Horizon Ridge checking in

You get my 400th post! :D

Ragnar did not pull away as she moved closer to him, and though his body tensed as hers drew along side his he did not feel the contact he had expected to feel. Still, she was too close and Ragnar was aware of the lack of distance between their bodies the same way he was aware of the proximity of Thistle. His expression was stoic, but his eyes were tempestuous, darkening as he was forced to come to the realizations that he otherwise wished he didn’t have to come too. He loved Thistle — there was no contest of that — and he didn’t want to lose her …but he would be lying if he said there wasn’t something — even if it was nothing more than a possessive fondness — for Nerian and that he didn’t want to lose her, either. In no world, aside from his fantasy world, would he ever be able to have both females, while the polygamy relationship sounded like the end all solution to him he instinctively knew Thistle would never go for it and would divorce his ass on the spot, and he wasn’t sure that Nerian would go for it, either. Maybe instead of taking wives he should have just created a harem. It would have been simpler.

Is it not enough for who? Ragnar wanted to ask her but resisted. Was she genuinely looking for his opinion on it and if so why? Did she value his opinion that much? Or was there a hidden connotation he was simply not picking up on? With Nerian, it was hard to tell and Ragnar felt that he always had more questions than answers. Because Ragnar wasn’t sure what she expected him to say he settled for, “If it makes you happy.” It was probably the wrong thing to say, touching the surface of what he assumed was her happiness so casually when he knew, deep down, it did not make her happy. She wanted her freedom — realistically it probably would be better for the both of them if he just gave it to her now — but her couldn’t. It was true that he probably didn’t need her as desperately as he had previously, he had enough followers that he could have set her free at any given time and yet he did not.

She spoke his name, beginning as if she had something important to tell him or ask of him, hesitating in a way that made it clear to him she was suddenly unsure if she wanted to ask it, before she asked something different. A question, he suspected, unrelated to what she had originally been about to ask which drove him a little crazy, wondering over what she had began with. Ragnar inhaled deeply and let it out, hedging his response. “I respect Pump,” Ragnar told her but it wasn’t that simple. It was never that simple. “We are not as similar as I first thought. We are very different leaders,” That much was obvious as they were two very different wolves. “We disagree on a lot of things…she is more lenient than me on things that I believe should be seen with more importance than she sees them.” Like the whole fiasco with the bear and now with Wheeling Gull Isle. Ragnar had done what was in his small amount of power to do: warned them, and now given Pump’s take on the thing could do nothing more and was forced to let it drop beyond tightening his patrols.

“Why do you ask?” He inquired to sat his own curiosity, while inviting her to give her opinions without actually coming out and saying it.