A/N: I apologize for the delay. I'm a full-time college student who is also trying to plan her wedding. The Muse is extremely tired these days.
Thank you to those who reviewed; you made my day! I'm so glad you are enjoying the story.
WARNING: sexual content. 18+ only.
It is three weeks following the battle for Whiterun, and Elismyra is not amused.
Vilkas and Ondolemar stand before her, the former with a black eye and smoldering hair and the latter with a bloody nose and split lip. Both are scowling so severely she would not be surprised if their faces became permanently etched that way, and the Altmer's skin is still faintly crackling with lightning. She supposes she's lucky Aela intervened when she did; it could have been far worse.
She feels decidedly like a scolding mother when she snaps, "What is the matter with you two?"
"He started-"
"Stupid Nord-"
"Enough!" The she-elf barks, beating back the overwhelming urge to tear out her own hair. "You are both grown men, warriors of the Companions, and you are Harbinger Regent, Vilkas." She stares him down with a frosty glare. "And you're scuffling in the yard like rotten boys. I will not have it." Turning to Ondolemar, she hisses, "I brought you into the fold to prove you have severed all ties to the Thalmor. This," she gestures vaguely between the two of them, "Tells me you ought to pack up and start the trek back to Markarth."
"He doubted my allegiance to you!"
"And you responded by socking him in the face?" She grits, irked. "How very Nord-like. No, I'm serious," she adds when she sees his shocked disgust. "You're practically one of them, now."
"I certainly smell like one," Ondolemar quips, with a pointed sneer in Vilkas's direction. The Nord pleads with Elismyra with his eyes. She cannot help but smirk.
Folding her arms across her chest, Elismyra puts on her best in-charge face and stares coldly at the both of them. "The Companions cannot be seen as a splintered group of mercenaries. We are more than that, and I will not let the two of you let your tempers destroy our hard-won reputation." She only barely smothers her grin. "If we cannot work together, we are no better than common bandits. Vilkas," and she knows he knows what is coming, if his desperately wide eyes are anything to go by, "You are hereby assigned to Ondolemar as his Shield-Brother."
"But - I -" The Nord splutters, and the Altmer is not much better, gaping in horrified disbelief. "I'm your Shield-Brother!"
"An easy enough adjustment. Aela has been without a Shield-Sibling for too long; I'm sure she won't mind."
"Myra," Ondolemar tries, letting his voice dip an octave, but if he thinks she's the kind of woman to be swayed so easily, he has another thing coming. "This will hardly be constructive."
Ignoring him completely, Elismyra marches past the both of them into her quarters, only to return a moment later with a thick sheaf of papers in her hand: their contract ledger. She can feel both of their smoldering glares boring holes into her face, but she brushes them off as if they are no more than gnats. If they want to act like children, they will be treated like children.
"Ah," she says, after she has scanned and flipped through several pages, "Here we are. Your first assignment." And she smacks the page of the ledger with her hand in overblown, dramatic joy. "Shimmermist Cave. Clear it out."
"There are Falmer in there!" They both cry in unison.
"Exactly. Hence the need to clear it out."
Vilkas is seething and Ondolemar is not much better, both men balling their hands into fists and refusing to look at one another as they snarl at her hard smirk, but Elismyra will not be swayed. Vilkas is a dear friend and confidante, it is true, but he is still her subordinate. Ondolemar… is another matter entirely, but she does not let herself think on it. She knows he will find her later to give her a piece of his mind. Loudly, if she were to put money on it.
Sure enough, when the sun has set and the evening meal is concluded, he is waiting for her in her quarters. His sharp face is drawn, his jaw clenched, and she feels the pulse of his magic ripple over her skin. She closes the door with painful gentleness and waits.
"Why?" he finally says, and the simple question feels so unbearably heavy. Elismyra knows he is not merely asking about Vilkas.
"Because I do not understand you, Ondolemar," she answers quietly, and moves to the bed. She sits with a soft sigh, untying her plait and running her fingers through her red hair. He watches in frigid silence. "You appear in Whiterun on the heels of a horrific battle, claiming to have renounced the Dominion. You claim you..." she searches for the word, "...care, for me, and yet you harass my friends and belittle my choices." She cannot look at him. "I just… don't understand what you are looking for."
Ondolemar is silent, a true testament to his anger. Elismyra does not think she has ever heard him so quiet, and the tingle of his magic becomes sharper as his breathing labors. Her wolf waits in tense anticipation.
"You," he begins, his voice dangerously calm, "Are looking for ways to punish me."
"No," she argues, and she is so tired of going around in circles with him on this, "I'm trying to avoid repeating what happened in Markarth." And she remembers the fire in his green eyes, the conviction in his venomous words, and the knife in her chest when he all but admitted he would have killed her.
Ondolemar snarls poisonously at her, unfolding his arms from across his chest to flex his fingers. His restraint is thin; she can almost hear the buzz of his magic, smell the crackling ozone of lightning, but her beast is strangely calm. She knows he is no match for her.
"Why?" he demands again. "Why are you so afraid of the past, Elismyra? I'm a wanted man, hunted just as you are! What more do you want from me?"
