The Reaper's Bride

Chapter 11

Stars twinkled brightly over their campsite. Though their tent was ripped and worn; their firewood low and hunting was getting sparse, the feeling of Owen's fingers lazily trailing up and down Iris's spine made everything else in the world simply not matter for the moment.

When his knuckles suddenly replaced his fingertips, allowing her to feel the cool metal of his ring on her skin, she suppressed a moan.

"Rys?"

"Yes?"

His fingers felt a little more weighted on her back, and the pressure against the knots there was downright sinful.

"I was thinking."

Iris arched into his touch. "About what?"

"You. Me. Us."

"What about us?"

"If there was one thing you could change, what would it be?"

Her answer was immediate, even if it was partially a lie. "Nothing."

The flames cast shadows across his handsome face in a way that made him seem much older than his thirty years. "Huh. That's funny."

"How so?"

"I thought that you'd have wanted to marry for love."

She shrugged. "We have love. Of a sort."

The storms that brewed in his eyes could have been created by Mesidora herself. "I... It pains me now, knowing that..."

The heavy sigh that left him had Iris immediately cupping his face in her palm. "Talk to me."

"I just... if there was one thing I'd change—it would be how we got married. If I could do it over, I would think twice before vowing to love the woman who agreed to spend her life with me, knowing that, at the time I said it, it was a lie. I'd wait until the words were true, even if it meant losing everything. Cherishing, protecting, forsaking all others—that's common sense, you know? If I'm close enough to a woman to essentially drag her down the aisle, I'm doing all those things anyway." Then, with a mockery of his trademark smirk, he tapped Iris's nose and said, "You know that better than anyone."

Iris's voice cracked. "Oh, sweetheart."

His smile was brittle as he wiped her tears away. "Promise me something."

"What?"

"No matter what happens, promise that the next time we see each other, you won't let us settle for anything less than that. No doubts. No taking the easy way out."

Iris's grip around his middle instantly became a vice. "You're scaring me. You're acting like we won't make it..."

He tenderly tucked a curl behind her ear and said, "We might not, love."

"And how, pray tell, do you know we will see each other again?"

His answer was a kiss to her forehead. "My gods might have told me to fuck off, but you have yours. That means I'll always be able to find you."