ties of the blood.

[Danicka] It's not a little bit later when Danicka arrives at the Brotherhood. It's several hours since the coffee shop before Lukas sees her again, without a phone call or text message to explain her delay or warn him of her appearance. That is a subtle change from how things once were, subtle because it was never a strong point to either of them to provide due notice. They should have known from the start something was different.

When one or the other would send a message or call the other, saying Meet me or I'm here, they didn't make each other wait. Not long, at least. Even when he pretended to hate her and she pretended indifference, they met. They came.

Apparently his Come with me and her not-quite-a-promise to come later were invitation and answer enough, because around two in the morning, Danicka heads upstairs to the common room of the Brotherhood of Thieves. She is still in her boots, and Lukas knows these boots that slouch around her calves. She's had them for years, they've had to be re-heeled twice, and the leather is supple and comfortable.

She is still wearing ribbed tights but underneath a looser, more comfortable dress than the skirt and sweater she had on at the cafe. The sleeves end just past her elbow, the neckline is shallow and wide, draping over her clavicles, and the color is deep purple. Her trench coat is open, and she carries a brown leather bag as well-worn and useful as those boots as she walks softly up the stairs. If she sees Lukas in the common room, that is one thing. If she does not, she continues on to the door of Room Two, yawning softly.

[Lukas] Unless one of the other residents is up watching late night TV, the common room is deserted. The Ahroun's back in his own room, the door shut. There's light coming from the crack. He's not sleeping; wouldn't be at this hour, anyway.

He's writing. He's sitting on his bed with his back to a pillow to the headboard, one knee up, his leather writing pad folded open over his thigh. He has a quick, handsome hand, rough-scrawled but easily legible, effortless with long practice. It's probably almost incomprehensible to Danicka, why he would choose to write when he has the option of phone calls, of webcams, of email.

Or maybe it's not. There's a certain quiet enjoyment in writing, in watching ink flow over the page. It's meditative. It's a way to take a few moments to himself.

He has no idea that right now, somewhere in the city, Garou are fighting and dying and raging back and dying again.

When Danicka knocks on the door, he calls out: "Come in." When the door opens and it's her, he knows it's her before he even looks up because he can smell her, sense her, hear her, recognize her with every fiber of his self, he tosses the pad aside without closing it and is off the bed in one motion. He comes toward her. The headboard lamp throws his shadow over her, then past her. His room door shuts with a quiet thump and this time he locks it, locks it with one hand while the other wraps around her waist. He lifts her on his hip as though she weighed no more than a child, and after his hand trails from the doorknob he turns his head to her, and up to her, and he kisses her.

Softly. In recognition, and in greeting.

"I missed you," he says, as though he hadn't seen her a handful of hours before. He lets her down, then goes over to his closet and gets a coathangar for her trench.

[Danicka] Of course she knocks. Once, she didn't. He snarked at her, rather than snapping, when at the time she looked as though she'd seen a ghost. Or a monster. The thought of letter-writing is hardly foreign to her, nor incomprehensible. It doesn't really matter. She has no idea that Garou are dying elsewhere in the city, and if she did, she would not pay it much thought. She does not know them. They are not her blood, her family, or her mate. They are not her friends. They are doing what they were born and trained to do. They are doing what all living things do inevitably, just doing it sooner than they might like.

She comes in though, and he is on his feet, moving towards her, shadows around him and over her and his hand reaching past her to lock the door. Danicka breathes in sharply, though he doesn't move so quickly that she feels lunged at. All the same: the moon is full, and she flinches slightly. There's no gasp of startlement or fear. It is a reaction he might have seen coming months ago, may not be surprised at now. If he looks at her before he tries sweeping her up against him and pressing their mouths together, he'll see that she looks tired. She didn't exactly look energetic at the cafe, and that was countless hours ago. Long enough to miss her, and badly.

There is resistance there, not to being near to him, not to being here, not to anything obvious and heavy with immediate evidence. It is a little like it once was, when they both held back more than they do now. Usually.

[Lukas] Lukas is in pajama bottoms; they're tied low at his waist. The lamplight bronzes his skin, picking out the fine hairs of his body, the veins of his hands and forerams, and riding the crest of the bicep. Her tan is fading with the warmth of summer, but his complexion is dark by nature, and it changes comparatively little.

