Chapter 4: The Morning After
The cold was what woke him. A sharp, insistent bite at his nose and ears, the rest of him submerged in a deep, satisfying warmth.
He was on his side, curled slightly. Alyna was wrapped around him from behind, her front fused to his back, one arm thrown heavily over his ribs, her hand splayed on his chest. Her breath was a steady, warm puff against the nape of his neck. The blankets were a tangled nest, trapping their combined heat.
He lay still, savoring it. The solidness of her. The way her body fit against his, no space wasted. The memory of the night before played behind his eyes—the firelight, the raw urgency, the quiet afterwards. A blush heated his skin under the blankets. It felt like a dream, but the pleasant, deep ache in his muscles was gloriously, undeniably real.
Then he felt her stir. A slight shift of her hips. The arm around him tightened, pulling him closer. He sighed, content, pressing back into her warmth.
He felt her then, hard and full against the cleft of his ass. A thrill, part nerves and part sharp anticipation, shot through him. He held his breath.
Her hand on his chest slid down, over his stomach, fingers tracing the line of his hipbone. Her movements were slow, sleepy. Unhurried. She nudged him gently with her knee, encouraging his top leg to bend forward. He complied, his heart beginning a slow, heavy drum against his ribs.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her touch was a language. Her fingers, slicked with something—saliva, he realized, she must have just licked her palm—traced a teasing, circling path lower, before pressing firmly against him.
He let out a shaky breath, his body arching into the touch. This was different from the desperate, hungry coupling by the dying fire. This was languid. Intentional.
She took her time, working him open with a patient, gentle pressure that melted the last of his morning stiffness into liquid want. When she finally, slowly, began to press into him, it wasn’t a claiming. It was an arrival.
A low, ragged moan escaped him. He buried his face in the pillow. It was an overwhelming fullness, but there was no burn this time, only a deep, stretching pleasure that made his toes curl. She sank into him inch by deliberate inch, until she was fully seated, her hips flush against him, her body a living blanket.
She stopped. Just held there. Her arm wrapped around him again, her hand coming to rest over his pounding heart. Her lips brushed his shoulder blade.
“Morning,” she murmured, her voice gravelly with sleep.
He couldn’t form words. He could only press back against her, a tiny, helpless movement that drew a soft groan from her throat.
She began to move. Not with the driving rhythm of before, but with a slow, rolling undulation of her hips. A deep, grinding circle. Each movement was an exploration, a reiteration. It was impossibly intimate. He was surrounded by her—her scent, her warmth, the sound of her breathing by his ear, the incredible sensation of her inside him. There was no frantic race, only a slow, steady climb.
His hand came up to cover the one on his chest, lacing their fingers together. He felt cherished. Desired in a way that went straight to his core, bypassing insecurity, erasing doubt.
The pace stayed achingly slow. Time lost meaning. The only world was the bed, the scratch of wool blankets, the syncopated rhythm of their breathing, the soft, wet sounds of their joining. He felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes. It was too much. It wasn’t enough.
Her lips found the sensitive point where his neck met his shoulder. She didn’t bite, just rested them there, her breath hitching with each gentle thrust. “Alex,” she whispered, just his name, and it sounded like a prayer.
That did it. The emotional swell met the physical one, and he came apart silently, a wave of pleasure so profound it felt like sorrow, shaking through him. His body clenched around her, pulling a sharp, broken cry from her lips. Her own rhythm shattered, hips stuttering as she followed him over, her release a hot pulse deep inside him.
They lay tangled, boneless, breathing the same air. She didn’t pull away. She stayed inside him, her weight a comfort, her face pressed between his shoulder blades.
Long minutes passed. The cold began to nibble at the edges of their sanctuary again.
Her voice, when it came, was raw. “I meant what I said last night. I want to try.” She paused, and he could feel her gathering herself. “This… whatever this is. With you. I want to try.”
He rolled carefully in her arms, forcing her to slip from him. The loss felt significant. He faced her in the dim grey light. Her blonde hair was a mess, her eyes serious and a little scared. The confident rogue was gone, leaving just Alyna, watching him.
He reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind her long, pointed ear. “Try what?” he asked softly, though he knew.
“Not being alone.” She gave a half-shrug, a attempt at nonchalance that fell flat. “Drinking terrible coffee. Walking in the snow. Not having to… explain myself.” Her gaze searched his. “The peace is fragile. My people, yours… it’s a mess out there. But in here?” She glanced around the tiny cabin. “In here, it doesn’t have to be.”
