Chapter 11: Ralg's calloused hands slide under Sabrina's dress as she arches against the hay, their muffled moans drowned out by the cows below—until Torvar's shadow appears at the ladder with a lantern, clearing his throat about 'fetching more ale' with a knowing smirk.
The child’s soft, even breaths from the cradle by the fire were a metronome of domestic peace. Sabrina counted them, each one a stitch knitting her into a life that felt increasingly like a perfectly crafted woolen sleeve—warm, smothering. Ralg slept deeply beside her, his arm a lead weight across her ribs, his face smoothed of its daytime intensity. In sleep, he looked like just a man. Not her anchor. Not her cage.
She slid from under his arm with the silence born of Elven grace and months of practice. The floorboards were cold under her bare feet. She didn’t bother with a cloak, just her thin linen shift. She needed the bite of the air.
The farmhouse door opened without a sound. The harvest moon hung low and heavy, bathing the yard in a blue-silver light that turned the world into a ghost of itself. The barn stood apart, a hulking silhouette. It had become her secret place. The smell of dry hay, of animal musk and old wood, was nothing like the cabin’s smells of stew and pine boughs and baby.
She climbed the ladder to the loft, the rough-hewn rungs familiar under her palms. Hay dust motes danced in the moonbeams streaming through the high window. It was quiet. It was hers.
She hadn’t heard him follow. He moved like a shadow across the land when he wanted to. One moment she was alone, leaning against a great stacked hay bale, feeling the night air cool her skin. The next, a large, warm hand clamped over her mouth from behind, and a solid, familiar body pressed her hard into the scratchy, fragrant hay.
Her initial jolt of fear vanished in a breath, replaced by a surge of hot, defiant recognition. He didn’t remove his hand. His lips were at her ear, his voice a low, rough vibration she felt in her bones.
“Sneaking out,” he murmured, not a question. The heat of him was immense at her back. “Thought I wouldn’t notice?”
She tried to shake her head, but his grip was firm. His other hand slid around her front, not to her belly, but higher, splaying possessively over her ribs, his thumb finding the underside of her breast. He was not being gentle.
“He’s sleeping,” Ralg growled, the words soaked in a tension that had nothing to do with the child. “Deep as a stone. Doesn’t need you right now.” His hand moved from her mouth, down her throat, tilting her head back against his shoulder. His other hand kneaded her flesh through the linen, his touch demanding. “I do.”
He spun her around to face him. In the moonlight, his eyes were chips of flint. The tender caretaker was gone, burned away by something older, more competitive. This was the man from the mountain pass, the one who’d seen a challenge in her and had to claim it.
“You miss it,” he said, his voice dark with certainty. He pushed her back against the hay, his body slotting against hers, letting her feel the hard, urgent press of him. “Don’t you?”
“Miss what?” she breathed, her own voice coming out thin.
“This.” He hooked a finger in the neckline of her shift and pulled, the fabric tearing with a soft, decisive sound. The cold air and his hot gaze hit her skin at once. “Being just you. Not a mother. Not a tenant. Just a woman who takes what she wants.” He leaned in, his mouth hovering over hers. “I missed the way you moan when you’re not playing mother. That raw, greedy sound you make when it’s just for you.”
His words were a key turning in a lock deep inside her. He was right. He saw through the serene mask to the restless, hungry creature pacing beneath. It shamed her. It thrilled her.
He didn’t wait for permission. He kissed her, a deep, consuming invasion that was all tongue and teeth and pent-up frustration. It was nothing like the reverent coupling in the snowberry thicket. This was a reclamation. His hands were everywhere, mapping her changed body not with worship, but with a furious, rediscovering hunger. He bit at her neck, her shoulder, his stubble scraping her pale skin. He filled his hands with the heavy weight of her breasts, his thumbs roughly circling the nipples until she gasped into his mouth.
“Ralg—” she managed, a broken sound.
“Shut up,” he whispered against her skin, his hands dragging her shift up her thighs. “Just feel it.”
He freed himself, the blunt head of his cock pressing against her. He was slick with his own urgency. He didn’t guide himself in with that painstaking care. He pushed, a single, solid, shearing thrust that buried him to the hilt and stole the air from her lungs. She cried out, a sharp, unfiltered sound that echoed in the hollow loft.
“Yeah,” he gritted out, his hips already beginning a relentless, driving pace. “That’s it. That’s my girl.”
The hay scratched her back. The barn beams swam above her in the dark. This was friction, and fullness, and a punishing, perfect rhythm that aimed to obliterate thought. Each thrust was a negation of the quiet days, the careful steps, the endless future of gentle touches. This was now. This was heat and sweat and the raw, animal truth of their joining.
He gripped her hip, his fingers biting in, holding her still for his taking. His other hand fisted in her silver hair, not pulling, just holding, claiming. “You think I don’t see you?” he panted, his breath hot on her cheek. “You think I don’t know you’re climbing the walls in there? This is who you are, too. This fire. It’s in you. It’s in me. It’s what made him.”
His words, coupled with the deep, internal friction of him, coiled a tension in her belly tighter than any spring. She was unmoored, a vessel of pure sensation. The pleasure was a storm surge, terrifying in its intensity, washing away the shoreline of her composed self.
She came with a shattered cry, her body clamping around him in violent waves, her nails raking down his back. The force of it blinded her, a white-out behind her eyes.
It tipped him over the edge. He drove into her once, twice more, a guttural roar stifled against her throat as he spilled himself, his big body shuddering, collapsing his weight onto her before catching himself on his arms.
