A single heartbeat passed, an intense throb of silence. Wulf’s jaw clenched and his eyes blazed, and she could see just how badly he wanted to refute her. But she had him, and he knew it.
“Fine, you stay with me,” he growled. “Right by me, do you hear? I want you close enough I can cut off anybody’s head that tries to get to you.”
Behind him, Lily saw Justin, Lionel, and Jermaine. Jermaine didn’t appear to be surprised, but Lionel and Justin looked flabbergasted.
In a clear voice that carried to everyone nearby, she told Wulf, “Of course. You’re the commander.”
His dark gaze lit. He touched her knee. “You bet I am.”
They raced for the ridge and the frozen waterfall.
The advance party had met up with the fleeing wounded, and the group was in the process of being overrun when two hundred cavalry, comprised of both Defenders and Braugne, hammered down on the attackers.
For the first time in his life, Wulf led command from the sidelines. Not that there was much to do once the main body of troops arrived.
“They don’t leave this battlefield,” he said to Jermaine. “I don’t want word of this getting back to Varian. We either capture them or we kill them.”
“Understood, Commander.”
Jermaine rode off to execute his orders, and in a complete reversal, what had begun as a rout quickly turned into a slaughter of the other side.
It was hard to stay on the sidelines. He couldn’t deny it. But every time he felt the impulse to roar forward and engage with the enemy, he looked around for Lily. Her face was white and set while she watched the fray, her restless horse pacing back and forth.
And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t leave her, not even when the most logical part of his brain insisted that she would be safe with a dozen fighters surrounding her. So he dealt with it. While the future might be a wide-open, unpainted canvas upon which they would make a multitude of other choices, for now the ones they’d made on that day were okay.
Even in the best scenario, the aftermath of battle was difficult. There were prisoners to control and question, the wounded and dying to tend, and, inevitably, they had casualties to identify.
Like their fighters, the abbey’s healers worked side by side with the Braugne army doctors. Wulf knew they got lucky, and the casualty list was going to be as good as it got in times of war, but that didn’t ease the stricken look on Lily’s face as she dove into helping the healers.
Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. Pulling her away from the triage station, he said gently, “Go back now, love.”
She gripped his shirt. “I can’t just leave.”
“Yes, you can. You can’t be everything to everybody all the time, so don’t even try, otherwise eventually it will kill you. Let everyone else do their jobs, and at least go back to one of the inns. I’m going to get a few questions answered, and then I’ll meet you there.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right. I’ll see you back in town.”
He kissed her lingeringly, right there, in front of his people and hers. Without looking, he heard everything around them grow quiet.
She sucked in a breath, but she didn’t pull away. In fact, rather uncertainly, she kissed him back, and he counted that as a win too.
“Bold choice,” she murmured against his lips. “Unexpected.”
“Advance communiques are effective at disseminating new policy to a populace,” he whispered, letting his fingertips linger on the soft curve of her cheek.
“Oh dear goddess, did you just say that to me?” Pulling back, she eyed him askance. “Was that remarkable sentence your way of flirting?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Of course not. The chocolate and the terrible orange food were my way of flirting. This was me making a public statement of intent. You’ll know when I’m flirting again.”
“Will I?” One corner of her lips tilted up. “What were you doing when you climbed my tower?”
He paused to consider. “Yes, that was flirting too.”
“Re-eally. I thought that was you looking for an argument.”
“It was an arguing kind of flirting,” he told her. “Remember, I brought the orange food and the chocolate with me. And since you’re going to bar your windows anyway, that was a singular event.”
“I’m not going to bar my windows,” Lily told him.
His voice hardened. “Unacceptable.”
“Isssss it?” Her eyebrows rose slowly to her hairline. “Tough. That’s my decision to make, because nobody in their right mind would make that climb, Wulf. Nobody except for you. And for your information, I was firm but very nice when I talked to Gennita this morning, and I offered her beautiful solutions to resolve our conflict. So you go ahead and do what you do, but you leave me to do what I do.”
He had already recognized he wanted her, but that was the moment Wulf fell in love. Because he might take her, and she might give in to him, but he knew he would never succeed in conquering her.
Laying his hand against her cheek, he whispered softly, “Lily.”
That was all, just Lily.
He knew his expression transmitted everything he was feeling, because he made no attempt to hide it. Her gaze softening, she put her hand over his.
When they finally drew apart, Margot swooped down on Lily like a bird of prey and bore her away, and that was a conversation Wulf was perfectly content to avoid. He plunged into work, and much later, he went to find her in town.
She hadn’t been idle, he saw as he walked down the main street. The doors of several homes stood open, and from the glimpses of the interiors and the activity in the streets, the houses were being turned into temporary hospitals—an idea so superb and obvious he should have thought of it himself.
He found Lily in the Sea Lion, drinking wine and picking at a plate of food, with Defenders strategically placed throughout the taproom. Her tired face lit when she saw him.
Deliberately he walked over, bent, and kissed her on the lips. All movement and discussion in the room stopped, then slowly started up again.
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “Now I’ve declared my intentions to your bodyguards and the townsfolk too.”
There went those slender, expressive eyebrows again. They were excessively talented at telling him off, those eyebrows. No words were necessary, although that didn’t stop her.
“You haven’t declared anything to anyone, not least of all to me,” she retorted. “All you’ve done is kiss me, and…” She held up both hands and laughed. “So what?”
“If I did not have a healthy self-esteem, I might take that the wrong way,” he told her. He sat on the bench beside her, close enough their hips brushed, propped his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand, and angled his body toward her.