Neverwinter Forest [m] Places far away and we're not you and me, but

It was strange — Catamaran realized only now that he'd never seen a woman cry. Not like this. Not someone he knew, someone he talked to. Not from something other than pain or panic. This was emotion — something deeper than the physical interaction of teeth into flesh. Something else had been injured, and he was rapt, fascinated, enthralled —

Had he done this?

This hurt and these tears did not please him. How could they? But there was a part of him that hung greedily on her every heavy breath.

"I care," he said. There was nothing new in his tone that assuaged or capitulated. In fact, if he hid any emotion, it was his dissatisfaction with the truth of this statement. Because he did care — he cared about her. But he comforted himself with the knowledge that it was not just that. "It's not exactly a turn-on if you're about to pass out underneath me."

He belly-crawled to their bed. Catamaran had no concept of what a marriage bed ought to look like, nor what a marriage in general might truly entail. It had not been part of his natal pack's culture, and such discussions had never included him when he'd gone out into the world. Their bed was not a representation of their union, but a preferred and familiar battlefield. He wanted to sink his teeth into her again.

"C'mere," he said. A familiar order, but one that'd softened into a single word over time. "Let's be careful with that thing. I'll show you when it holds your weight again."