He holds the coathanger out to her or, if she shrugs out of her trenchcoat, hangs her coat up for her. Either way, he swings it back into the closet, hanging it close to the wall.

The door he leaves open. It's not deliberate. He simply doesn't care anymore. It doesn't occur to him to close it, hide his secrets, protect his privacy. He comes back toward her, and his hand is rough and warm on her cheek as he touches her face, turns it up toward his.

"Jsi v pořádku?"

[Danicka] That Lukas is an intensely physical creature isn't under debate. He is, at the same time, cerebral, thoughtful, and pragmatic.

That Danicka is somewhat wild, somewhat feral, isn't even a question. She is, at the same time, more than a collection of instincts and hungers.

When words became the sources of all misunderstanding and confusion between them, they could touch and it would seem to soothe the struggle between them. Words became unnecessary. Silences and nearness created and nurtured what little trust they began with, let it become more, let it become this. Danicka's entrance into Lukas's room is something like watching two dancers move together who are listening to different music, or to the same song at different tempos.

He wants to move off his bed, throw aside the letter-writing -- and there really is no damn reason she would find incomprehensible, as though her affinity for technology makes her too modern for such things, or dismissive of them, as though the fact that he has never seen her writing a letter means she does not do it -- and move towards her, pull her against him, kiss her, and lift her off the ground. He's done this before and felt her arms and legs around him in response, felt her slip her tongue between his lips even if he was not seeking it. He wants to lock the door and revel in her being there, near to him again, when the last time he saw her she was distant and did not even return a touch of his foot under the table.

She wants to enter his room and walk towards him, step out of her boots, and find a spot on the bed beside him while he works on his letter. She wants to close her eyes and relax in the shadows of a room lit only by the bedside lamp, warm and golden. She wants to just lie there, with the warm bulk of him under her arm, under the drape of her leg, and simply be still. Be quiet. Be together.

What happens, instead of either of these, is this:

Lukas sees her and his notepad is down, gone, forgotten, unimportant. He is near her in three steps and she is tensing after one, he is seeing how tired she is after two. He does not get to sweep her up in his arms and kiss her any more than she gets to curl up against his side and listen to his heartbeat. But she does not see his delight -- or she does, and feels guilty for flinching -- and he does not know what is wrong, does not know what she wanted, maybe could not have guessed because it's never happened because he never just lies in his bed and waits for her.

He is slower, when he reaches past her to lock the door. Danicka exhales, and Lukas goes for a hanger. They don't... really touch. And if that inserts a certain tension where there did not need to be any, neither of them can be blamed for feeling it. Danicka resists, because she is all too sensitive to what he is, and Lukas pulls back, because he is all to sensitive to what she is to him.

She shrugs out of her coat and hands it over, as though they do this every day, as though it is not strange at all for a Garou to be taking his mate's coat and putting it away for her. They're quiet. Even when he steps back over to her and touches her face, they're quiet. For some reason she winces slightly when he puts his hand on ehr cheek and moves it, and instead of turning her face into his palm as he so often does, she resists that gentle guidance, rejects it, sighs.

"I'm just tired," she says quietly. She closes her eyes, lowers her head again so that, were her eyes open, she would be watching his chest and not his face. The lamplight turns him bronze. It turns her hair gold. Mrena stood in this room once and commented on the way Danicka looks in this light. She wanted to paint her in oils. That never happened. "And I came in here and ...felt a little jumped on."

[Lukas] Lukas's eyebrows draw together faintly, a stitch in his forehead, a shadow between his eyebrows. A pause. Then, simply, "I missed you."

His hand drops from her cheek. He'd only begun to turn her face to his, anyway; stopped at the first sign of resistance. In a human couple, this sort of awareness would border on skittishness. Would border on unhealthy; on his caving to her every wish and desire. But they're not human. He's so much stronger than her. By the laws of their society, he holds all the power here, and she holds none.

There are no boundaries for him -- except those he sets for himself.

So he checks himself carefully. Sets the boundaries at the first sign of discomfort. A flinch; a stiffness; a rejection, however slight. It makes him stop, draw back. It makes his hand fall from her face, back to his side.

"Do you want something to drink? Eat?"

[Danicka] "Vím,"

she says softly, and this is the truth. Her eyes open as she says it, looks up at him of her own volition and not because he tilts her face up, looks up at him because for a moment she has both energy and desire to do so, because she wants to see him even though she can hear that slight, brief frown in what he says.

