Peter and Sirius stood at the Floos in the Entrance Hall on the night before the Potters' funeral. They were dressed in black and rather miserable, sad to have lost the kind, generous Potters, but also torn between grieving with James and caring for Remus during the full moon.
"Poor old Moony," Peter was saying. "He hates to be locked up indoors. I hope he doesn't blame us. It can't be helped."
Remus smirked. "I assure you, there is no blaming going on. Though he will rip everything in the shack to shreds before morning."
Sirius ruffled his own hair. "I don't know, Remus. This new 'I'm OK, Moony's OK' philosophy of yours doesn't move me. It's not his fault he's a monster. I get that. But you can't just tell him not to act out on his nature."
Remus sighed. "I don't try to tell him anything. That's not how it works. He just - is, and maybe he can be better."
"Well, even so, he'd still just as soon eat us in our human forms as look at us," Sirius said.
Remus didn't deny it, hanging his head.
Sirius dropped a hand on his shoulder. "All I'm saying is, lock up tight, and be extremely careful tonight. Between you and being gutted over the Potters, I know I won't sleep a wink."
Filch was croaking at them from the Floos. "If you're going, go now before I lock up for the night."
The lads stepped up to the fireplace, reaching into the bowl of powder.
Remus stepped back to avoid the flare. "Remember me to James. I never dreamed I wouldn't be with him on a night like this. Tell him I'm sorry."
Sirius nodded. "He knows."
In Cygnus Black's study, Lucius Malfoy was pacing quickly enough for his robes to stream out behind him.
"Come, my boy," Cygnus Black called from behind his immense walnut wood desk, his back to the floor-length window, his high-backed chair casting a massive shadow over the room. "Sit down. It doesn't do to fuss over gossip."
"It is no longer mere gossip," Lucius said. "No longer half-heard whispers, but a written report."
"An anonymous report," Cygnus said, waving away the grey trails floating out of the pipe he was smoking. "It's someone without the backbone to sign their name sending each of us the same note bearing wild tales of Narcissa and some unworthy beau at school. I understand how disappointed you must be, how your pride must be suffering, but such things are not uncommon in the last days before a wedding. I daresay you have your own - erm, diversions."
Lucius didn't even blush. Of course he did. All betrothed traditional wizards did.
Cygnus went on. "All I'm saying is that in a few months, when everyone and everything is settled, this report won't matter in the least."
Lucius grit his teeth. "If wild tales were all there was to it, I could accept your view, Father Black. However, my concern is that this report aligns too well with the troubles the Snape boy has had at school. They say he was under the influence of a romantically active Veela at the time of the attack in the potions lab - "
"You're not saying that my daughter and that greasy half-blood - "
"No, not Snape himself," Malfoy sneered. "Clearly, he understands the meanness of his social position and has directed his affections elsewhere. He is rash, but not a stupid nor an impudent boy. No, our Narcissa's attentions are being squandered elsewhere, and it's affecting people around her. Which provokes the question of whether her attentions are excited and intensified by - well, whether there is something to the rumors about Veela heritage."
"It is quite an accusation," Cygnus said, the bowl of his pipe clicking against his desktop, "to stand in a man's study and suggest creature heritage among his daughters, and by extension, his own wife. It is well-documented that the Rosiers haven't had a Veela in the family since the medieval period."
Cygnus's indignation set Lucius back. "No, sir. It was no accusation, merely - "
"Once you get back that far in history, every family has some creature involvement. Why, look at yourself, Malfoy," he said, blowing a mouthful of smoke at his intended son-in-law. "The way you're trotting back and forth on my good silk rug with your chest puffed out. I could say you look almost like a centaur at this moment."
Malfoy coughed out a nervous laugh. "I assure you I am not."
Cygnus raised his eyebrows, his pipe fuming.
To seem less centaur-like, Lucius took a seat and pulled the anonymous note from his pocket, reading it again. "Dear sirs, I write as a concerned friend of Narcissa Black's. She is much too close to a boy from school, a half-blood cursed with a disturbing and dangerous nature. I warn you to withdraw her from Hogwarts at once."
"The oddness of the handwriting still strikes me," Lucius said. "It looks like a message dictated to a five year old child, letter by letter. This reveals two things. The first is that the writer has access to a young child. The second is that the writer is familiar enough to the family that their writing might give them away."
Cygnus's posture stiffened, his lips sealing themselves in a hard line.