He nodded slowly. “I want to try, too.” He leaned in and kissed her, a soft, closed-mouth press of lips that held more promise than any grand declaration. “But we need firewood. And that coffee.”
She grinned, the cheeky mask sliding back into place, but it was softer now, tempered. “Priorities. I see you’re a man of culture.”
They untangled themselves from the blankets, gasping as the frigid air hit their skin. They dressed quickly in the clumsy, shared silence of two people who are no longer strangers. He pulled on his worn hunting leathers; she reassembled herself into the lethal, graceful rogue, though she left her hair down.
He broke the ice on the water bucket, pumping fresh, achingly cold water to fill the small pot. She took over building a new fire, her movements efficient and sure. Soon, flames were licking at fresh logs, and the pot was steaming over the heat.
He scooped the coarse, black grounds into two tin cups, pouring the hot water over them. The smell was bitter and sharp. He handed her a cup.
She took a sip, her expression unreadable. She held it in her mouth for a second, then swallowed. She looked at the cup, then at him.
“Well?” he asked, a smirk tugging at his lips.
“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever tasted,” she said with complete sincerity. Then she took another, longer drink. “It’s perfect.”
They sat on the floor by the hearth, shoulders touching, drinking the terrible coffee as the cabin warmed. The simple normalcy of it felt more daring than anything they’d done so far.
“We can’t stay here forever,” Alex said, staring into his cup. “My supplies are low. I was tracking a elk herd before the storm. Need to replenish.”
“Hunting,” Alyna said, nodding. “I can do that. What’s your plan? Bow? Traps?”
“Bow. I’ve got a good spot a few miles east, near a frozen creek. They go there to lick minerals.”
She finished her coffee with a grimace and a sigh. “Alright. Let’s go hunting, then.”
He blinked. “Together?”
“Unless you think I’ll scare the elk. My ears aren’t that big.” She flicked one pointed tip.
“It’s just… people might see. A human and a blood elf…”
“Out here? The only ‘people’ are yetis and snow leopards. And we’ve already handled one of those.” She stood up, stretching, her body a long, elegant line in the firelight. “Unless you’re ashamed.”
“No.” The word came out too fast, too firm. He stood up to face her. “Never that.”
Her smile was small, real. “Good. Then stop worrying. We’re just two people trying not to starve. Simple.”
It wasn’t simple, and they both knew it. But for today, in the vast, forgiving whiteness of Winterspring, maybe it could be.
They prepared in quiet tandem. He strung his longbow, checked his arrows. She inspected her daggers, the edges glinting wickedly, and pulled her hair back into its familiar ponytail. She threw her cloak over her shoulders but left the hood down.
As they stepped outside, the blinding white world and the knife-edge wind hit them like a physical rebuke. Alex pointed east, and they began to walk, their boots crunching in the deep, pristine snow. The sky was a high, pale blue, the sun a weak silver coin.
They walked in silence for a mile, the only sounds their breathing and the endless wind. Then Alyna spoke, her voice carried away almost before he could hear it.
“I was run out of a town once. In the Hinterlands. A human settlement. They called me a demon. Said my… shape… was a curse from the Light.” She said it casually, like she was commenting on the weather. “Had to hide in a pigsty for two days until the search parties gave up. Smelled like shit for a week.”
Alex’s chest tightened. He didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry” felt pathetic.
“Don’t be,” she said, as if reading his mind. “It’s just the way it is. People fear what’s different. Makes them feel big to make you feel small.” She glanced at him, her green eyes sharp. “You’re not like that.”
“I was just… surprised. In the cave. Not disgusted.”
“I know.” She smiled, a thin, hard thing. “Believe me, I know the difference.”
They crested a rise, and the frozen creek lay below them, a jagged scar of white through the pine trees. And there, moving like grey ghosts among the trunks, was the herd. A bull, three cows, a couple of younger animals.
Alex dropped to one knee behind a snow-drifted log, nocking an arrow. Alyna melted into a crouch beside him, her presence suddenly negligible, a part of the landscape. Her rogue’s training was absolute.
He drew, the familiar strain in his shoulder a comfort. He focused on the lead cow, picking his spot behind the front leg. He exhaled slowly.
