23. Homecoming
Homecoming
Isold the house.
This was perhaps not the most rational response to unlocking the door and immediately being slammed by a decade’s worth of memories of guilt, but I’d learned my lesson about trying to pretend to be someone I wasn’t.
Alluin hadn’t given me all his things so that I could pretend to be Alluin when dealing with them.
He’d hate that. And, since ‘burn the house down’ was explicitly on the list of acceptable outcomes, I felt that ‘sell the house’ was probably also within scope.
There were plenty of buildings to choose from that didn’t have memories attached.
The Antlered Palace, only a few miles from the palace garrison, was the center of state for Stag Court, so aside from the town associated with the garrison, there were also a good deal of residences that haloed the palace itself.
I ended up acquiring a run-down estate roughly a twenty-minute ride from both the garrison and the palace.
It meant more of a commute than the house in town, and I needed to hire both a maid and a hostler, but if this was supposed to be Dain’s home, too, I wanted it to be a place he could be comfortable in both his forms.
Fixing up the estate gave me something to do in my off-hours instead of obsessing about the state of the two people I loved most in the world, and it had a lovely view, besides.
I didn’t end up painting any walls pink, but I did knock down a few, and I ripped out the formal gardens so I could install various beds of wildflowers and blooming shrubs.
Though I spent a lot of thought as to what Alluin and Dain might like, I didn’t subsume my desires to theirs or try to make the house a showpiece.
If Alluin had wanted a showpiece, he shouldn’t have given me free rein.
I didn’t tell Alluin what I was doing, save for giving him the new address so he’d know where to find his bed.
It didn’t feel right, somehow. He was tracking Dain through the wilderness—a difficult task, given that Dain clearly didn’t want to be found and could travel enormous distances when the moon was full—and I only had so much paper I could flicker to him long-range.
Sometimes he was so far away or in such a strange location that my flicker-bird couldn’t find him at all.
When my letters got through, I wanted them to have things about me in them, not the price of copper piping or the vagaries of sourcing orchid dirt.
Weeks turned to months turned to years. I gave monthly reports to the Court on the whereabouts of the crown prince and the First General, much to Queen Ronelis’ silent disdain.
I got rid of my apartment and took rooms at the garrison, staying there or in the beds of locals a few nights a week for convenience.
I managed to hold down a paramour for an entire four months, primarily because we only saw each other on feast days, and then ended that relationship as soon as he implied he might like to come stay at my house for a few nights.
That reaction did lend me some pause. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed about the number of partners I had, nor the speed at which I bored of them.
Alluin had never judged me for it, and I took care not to imply that I was looking for anything else from people.
Yet it didn’t feel right to bring them home.
I didn’t want to fuck people under the same roof Alluin might live under.
He hadn’t done it either, as if we had some sort of silent agreement.
All of his one-night stands hadn’t even involved sleeping in the same bed.
“That’s because they’re your mistresses,” one of the other commanders informed me with a wicked glint in her eye when I dared bemoan my reticence to bring home paramours.
“Don’t make that face, Zhiolas. Anyone who knows anything about you surely knows that you’re devoted to the general.
If you ever got invited to Alluin’s bed, I doubt we’d see you for a week.
Maybe a fortnight, depending on how vigorous he was feeling. ”
“Shut up. Pass me the brandy,” I muttered, turning crimson.
“I’m just saying.” She smirked, though she passed me the brandy. “There’s nothing wrong with having mistresses, as long as everyone’s amenable, but don’t expect to want to bring them home.”
I grumbled some more, but it wasn’t as if she was wrong.
I was loyal as a dog where Alluin was concerned, and if he ever wanted me, all he had to do was tell me.
Not even ask me. Just inform me. I knew I wasn’t the sort of person who ought to be adorning Alluin’s arm, and I wasn’t going to inflict myself on him, but if he wanted me, there was no amount of knowledge of how bad an idea it was that would make me refuse him. A man had his limits.
