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He said, “I wanted to wait until I knew for certain what would happen. I wanted to be able to tell you that he was on the mend, and would be fine.”

His brows climbed a fraction higher. “And if he’d died instead?”

“Then I would have told you that he had.”

Erik looked at him a long, unblinking moment, then nodded, and resumed pacing, fingertips tapping restlessly together. “Right. Gently, I’d imagine. After you’d sat me down and poured me a cup of wine. Perhaps while wearing something–”

“Erik.” He hadn’t meant to speak so sharply, was in fact tossing all of his precautions – perhaps needlessly, even stupidly – out the window into the rain, but it turned out he wasn’t capable of standing still and receiving insult, not even from his lover. “I wasn’t hiding anything from you. I nearly told you the moment I learned of it–”

“Then why didn’t you?” Erik ground out through a clenched jaw.

“Because you’re managing this great bloody war march!” He flung an arm to the window. “You’ve men and beasts to worry about; when you aren’t in the saddle, you’re sitting up all night in your tent writing missives by lantern light until your eyes won’t focus. And, let’s face it, darling, your worry about Leif borders on obsession.”

Erik scowled.

“It does. Is there even a moment you aren’t fretting over him? Wondering where he is? If he’s safe? If Ragnar has clouded his judgement? I didn’t want to drop terrible news in your lap and watch it fester in your mind until I knew the ultimate outcome, one way or another. Better to tell you he’s recovering, or tell you he’s dead, than tell you he’d been savaged.” In a softer tone: “Knowing wouldn’t have changed anything. You couldn’t have done anything for him. None of us could have.”

Erik’s jaw worked a moment, as though chewing over the words. Then he cursed and turned away. Massaged at the back of his neck.

Oliver wanted to rub out the tension there himself, but didn’t think now was the moment to approach, not while Erik’s back was still up.

“Amelia says he’s doing remarkably well. Sitting up in bed, and eating. Erik, being a wolf is what saved him. A normal man would have been killed for sure.”

Erik took a deep breath that jacked his shoulders up, and heaved it back out, gaze fixed on a spot on the wall where the rough plaster was flaking away, revealing the straw insulation beneath. “But if hewasn’ta wolf, he would have been with us, marching in our Phalanx. Your cousin would not have ridden to meet him, and the attack would never have happened.”

Oliver bit back his own sigh, and didn’t state what seemed, at least to him, to be obvious: if someone beyond the veil was watching them, as Amelia had suggested, spying on them so they knew the exact moment to strike, the portal could have just as easily opened right here tonight, in the middle of their camp. Or on the same stretch of road, when the Aeretolleans approached Inglewood Manor.

Erik’s head turned, hair sliding over his shoulder so that it framed an expression gone drawn and heavy with sadness. “You were protecting me.” He sounded devastated by the knowledge.

“I was refraining from adding to your burdens,” Oliver countered. “But…would it be so bad if I did?” He took a step forward. “If I protected you? Is that not what lovers do?”

A muscle in Erik’s cheek leaped, and he turned his head away again.

Oliver went to him, then. Closed the gap between them in a few quick strides and slipped his arms around his waist without hesitation. Rested his chin on his chest and peered up at him in time to see the bob of his throat as he swallowed, and kept his gaze fixed elsewhere.

Oliver sighed, but fondly, and let his smile bleed through into his voice. “Oh dear. It’s always going to be this way, isn’t it? Things will rub along nicely, and then I’ll do something as bold as make a decision, or try to take care of you in the same way you take care of me, and you’ll go broody and stubborn on me, won’t you?”

“Hmph.” Erik’s gaze finally flicked to him, unamused.

“We’ll keep having the same conversation, won’t we? You wanting to control everything – fix everything – and me trying to keep you from needing to.” He pushed his smile wider, and Erik’s mouth twitched sideways – not in a smile, but in a sort of concession.

His arm stole around Oliver, though, hand sure and strong at the small of his back. “You see now why I was so disagreeable to you when we met.”

Oliver coughed out a startled laugh. “Warning me off for my own protection?”

The daintiest shade of pink suffused Erik’s sharp, masculine cheeks. “Aye.”

Oliver laughed. “Lucky for you, I saw straight through your dastardly plan.”

Erik’s grip tightened. “Lucky for me.”

Later, sweaty and spent, after they’d traded the creaking of the floorboards for the creaking of the bedframe, they lay tangled beneath the covers, listening to the susurrus of the rain on the roof thatch. Erik traced aimless patterns down his arm, the regular up-and-down of his chest under Oliver’s cheek lulling him rapidly to sleep.

But then, in a rough, sleepy voice, Erik said, “There’s nothing else, is there? That you haven’t told me?”

All the pleasant, post-coital languor dissipated in a flare of worry. An image of the emperor filled his mind, exhausted and peaked, leaning heavily on his elbow and sipping wine. Dismissing him with a wave, no lessons today.

Oliver took in a slow breath that he hoped sounded and felt as easy as those previous. “No,” he said. “Nothing.”