If he wouldn't say it, Lucius would. "It seems that Narcissa has been to see her sister. And not Bellatrix, the other one, the mother of her young niece."
"Narcissa has no other sister," Cygnus said.
Lucius sat up in his chair, chest puffed again. "Sir, we will not know what exactly is meant by this rumour of a 'dangerous and disturbing nature' unless we go to Andromeda - "
"We do not speak that name here, Malfoy," Cygnus said, rising to his feet. "Now, swallow your pride and suffer a schoolgirl's final flirtation before she becomes your wife."
"Sir, if you do not wish to interview the note-writer to find out what this means, the only other person to ask is Narcissa herself. Allow me to bring her home, for as long as it takes. I'll escort Snape back to school and return with her. It will distance her from this boy, and give you and I and Bella a chance to straighten her out. Whatever happens, we must preserve our betrothal agreement."
Cygnus tipped back in his chair, unconvinced.
Lucius planted his hands on the desk, leaning over it. "Sir, Bella is distracted with politics. She has been married for years without producing a Black family heir and may forestall such a responsibility forever."
Rather than arguing, Cygnus sighed.
Lucius went on. "And If Narcissa is allowed to wander off after a half-blood boy, she won't produce a suitable heir either."
Cygnus raised his head. "How could she wander off after the engagement bonding ceremony, Malfoy? What have you done? Is the betrothal pledge broken?"
Lucius felt his face tingle, as if blood was rushing to it. He forced through the falsehood anyway. "No, of course I haven't betrayed her," he said. "But if this flirtation of hers is truly cursed with a bad nature, he may persuade her to betray us using supernatural means, against Narcissa's own good nature. She might follow after him, sully herself, and lose her chance to produce a proper heir, leaving the Black family line to pass through - the note-writer. We must act to preserve this ancient house, Father Black. Disruptive as it may be for family harmony today, anything is better than risking another unsavoury elopement."
"Narcissa would not dare," Cygnus thundered, but his eyes were glassy, as if he was near tears at the thought.
"No, of course not, Father Black," Lucius said, his voice smooth and low. "Our Narcissa is a good girl, the best girl. And this is why she must be thoroughly protected from the - what was it again - the dangerous and disturbing classmates at her wild, unregulated school."
Cygnus let out a smokeless breath. "Are you saying you want to move the wedding date up?"
Lucius hoped Cygnus missed the trace of a wince in his expression at the question. "No, sir. I do not mean to rush Narcissa, but merely to safeguard her."
Cygnus drew on his pipe. "Very well. Go to the school as if all you care about is Severus. Make no scene with our girl, but instruct the headmaster to send her home on wedding business tonight."
Severus Snape sulked his way up to the headmaster's office, Lucius Malfy following behind, tapping his ankle with the end of his walking stick. "Repentant and respectful," Malfoy said.
Though Severus's suspension was over, he was reporting back to school more angry and foul than ever. Lily's home in Cokeworth was destroyed, and she and her parents had been missing for days. Police had cordoned off her garden with yellow tape but after that, they didn't seem to know what to do. The place stood wrecked and charred with hex marks, unsightly even for Cokeworth.
After the attack, he had watched the house. Petunia had come with her huge lug of a fiancé to salvage what she could, gathering a bundle of dolls, photograph albums, clothes, and LP records, crying and ranting. Severus had been developing a listening device charmed to look like a harmless galleon, and he had left one in the ruined upstairs bedroom, eavesdropping from a twin coin as the police interviewed Petunia, asking her questions she couldn't answer about "freaks." She was frustrated beyond her capacity to speak, howling in tears instead. It was enough for the police to take the phone number of her fiance's house and promise to contact her if anything changed.
The listening device went silent after that. While Petunia was easy enough to dismiss, Lily was quite the opposite. Even as he waited for the headmaster to open the inner door to the office, Lily filled Snape's thoughts. Of course she had figured out his role in the attack. She couldn't be duped for long. There had been a sadness, a hurt look of betrayal in her face as she and Potter sailed over his head on a broom, Lily's useless Muggle parents clinging to them for their lives. She knew the Death Eaters had come that night because he had called them.
It wasn't fair. All he wanted was to get Lily into the safety of the Death Eater ranks, alone, without Potter or - he cringed to think of it - without any children by Potter. But in trying, Severus had thrown everything Lily Evans loved into mortal peril - her parents and her arrogant arse of a toy husband.
