Maybe it was Ragnar’s instinct and feral driven desire to dominate Diluculo that caused him to dislike her so because she refused to acknowledge that he was her superior in Rank, if nothing else. In Odinn’s Cove she would have found herself a corpse at the Jarl’s paws …but there was little sense in comparing the Cove to the Ridge. They were vastly different. Ragnar did not lead the Ridge, and it did not appear that he would ever see the Beta rank as far as he could see - and he did not have the freedom to execute as he would have. Pump lingered above him, her superiority over him keeping him in check, keeping the leash the Viking had foolishly he saw now, put himself on choking him back when he made to lunge. The chain that bound him would not break, would not rust and corrode. No, the only way he would be free of it was when he was allowed the freedoms he desired which didn’t seem like it would be any time soon. It was all amount of Ragnar’s outstanding will power and perhaps just dumb luck that he had yet to make good on what everything in his body was telling him to do. There was silence for a bit, interrupted only by the sound of her teeth scraping across the bones she worried, reminiscent to the Viking of how it sounded to crush such feeble things to splinters beneath the power of his jaw.
Ragnar watched as she rose - smaller than him, humorously, though he was used to looking down at others - Thistle particularly who was smaller than Diluculo as it was. While her pregnancy did not give his wife height it gave her weight (not that, Gods above he would ever tell her that) and he was positive if she could have gotten him to the ground Thistle could have pinned him with relative ease for multiple reasons. A soft, amused snort escaped Ragnar’s black, leathery nostrils when the female all but challenged him to kill her. As much as I would like too, There was no lesson in death.