Some women -- Shadow Lord kin or otherwise -- would be grateful that he gives in, that he sets these limits to his own power, that he does not force her. Some women would, however, not be surprised to be forced, would feel wary of being forced. Danicka is so far past that it is unknowable to most people. It is not that she does not fear pain, or trauma. It is not that she expects her will to be respected.

But when Lukas pushes, Danicka lashes out. She gets angry. She resists. She expects him, if not to limit himself, to treat her with a certain dignity and respect that no Shadow Lord Kin should ever have learned to expect from a fullblood.

"I missed you, too," she says, steps forward, moves into him, against him, lays her forehead on his chest. "Hey... do me a favor?"

[Lukas] Bare to the waist, Lukas's skin is intensely warm; is perhaps surprisingly smooth and fine beneath the hairs on his chest, on his forearms. It's a minor benefit of what he is, the blood and spirit that fuels him. He regenerates almost any damage caused to his body, no matter how minor or massive. The sun doesn't roughen his skin. The wind doesn't crack it, or at least not for long. The cold doesn't dry him out. Teenage bouts of acne never left a mark. A thousand strikes, bites, slashes, gashes, faded without a trace.

He has a small handful of scars, and that's all. Each one marks a death and a resurrection.

When she lays her brow to his chest, he circles her with his arms. His back is a smooth slope beneath her hands, smoother still than his chest and arms, totally unscarred. He's hard with muscle, skin riding taut over it; hardly any give at all.

He breathes with her for a moment. Then he lowers his chin, kisses the top of her head. "Of course," he murmurs.

[Danicka] She was never allowed to stay hurt for very long. Her mother, like her lover now, used talens. Her brother used a healing gift. Danicka has no scars on her body, not even a closed-in piercing, but she looks more than the year and change she has on Lukas. She looks closer to thirty, older than that when she's tired. There are lines forming at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Though she cannot die and come back from a lethal wound, this life has aged her and is aging her in ways that may never apply to Lukas. Time will be different for him, always, because there is so much less of it.

Danicka has to wear sunscreen, applies lotion, washes her face twice a day and rinses in cold water without fail, gets whitening treatments when she goes to the dentist, takes vitamins so that when she's older her bones do not turn to dust. She carries talens and a firearm so that she can live to see thirty. Or twenty-six.

She does not wrap her arms around him, though, neither chest nor waist. She tucks her arms in, her jersey dress soft under his hands and the backs of her wrists between her torso and his own. The way she curls forward against him seems to suggest she seeks protection that she rarely asks for out loud. Shelter. Her hair is cool on his skin.

"Go back to bed and finish your letter," she says, and nuzzles his chest for a moment.

[Lukas] So rarely, Danicka asks for shelter, for protection, for the very things Lukas snarled at her about the first time she came to his room, and the very things he thought, even then, that he would give her. Gladly. Without reservation. No matter what face he showed the world.

He holds her like that for a while, her arms tucked close, her face against his chest, his arms folded around her as though to ward. His chest rises against her when she nuzzles him, and he draws a breath in. Then he bends to drop another kiss atop her head.

"Okay," he says. He sounds faintly puzzled; he doesn't argue. His arms drop away, his hand lingering at her elbow a moment before he turns and goes back to bed.

As thoughtful and methodical as Lukas normally is, and tries to be, there's a boundless, animal energy in him. He throws himself down on the bed, grabs up his letterpad, scoots back against the headboard and fluffs his pillow. It's all done rapidly, carelessly, with the thoughtless comfort that comes with territory. Ownership. His space, his bed, his.

When he's settled, though, he looks up at her. "Are you joining me?"

[Danicka] The first time Danicka came into this room she was terrified that the man she'd slept with and dumped and tried repeatedly to shut down was going to do something to hurt her. Not because he said anything, or even looked at her: because he came upstairs in glabro, and she was scared of something that was not human, not wolf, horrifically in-between. She knew that it was Lukas's room, though. She knew because she'd seen him exit Room Two, she knew because he offered to let her and Sam talk in there once, she knew exactly where he was and that,

when she was panicked,

was the first place she thought to go. Not down the stairs and to her car, not to the cold hardness of the bathroom, but inside the unlocked door and into the den of someone she had just as much reason to fear. The den of a man who had not touched her except to shake her hand, except to crush her against his chest in a pull that was part embrace, mostly restraint, except to grab her by the wrist and haul her out of a cafe in fury as though he would make good on his threat to make her sorry for lying to him. The den of a man who had called her a whore before whispering her name, and kissing her, pushing her hair back and gasping at the feel of her on top of him. Who had kissed her shoulder, held her arm, tucked her feet under his, because he thought she might be cold.