But, well. Given that essentially everyone in the garrison was aware of the fact that I would be on my knees for Alluin in a heartbeat, the logical deduction was that Alluin wanted what we had, not what my cock very much wished we had.
Even if Alluin hadn’t gotten the memo over the past two centuries, Dain would certainly have told him, so I knew he wasn’t ignorant of the fact that I found him deathly attractive.
He simply didn’t want to act on that knowledge.
I tossed back my brandy with a groan. Mistresses it was.
Three years, two months, and nine days after Alluin left to find Dain, someone pounded on my door in the middle of the night.
I jolted awake from where I’d fallen asleep on my comfy bracken-fern couch while re-reading some of the letters Alluin had sent me, ears snapping towards the doorway in time to hear the spare key I’d told Alluin how to find turn in the lock.
I was on my feet in a flash, flinging myself for the banister in the second level of the foyer in time to see my two favorite people in the world walk in, icy and covered in dirt. “Alluin. Dain!” I yelped. “You’re home!”
Alluin and Dain looked up as I flew down the stairs, Alluin with relief and Dain with hunched-shoulder shame.
I threw myself at Dain—he looked more miserable—and slammed into his wall of cold muscle with sheer joy coursing through me.
He went as stiff as a statue, his shock and anxiety palpable, but I just hugged him, ignoring the fact that he was dressed solely in a cloak, a pair of Alluin’s cut-up pants, and a rime of rapidly-melting snow.
“Gods, it’s good to see you,” I said, rubbing my face on Dain like a cat. “You look like absolute hell.”
Dain slowly put his arms around me, moving like he was concerned he might get stabbed. “I eat a lot of food on four feet,” he rasped out. “It’s hard to find enough game. I had to keep moving.” He swallowed. “Made it all the way to the wilds. I ate some really weird stuff.”
“I’m aware.” I looked over at Alluin, grinning like a loon. “I’ve been keeping the palace updated on your general whereabouts—so much as I could glean from Alluin’s letters, at least. You didn’t tell me you were coming!”
“We decided four days ago,” Dain said roughly. His embrace eased by fractions before he finally let me go and swallowed again. His golden eyes gleamed. “May I have your hospitality, Commander Ulahana?”
“Better,” I said, grabbing his hand and Alluin’s and towing them towards the kitchen. “Be welcome at your home and hearth, Dain Sundamar. Alluin and I put this place together for us all. Or, rather, I put it together, but it was with Lu’s money.”
“Our money,” Alluin said, the first words he’d uttered since arriving.
“Yes, yes, our money.” I pulled out a chair for Alluin and swept my arm to indicate the bench seat I’d gotten custom-made for Dain. “Sit! You want some mead? I’ve got a few bottles stocked for you. Wine, too,” I called over my shoulder to Alluin, bee-lining for the cold box.
Dain looked at the seat for a long moment before slowly lowering himself down onto it, using his wing-arms under the cloak to tuck it more firmly around him. “You got me a chair,” he said thickly.
“Of course I did. You have the worst fucking time with regular chairs.” I pulled out the plates of salted meat and cheese I’d been making anew every few days for the past two years and set them in front of my people with a flourish.
“Ta-da! Snacks. If that’s too rich, I’ve got other stuff, too, but I tried to put together your favorites.
Horse and venison for Lu, and mostly pork for you.
The cheese is goat cheese. Here,” I added, setting a small pot of honey in front of him. “For drizzling on the cheese.”
Dain leaned his shoulder against me for a moment, a rare show of affection now that he was an adult. “You had these made for us? All this time?”
“Well, it’s not old,” I said, beaming down at him.
“If me or Ruthie don’t eat them—she’s the maidservant, Lu, so don’t be shocked if you hear someone else in the house—I bring them in for meetings.
It hasn’t been the same thing the whole time, either.
I can’t cheerfully eat the same snacks endlessly the way Alluin can. ”
Alluin had his eyes closed and was breathing quietly. He didn’t touch the food.
“Lu?” I asked hesitantly.
He looked at me for a moment before looking away. “You didn’t come to Droesh.”
