Thistle leaned towards his face then, and he felt her tongue glide across his muzzle, mixing his blood, the blood of the bear and her saliva against the short, velveteen fur there, covering the smaller scars that marked his muzzle in rich crimson. His nose was full with the scent of blood, the bears, his own. The scent did not turn the Viking’s stomach as it might have others. He was born in and grew up in blood. He had smelled it many times, and even the sickly sweet scent of decaying bodies. He was not as desensitized to it as he had once been when raids were a regular thing and battle loomed right around the corner at almost all times.
Apparently, this declaration of love had caught Thistle off guard, which was amusing because it was not the first time he had ever said it to her, but her surprise, he realized, probably wasn’t all that unwarranted given that it had sort of just spilled from betwixt his lips without any conscious thought. Despite that, he was not just casually throwing it around. He truly did love her. Somehow, impossibly, but truly all the same.