Ragnar had merely been teasing his wife but her scoff and rebuttal signified that she had taken his words with a sincerity they had not been meant to be taken as despite that he had found it fascinating that she had informed Julooke on how to deal with delusional fevers. More that the Viking thought about the more he came to realize that surely he was not the only one to ever suffer from it’s ill effects and would not be the last. It was a secret of the trade, passed from Thistle now to Julooke as someone had surely passed it off to Thistle. Ragnar could say with any degree of certainty that he wouldn’t pursue another woman clouded with delusional fever if it were a woman other than Thistle that treated him for it and it was that uncertainty that clued Ragnar in on why his wife had taken his words with such importance; because she knew he would, too. “What if it is not me?” He asked her then, teasing her along further. “What if it is the Allfather desiring a conquest?” Ragnar viewed women as equals to men, they were an important part of his culture and the men respected the free women but that did not mean that Ragnar did not still subject his previous wives and dalliances as nothing short of what they had been to him: conquests. Nothing more.
It was easy to tell that he had now earned Thistle’s fury, ironic though it was, in telling her the truth. In confessing what Nerian had (in so little words) admitted to him; that in a strong case of what he did not know was called Stockholm Syndrome she had fallen in love with her captor — him. It was not as if Ragnar had ever expected the Anglo-Saxon woman to fall in love with him and even now he was suspicious of it, though her body language and eyes had made it abundantly clear that she had not been lying to him. “Women?” Rangar asked, incredulous, caught off guard by her plural use of the word that implied more than one. “There is more than one?” That was news to him but even so he failed to understand what he was supposed to do about it other than become a hermit like Kennedy, in which case it would be better for her to end his life right then and there than make him suffer a life of unclaimed ambition and elusiveness. Ragnar was an explorer, a conqueror to take that away from him would be to strip him of his essence. Of everything he was, of everything he was born to be. “What would you have me do, hm?” The question came out rough, harsh, demanding of an answer that he could not come up with on his own.
“I have done what I could. I told her that I love you, that we have children, that I am a faithful husband now. She has not sought me out since. I believe she has gotten the message so she is not actively pursuing me.” In his attempt to keep the two women of his life from slamming heads with one another he had managed to make whatever pre-existing animosity between them seemingly worse. Women the Viking thought with a roll of his eyes, they were beautiful creatures, pleasing and strong but difficult as could be; Thistle had caught him with her words with her question and for a moment Ragnar seethed in irritated silence as she licked his muzzle — a surprising gesture from a woman whom he assumed was angry with him — and backed herself out of his somewhat embrace. He turned to face her, eyes narrowed, face set in a stoic and harsh, terse lines. She understood that it had been his initial jealousy at the thought of letting another man have her after their night of passion in the apex of her heat cycle in Ravensblood Forest had been what had spurred him to claiming her as his mate, also. That is different is what burned upon the tip of his tongue but was destined to never pass through his lips because he knew there was nothing but hypocrisy in those simple, three words.
“I would tear them apart and wear their skull as a helm,” The savage responded to her question, baring his teeth at her as he sauntered closer, feeling the embers of passion stir within the blaze of ire deep within him. There was something about Thistle’s anger and jealousy that was so damn sexy to the Viking. “Why are you so threatened by her?” That was the enigma of the whole thing to Ragnar. It was what he strove to understand with desperation but couldn’t unless she explained it to him. He was not Odinn, after all.
