The first night spent in Stavanger Bay could not be attested to the best night’s sleep the platinum Viking ever received if only because, while he had slept curled around his wife and children he had not dared to let himself be taken into so deep a sleep that he would not be able to wake from it quickly. The half asleep state in which Ragnar had ‘slept’ left him on the brink of consciousness, alert and rousing forth from it at every rustle. All in all, it was not a very good night. It was not to the fault of anyone but Ragnar’s own, given that while he felt the lack of tensions and stresses that had plagued him in sleep and in the waking hours he could not let his guard down. Not yet. Not so soon.
Not all tension had left the scarred Northman, either. It made him anxious to have Nerian in heat within proximity of Thistle’s nose, not because Ragnar had anything to be guilty for — on the contrary he had displayed quite a bit of unrestrained will power in declining Nerian’s body though, admittedly, the temptation to take what was his by slave law alone was there, to sire an illegitimate litter upon her so that no other male could ever lay claim to her had been there — but because he knew of Thistle’s jealousy towards the anglo-saxon woman and did not want her jumping to wild conclusions. As it was he warred with himself over if he should just tell Thistle about how Nerian had attempted to seduce him into planting his seed, seduced by her own heat season because then that way it wouldn’t look like he attempted to hide it; he had nothing to be sorry for. Against every hormone in his body that reacted, on the most basic and primitive instinct level, to the scent of Nerian in heat Ragnar had told her no, finding the strength to do so even when she had slid along his side, until Ragnar’s body had pulsed with out of his control want.
On the other side of that spectrum of trepidation, Ragnar wanted her to know what he had done for her. That he would spurn all other females, as long as that was what Thistle wanted from him. In a lapse of fair judgment he didn’t think it was entirely fair given their children weren’t really his and he was three already. Perhaps he was doomed to adopting bastards, then, but not even his own. Bastards of other men. He had finished a patrol, deciding that it did nothing for him to continue laying and feign sleep when he wasn’t actually sleeping. He had circled back intending to steal his wife away for a bit, still unsure if he wanted to instigate that fight with her, or if putting it off would only make him look suspicious. Ragnar suspected she didn’t fully trust him to be loyal to her, and while in a manner he understood, he also found it insulting, too.
Surprise took control of his facial features as he had been heading near the area in which he had left them earlier to see a streak of fawn color that smelled too canine to actually be venison and turning his pace quickened to catch up to her.