I blinked at him, my excitement starting to drift down like ashes. “Well…no,” I said, unsure of what I’d done wrong. “You weren’t here to go with, and if you…” I glanced over at Dain, who was steadfastly ignoring us. “…if the two of you were there and wanted the company, I assumed you’d invite me.”
“It’s yours. Ours,” Alluin snapped, his eyes flicking back to mine, hard and cold. “You don’t need my invitation. I thought you loved it.”
I rocked back, shocked, my ears dropping and hurt wrapping around my heart like thorned vines. “Are you seriously yelling at me because I didn’t do good enough? I made a whole house for you. You only just got back.”
Dain shoved himself to his feet, his chair screeching across the floor. He picked up his plate in one hand. “I’m assuming there’s a bed that will fit me?”
“Ye—yes, of course,” I got out through the pain in my throat.
I pointed towards the suite I'd set up for him, one that had an outside wall large enough that he could glamor it out and come inside in his four-footed form. “East side, ground floor. There’s a shower, too, with hot water. I got a fancy new talisman heat system put in.”
“Much appreciated,” he said in a low growl. He shot Alluin a glare as he passed by, tails lashing hard enough that they smacked Lu in the side.
Alluin pinned his ears and looked away, his jaw ticking.
“Lu?” I asked again, my hurt in my voice.
He looked down at his fisted hands and slowly uncurled them. “I missed you,” he said in an emotionless voice. “So fucking much.”
“So you’re…yelling at me?” I ventured hesitantly.
His windburned skin slowly rouged out onto his ears. Alluin’s shoulders hunched, and he didn’t meet my eyes. “You didn’t even hug me. And…” His ears dropped down into a submissive pose. “I haven’t… I haven’t really slept in days.”
“Ah,” I said. I slid into the chair next to him and leaned my knee against his leg. “You truly do turn into a raging asshole when you’re sleep-deprived, Lu. You know that, right?”
Alluin looked shamefaced, but he at least looked at me through his dark lashes.
“I know.” He wet his lips. “There isn’t a ‘good enough’ you have to do for me, Zhi.
Not ever. But if there was…” Alluin turned towards me, keeping his head lower than mine and his ears dropped, pleading in his eyes.
“If there was, shaeulo, you’ve so far surpassed it that I know there’s nothing I can do to deserve it.
You’re amazing. I love that you took me at my word.
I love that you sold the gods-damned house,” he said, breathing a laugh even as tears gleamed in his lovely hazel eyes.
“This is so much more than I had even dared dream of.”
The praise undid some of the unhappiness his sharpness had carved into my sunlit joy, the sensation of new debt balancing out and slipping away into the comfortable depths of our bond.
“I didn’t hug you because the whole purpose of this was rescuing Dain, and as soon as I start hugging you, I doubt I’m going to want to let go,” I informed him.
“I was hoping to feed you, shove you into our newfangled hot shower to de-ice you, and then drag you into bed and stay there, possibly for several days.”
His expression eased. “Oh,” Alluin breathed. “Can we skip to the bed part?”
“You might ruin the sheets. You’re kind of filthy,” I said, smirking at him.
Alluin’s chin came up and his eyes flashed with something dark. “I could show you filthy.”
Heat flashed down my spine. “Flirt,” I said, trying not to let my breathing go shallow. “And here I was about to take you upstairs to chastely cuddle you all night.”
“I suppose that’s a bit cruel of me,” he said with a slow smile, “especially as I suspect I’m going to need your help to peel me out of these leathers.”
Well, fuck me. There was no hiding my stiffening cock as I snatched his plate off the table and wheeled for the cold box, but his eyes were on my face and not my groin, so perhaps I got away with the maneuver.
He knows, I reminded myself as I shoved one of the slices of meat into my mouth before covering the plate again and putting it in the cold box. He knows. He just doesn’t want it.
I managed to convince my over-eager prick to at least settle down to the point where it wasn’t so blatantly obvious that I was aroused. “Well, come on then,” I said, planting my hands on my hips as I smirked back at Alluin. “Let me show you your bedroom.”