“Then figure it out.”

She stepped away and gave him her squinted, narrowed stare once more.

“I won’t come inside of you until I learn it,” he offered, his tone telling her he was becoming distressed about this possibility.

The idea of being coated in that hot liquid sent a shiver of delight through her system.

She wondered who would be more upset about this considering Reia didn’t actually want to forgo having Orpheus’ cock inside her. She enjoyed their times of passion together. She wanted to falter since she knew being intimate was more than just about pleasure to him.

Instead, she snorted a laugh.

“That won’t work!” she exclaimed. “You’re like a bloody fountain, Orpheus, and even your pre-come can get me pregnant. Once you learn it, we will continue. Until then, we can still touch, but just not in that way.”

He gave a whining groan. “As long as you will be happy, I will do as you have asked.”

Reia softened her expression and smiled for him as she reached out to pet his face.

“Thank you. I have made you a new bell. Would you like me to put both on you now?”

His eyes turned bright pink, and he nodded, making her heart swell for him. Silly bonehead. You’ve loved me for a long while.

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Orpheus roamed the surface in which the humans lived, hunting for his female that wanted meat to eat with her vegetables.

Now that he was no longer hungry, he knew this task would be much easier as he wouldn’t lose himself to a frenzy. Unfortunately, something seemed to have the herd of deer he was following on high alert, and he was unable to get close without spooking them.

The chase still made him excited. He’d ended up viciously slaughtering the one he’d recently managed to catch, rendering it unable to be taken through the Veil.

He’d attempted to catch a rabbit, but it was quick, and he’d ended up squishing it by accident when he slammed his hand down on it. He’d never tried to catch a rabbit before, but Reia said they made good meat for stews, and he’d been curious to know how’d she’d be able to teach him how to cook it.

It was the first time he’d left her in two weeks for an extended period of time and he was very keen to get back to her. A day had already passed, and he longed to see her, hold her, smell her, and listen to her hum since she’d started doing that lately.

He hoped it was because she was content with him.

It’d only taken him a week to figure out the spell that stopped her from bearing his child. He hadn’t liked not being able to connect with her, and his urgency for it pushed him to learn. It was only after the first time they had sex again that she started humming to herself.

Orpheus walked while crouching on his feet and hands, moving slowly as not to jostle his bells too much. He was starting to think perhaps the tiny noise they made were what the deer were being startled by, and he considered placing them in his pocket of his pants for now.

He didn’t want to, and he worried he’d break them since he couldn’t see behind his skull to look at his horns.

Next time, I’ll ask her to take them off before I go hunting.

At least he knew now.

The morning sun was bright in his eyes, but felt warm against his body, heating his clothes and the flesh beneath it. Now that spring was nearly over, there were many colours and flowers.

He’d once picked flowers for Katerina. He’d found them pretty, like her, and had wanted to give them to her in hopes she’d find them pretty too. She hadn’t liked them.

Would Reia like flowers? The idea she might give him that beaming bright smile she wore, the one where she looked as though her heart was melting in her chest in a similar way to how her smile made him feel, begged him to try. I will take some when I leave. If she doesn’t like them, I will not do so again.

He wanted to give her red roses since she smelt of them.

He wanted her to understand why he adored her scent, and he knew there were many elderberry bushes just on the cliff edge of the Veil. He could present both for her to smell so she could share in what he experienced within her presence.

Just as he was coming upon the herd of deer, seeing them just a little way past the trees, the smell of elderberries and roses flittered into his senses.

Did he want to go back to her so deeply he was imagining her scent?

“Orpheus?” He heard that lovely voice from behind him, and he swiftly spun around.

There she sat in a small area of grass that had yellow weed flowers sprouting from it. She was sitting on her hip with her legs curled to the side, one hand resting on the ground to support herself.

His head twisted to the side so sharply that it almost went upside down.

“Reia?” He came towards her. “What are you doing here?”

Did she follow me? But why would she? He didn’t know how he felt about this. She wasn’t within the safety of their home protections, and she wasn’t even wearing shoes to shelter her little feet.

She wore her pale blue dress that was similar to her pink one she’d had to fix because of the cut in the back of it from the dagger that had killed her. Orpheus hated that she also bore the scar of it between her shoulder blades – a constant reminder that he’d failed her.

She didn’t bear the scaring from when she’d apparently been eaten by a Demon, something that had distressed him to discover. They both thought that perhaps any new wounds she gained would disappear the next time she was killed – not that he was keen to find out the true answer to that.

She had small ones from the times he accidently cut her with his claws, and he’d much rather see them there than to know they were gone because she’d been injured so badly she’d died.

At his question, she lifted her hands to stare down at her palms.

“I-I don’t know. One minute I was eating my breakfast in the garden.” She met his gaze when he placed his hand over her hair to pat her, a thrill soaring through him at being

able to touch her. “And then suddenly I disappeared and showed up behind you on the ground.”

A day has passed. It was roughly this time of the day he’d left their home to go hunting.

It took a day for Mavka’s wounds to start to heal, no matter how big or how small. A day of missing a limb completely before it regrew within a second. A day of being blacked out as only a skull, before the body regrew in a bubbling, goopy, black liquid before a solid form hardened.

She will always be with me. He once wondered what would happen if a human gave him their soul and they abandoned him by running away. How could they always be with him if they left even after giving him their soul?

Was this his answer to that question?

“Perhaps we can only be apart for a day.”

Like a Mavka’s wounds healing, her body would appear with him in a day.

“That’s really inconvenient,” she groaned, falling back to recline on the grass. His heart shrivelled a little, thinking she didn’t want to be with him right now, until she said, “I didn’t even get to have a single bite of my breakfast before I disappeared. I’m going to be really hungry soon.”

Orpheus chuckled at her, his jaws parting at the depth of his humour.