In his mind, Snape knew she was lost to him. Nothing could ever reconcile the pair of them, not even after she had looked down from the broom and seen his wand raised and understood that he was letting her escape. He didn't call the others to stop her and did nothing to stop her himself. It may have been the weakest, most cowardly of I-love-yous, but it was all he could do in that moment.
And still, as the headmaster welcomed Severus back, he was only half there. His thoughts were wherever Lily had escaped to. She would be back - back to finish her time at this school where she was Head Girl. And when she came out of hiding, he would re-commence her recruitment to the Dark Lord.
It was more complicated now that Potter was involved, but not impossible. Snape himself was not capable of eliminating Potter - not with Lily standing by to protect him, at any rate. But he happened to be in the service of someone strong enough to vanquish any rival.
Lucius and the headmaster blathered on. Yes, young Snape had learned his lesson. Oh, and by the way, Narcissa's mother needed her at home for some pre-wedding matters. You know women, hahaha…
Snape watched Dumbledore's profile, nodding and chatting, and he knew what would provoke the Dark Lord to act against Potter - or rather, who. What the Dark Lord cared about at Hogwarts more than any soulmate pairs was Dumbledore himself. Snape had been assigned to watch him, but Dumbledore was cagey, secretive to a fault, not one to reveal his weaknesses carelessly. He needed more invasive watching.
And as he sat listening to Lucius go on, Snape eased his hand into the pocket of his trousers, to one of his charmed listening galleons. Like a Muggle magician doing sleight of hand tricks, he worked the coins out of his clothing, and slid it beneath himself, into the crack between the plush purple cushions of Dumbledore's sofa. He left it there for good.
The sun had nearly set. Remus sat alone in the parlor of the shrieking shack. He'd already got undressed and was wrapped in an itchy grey blanket, breathing deeply, trying to calm and prepare himself for the rage and ruin of the night to come. His senses had begun their change already. Some of the colour had run out of his vision, but his hearing and his sense of smell were overpowering, almost dizzying with their sharpness.
When the knocking at the door started, his uncommonly keen reflexes jerked him to his feet, and he bit back the urge to shout. Someone was outside, banging to get it. He couldn't let himself be seen. There was hardly any time left, but he couldn't resist creeping to a window where he could see the door. He imagined he was walking stealthily but Moony was invading his movements already, and it was impossible not to spring and bound from place to place. He struggled to hold the blanket over himself.
There she was, on the other side of the wall, just outside, pummeling the door with both fists. He might have been able to keep from answering if he hadn't heard her voice, if she hadn't called his name.
"Lupin, please. Let me in. Hide me," Narcissa said as she beat on the door. She stopped to listen for his answer. And though he gave none, in the silent pause, they could hear one another's hearts pounding.
His hand - still a man's hand, no claws, no long hair - scrabbled at the doorknob, barely managing to turn it. She surged into the gap as he opened it but he stood in her way. Speech was difficult, his voice low and gritty. "You can't be here," he said. "Go back."
"I can't," she said, pressing further into the doorway. Her body touched his as she tried to squeeze past him. He leapt back. He didn't mean to let her in, but she came when he gave way.
"My father has dispatched Lucius to the school to bring me home. Dumbledore sent me to my room to pack but I ran here instead. I can't leave with Lucius. Something's wrong, I feel it. I feel - " she looked up at his face, trying to catch his eye but his gaze was unfocused, distant " - I feel like if I let them take me, they'll keep me home until I'm married. And I don't think I can - "
He veered away from her, pushing himself off the wall of the vestibule and stumbling into the parlor. His hands rose to cover his ears, to block out the sound of her heart. "Sirius," he said. "Not me, go to Sirius. At Potters."
She reached out, trying to steady him as he staggered away. "But I've never been to Potters, I can't apparate there unless you give an address, coordinates. Where is it?"
"Cissa!" he choked over her questions, holding her at arm's length. "Go now. Anywhere. Go or I'll - "
He doubled over, his hands contorting, letting go of her. It was taking him. With the last of his human speech, he uttered a single word. "Door…"
She did as he said, leaving him in the parlor to run to the door, slamming it shut, finding her wand and charming it locked. Remus had meant for her to do this from the outside of the door but she hadn't come here just to leave. She stood watching as something more than her own magic worked on the locks, as if the house knew to seal itself up when the signal was given.
