Horses and Baron’s Men were at Draka’s when Aurie decided to sit on the porch steps to rest between morning chores. The men were still asleep.

  She was still getting used to thinking that way, but with how much Alden had grown in these past few days, she knew there was no other way of thinking about it. The men. Her men.

  She tipped the cup of tea to her lips with a thoughtful grin. Alden had grown so much. So had Maud. If only—she let the warmth in her throat steady her—it had been from something else. Anything else.

  Worry consumed her as much as it did them, she knew. Somehow, for her, it was less filled with the fears in their hearts, but concern for her grown children. They were terrified of the world and she was finding that fear wasn’t among her concerns.

  She wasn’t afraid of the villagers. She knew she should be. She knew that their fear were natural reactions to what Balian and the others did. A realistic one. A normal response. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t worried that they would starve in the upcoming winter, either, if she were honest with anyone but herself about it. It would all be fine, her heart told her.

  Her only worries were coupled with her pride. Her children were not going to be the man and woman she had always imagined or intended for them to be. Her son was no longer walking through the field with a scythe or pitchfork in search of signs of vermin who would eat their crops. He no longer asked about the clouds or guessed at when sunset would happen by looking at the sky. His eyes were no longer raised beyond the horizon, if lifted that high. His hands were never holding a scythe or a pitchfork, but their hunting spear. It never left his side, even when he slept. And he slept on his back most of the night. Her son was not going to be a farmer. He was becoming a soldier. And her daughter would not be some motherly wife to a farmer. No, she will weigh a man’s ability to do violence with their love before she will ever consider them a match. This Draka had become the sort her daughter would always search for as a husband, which worried her far more than the village ever could.

  She took a long sip of her tea, eyeing the horses in front of Draka’s house, wondering why the Baron’s Men looked to him as if he were something more than a landed soldier. A noble? Not with those feet or the willingness to sleep with a horse in his house. His house! Who does that? Mad men and barbarians, that’s who. And Draka.

  There was something more to him than anyone was saying, she felt it in her bones, in the cup that warmed her fingers, something bigger than any of them would believe without reason. No Baron sends an army because of a flood by request. She knew enough to know that. Draka had to be someone important. Nobleman?

  No, Aurie decided, that wasn’t possible. Their King was not fool enough to elevate a barbarian that way. Give him an army in a foreign land to use? Sure. Give him lands within a few weeks’ ride of the palace? Not a chance. But Draka had power.

  Gerard may argue, but there was an obvious difference in rank between them with Draka at the top. She lived in Alcer long enough to know when a man had enough of a bond to speak to his commander with ease and how he sounded when he did. They were close, like her grandfather or father and their captains were, but Draka was in charge.

  If she felt the same as her children, she would be finding every possible way to get him to be Maud’s husband before the sun could fully rise. Maud had been swaying between crying and lashing out, something that Aurie recognized instantly but had no idea how to fix. She did the same when she was tired, or scared, or tense. Like a caged rat. And Maud has been all three. Except with him. Or, at least when she thought of him, since he was always gone so early in the day or altogether. What did Balor do to calm her down when she was like that? She remembered lashing out at him when she was pregnant with Maud and he, somehow, handled it. But she couldn’t remember how, just that the tension eased, the fear disappeared, and she was able to rest.

  “Ouch! What in the Rivers, Maud?” Aurie leaned back a little to peek through the cracked door. Maud was pulling Alden upright from his bed by his ear while he thrashed to get his blanket off.

  “No problems sleeping now, is it?” Maud growled through clenched teeth. “Liar!”

  Aurie winced. She wasn’t sure if she should intervene. She wasn’t sure of her place anymore. Maud was practically running two households at once and would fully do so if Aurie would let her have her way at Draka’s. What did that make her? The mother? But that no longer meant what it once had.

  She was no longer the unquestioned authority of the house, the one who could say a few words and end sibling arguments or get chores done. And, without attempting it, she knew that ‘I’ll tell your father’ no longer had any weight either. Those two had taken their places as the heads of the house while she and Balor have become the children.

  “What are you talking about? Get off me!”

  “You slept through it! I needed to go pee and you slept through it!”

  “Oh no,” Alden sounded bored, “Whatever shall I do to make it up to you?”

  “Something was in the forest, Alden! I ended up running to get away from it because you weren’t there!”

  “What?” Aurie leapt through the door, echoing Alden.