Just as his fingers were about to release, a piercing shriek tore through the frozen quiet. Not an animal. A voice.
From the trees on the opposite bank, three figures emerged. They were bulky in furs, faces obscured by hoods and wrapped scarves. They carried not hunting bows, but crude axes and clubs.
Bandits. Or desperate, hungry men. It amounted to the same thing.
The elk herd bolted, vanishing into the woods in a thunder of hooves and flying snow.
“Damn it,” Alex hissed, lowering his bow.
The lead bandit pointed at them. His voice was a rough bellow across the creek. “Oi! What’ve you got? Food? Coin?”
Alex stood up slowly, his hands open and away from his body. “We’re just hunters. We’ve got nothing.”
The three men began to cross the frozen creek, their steps clumsy on the ice. There was a greedy, desperate energy to their advance.
Then the middle one stopped. He was staring past Alex, at Alyna as she rose gracefully to her full height beside him. Her hood was down, her ponytail bright gold against the white, her long ears unmistakable.
“The fuck is that?” he snarled, his voice dripping with venom. “An elf? You’re consorting with a pointy-ear?”
The mood shifted instantly. Hunger was replaced by something uglier, sharper. Prejudice was a hotter fuel than greed.
Alex felt a cold that had nothing to do with Winterspring settle in his gut. He glanced at Alyna. Her face was a calm, deadly mask. Her hands hung loosely at her sides, too close to her daggers.
The lead bandit hefted his axe. “Freak of nature shouldn’t be breathing our air.” He spat on the ice. “Kill the elf. Take the boy’s gear.”
They surged forward.
The world narrowed to the crunch of snow, the rasp of their own breath, and the three advancing shapes.
Alex’s bow was useless at this range. He dropped it, his hand going to the skinning knife at his belt. It felt pitifully small. Alyna hadn’t moved. She was a statue, assessing.
“Two for you, one for me?” she murmured, her voice barely a whisper.
“What? No, I—” he stammered.
“Kidding. Left.” And she was gone.
She didn’t run. She simply wasn’t there anymore, a blur of grey and brown melting into the snow-dusted pines to the left. The bandits hesitated, their charge faltering as their target vanished.
It was the opening Alex needed. He didn’t think. He acted. He snatched a handful of loose, powdery snow from the log, packed it roughly, and hurled it into the face of the lead bandit.
It wasn’t a rock, but it didn’t need to be. The man cursed, flailing, his axe swing going wide as he clawed at his eyes. Alex ducked under the wild arc, coming up inside the man’s guard. He drove his shoulder into the bandit’s chest, knocking the wind out of him with a whoof. They went down in a tumble of limbs and wet furs.
The smell of unwashed body and rancid grease filled Alex’s nostrils. He wrestled for control of the axe handle, his knuckles white. The bandit’s face, now clear of snow, was brutish and scarred, his eyes blazing with stupid hatred.
“Gonna gut you, elf-lover,” the man grunted, spitting in his face.
From the right, the second bandit raised a club, aiming for Alex’s exposed back. Alex saw it coming from the corner of his eye, but he was pinned. He braced.
The blow never landed.
Alyna materialized behind the second bandit as if woven from shadow and winter light. One hand snaked over his shoulder, clamping over his mouth. The other drew a thin, cruel line across his throat with a dagger. It was a silent, brutal motion. The club fell into the snow with a soft thump. She let the man slide down, a dark bloom spreading across the white.
The third bandit, younger and wild-eyed, froze at the sight. He looked from his dying comrade to the woman who killed him. Alyna turned her head, meeting his gaze. She didn’t smirk. She didn’t taunt. She just looked at him, her green eyes utterly flat. Her daggers were held low, dripping.
With a choked cry, the young bandit turned and fled, crashing back through the trees in blind panic.
The man beneath Alex saw it too. The fight went out of him. His grip on the axe slackened. Alex wrenched the weapon free and scrambled back, breathing hard, the cold air burning his lungs.
Alyna stepped over, planting a boot on the bandit’s chest. She leaned down, her ponytail swinging forward. “The elk are gone,” she said, her voice conversational. “You ruined our hunt. That was very rude.”
The man just stared, petrified.
“You should go catch up with your friend,” she continued, tilting her head toward the woods where the third had fled. “Before you freeze. And before I reconsider the artistic value of your entrails.” She lifted her boot. “Go.”