From the parlor, his cries were awful, as if he knew she was still in the house and was fighting to stop the transformation. It was a sound of pain, and fear, and more than anything, sorrow. Even knowing Moony as she did, the sound of his voice taking over Remus's raised the hair on the back of her neck, all her instincts telling her to run. There was an exit Floo upstairs but she would have to get by him to use it. Maybe once his screaming stopped, she could do it.
For now, she stayed by the door, her hand on the knob, waiting as the cries and then the high dog-like whimpers died away in the next room. What she heard next was quieter but no less alarming. On the other side of the wall, the werewolf sniffed. Moony was here and he had sensed her scent in the house. The walls and floors echoed with thuds and scrapes as he bounded to the vestibule. She stood quaking at the door, stalled in her human form, her eyes wide and grey, her breath shallow from fright.
A low growl was grinding in Moony's chest, his teeth were wet and bared, hungry, he was lowering his stance, winding up to pounce.
She swept off her long black cloak and flung it in his face. For an instant, it blinded him and he was left clawing at it, tearing it away from his head. She had worn her backless ballerina dress again, the one that didn't obstruct her Veela wings. Where were they? Where was her Veela form - the one she needed to keep Moony from mauling her?
He was free of the cloak, growling and circling her as much as the small space would allow.
There were tears in her eyes now. "Lupin," she said to the creature. "You don't want to hurt me. Lupin, don't. I'm yours."
He leapt at her, pushing himself across the room with a burst of strength from his massive rear legs. She screamed, bracing herself for the bite of claws and teeth. But all she felt on her skin was hot, humid breath. Moony stood with his snout in her face, tilting his head from side to side as he looked at her. His clawed hands scratched at the door, on either side of her head. She dared to look at his eyes, the warm brown turned green, the colour of the flash of light from a hex. In those eyes, she saw herself reflected - the blazing gold of her own eyes, white fangs elongating in her mouth. Eye to eye, Moony stared back at her, looking away only when her wings burst from her back.
He threw back his head, and howled.
It was early, barely sunrise when Narcissa's eyes fluttered open. At first, she wasn't sure where she was, but she knew the light wasn't filtered through the lake water. She was not in her dormitory. With a closed fist, she rubbed her eyes and rolled from her side to her back. The ceiling overhead was smooth and white, undecorated. She wasn't at home in her parents' manor house either.
Though the room was cold, she had the feeling that she had been sleeping without a nightdress - without anything. Beneath the blanket, she touched her bare stomach. And then she began to remember…
With a gasp she sat up, clutching the blanket to herself. She was in the werewolf shack. And in bed next to her, under the same blanket, on his stomach and uncovered from the waist up, sleeping heavily, was Lupin.
Her heart crashed, her fingertips pricking with panic, like almost falling down stairs.
No, no. Maybe it wasn't what it looked like. Creatures don't care for clothes and, after all, Moony never wore anything. The fact that she wasn't wearing anything either didn't necessarily mean they had…
Wordlessly, she summoned her dress. At first, she thought the spell hadn't worked. It had, only her dress was coming to her from somewhere else in the house, down the stairs. She grabbed at it and pulled it over her head, quick to cover herself and leave Lupin his privacy beneath the blankets.
As she moved, she clenched the muscles in her pelvic floor, her body reaching toward the odd, displaced feeling inside her, like an ache. There it was, unmistakable.
Yes. This scene was exactly what it looked like. Moony and the Veela - no, she and Lupin - during the mad night locked in the shack together, they had…
She scrambled for her wand, rushing through the contraception spell her mother had taught her on the morning of her engagement ceremony. She had never actually used it before but the motions felt familiar this morning. A scrap of memory surfaced. She had done this earlier in the night. Even as a Veela, she knew not to risk bearing a child with a transformed werewolf.
Knowing the spell had been in place all along did little to calm her racing pulse. Lupin was still sleeping, one long arm dangling off the edge of the bed, his hand trailing on the floor. He must have been missing her warmth under the blanket, and now he was turning in his sleep, pulling the covers to his chin. His face was turned toward her now, peaceful, asleep. Keeping a distance between them, she lay down beside him, and watched.
He was so beautiful to her, his colour higher and pinker than usual after his night as a werewolf, his waving brown hair a complete mess, falling over one closed eye. His face was human but his chin and upper lip were covered in dark stubble. Behind his lids, his eyes would be brown again, knowing and kind. In his sleep, exhausted from his transformations, she could sense his heartbeat, steady and slow, so strong.
