Stavanger Bay everyone, step aside; this is the last warning

Szymon made no protest when his Chosen One wrapped her limber forelegs with renewed vigor around his steely-muscled neck, clinging to him not out of vulnerable need but an imperious desire that he listen. His tattered ear, wedged firmly between her sharp teeth in a series of gnawing nibbles, flickered with an involuntary desire to escape but cupped forward aside its twin immediately thereafter as he tried desperately to catch every syllable. They were clipped and brusque at first, but smoothed out and became entreating — Szymon couldn’t understand her trepidation. He was not an empathetic creature despite his affection for Doe and the gentleness that he had found, waiting behind an inconspicuous door in the innermost reaches of his battered heart like a forgotten store of gold and riches. Even had she tried to explain the unrest she felt, he wouldn’t have been able to fully grasp it — despite it being the same emotion that drove his occasional fits of possessive jealousy.

Drawing breath as she began to hum to him, determined not disappoint her and thereby earn the renewed sting of her voice in tones of impatience, “All right,” he said slowly. She had said, “You told me that you chose me, and I have already chosen you.” He set that knowledge carefully upon the wall of the den directly before him, tattooing it upon his forearm so that he could always refer back to it. He chuckled as her tongue soothed the scarred flesh of his ear, flicking it at the ticklish sensation of moisture, and bent his head to set his fangs against the hollow of her throat, tangling them in the thick, protective fur that covered it. He guessed without asking that Skellige had made no reply, for if he had, the scrappy little witch doctor would have spilled his answer along with the telling of her asking. That troubled Szymon, but not overly much — the blessing of the Sea was the important thing, for until that happened not even the Leviathan could, in good conscience, take a mate. They all had to be reborn — perhaps not Deirdre, who was a dryad and keeper of the forest, but certainly everyone in Skellige’s warband.

“Wonder what spirit g-guide you’ll re-receive,” he mused, smoothing a lick from her throat up the narrow, tapered slope of her pinpoint chin.