  Maud stiffened with wide eyes and a sheepish tuck of her frizzy brown hair behind one ear. “There were bright flashes in the forest by the village. Explosions. I ran. To…Draka’s…and hid under his house.”

  Aurie and Alden mirrored each other’s gaping stares.

  Maud shook at them, “I was scared, alright? They were coming closer, so I went there. Which I wouldn’t have,” she kicked Alden’s bed, “if you had woken up when I needed to go!”

  “The gods, sorry!”

  “Are you alright?” Aurie rushed to her and squeezed her arm. “What happened?”

  “Well…” Maud trailed off, her eyes shifting, “Draka brought me home. With this.” She tugged the golden pelt from the loft and caught it in a heap in her arms.

  Aurie gasped. She had never seen a pelt that color before. She ran a hand across it. Or so soft. “Well, I’m glad he brought you home.”

  “Yeah,” Maud didn’t sound very happy about that. She twisted herself toward Alden with a finger jamming into his chest, “Don’t do that to me again! You’re a…a…bad brother!”

  “What?” Alden squeaked. That must have cut deep. “I said I was sorry!”

  “You should be,” Maud went to the middle of the room to begin folding the golden pelt.

  Aurie sighed. Alden blinked and shook his head, still confused, “I didn’t know. I was…”

  “Sleeping,” Maud flapped the pelt with a snap, as if trying to slap dust off of it, “Yeah, I know.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Aurie decided that it was best to return to drinking her tea on the porch. Once again, she felt the changes all around her causing her to meander aimlessly. What purpose did she have now? Something white near the garden window caught the corner of her eye. She stopped and turned.

  Vigora tilted her head at her with ears popped upward. She had her entire head through the window enough that she was practically climbing inside. Aurie’s blood went cold at the sight, then she cackled as she walked to the beast victoriously.

  “I moved the herbs, you little shit. You can’t reach them anymore. Now, shoo. Go home.” Aurie put a hand to Vigora’s nose, her fingers able to fit side by side between the giant nostrils, and pushed.

  Vigora’s nostrils widened with a huff and her ears flipped sideways. Then she shook Aurie’s hand gently from her nose and stretched her neck further through the window so her chin slid over her shoulder.

  Aurie felt their cheeks rub and couldn’t stop the giggle. It was so warm, rough and yet soft. Comforting. No wonder Maud liked her so much.

  “Alright,” Aurie let her eyes close as she leaned onto the horse’s cheek and rubbed her neck. “Maybe you aren’t such a little shit after all.”

  Chewing, especially with a mouth the size of a child’s head, is very distinct and loud. This particular time, Aurie’s ear was where the jaw bones were shifting and each crunch resounded like a thunderstrike. She narrowed her eyes and slowly turned toward the only cloudy blue eye she could see, which widened.

  “You..." Aurie stiffened her jaw in rage. She looked behind her to find Vigora’s nose in the basket of pears, her long lips sucking one after another into her mouth. “Little. SHIT!” And Vigora slipped out the window and galloped through the broken fence toward Draka’s at a sprint.

  The bowl of pears spun and rattled on the small table along their bedroom wall, where she had put them thinking they were out of reach of the horse. There had been a few carrots and a cabbage there, too.

  “Huh,” Maud lifted the last two pears out. “How thoughtful! She left enough for Draka’s dinner tonight.” Not a hint of sarcasm.

  Aurie snatched the pears from her hands and wiped them on her apron before setting them over the mantle. “Over my dead body, they are. I’m putting an end to this once and for all. That shitting horse needs to be skewered!”

  She untied her apron and shoved it into a chair on her way to the door. With each step she took toward his house, she thought of what she would say when she got there. “Either you tie your beast up or the next time she is in my yard, I will cook her up AND EAT HER!” “Tie your horse up, you barbarian, or I will put mud in your next stew!” “That little shit eats one more fruit and I swear by the Rivers that your next meal will be HER!”

  “Ma, please!” Maud ran in front of her and stopped. “Don’t. Don’t be mean to him. Please, I beg you.”

  Aurie crossed her arms at her. “Be mean? No, I’m going to make this stop. We only have so much, now, and that beast just ate an entire week’s worth of it.”

  “I know, but…” Maud looked over her shoulder at the horses still standing in front of his house, then back at her, “But we can find other ingredients.”