He hadn't wanted this to happen. He'd tried desperately to send her away when she arrived at the shack, but she hadn't gone. It was her fault. Did that mean she forced this on him, made it inescapable?
No, she remembered enough from the night before, enough of the urgent, eager exchanges between them to know that no one was forced. As always, their desire had been mutual, and immense. Her own heart was picking up speed as she thought of his strength inflaming her own, both of them at their most powerful and neither of them afraid.
She had come here in love with him, and she was still. What had happened in the night hadn't ended that, but it had changed it. Only she wasn't sure how.
Waking him up to sort it out would be the next thing to do, but she was afraid. Whether he wanted to keep her or not, whether he loved her back or not, she was his for life. She knew it and it was at once marvelous and terrifying. And so she kept still and watched him, pulling her knees up inside her full skirt, shivering on top of the bedding, admiring the best person she knew, wondering if she'd lost him.
Her face lay on her arm, her eye level with her wrist. On it was a mark, a bite but not the ravenous tearing wound she'd expected from Lupin's werewolf mouth. Instead it was a neat imprint of orderly incisors and two larger, deeper canines, stamped like a seal, looking almost official. It must have been magical because it didn't hurt, not even when she pressed it hard against her forehead.
Eventually, Lupin turned from his side, onto his back, flexing his spine. The breathy moan he uttered as he sleepily stretched himself made her blush, but she stayed quiet, propping herself on one elbow, keeping his face in sight.
"Cissa?" he said, glancing down at himself to make sure he was modestly covered. "Are you alright? Did you get hurt at all last night?"
Her throat was tight as she answered. "I'm not hurt."
He let out his breath. "Thank the stars. Spending the night here with me while the moon was full - that was outlandishly risky."
There was a pause before she agreed. "Yes, it was."
The husky nervousness of her voice piqued his attention, and Remus glanced at her before settling back to blink warily at the ceiling, sensing his surroundings, his eyes and his head clearing. As the clarity came, his expression changed from sleepy contentment to confusion, to worry.
Finally, he spoke, the silent strangeness around them growing stranger as he broke it. "What - what did we - do all night? I have these dreams sometimes. And I'm having trouble knowing what's real right now. But can you tell if, last night, here alone together, we…"
She sat up, testing her tender pelvic floor one more time before she answered. "Yes."
He dropped one hand on his forehead. "Yes what? Yes, you can tell? Or yes, we - did?"
"Yes."
He sat up with a jolt, summoning his clothes. "No, no, no," he was saying. "No, I never meant to do this to you. Not like this."
"It wasn't just you," she said. "It was us."
He scoffed, fighting his way into his shirt.
"Lupin, wait," she said, her hand on his sleeve. "Be still for a moment and let the memory of it come back."
She watched his face change again, his expression moving from fear to blushing astonishment at the memory of her, so close, before his face was full of regret.
He covered his eyes with his hands. "I don't understand," he said, shaking off his stupor and managing to get into his trousers underneath the blanket. "The school's chastity charms are in force here in the shack. Sirius tested it. It's true. So we should have been safe here. Do the charms not apply to creatures? Is that it?"
She moved across the bed to sit on its edge, still cold and hugging herself. Remus had already stood up to start a hopeless search of the room for lost socks that hadn't obeyed his summons. As he looked, he kept talking, relentlessly trying to make sense of it. "James said the chastity charms are in place all over school grounds and buildings. That includes this place. The only reason he and Lily can do it on school property is because of their marriage, their soul bond which makes their sex chaste. So it must be the creature thing that failed to stop it."
As he paced by her, Narcissa caught his arm. He jerked to a stop, looking into her upturned face. His heart seemed to break and he sat heavily on the bed beside her. "You lovely thing, I am so sorry."
Her mouth was dry, clicking as she opened it to speak. "Sorry? You didn't want me?"
His face twisted with pain again as he clasped his arms around her. "Of course I did. I do. How could I want anything if not you? But you wanted to save this. I knew that. You told me. And I still - Stars, Cissa, forgive me."
He bowed his head, his eyes clenched shut. She raised a hand to caress his cheek, touching his skin for the first time since he'd had her. Her blood surged. Yes, this person, this body had been the same as her own. A shadow of the feeling returned to her now, eclipsing the worry and uncertainty she had felt since waking up. It was ecstatic, alive, as warm as he was as she leaned into him.
