He inclined his head towards her slightly when she admitted she didn’t want to cause Thistle that kind of pain but he kept trudging forward, hoping to put distance between them that she kept persisting on closing. Yet, the fact that she admitted that she didn’t want to cause Thistle that kind of pain didn’t match up with her following words and her final push to get him to succumb to what her hormones were doing to him. It wasn’t fair. And oh, there was no doubt that the Gods were laughing at him, now. He shook his head vigorously when she told him she wanted him, as if he could unheard those words. As if they did not sear into his brain accented to temptation by the scent of her body in heat. He couldn’t give Nerian what he wanted because if he did the outcome, he knew, would not equal his happiness. It would equal a lonely lifetime without his wife and the children he planned to have with her, or it would happen with his slow and painful death a few days from now. In no outcome would him accepting Nerian’s offer to take her body equal his happiness. Not in any long term manner, anyway.
“We both know Thistle would never share me,” Ragnar told her in a low tone, intending to keep moving still. He didn’t want to stop. In fact, he wanted to keep going until his body could no longer walk. Until his paw pads were cracked and bleeding and his body was so exhausted that death would be a welcome reprieve. However as he moved forth he was forced to stop by Nerian blocking his path. Eyes of Caribbean ice lingered on her long enough to glare, conveying his silent command for her to move before he looked away, at the tree lines. He recoiled, on instinct when she buried her face into his scruff, his body tensing like the string of a bow. For a moment he dared not breathe as he stood there, immobile. Then with some great strength that he hoped to the Gods Thistle better have damn well appreciated him for, he aimed to grasp his slave’s scruff and push her down and away from him.
“I said no,” His voice was cold, hard, and unrelenting, final. The voice of both her master and her alpha. With those words he altered course and moved out of Stavanger Bay, not caring to know where he was going, and not daring to look back just knowing that he wanted away from his tempting Priestess, knowing that the next time Thistle snapped at him in irritation he might just lose his patience because that had been an extraordinary feat of willpower, and if that didn’t prove how much he loved her and respected her Ragnar had no idea what would.
