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“May I stay with you, here, tonight?” he asks.

My body flinches involuntarily.

“It’s your bedroom,” I respond, my heart in my mouth. “You can do what you want.”

“Only if you agree,” he says. “The text says you have to agree.”

“And you follow the text?”

“My texts were not wrong. They were merely scant on detail,” Fenrother replies. “So, I follow the text.”

Despite myself, despite everything, a smile curls my lips at his way of thinking.Merely scant on detail.

“It’s your bed,” I say. “I’m not going to make you sleep elsewhere.”

The sigh I hear this time is one of pleasure.

“Then I bid you good night, mate,” Fenrother says, and all the candles gutter out.

ALICE

I’m not sure how long I lay in the dark staring at the flickering lights which bob past the windows. All I know is, I fall asleep, and when I open my eyes again, I’m half covered by an enormous body and it’s morning.

For a second, I freeze. Fenrother was clear last night he wouldn’t do anything if I didn’t agree to it. Then I feel a sleeping whoosh of breath in my hair, and, it appears he is doing a starfish impression across the bed, meaning I’ve got caught within it.

One arm is flopped over me, along with one leg and his tail. I turn my head to see exactly what’s going on and find the face I saw last night, only this one is completely unguarded—a half smile on his face, those long dark lashes pressed against the soft iridescent scales under his eyes. He looks like butter wouldn’t melt between those luscious lips of his. Lips which took mine by storm.

Fenrother is hopelessly, terminally confusing to me. Although, apparently not to my body, given the rush of heat between my legs.

His eyes open. Huge, dark pupils contract to mere slits as the light hits them. Fenrother stares at me and inhales.

“Blood.” He growls the word as he exhales, his eyes predatory.

It’s then I realise why the feeling between my legs is so familiar and why, at that exact moment, the cramping hits. I leap out of bed, the long white shirt stained scarlet where my period has soaked through, and race into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me.

What the hell am I going to do? There’s nothing I can use, no pads, no tampons, nothing to stem the flow as I pull off the shirt and moan at the pain.

I’ve never been particularly regular, ever since my periods first started, but what is regular is the pain and the heavy bleeding at least once in every three menstrual cycles.

I guess this one is one of those.

Lucky me.

The bathroom door slams open, and Fenrother holds it against the wall, his muscles bulging.

“Who hurt you?” he bellows, eyes raking over me and the crime scene the bathroom is starting to resemble. “I will kill them. I will rend them limb from limb and chew up the remains,” he snarls.

He takes a step towards me, and then in a rush, I’m scooped into his arms. Only when I’m there, he seems to realise he doesn’t know what to do with me, and I’m put back on my feet.

“Alice,” he says helplessly.

“It’s okay.” I put my hand on his arm. “It’s okay. No one has hurt me. I’m going to be fine.”

I grit my teeth as my womb does the fandango of all the cramps.

“There is blood. You are in pain.” Fenrother looks down, drops to his knees, and grabs at my hips, pulling my fannyright into his face. “The blood…it comes from where you piss? Someone hurt you there?”

His eyes are wide, wider than I’ve ever seen them as clearly his brain is trying and failing to understand the situation. I’m squirming against his grip, hot with embarrassment as he inspects me ever closer.