"I did say that once, didn't I," she said. "I did tell you once that I wanted to give myself to someone else someday." She rolled her forehead against his. "If it was ever true, it wasn't for long."
He sighed, his eyes still closed. "You're saying that because we can't go back."
"No," she said, both her hands on his face now. "Look at me, Lupin." She waited while he opened his eyes and sat back slightly, so his eyes could focus on hers. "I'm saying it because I - "
"Stop," he said. "Wait. You always move first. From the very first time we played chess. It's not right. Let me, Cissa. Let me be first to say that I love you."
She made a sound, high and sweet as they held each other tightly on the side of the bed. Her head on his shoulder, she turned and kissed his neck, just below the line of stubble growing there, flesh smooth and human and still hers. His hand cupped her head, holding her close, and she echoed back what he'd said, whispering it against his throat, speaking as loudly as she could without dissolving into tears.
At last, it was Narcissa who broke the embrace, pushing off his chest, reaching for his right arm. "I know how it happened," she said, her thumb gliding under his cuff, smoothing the white flesh of his inner wrist, feeling for something. "I know why the chastity charm didn't stop us." She turned his wrist over in her lap, and there on his skin was an imprint, a neat crescent of a bite, hers. He didn't seem terribly surprised by it. She had marked him before. But then she showed him the matching crescent on her own wrist.
"It's exactly as it was in the book I read about betrothal contracts. Our creature selves," she explained, raising his wrist to her lips, kissing it. "This is how they came together here - how we came together. We didn't do it until after we did this, after we made these marks in each other. When we formed this bond and made ourselves chaste."
He sat as if stupefied. "Bond."
"Yes, a creature bond. I don't know how it affects us as humans but - they've done it. It's done."
Remus sat beside her, grazing the mark on her wrist with his fingertips. The skin was unbruised and unbroken. She wouldn't be a werewolf. But what did the future hold? He asked her. "Where do we go now? Malfoy - he'll have been looking for you all night. And your father too."
She smoothed his hair and kissed his forehead. "I won't let them hurt you. Last night you told me to go to Sirius at the Potters.' I know they're grieving there, but would they take us in, even if only for a little while so we can stop and think?"
He nodded. Yes, it made sense. He would take her with him to where he always went during the worst trouble. To the lads.
Lily sat up in bed as James crashed through the door, coming in as if he was leading a stampede. It was daybreak on the morning of his parents' funeral. It might have been a glum moment if, late that night, he hadn't let Sirius and Peter talk him into blowing off tension in what used to be his favourite way, as Prongs. For years, they'd spent every full moon running through fields and woods in their animal forms, and even without Remus, keeping it up felt natural, necessary. Remus wasn't the only one of them who could exorcise his demons this way.
The lads had gone to bed and James was back in his own room now, standing dirty and disheveled in the open doorway. He scanned the room with a wild look, startling when he found Lily there even though she was exactly what he was looking for.
She laughed at him. "Our Prongs is home at last."
He tried to close the door, swinging it too forcefully, making it bounce open again.
She laughed harder. "Easy. Now come to bed."
He let his cloak slip to the floor and sprung toward her, jumping into the bed on his hands and knees. For the first time since his parents died, she saw him smile. She could have said something about the schedule for the day, the guests they were expecting, the parchments waiting for them to sign. But instead, she let him stay in Prongs's carefree space a little longer.
He wasn't speaking, but it didn't matter. She laid back on the pillows, sliding his glasses down his nose as he crawled over her.
"So a night out with Padfoot and Wormy was just what you needed, was it?" she asked as he began to nuzzle at her neck and shoulder, still too caught up in Prongs's preference for feeling and hearing to have much need to say anything himself. His tongue flicked against her skin and she squealed.
As she expected, Prongs was promising to be a fun companion. But she missed the James in him. She wanted them both, and she reached for his hands, rolling on top of him and holding him down by their intertwined fingers on the pillow on either side of his head.
"Wish me good morning, my darling husband," she said.
"Good morning," he said, still smiling in spite of everything.
She hummed, content and letting herself settle along the length of him. "There you are. Had to make sure the man I married was still in there before I let this wild, gorgeous creature come in from the forest to ravish me."
He flipped her over, quick and strong. "Yes, love. This creature is always me, and always bound to you."