And then he'd asked if she expected him to protect her, he who could not sleep til she was gone because he could not stand the thought of waking to find she had left him alone. It was a valid question, and the answer had been no, and the answer still has not changed even though the question no longer matters.

It does not matter if she expects it. He will. He does.

She still doesn't even know why he challenged Milo for guardianship of her, all those months ago. That it was not, then, about mating. That it wasn't about love, or lust, or at least that wasn't the reason he gave. It was about protecting her, keeping her safe, the way he tries to when he holds her between his body and the wall, warm on his bed, though they sleep here so rarely.

Danicka steps back as he does, arms falling to her sides, and goes to sit at the desk chair, turned so that it faces his bed. She puts her bag down on the desk alongside whatever else is there tonight. She bends at the waist to start tugging her boots off and gives him a small smile, a small nod. "Yeah. In a minute. Just write, baby." As though she is really saying: it's okay. I'm okay.

In smooth, slow motions, Danicka takes off her boots and sets them side by side on the floor by the desk. She reaches under her skirt and tugs down her tights, drops them on the floor, wiggles her newly bared toes on the thin, flat carpet. The dress is next, rucked up and tugged off over her head, laid out over the back of his chair. Her panties are plain white cotton, though they are, like most things she owns, finer than average, a pair of seamless and overpriced skivvies. She peels them off, tosses them on top of the tights, and stretches once, arms over her head, back arched, neck rolling.

Relaxing again, she crosses the short distance to the edge of the bed and starts to climb onto it, nudging Lukas's hip with her knee, just in case he hasn't moved over yet to make more room for her. It's cool. Not cold, not frigid, but she tugs at the blankets he is resting on top of, intending to climb underneath.

"Who are you writing to?"

[Lukas] Lukas looks at Danicka questioningly for another moment. Then he takes a breath and returns to his letter, soon settling into it. His hand whispers over the paper. The nib of the pen scratches faintly.

From the beginning, Lukas's focus has both infuriated and drawn Danicka. He delves into his letter, not even noticing as she pulls her boots off. Then her stockings.

When she drops her skirt, though, he notices. He looks over at her, still writing. Lukas writes on plain white paper, ruling it in his mind, and his lines are normally as straight and pristine as one might expect from the rather solemn Ahroun. Not tonight. His line runs crooked; he looks down in time to keep from running off the edge of the page.

And takes another breath, deeper than the last.

Of course he moves over when she comes to the bed. He puts his pen in his left hand for a second, turning down the sheets for her. The bedding at the Brotherhood is strictly utilitarian: thin sheets, plain white; polyester-stuffed pillows; thin quilted comforters that, in deference to the season, Lukas has stacked one atop the other.

"My parents," he says. His weight pins half the sheet down, though as she climbs underneath he draws his legs up, works them under as well. There's only one pillow, so he shares it if she sits up; puts it down for her and leans against the headboard if she lies down. "I try to write every few weeks so they have something more tangible than a phone call."

A pause. Then, "How's your father?"

[Danicka] Nothing about Danicka's undressing is intentionally sensual, not in a calculated sense. Her dress comes off, a swath of purple through the air catching his eye and distracting him, momentarily, from his letter. She notices, but would not mind even if he stopped trying to write and just stared at her, watched her as winter dress gives way to nudity. She half-smiles at his deep breath, slips her legs under the covers as he pulls them aside, and slides downward until her shoulder and head tuck around the pillow that they have to share because it is the only one.

It is entirely unlike sleeping in her bed, which is soft and covered in a heavy down comforter for winter but free of extraneous throw pillows or decor. It is entirely unlike sharing a hotel bed. No matter where they sleep, they seem to take up the same amount of space in the end, inextricably wound together.

It's warmer underneath than out in the air. She shivers slightly, once, and smiles as he gets in with her. Their legs touch under the blankets and sheets, which are rough enough to rustle in a ways hers do not. Bare thighs touch his loungewear; she moves one slim calf between his shins. She looks up at him as he sits back, leaning on the plain headboard, and smiles. She wriggles one arm across his waist, her shoulder and part of her bicep barely peeking out from under the blankets.

