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Absolon pulled the woolen hat off his head and twisted it in his hands. “It’s more than most have ever done.” He leaned back into the chair, and Ragnar liked the look of him there, not easy as such, not quite comfortable, but close and in his home where he could take in this view of him and ease his heart of its worrying over whether Absolon lived.

All before he left again.

“Then you should have taken that small amount and kept it. Why come here?”

He shrugged half-heartedly. “The farm got lonely. It felt empty. All of it—my house, the store, the stables, the fields. They were as empty as I felt because you had gone.”

“It was better I did.”

“Yes, it was. Then.” Absolon cleared his throat. “But I realized that you had changed. When you brought Trogen back you did that for me alone, and I thought…I hoped…it would mean we could be different than we were. So that’s why I had to find you.”

Absolon told him of his journey, of the decimation he found at the garrison, but also what he’d found in Jönköping.

“You left your family untouched. I spoke to them because I wanted to know for sure you’d been there. They were worried about you and said that you hadn’t seemed stable, but seeing that you’d left them alive, I said they had nothing to worry about.”

That was true; he had no desire to go back there.

Absolon got off the chair and sat next to him on the bed. “I knew then, that even after I had rejected you, even after you had brought Trogen back to me, that you were different from the person you had been. You were better. You were enough and no longer striving to be someone else.”

Ragnar turned his head to look into Absolon’s imploring gaze. “And what now?”

“Now I know you are worthy of my love, and I hope I am worthy of yours. And, if you’ll have me, there is no one I would rather spend eternity with.”

Could he believe it? Could he trust it? Did he want it?

The answer to all three was a resounding yes.

He placed his hand against Absolon’s cheek, drawn to the bewitching hope of his gaze and the expectant grin on his lips, and kissed Absolon. The anticipation broke him apart and he breathed everything he ever was and could ever be into that connection. He surrendered the last piece of himself to Absolon’s love and with the ruin of his defenses bestowed upon Absolon everything he had to give. The fervor of his kisses, the blaze of his love, and the passion of his soul joined with Absolon’s to create one perfect union. They were complete and nothing in the world could tear them apart again.

Absolon shivered as he broke the kiss. Pleasure rippled through Ragnar’s body, bursting with the full realization of everything that love between them could be. He smiled up at Absolon, his lips buzzing with need.

“Is that a yes?”

He laughed. “Yes, yes, a thousand years of yes.”

Absolon grabbed him and pulled him back onto the bed. They tore their clothes from each other and filled the stone house with the sounds of their ecstasy. When they were done, and curled in each other’s arms, Ragnar felt as at peace as the winter that lay beyond their door. It was a peace not of death, but of promise for what lay ahead and what they would witness and endure together.

Forever.