’s palm. Then to the bond mark on his wrist. His lips stayed there for a moment, warm and deliberate.
"You smell like me now," he said against Neve’s wrist. "Finally!"