  Aurie’s brow rose sideways, “Where?”

  Maud looked around thoughtfully.

  “Exactly,” Aurie shoved past her. “Those pears are for our stew, Maud. They had better make their way into it before you make his!”

  Now, where was I? Oh, right… “Tie that plowing horse up or I’ll…”

  The soldiers were walking out Draka’s door when she arrived. Two of them nodded respectfully to her as they stepped past her from the porch while the other two made her wrap her shawl tighter. His door was closed. She growled under her breath as she went towards it.

  They rode off, two in each direction, fast enough that a snaking cloud of dust followed them. Aurie ducked her head under her shawl. She knocked on his door.

  “Offla! You rotten barbarian! I have some words for you about that horse of yours! If you don’t…”

  Something small thudded, then bootsteps and the door flew open to snatch the air out of her lungs through a gaping mouth. He was only a little taller than Balor, thinner, but not half as lanky as she had thought from how his shirt and trousers hung off his bones. He was all muscles. His arms weren’t thick but bulged with rolling mounds of muscle. His bare chest, filled top to bottom with a thin blanket of brown hairs peppered by grays, was solid and thick, over top of a belly that looked more solid than the door he held open. Her eyes followed the form of the muscle over his hips and went toward the top of his trousers in perfect lines. She jumped them up to his face and found herself just as awestruck by the long auburn and gray hair hanging over one of his golden hazel eyes, curling around the high cheekbones to touch his square jaw with their tips. Peppered gray stubble only made his square jaw and dimpled chin tucked beneath thick lips more defined.

  Draka’s eyes widened with a jolt, jumping from her to his bare chest, and he slammed the door shut.

  Aurie took a step back. Why was she here? There was a reason. She put a finger to her teeth. She had a reason to be here.

  Her eyes wandered, searching the doorframe, the walls, the road, the dust cloud, for something, anything to remind her. She swallowed dryly. Without a shirt. He had come to the door without a shirt. She had never seen a man that looked like that. She had never…not once, not since the day she married Balor had she been…struck by another man like that. Her head was fragmented. Flooded. She felt…wrong. He was too good looking. She had to go get Balor. He can come back and talk to him about…whatever it was. She needed to go.

  The door flew open and Draka stepped out in a thin red shirt that shimmered in the sunlight. It hung over him in long, wide folds, hiding everything from the nape of his neck down to his thighs. He glowered at her with a hand to the side that spoke plainly, ‘What?’

  Aurie found herself nearly stumbling down from the porch steps the moment she looked up to his face. His perfectly beautiful face. Beautifully annoyed face. She looked to her house, yearning to run for it. Her legs were numb, her heart was already running. She was planted.

  Vigora poked her nose around the corner of the house and disappeared at the sight of her. Aurie remembered.

  “Your horse!” Aurie turned toward him, but kept her eyes at his…missing two toes? Both feet had one missing? The Rivers did this man have against his own feet? “She stole right out of my kitchen this time! You need to tie her up, box her up, or something! Keep her in your plowing house if you have to, or whatever you do with her, but keep her out of my food, you…you…Pretty Shit!”

  There, that should get a rise out of him. What do you have to say to that, now that you know I think you’re a barbarian! Wait…Aurie let out a long sigh. She didn’t, did she? She wanted to scream when he started laughing at her without making a sound. He stumbled into the frame of his door and sank to his knees from laughing so hard while still stifling any sound coming from his lungs.

  She covered her face with her hands. He fell onto his back and slapped the floor, his entire body vibrating with his silent guffaws.

  “Just, start tying her up.” And Aurie rushed back to the house. She had never…would never…this is bad. This is very bad. No wonder Maud is so taken with him. He’s too good looking, Aurie picked up her skirt and dashed. Too…every plowing thing. I need Balor. My husband had better be at the house still.

  As she reached her door, Aurie drew in a breath to steady herself. She threw herself through the door, “Go help Offla—Draka—with his horse.”

  Maud, in the kitchen, cocked a brow at her while stirring the stew. Alden blinked at her from his bed with the spear over his shoulder while he was tying his sandal.

  “Now, both of you!”

  Before they were out the front door, she flew through the bedroom door and leapt over Balor in a shower of kisses and straddling legs. His thick arms wrapped around her waist as he happily returned her kisses.

  Balor. I need Balor. I love my husband. Only my husband. Balor.