Her forehead furrows, though, smile fading slightly. "I haven't really heard from him since we got back. I still call on Fridays, but..." she shrugs, eyebrows tugging together tightly for a second before separating once more. "He doesn't stay on the phone long. Doesn't say much."

[Lukas] From her vantage point, Danicka can see that Lukas's letter is entirely in Czech. He doesn't mind if she reads it. If she does, it's largely mundanities. He tells them he's doing well. He complains goodnaturedly about the cold Chicago weather. He wonders if Anezka's going home for Christmas, which will also be his birthday. He doesn't mention any plans of going to New York for the holidays. He doesn't mention the war at all.

Or Danicka, for that matter.

When Danicka answers him, he looks at her for a moment, frowning faintly. For the now, Lukas says nothing of it. He goes back to his letter, which he finishes -- not hurrying, but simply bringing it to a natural close. A few minutes later he signs it:

Lukášek

and then reaches over her to set it on the nightstand, his pen capped and laid atop the paper.

Then he's pressing his palms to the mattress, the muscles in his shoulders drawing taut as he levers himself up, slides down the bed. They have long-framed beds here at the Brotherhood, college-style, but even so Lukas just about tops his out. Danicka's calf, slid between his, rides up to his knees. He moves his arm under her neck, drawing her against his side as he reaches up to adjust the light so it shines up at the ceiling instead.

"What did your brother say to you that night?" he asks. "After he gave you to me."

[Danicka] Indeed she does glance across the page, but Danicka doesn't absorb anything from it. She moves a little closer to Lukas after he finishes the letter and moves down next to her, her arm still wrapped around his torso. She slides her leg out from between his and drapes it over his thighs loosely, resting her head more on his arm and chest than the pillow. Her eyes close as she wraps herself around him thus, her breath slow and curling over his skin, the smell of him rich and warm in her nostrils.

The question does not get answered for several moments. She takes a deeper breath, sighs it out slowly. "After you went outside? Not very much." Which is partly the truth, at least. Her eyes close a bit tighter. Her hand presses against his ribs, his heartbeat hitting her palm through that broad cage. "He wanted to know what I'd told you about him. He wanted to know why I wanted to leave him."

Danicka presses her face against his side, breathes him in as he breathes in. After a moment, she turns her face so she is not speaking into his flesh, opens her eyes but looks at the wall rather than twisting around to try and find his gaze. "Why?"

[Lukas] "And before. At the table, in Russian."

They nestle in his narrow bed, fitting together thoughtlessly, comfortably, naturally. She drapes over his broad chest; his thighs are warm and hard through his thin lounge pants, which are a little rumpled up with the way he scooted under the coves. His arm encircles her waist loosely, but securely. They breathe together, not quite in sync, close. A slow, steady rhythm that expands their bodies against one another's, raises her arm across his ribs, shifts his over hers.

"I was just wondering ... if your brother pushed you and your father apart, or if your father feels he no longer has a right to speak to you because he thinks I'll object."

His arm winds a little tighter around her. Almost instinctively, he draws the comforter up over her shoulder, tucking her in. His free hand drops to her knee, holds her there, too. Secure. Safe. Close to him.

"I remember you wanted me to meet your father," he adds.

[Danicka] She becomes still, at the mention of the Russian. That she remembers all too clearly, the words her brother said to her in their mother's language before she rose from the table and left to go pack her things, as she told Lukas. Boxes arrived shortly at her apartment after she did, full of reminders of her room, every object out of place in Chicago when in her memory they all belonged in that small windowed room in Ridgewood.

He covers her up with the blankets. She covers him with her body. They hold each other as though each believes the other is the one in need of comfort, closeness, reassurance, which may even be the truth of the matter.

"I just thought he might want to meet you, actually," she says absently, and looks at the wall past his chest. Her eyes close slowly, lashes flicking his skin once, then open again.

"At the table, my brother told me to go upstairs, pack my things, and leave. He told me I would not be coming back." There's a pause. "It isn't your objection my father is concerned with, lásko."

[Lukas] This close, Danicka can feel Lukas wincing -- not only the muscles of his face contracting on themselves, but the ones in his arms, in his chest, all down his body. They tense for a second, then release. He draws a breath, then turns and presses his lips to her forehead, warm and lingeringly.