"I want to be able to trust you!" she cries, hurt. "You're still exactly like the Ondolemar of the Thalmor, the one who would have murdered me in the Isles. You say you've changed, that you were wrong, but you act as if you still don't care." And to her horror, her breath begins to snag in her throat and her eyes being to sting, and this is not how she wants things to be with him. "I cannot-" And she struggles to control her voice, "I do not want to spend my days wondering if you're going to slip a dagger between my ribs."
He looks as though she's shot him. His mouth falls open and his pallor dims, the beautiful gold of his skin dulling to a sickly yellow. Ondolemar's magic vanishes with a snap, sucked back into his form, and she almost misses its throbbing burn. "Myra-"
"Don't," she begs. "Please."
The Altmer ignores her entirely, moving into her space and taking her chin in one large hand, forcing her to look at him. "You will listen," he tells her sternly, "And you will not doubt me when I say that I love you, you infuriating woman. Why would I throw away centuries of my life, choose to live as a stinking mercenary, and tolerate that unbearable beast of a man if I wanted to kill you?"
"Because the Thalmor are all you know," she reminds him quietly, "And I hardly think punching Vilkas in the face means you 'tolerate' him." Gently, she pries his hand away, craving his touch but remembering all too well what had happened the last time she had indulged in him. "You cannot love me, Ondolemar."
"I do."
"You do not know me. Not truly; I've gone to great pains to make sure of it."
"As I am well aware," he answers darkly, his eyes turning thunderous. "Yet I will never understand why."
Her smile is achingly sad, and she feels her lashes dampening. He brushes at her cheek with his thumb, and he is so utterly tender that it hurts. "Perhaps one day I will tell you," she breathes, "But not today." And at his hurt expression, she sighs, brushing her fingers across his smooth jaw. "I brought you here because I want to trust you, Ondolemar. I know the man you can be, the one you try so hard to deny. That is the man I love." Ignoring his sharp intake of breath, she forges onward. "But until the day comes when he is the man you choose to be, I cannot-"
He kisses her, so softly she is almost sure she is imagining it, and when she cannot keep back her sigh he cups her face in both his hands, long fingers just brushing her ears. Elismyra struggles to hold onto her resolve, and it is weakened further still when he gently presses his tongue to her bottom lip. Her mouth opens without her permission, and he tastes like honeyed mead and snowberries.
"You love me," he breathes against her skin, and she swallows noisily, her eyes fluttering and her heart thrumming loudly in her chest, "Do not push me away."
"I have to," she gasps, and even to her own ears she does not sound convincing.
"No," he says. "You don't."
The kiss following takes her breath away; he is everywhere, his hands at her waist and in her hair, his scent filling her sensitive nose, his mouth warm and wet and so very familiar, and her wolf stirs hungrily. But this is not the place for selfishness, for taking and hunting and savagery.
So she silences it, and pulls him in.
It is unlike any previous encounter they have had; without the threat of his colleagues breathing down their necks, without need of secrecy or fear or speed. He kisses her with a reverence, a slow, burning passion that had always escaped her in their frenzied trysts.
He pulls the laces of her tunic open slowly, his hands creeping under the fabric to caress her scarred and puckered skin. She pulls his hair from its horsetail and combs her fingers through the silken strands, and surrenders.
They disrobe gradually, mapping skin and tasting scars; he traces patterns over her bare ribs and massages her hips, and she feels every line of muscle in his back and across his shoulders. She laughs breathlessly when she discovers he is ticklish.
When he finally enters her, almost lazily with a sensual, gentle glide, it is so achingly right that she cannot help but whimper, her eyes closed and his lips at her neck. She locks her ankles around his waist, smooths her hands down the planes of chest, and arches into him. She does not care if she will regret this in the morning; she has missed him.
They move together for what could easily have been hours; Elismyra loses count of the times he coaxes her to the knife's edge, only to drive her back down as he pulls away, leaving her empty and wanting. She keens every time and his chuckle is the most unguarded she has ever heard.
His brow is soaked with sweat and she is not much better; she can feel the rivulets dripping down her temples, sliding between her breasts, and his skin slides against hers when he moves within her, only just brushing the softest parts of her, and she thinks he could kill her now and she wouldn't even care.
When the end finally comes, when his hips lose their careful rhythm and his hair is plastered to his neck, she digs her fingernails into his shoulders and bites at the shell of his ear. He chokes, grasps her thigh from where it rests at his waist and hoists it higher, and she sees white.
Elismyra gasps raggedly as her climax crashes into her, slamming into her with all the wild force of a firestorm, and Ondolemar follows her over with a hoarse cry, bracing his forehead against her own as she pulses around him, and he spills himself deep within her.
They lie together afterward, and she knows she should feel some semblance of shame, of frustration and anger at her own stupidity because she knows what this road leads to, but she finds she cannot when he gathers her to him and presses his nose into her sweat-soaked hair and just breathes.
When their heartbeats have slowed and she knows he is about to fall asleep - apparently unconcerned with the fact that he has his own bed and the gossip in the morning is going to spread like magefire - she asks, "Please, just try."
"Hm?"
"With Vilkas. With all of them. And not just for me." She brushes a stray strand of white-blonde hair from his neck. "For them. For you."
The smirk that twitches at the corners of his mouth is tired, but still smug nonetheless. "On one condition."
She tries not to laugh. "What?"
"Marry me."