He scrambled up and ran, following the path of his companion, leaving a trail of fear in the trampled snow.
Silence rushed back in, louder than before. The wind moaned through the pines. Alex stared at the body lying a few feet away, the red stark against the endless white. His hands were trembling. He’d never seen a man die before.
Alyna cleaned her daggers meticulously on the dead man’s furs before sheathing them. She walked over to Alex, her steps silent. She didn’t touch him. She just stood beside him, looking at what she had done.
“You okay?” she asked. Not ‘are you hurt?’ But ‘okay.’
“You killed him,” Alex said, his voice hollow.
“He was going to split your skull open. Yes.” She finally looked at him. There was no triumph in her face, only a weary pragmatism. “It’s not the same as shooting an elk, is it?”
“No.”
“It shouldn’t be.” She knelt, retrieving his bow from the snow and brushing it off. She offered it to him. “You took the leader down. That was smart. Using the snow.”
He took the bow, the familiar wood feeling foreign in his hands. “I just… pushed him.”
“You controlled the fight. Gave me an angle.” She nodded toward the trees where she’d disappeared. “We fought together. Didn’t we?”
He replayed the frantic seconds. His distraction, her flanking move. His desperate grapple, her lethal finish. It hadn’t been coordinated like a military drill. It had been messy, instinctive. But she was right. They had moved in the same desperate space, and they had both survived. He looked from the body back to her. The beautiful, terrifying woman who had, just hours ago, held him with such heartbreaking tenderness.
The juxtaposition should have broken something in his mind. Instead, it welded something together. This was her world. The real, sharp-edged world beyond the cabin’s fragile peace. And she had pulled him into it, and stood with him in it.
“We did,” he said, the tremble leaving his voice. He shouldered his bow. “We fought together.”
A faint, relieved smile touched her lips. “So, Mr. Hunter. Our dinner just ran away. What’s the plan now?”
He looked east, where the elk had vanished. He looked down at the spoils they couldn’t possibly carry. Then he looked at her, standing firm in the aftermath. “We go back. We finish that terrible coffee. We figure out what comes next.”
“Sounds like a better plan than licking minerals by a creek,” she said, turning back toward the path they’d made.
He fell into step beside her. The walk back was quieter, the space between them different. It wasn’t the comfortable silence of the morning. It was a loaded, shared quiet, dense with what had just happened and what it meant. The cold felt cleaner now. Sharper.
As the cabin’s dark shape appeared in the distance, she spoke again, her words trailing steam. “For the record,” Alyna said, not looking at him, “I’d have been pissed if you’d gotten yourself killed. Just got you broken in properly.”
A surprised, rough laugh burst out of him. It felt good. It felt real. “Noted.”
“Good.” She shouldered open the cabin door, letting the wave of trapped, slightly warmer air wash over them. “Now, about that coffee. I think I’ve earned a second cup.”
The cabin was colder, the fire having died to embers in their absence. Alex shrugged off his pack, his movements stiff. The memory of the bandit’s blood spreading in the snow flashed behind his eyes, a bright, garish stain against the memory of her skin in the firelight. He busied himself with rebuilding the fire, stacking logs with more force than necessary.
Alyna sank onto the edge of the bedroll, pulling off her boots. She watched him, her earlier casualness gone, replaced by a watchful stillness. “You’re quiet.”
“Thinking.” The kindling caught, flames greedily licking at the dry wood.
“About?”
“About how you move. How it was over so fast.” He sat back on his heels, looking at her across the small space. The rogue, the lover, the killer. All the same person. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
She shrugged one shoulder, but her eyes held his. “It’s just training. Efficiency. You don’t waste motion when your life is the currency.” She paused. “It bothered you. The killing.”
“The necessity of it bothered me.” He corrected softly. “Not you.”
The distinction seemed to matter to her. Some of the tension left her shoulders. She leaned back on her elbows. “So. That coffee?”
He made it, the process a familiar ritual that steadied his hands. The bitter steam filled the space between them. He handed her a cup and sat beside her, not touching, but close enough to feel the warmth she radiated.
“We need food,” he stated. “The herd’s spooked for miles. I’ve got some salted venison, a few root vegetables that are probably half-frozen. It’s not a feast.”
“After today, even gruel sounds good.” She took a sip, her nose wrinkling. “Still terrible. I’m starting to develop a taste for it, which is concerning.”