As though he could reassure her. And comfort her. As though she needs it.

"Je mi to líto," he says softly. His arm moves, encircles her shoulders now, holds her closer. He draws and releases a breath. "Je něco, co můžu udělat?"

[Danicka] She moves her hand from his ribs to cover his heart, the swoop of her thumb and forefinger underneath his left nipple, the center of her palm against the lower curve of his pectoral muscle. It is instantly, thoughtlessly protective, hidden underneath the stack of blankets above the thin sheet. They are not going to need that many blankets, not with his rage, his heat, and the warmth she generates when she sleeps.

"Já si to nemyslím," Danicka murmurs, then adds: "Ale to je v pořádku."

[Lukas] "No," Lukas replies after a moment, quietly -- neither sad nor resigned. Something closer to acknowledgment. "I don't think so either."

His other hand moves, leaving her thigh to tuck behind his head -- and then, after a moment, reaching back to click the light off. Darkness shrouds them, broken only by the faint light from the alleyway, through his open window. He always keeps his blinds drawn back, the window open at least a crack, even in the dead of winter. It's a small part of him that's wolf, that's wild, that does not want to be kept indoors in canned air.

"For what it's worth," he adds, "I would have been happy to meet your father again." His hand combs idly through his hair, then tucks behind his head again. "I still haven't even told my parents. Originally I was hoping we could meet them after we left your father's house, but -- well."

He doesn't need to go on. They both remember how that went.

[Danicka] This time it's Danicka who winces, her brow tightening, eyes open now, breath shooting softly out of her mouth across his chest. She holds onto him with arm and leg and cheek to his body, loose rather than clinging but close.

So close.

"I know," she says soften, when he tells her he would have been happy to meet her father again. Maybe he means in the way mortals do: showing up one day to talk to sire of the girl you want, to ask for blessing if not permission, to acknowledge at least the concept of transferring responsibility. It's highly doubtful that Lukas means it that way, or that Danicka would do anything but laugh if he did. Miloslav is not, and has never been, the one who holds the claim on the woman that is now his.

That does not mean he never protected her.

She twists a bit, pushing up on her elbow beside him so she can look at his face in the dim, alleyway-reflected light that is more blue and gray than yellow or white. Her head is tipped, her shoulder hunched near her cheek, her expression quizzical.

"Are you serious?"

[Lukas] "About what?" Lukas, too, moves his head on the pillow -- tilts it to look at her more directly. "Not telling my parents?"

[Danicka] "Well, that," she says, her right leg slipping between his thighs due to her changed angle. She nestles her knee between his, puts more of her weight on his torso without asking permission or expecting much reaction, moves her shoulder away from her cheek so she doesn't end up sore. "What all haven't you told them? That you're mated, or... to me, or..."

[Lukas] "I haven't told them anything." Lukas shifts, making a fist under his head to prop himself a little higher, look at her more directly. "They know you and I are in the same city. They know I know you. That's about it." A faint grimace. "When I sent you my books, I told my mom you were just holding on to them until I got back to Chicago."

[Danicka] For a moment, all she does is look at him in that almost nonexistent light, her shoulderblades and shoulders, neck and hair and face and breasts exposed to the chill in the room while the rest of her is languid against him. It takes time for her brow to furrow, and even then it is not a deep expression. The shadows make it harder edged than it really is.

"Why?"

[Lukas] Now Lukas does grimace -- an expression that was far more common on his face earlier this year than now. His chest moves beneath her, up and down, a deep breath.

"In the beginning, it was because I didn't think we were going anywhere. I did ask them about you and our history, but I didn't expect anything to come of it. I didn't expect this to last. I didn't want my parents to know because ... well, if -- when -- you left me, it was one more set of eyes I would have been shamed before.

"Then, as time went on, it just got harder and harder to tell them. There was more and more to tell."

[Danicka] The nearly invisible furrow to her brow deepens suddenly, when he talks about shame. Not when he talks about thinking this wouldn't last -- she didn't, either, and cannot blame him for agreeing at the time. Not when he says when as though it might still be true, because she knows he means what he thought then, what he could not possibly think now or else he would not be with her like this, holding her naked in his bed, comfortable enough that he can talk to her rather than roll her over and lose himself and his thoughts in the feel of her.