Silence, broken only by their ragged breathing and the distant call of an owl. The scent of sex and hay filled the air. He was still inside her, softening, his forehead resting against hers. His eyes were closed.
When he finally pulled out and moved, it was to slump beside her in the hay, one arm thrown over his eyes. The moon illuminated the sweat-sheened planes of his chest, the scratches she’d left.
Several minutes passed. The cold began to seep back in.
The cold began to seep back in. It prickled at her heated skin, a tangible reminder of the world outside their tangled limbs and the loft’s secret warmth. Sabrina stared at the rough-hewn beams above, waiting for the familiar flood of guilt that usually followed such fierce abandon.
It didn’t come. Instead, a hollow clarity settled in its place. She sat up, the torn shift falling from her shoulders, and hugged her knees. Ralg’s breathing had evened out beside her.
“Your friend,” she said, her voice scratchy from disuse. She didn’t look at him.
“Hmm?” he grunted, the sound drowsy and satiated.
“The big one with the laugh. The one telling stories by the fire last night who drinks all our mead.” She plucked a piece of hay from her arm, rolling it between her fingers. “The one currently using our good blankets.”
Ralg opened one eye, watching her. “Bjorn.”
“Right. Bjorn.” She finally turned her head, her pale blue eyes catching the moonlight. “How long is Bjorn going to be staying here?”
He was quiet for a long moment. The owl called again, farther away now. “He’s between jobs,” Ralg said, his voice careful. “The mine at Dawnstar closed. Said he’d help with the woodpile, repairs. A week. Maybe two.”
“Two weeks,” Sabrina repeated flatly. The words sat in the hay-dusted air between them. Two more weeks of another presence in the small cabin, of lowered voices, of performing a version of domestic peace for an audience.
“He’s good company,” Ralg offered, though it sounded weak.
“He is good company,” Sabrina agreed, because it was true. Bjorn was boisterous and kind. “And he looks at me like I’m a vase he’s afraid to tip over.”
A faint smile touched Ralg’s lips. “You are a bit of a precious vessel.”
“I am Dragonborn,” she said, and the word, which usually felt like a secret power thrumming in her blood, now just felt like a fact. “Not porcelain. I haven’t Shouted at him yet, have I?”
“Yet being the operative word.” Ralg pushed himself up to sit beside her, his shoulder warm against hers. “It bothers you. His being here.”
She leaned into his solidity, letting out a long breath that fogged in the chill air. “It’s not him. It’s the…shape of things. The walls get smaller with another person in them.” She gestured vaguely toward the farmhouse. “I feel like I’m holding my breath. And then I come out here just to remember how to exhale.”
He was silent, absorbing this. His hand found hers in the hay, his calloused fingers lacing through hers. “I followed you because I saw it. That look on your face when you thought no one was watching. Like you were solving a puzzle with no solution.”
“Maybe there isn’t one,” she whispered.
“So we make a new one.” He brought her knuckles to his lips, a soft kiss so different from the fury of minutes before. “Bjorn leaves in a week. Ten days, tops. Then it’s just us again. And the little one.”
“And then what?” The question escaped, blunt and unadorned.
Ralg didn’t have an answer. He just held her hand tighter, his thumb stroking her palm. The future was a blank, white field beyond the barn doors, and for all her power, Sabrina couldn’t see a path through it.
The future was a blank, white field beyond the barn doors, and for all her power, Sabrina couldn’t see a path through it. Ralg’s silence stretched, filled only by the settling of the old timber around them. He let go of her hand to drag his palm over his jaw, the bristles making a faint, scraping sound.
“You’re bored,” he said finally. It wasn’t an accusation.
Sabrina laughed, a short, surprised puff of air. “That’s a reductive way of putting it.”
“It’s a true way of putting it.” He shifted to face her more fully, his expression unreadable in the gloom. “The routines. The quiet. Me. It’s not enough fuel for your fire, not anymore.” He paused, choosing his next words with deliberate care. “I’ve been thinking. About spicing things up.”
She tilted her head, a silver braid slipping over her shoulder. “Are you suggesting we take up alchemy? Because I’ve mastered a rather explosive flame cloak, but the cabin’s timber might not survive it.”
“Not alchemy.” He held her gaze, his voice dropping into a lower, more tentative register she rarely heard. “Bjorn. He admires you. Obviously.”
Sabrina went very still. The cool air seemed to crystallize in her lungs.
“I see the way he tries not to stare,” Ralg continued, his words coming quicker now, as if he’d rehearsed them. “He’s a good man. Steady. And he’s here for another week.” He reached out, his thumb tracing the line of her collarbone where his teeth had been earlier. “We could… invite him. Into this. With us.”
The concept didn’t shock her. The fact that it was Ralg suggesting it did. This was the man who growled possession into her skin, who mapped her body like it was a territory to be defended. Yet here he was, offering to share the map.
“You’re serious,” she breathed.
“Deadly.” A flicker of his old, competitive smirk appeared. “Think of it as an experiment. Like testing a new Shout. You’re always saying you want to experience everything Skyrim has to offer.” His hand cupped her face, his touch grounding her swirling thoughts. “He’s a part of it. A loyal friend. It could be… fun. For all of us.”
Sabrina’s mind raced, discarding a dozen responses. The careful domestic tapestry of the last few months suddenly seemed flimsy, a curtain he was now pulling aside to reveal a different, wilder landscape behind it. This was no tame suggestion. It was a dragon’s offer: a leap into unknown skies.
She looked at Ralg, really looked at him. His eyes held no joke, only a stark, challenging openness. He was waiting. The scent of their sweat, the hay, and the cold night fused together in the quiet loft.
The muscles in her throat worked before any sound came out.