Noctisardor Bypass [m] The taste of liquor on your lips

Mahler’s path was unsteady, frantic, and heavily perfumed. Wylla could tell that he was angry long before she spotted him ahead, and not only because of the charged quality of his urine. He was moving in a less predictable manner than usual.

When she found him, they stared at one another for a time. Again Wylla worried that he might deny her this. There would be no reason for it. They were man and wife now and he had once asked to do this again with her, so she had no reason to think he did not want more children. But there was a hard cast to his lilac eyes, purple chips of ice on his approach that only melted when he lowered his crown to butt against her shoulder.

Wylla let out a slow breath and twined her fur with her mate’s, like slender fingers sliding into the calloused grip of a strong lover’s. She snaked her body sinuously down his side and pressed her nose into the junction of her neck and shoulder. Her touch was soft; she knew he was in pain there.

Knowing it did not stop the urgent spark of want in her stomach or her gaze when she brought it back to his. Rivenwood would heal. They would heal, and new life would help to mend them all.