When he talks about how being left by her would have made him feel ashamed.

She leans over then, and kisses him gently, at the corner of his mouth.

Pulling back, finding his eyes: "I had to tell my father about you. He kept asking if I'd met any of our tribe in the city. He worried because I did not have a guardian. He wanted Vladislav to find out what Shadow Lords were in Chicago and inform them of my whereabouts and need for protection. Then I met you. And he remembered your family name."

She pauses there, takes a breath, huffs it out in something like laughter. "And when you told me you'd challenged Milo for me, I had to tell my father so he could tell Vladislav, because Vladislav had to know who was watching out for me here." A beat. "That was when my father asked if you were guarding me as a step towards mateship. But... I think that's because I had been asking him things.

"About my mother. And him."

[Lukas] Lukas catches the tail end of her frown, and though he closes his eyes when she kisses the corner of his mouth, he raises his hand to her face when she draws back.

"I didn't mean I would have been ashamed that I'd loved you and sought you for my own," he says quietly. "I meant I would have been ashamed to have been unable to keep you, and for not knowing better than to love you at all."

It's a small difference, in the end. It might not matter at all. It's long past; he doesn't think that way anymore.

Their eyes hold as she tells him her side of things. What she told her father. When. Why. "What did you ask him?" Lukas asks. And, "What did you tell him when he asked?"

[Danicka] So she kisses him again, when his hand is on her face. It's no more lingering or lustful than the other one, no less tender. She nuzzles his palm briefly, eyes falling closed and lashes brushing the heel of his hand. They open again. "I understand," she says, and she does. She doesn't explain why, or how, or if it's just a general grasp on how the male ego works, how the Shadow Lord's pride finds itself manifesting in behavior.

"I asked him if he loved her," Danicka says quietly, after a moment. Months ago, she would have lied, or rolled her hips, or done anything to get him off this topic, to talk about something other than her family. At this point she has almost become resigned: he knows so much already. Not the worst parts, not some of the things mother or brother said or did that have stuck with her in insidious, lurking ways. He knows enough that it is not worth telling him why someone like her would ask her father if he loved the woman he was mated to.

The Ahroun he was mated to.

"And I asked him to tell me about when he first met her. They were arranged, though she refused to marry him." Danicka settles further against him, her rather negligible weight resting on top of his body. She folds her arms loosely over his chest and rests her chin on her wrists. "I just... wanted him to tell me how he felt about her, and I'd asked before but I think he could tell I wanted to know more."

Her face pulls with an expression of remembered pain. "In early May we were talking and he was telling me that Vladislav wanted to hear from me. I think I was quiet, and after awhile he just asked me if something had happened with you. And I started crying."

She smiles thinly, achingly, and moves her arms. She lays her head down, slides her arms around him, fingertips wiggling between the mattress and his back.

[Lukas] Lukas's arms fold around Danicka's slender shoulders as she lays her weight onto his body. They tighten when she says

I started crying

because the thought of her crying aches, and because he remembers exactly what happened in early May. His back arches when she shifts her arms, giving her hands room to slide beneath before he lowers his weight again. He's intensely warm, his skin nearly hot against her palms, the bedding full of his body heat.

For a while he's silent. His fingertips trace slow, meaningless whorls against her shoulder. Then his arm tightens again; he raises his head to kiss the top of her head, again. When he lays his head down he reaches up and clicks the light off entirely.

In the dark now, they can see the faint square of light thrown up from the alley; the shadows of his dresser, his desk, his single chair.

"I want your father to know I love you," he says quietly. "I want him to know you're... all right. That you'll be all right."

[Danicka] "He does," she whispers, enough emphasis on the second word to at least attempt reassurance.

Danicka holds Lukas to her chest, legs tangled and arms around him, eyes closing even though it's dark already, his heart thumping loudly and heavily under her ear, steady as a drum. Steady as rain. They hold each other the way they almost never have, never get to, unless they have just made love and are trying to remember what planet they are on afterward. She told him earlier that she's tired. She's tired more often these days, laden with schoolwork and busier than she has been since leaving the Sokolovs. It takes very little time to break a routine. Sometimes it seems like it takes forever to get used to a new one.

"He helped me pack," she adds quietly. "And after my brother left us alone he asked me if this is what I really wanted."