He managed a smile. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
They ate a simple stew later, bowls balanced on their knees by the now-robust fire. The venison was tough, the turnips woody, but it was hot and filling. The silence was easier now, companionable. The shared violence outside had forged a new understanding, a grim practicality layered over the morning’s tenderness.
After, he took her empty bowl. His pulse, which had finally settled, picked up again. “You’re stiff.”
She rolled her shoulders, a barely perceptible wince crossing her features. “Lying on frozen ground, then killing someone. Does wonders for the musculature.”
“I could… I have some oil. From a scentless pine nut. For my bow.” He felt foolish saying it. “It’s good for hands. Might help.”
She arched a slender eyebrow. “What are you proposing, hunter?”
“A massage. Just… to help you relax.” The concept was foreign here, in this place of survival. Pampering was for cities with heated baths.
She studied him, her gaze curious. A slow, intrigued smile played on her lips. “Is this a human thing?”
“A ‘my-mother-had-bad-shoulders’ thing. But yes.”
She chuckled, a low, warm sound. “Alright. Show me this human thing.” She shifted, laying on her stomach on the bedroll, her head resting on her folded arms. Her ponytail trailed over her shoulder, a golden rope against the dark wool.
Alex’s mouth went dry. He retrieved the small vial of clear oil, warming it between his palms. He knelt beside her. The firelight danced over the sun-tanned skin of her back, illuminating a faint, silvery scar along one rib, the powerful cut of her shoulders. He poured a little oil into his hand.
He started at the base of her skull, his thumbs pressing into the tight cords he found there. She tensed for a second, a hunter’s instinctive recoil from unexpected touch, then let out a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to come from the center of the earth. Her body sank into the furs.
“Light’s grace,” she mumbled, her voice muffled.
He worked slowly, learning the landscape of her. The formidable strength of her shoulders, the knots of tension woven into them like steel cable. He used the heels of his hands, his knuckles, applying steady, deepening pressure. Soft moans escaped her, not of passion but of profound relief. Each one felt like a victory.
He moved down her arms, kneading the long, lean muscles of her triceps, her forearms, all the way to her wrists and the elegant bones of her hands. He turned his attention to her back, tracing the line of her spine with oil-slicked thumbs before working out from it, spreading the tension outward until it seemed to dissolve under his touch.
“Never… had anyone…” she slurred, halfway to sleep.
“Just relax.”
He moved to her legs. The powerful quads and calves of a sprinter, a leaper. He spent time on her feet, pressing into the arches, and she jerked with a surprised gasp before melting again. He could feel every ounce of her formidable physicality yielding, trust being given in the form of surrender.
Finally, his hands slid to the muscular curve of her ass. He kneaded the dense flesh thoroughly, earning a low, appreciative hum. She was pliant, utterly boneless beneath him.
Then, in one quick, fluid move, he lay down between her legs. He hooked his hands under her hips, spreading her cheeks. He didn’t hesitate. He dove deep, his tongue finding and pressing into her hole.
She cried out, a sharp, shocked sound that tore through the cabin’s quiet. Her whole body seized, then trembled.
He worked her with his tongue, swirling, pressing, fucking her with it. It was worship of a different, utterly primal kind. He cherished every part of her, this most hidden, vulnerable place. This was not about her cock, the source of so much conflict for her. This was about her. Alyna. The whole, complex, lethal, beautiful woman.
Her moans crescended, losing any semblance of control. They were ragged, desperate things. Her hands fisted in the bedroll. She pushed back against his mouth, her hips moving in frantic little circles. The tension he’d just melted away rebuilt into something tighter, hotter, coiling at the base of her spine.
When she came, it was with a broken, sobbing gasp. Her body arched like a bowstring, trembling violently, before collapsing into a shuddering heap.
He held her hips until the last tremor passed, then gently released her, wiping his mouth on his arm. He moved up to lie beside her, pulling a fur over them both.
She was breathing hard, her face turned toward him, her green eyes wide and dazed. Awe, and something like vulnerability, shone in them. She reached out, her fingers tracing his jaw, sticky with oil and her.
“You,” she said, her voice wrecked and full of wonder. She swallowed. “You will pay for that.”
It was a threat, but her eyes were smiling. It was a promise. And for the first time since he’d found her half-frozen in the snow, Alex felt completely, unshakably sure of his footing.