“I will find you food, my little bride. I was hunting deer, but I won’t be able to do that with you here now.”

She rolled to sit up and raised a brow at him.

“Why not?”

His chuckled deepened. “Because you are loud and clumsy, Reia. You will scare them away.”

Shuffling to her feet, she placed her hands on her hips to give him a glare that was empty of any real anger.

“Not if I do this.”

She turned ghostly, making her feet hover above the ground and silencing her near completely. If it wasn’t for his

impeccable hearing, he would have struggled to hear her speak.

“That’s true, but I would rather you be home where you are safest.”

She turned physical once more before rolling her eyes at him with a huff. “I’m always going to be safe, Orpheus. I can turn into a freaking ghost! Not even you can touch me.”

He snapped his jaws in annoyance, to make a sharp chomping sound. He didn’t like that he couldn’t touch her like that, and she often liked to play with him by turning transparent in his arms to tease him.

“Fine,” he bit lightly. “You may stay with me until my hunting is done. I will find you something to eat now, though, so you don’t go hungry.” He reached his hand out to her as he stood on his legs, and she took it. “May I carry you? I like holding you on my arm.”

“Sure.”

She waited for him to bend over and stretch his arm out behind her, and she sat on the crook of his elbow. He lifted her, wrapping his arm and hand securely around her waist before he began to walk with her.

“You know,” she said slowly, looking around at the bright forest that was nothing like the dark of the Veil’s. “This reminds me of the last time you carried me above the surface.”

“I am thankful for that walk every day, even though you were noisy and wouldn’t stop complaining of the cold.”

“There was snow everywhere! Don’t you understand how cold I was? And, I basically had to beg you to slow down, and you still wouldn’t!”

She grabbed one of his horns and started shaking his head everywhere as he began to laugh. I enjoy teasing her.

He was new to it since he felt comfortable to do so now that he knew she wouldn’t leave him.

“You were strange even then. I should have eaten you the day the Demonslayers attacked me, but the sound of you

laughing in my mouth startled me.”

“It was a moment of insanity. I knew you were going to, and it was kind of creepy having your fangs slowly slipping around my head.”

He tilted his head up so he could bump the side of his snout against her. “Then I am thankful for your moment of madness, because it means you are here with me now.”

Reia grumbled something along the lines of him being too sweet, but he never understood when she called him something that was the taste of food. He thought something being too sweet was bad, like how he didn’t like honey for that very reason.

However, he knew it was a good thing coming from her, like a compliment, and accepted it.

“You made me a promise, by the way,” she said, kicking her legs back and forth individually to swing beneath his arm.

“A promise?” There was a task he had said he would do but had not fulfilled? Am I in trouble?

She bent her body forward, trusting he wouldn’t let her fall so she could do so freely. Her hair curtained the other side of her head as she looked to him while giving him a smirk that looked sinister coming from her.

“You said you would kill those who hurt me from my village.”

Orpheus immediately redirected his path, and she lifted her head up when she noticed to search the forest.

“Where are you going?”

“To your village,” he answered plainly.

“Really?” she almost seemed to giggle. “You’re really going to take me back to my village so that you will kill them?”

He brought his gaze to her, not understanding her tone.

“Do you not want me to?”

“Yes! I very much do, but I don’t think it should be all three of them. Those that helped Chad only did it because

they wanted to impress him. They weren’t the ones who ever actually physically hurt me by throwing things. Darren, the man that was being offered to you, was one the people who helped him.”

“I will end them all for you, Reia, if that is what you seek.

Whatever will make you content.”

Actually, he really wanted to. They had harmed his little doe, tormented her, and he wanted to maim them for doing so.

“I’ll think about it on the way. What would happen if you were to eat Chad now?”

“I don’t think it would make me hungry or satisfy me, but I would become a little more human, obtain a little more humanity.”

Would she want me to change? Orpheus hadn’t thought that if perhaps Reia might want him to be less furry, or monstrous.

“Hmm,” she sounded thoughtful before she scrunched her nose up. “Well, I don’t like that. Could we feed him to the Mavka? He’s really stupid, he needs to obtain more humanity.”

A light chuckle of agreeance tickled him.

“He is rather stupid. We can do that.”

Jealousy and annoyance flared in his stomach, disliking that Reia cared so much for the antler-horned Mavka, but he tried not to show it. Orpheus was just being, as Reia called him, selfish and possessive.

She accepts me. She liked him how he was, and that made him feel loved and wanted.

“Good. I want to do that, then.” She continued to kick her legs while she seemed to think for a long while. “You aren’t taking me home straight away. Does that mean you trust me to be on the surface with you? That I’ll be safe?”

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation.