“Would you let her treat my delusional fevers?” Ragnar murmured his question to his wife, a trademark coy smirk tugging at the edges of his lips. It had been a while since his last one had hit, a product, he was determined came from the Allfather’s possession. In them, reality became blurred and he was more prone to acting like the ‘playboy’ he’d been before he had committed himself to Thistle. Out of tune with reality and incoherency likely put Ragnar at his most dangerous because there was no sense of veracity, nothing to distinguish and tell him differently. It held the very real potential to be disastrous especially if advances were not rejected. “Or any other woman for that matter?” It was only when women treated him that he acted carnal, he found. Floki had treated them dozens of time and Ragnar had only ever been grumpy when Floki allowed him to be awake. Given Ragnar’s proneness to violence when it came to healing the mischievous Viking liked to keep the Jarl unconscious.
There was a brief moment when Ragnar mistook the heat of his wife’s stare to be unbridled passion as it seared into his skin, prickling at his nerves but he realized at Thistle’s harsh, ironic laugh that he had gotten it all wrong. It wasn’t heat of unbridled passion but the heat of her anger. Ears slicked back to his head because he had no idea what he had done wrong — even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. Nerian had been practically throwing herself at him, and it would have been easy to claim the Priestess as his, too, right then and there, but Ragnar hadn’t. Ragnar hadn’t because of her threat, because, and the most important reason, of his love for Thistle. In response to her own anger, Ragnar felt a swell of ire rise in his chest, possibly at the fact that she even considered Nerian as some sort of competition (or so this was what Ragnar assumed). If things had been vastly different, maybe, but they weren’t and while Ragnar had tried to pursue Nerian in the Cove she had rejected each of his advances until he had stopped trying period. Ragnar wasn’t sure what the difference was here, he was the same man and she was the same woman. Neither had changed besides Ragnar’s devotion to his wife. A devotion borne of his unyielding love for Thistle, something he had not felt for any of his previous wives. They had merely been conquests. Things he wanted to claim while they were interesting and dispose of when they ceased to be so.
He listened to her words and watched her lay down, heard the heavy sigh that passed through her lips. “She confessed love for me,” Ragnar told Thistle abruptly, bluntly, encouraged by his seething ire and his desire to defend himself. “She threw herself at me, touching my body with hers, inviting me to take her,” The Viking’s nostrils flared with a vicious expel of air as he loomed over his wife, stepping so he was partially standing over her, each front leg on either side of her as he bent so his muzzle was close to her right ear. “And do you know what I did?” His words were harsh, taking on the rough edges of his native tongue (of which he almost feared he might slip into) “I rejected her. Twice,” Because it had felt to Ragnar that she had been pursuing him even after he had informed her he had a wife. “For you. Because of you. Do not think that you have any competition because I have given you my heart.” Ragnar did not necessarily mean to be so rough with her but idly he wondered how many times he would have to tell her that.
“She will not hurt you. She knows if she does I will kill her.” Ragnar had spared her once but he would not extend the courtesy if she touched Thistle or their children with ill intent. His fondness for anyone did not extend that far.
