Thistle returned the touch with a soft nip to the fur of his cheek, Ragnar felt, as he trailed his small line of kisses before he pulled away with the intention of allowing her to finish the meal he had brought for her. He assumed no matter how wrongly the assumption was, that when she did not draw to him that it meant she did not want to be near him. That she did not desire the closeness expected of a married couple. It was likely not the case but Ragnar was a creature that craved touch. Words were not enough for him, perhaps because he was not a man of many of them. Thistle had been so worried, once upon a time (and though he did not know it probably was?), that he would lose interest in her and yet neither of them had considered — until Ragnar did just now — that maybe, someday, she would lose interest in him despite that she had warned him she was into the ‘mating for life’ commitment. In an odd, and extremely rare form of self depreciation Ragnar wondered if that was the case. It wasn’t, after all, as if he could read her mind and know that she was just lost in her thoughts.
“I had planned to but…something told me to tell you now,” It wasn’t as if Ragnar could put a name to the urge as sudden as it had been. It simply was. “If they do not stop growing they will have to get their own dens,” Ragnar murmured in a petulant manner, soft, heavily accented voice thick with it. He was quite serious about that, too. Besides, it wasn’t as if Ragnar intended for the children to stay in the same den as Thistle and him forever. Eventually it would become a huge invasion of privacy — especially, Ragnar considered, when Thistle went into her next heat cycle and their privacy would be wholly warranted and wanted. Unless their children wanted to be scarred for life (which would admittedly save him the time from explaining to them how the whole ‘birds and bees’ process worked). In the Cove it wasn’t as if such things were necessarily done in private (it was a natural process, after all) and Ragnar was well adept in knowing how procreation worked since he had been but a small boy. “It is only as good as if he follows and comes here,” Ragnar spoke softly, perhaps even sorrowfully. He missed Floki what he might consider the most, and his wife, Helga, too. “I know, but you have nothing to fear, wife. If they step even so much as a toe into our territory I will kill them.” He would not apprehend, he would not question, had no intentions of slapping them on the wrist with a warning and sending them on their way. No, he would kill them. It was that simple. The woman whom had greeted them on Sea Lion Shore had not seemed to have taken his warning seriously enough for Ragnar’s general liking and so he would do what was necessary to prove that he was just as much bite as he was bark.
“She did not know me that long. She is only seven months old, I think.” Unless of course Kenna had spoken about her middle son’s childhood which Ragnar seriously doubted. He had never been Kenna’s favorite son and so it was unlikely that Hati ever heard any embarrassing stories of Ragnar’s childhood. "Some things are better left dead, anyway, wife." He told her with a wry smile.
