Chapter 43: My Body Hurts, And I Have Soup To Make! 2
"You smell like me now," Cael said against Neve’s wrist. "Finally!"
Neve looked at the top of his head and sniffed his own shoulder experimentally.
Cael’s scent was definitely there. And underneath it, still present but quieter, the faint trace of the unknown — the dragon mark that had been there first. And under all of that, something that was just Neve, which apparently still existed somewhere under two bond marks and forty-five per cent pheromones.
’By the time all ten are done,’ he thought, ’Am I going to smell like a whole tribe?’
He stopped thinking about that.
He finished the stew and handed the bowl back. Cael took it and was gone and back in under a minute, efficient in the way he was efficient about everything.
"You should sleep more. You must be tired," Cael said.
"What time is it?"
"Morning still."
"When does the festival start?"
Cael paused. "Evening. The guests arrive before sundown."
Neve threw his legs off the bed.
"Neve—"
"I need to start cooking." He stood. His lower back said its piece, but he walked through it. "How much time do I have?"
"You should rest—"
"Cael. How much time?"
Cael looked at him with the expression he sometimes got when he had decided arguing was not going to produce results. "Several hours."
"Then I have work to do." Neve headed for the kitchen. He noticed the cold as soon as he turned the corner... a sharp draft coming through the far wall from the crack that served as their window. He stopped. "Why is it colder in here?"
"Snow started last night," Cael said behind him. "I blocked the cave entrance so the cold wouldn’t reach you while you slept."
Neve turned. "Blocked? What do you mean by... blocked?"
"I sealed it," Cael said.
"What? How do we get out?"
Cael looked to the side for exactly three seconds, like he didn’t have any answer to that question. He even scratched his head. Then he looked back.
"I break through it," he said confidently.
Neve looked at him.
"It’s easy. Trust me," Cael added.
Neve decided not to pursue this further and turned back to the kitchen. He started pulling out what he needed for the soup — the stock ingredients, the salt, the stored vegetables. He was calculating portions, how much he could make without cutting too deep into their winter stores, how many people might be at the festival, whether he should do multiple batches—
A gust came through the wall crack and hit him directly.
He shivered once.
He did not feel cold the way he used to feel cold. His red panda body had opinions about cold that were different from his human opinions... it was brisk, it was sharp, it was not pleasant in large doses, but it was not the bone-deep misery he remembered from winters in his old world. He was not going to freeze.
He pointed at the crack anyway.
"We should put stored meat close to that gap," he said. "Cold air coming through there — it’ll keep things from spoiling."
Cael looked at the crack and back at Neve. He filed the information away.
"Let me open the entrance first," he said. "Then I’ll help you cook."
"You don’t have to—"
"I want to," Cael said. He was already moving toward the entrance. He stopped and looked back. "I need to do something useful. After last night, I can’t just stand here watching you work."
Neve opened his mouth.
"That came out wrong," Cael said.
"Did it?"
Cael turned back toward the entrance without answering.
Neve pressed his lips together to keep the smile contained and started on the soup base.
.
.
Thirty minutes later, the entrance was open.
Neve came to look and stopped.
White. Everything outside was white.
Snow had come overnight, the way first winter snowfall decided to surprise everyone. The trees had it across every branch. The ground was completely covered. The sky above was the particular pale grey of more coming.
Cael was standing outside with snow up to his shins, looking unbothered.
Neve stepped out beside him and breathed in.
Cold and clean and completely silent in the way only heavy snow made things silent. He had forgotten about that. The way the world went quiet when it was covered.
"You’re not cold?" Cael asked, watching him.
"Not really," Neve said. He breathed in again. "My body handles it better."
Cael looked at him for a moment with that expression that wasn’t nothing.
"I blocked the entrance because I thought you’d be cold," he said. "If I’d known—"
"You didn’t know." Neve looked at the snow. "It’s fine."
Cael crouched in the snow in front of him, which brought him to Neve’s eye level, which was somehow more sincere and more inconvenient at the same time.
"After last night," Cael said, "I can’t have my mate working like this. Let me help. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it."
"And whose fault is it that I’m in this condition?" Neve said.
Cael’s ears went red, and his tail moved.
He looked at the snow with the expression of someone who was accepting responsibility and finding it warmer than expected.
Neve reached out and ruffled his hair.
Cael went very still under it, the way he did whenever Neve touched him without warning — completely still, like he was afraid any movement would make it stop.
"What time will the guests arrive?" Neve asked.
"Before sundown," Cael said. "The dragon king will be there by then."
Neve looked at the white landscape and thought about Vaelthorn.
About the bet with Isabella.
About the advanced dialect reward sitting in his future if everything went right tonight.
About a dragon lord somewhere in this world who had put his mark on Neve in the dark and then disappeared like it was a casual thing to do.
He pulled Cael’s hand, and Cael stood from the snow, taller than the landscape around them, ears still slightly red.
"Then we have no time," Neve said. "Let’s cook."
Cael smiled.
It was small and not something he did often, and it changed his whole face when he did it.
"Yes, Neve," he said.