[Lukas] Lukas thinks about this for a while. It wasn't by mistake that he said he wants her father to know that he loved her. Not merely that she loved him, but the other way around, too: not because his love of her was more important than hers for him, but because he'd hurt her before. He'd hurt her before, rejected her before, and her father knew it.

He strokes her hair back, combs his fingers through the strands, down to the tips. There his hand spreads over her back again, covers her through the comforters he's drawn up.

"I'm glad," he replies. "I'm very glad."

A few moments pass. Time goes by. She's tired. She's holding him and he her, and if they stayed like this she might be asleep before long. He'd be asleep before long.

But he speaks up again, his voice quiet in the air, a vibration in his chest. "Will you meet my parents," he asks, "the next time we're in the city?"

[Danicka] She tells Lukas what her father asked. She does not tell him her answer.

He makes me happy.

Which was all, in the end, that Miloslav wanted or needed to hear. Love was one thing. Love was trickier, in his mind, than other feelings. His mate threw him through a wall. His mate hurt him, regularly, for roughly twenty years. His mate broke things he made, raised his son to be a monster, taught his daughter to be afraid, was one of the main reasons he was pulled away from his other children when they were still teenagers.

Did you love her? she's asked him, so many times. Despite everything, even after eleven years have passed since she was killed, the answer was always:

I still do.

Love, in Miloslav Musil's mind, is something very different than men and women in their twenties might think it is. Love is a problematic question. Love is a craft more detailed and more risky and more injurious than cabinetmaking, no matter how many notches and scars the latter might leave on his aged hands.

Happiness, though.

He makes me happy was more than he could have hoped for, for Danicka, so easily startled and so often terrified in childhood, so tearful, so careful not to laugh, so wary of delight. Miloslav remembers the brief years when the Kvasnickas would visit, and the time or two that he saw Daniela laugh with her hands over her mouth at something Anezka said, something Lukasek did. He remembers watching the evolution of her feigned smiles, her calculated warmth, the happiness she learned to display that never quite imitated pure joy.

Lukas wants this man to know that Danicka is loved. This man wants to know that she is happy. Either way it comes down to the same thing: Miloslav knows. And Lukas is glad.

She stirs on top of him. Lifts her head, looks at him with eyes already starting to seem heavy with sleep, as though he woke her when he asked this.

"That depends," she says gently, with a thin edge of wry teasing, a restrained swell of affection. "Will you tell them about me first?"

[Lukas] "I'll tell them about you first," he promises.

Lukas is wary of making promises he cannot keep, or promises that will take so long to keep they will mean nothing, because their keeping will mean one or the other is dead. These smaller promises, though, the ones he can safely make and keep -- these he's glad to make, glad to give her.

"I'll tell them about you tomorrow," he adds, and his arms shift her a little closer.

Almost absently, he tugs at the blankets again, secures them around her, arranges and rearranges his nest, his den. He draws another breath, releases it. It's the only goodnight there is between them. It doesn't seem necessary to say more; do more. They're so closely entwined, so intimately in contact, that it doesn't seem necessary to bid farewell. Lukas closes his eyes. He listens to her breathing. He listens to her heartbeat, which is more felt than heard, a steady beating against his own.

In the morning, they'll want to each other. They'll move toward each other drowsily, warmly, caress and touch and draw together in a progression as natural as the tide. They'll make love under the covers, he on top, moving into her with slow, steady rolls of his hips while their mouths stray, and kiss, and explore, and kiss again.

In the morning, afterward, they'll shower and go downstairs for food from the kitchen; or at least he will. They'll eat in his room, though, side by side on his bed with their backs to the wall, and he'll tell her how his mother taught him to make scrambled eggs when he was six or seven years old. They'll laze about his room, spend time, stay close.

Later, he'll get her coat out from the closet. She'll dress, likely out of her bag, something fresh and wholly unlike what she wore the night before, and he'll hold her coat while she slips into it. He'll ask if she wants him to walk her down, and if she lets him, he'll follow her to her car, kiss her goodbye to the sound of Tuesday morning traffic.

He'll miss her before she's gone ten minutes. He'll call her after fifteen and tell her so, and ask when he can see her again.

But all that lies in the future still. It's dark now; the Brotherhood is quiet. His room is quiet. Her breathing is quiet, and steady, and slow, and he thinks to himself that if this moment stretched out forever, unraveled into an eternity, he wouldn't mind. He wouldn't mind at all.

They sleep.