“I am also wounded.”

“What? Where?” She quickly came forward to place her hands on him to check his body. Her instant concern gratified him. “I didn’t think he’d gotten you back.”

“I did not get them from him.” He showed her his bare hands since he hadn’t left with his gloves. He no longer needed to wear them since Reia accepted his body. “I got them getting your honey.”

“Aww, you were stung by the bees?” She brushed her thumbs over his hands, finding little spikes embedded into his skin. She tsked. “Come, let’s sit you down so that I can remove them.”

Yellow flashed in his own orbs when the Mavka looked disappointed in her care for him. She hadn’t just touched his wounds, but held his hands and patted his body.

They didn’t actually hurt that much.

“Stay,” he warned when he got up to follow them.

“No,” Reia rebutted, tapping him in the stomach. “He can come. He shouldn’t have to sit near the circle anymore.”

He sighed. I have to be good. Cannot crush his skull, cannot tell her no. Reia’s happiness mattered more than his own.

Gesturing for Orpheus to sit on the porch steps, she stood between his knees and cupped one of his hands so she

could use her nails to remove the bee stingers that remained in his skin. His fur and shirt had saved the rest of him from being stung.

The Mavka was crouched into a seated position only a few feet away as he watched them with interest. His head turned one way and then the other while examining them together.

“Anymore?” she asked when she was done with the other hand.

Orpheus began to open his jaw. “I tried to eat a few to get rid of them.”

“You got your tongue stung?”

He nodded.

“Okay, fine. Only because you worked so hard to get it for me.”

Slipping his tongue forward, he opened his mouth a little wider and Reia started checking it for stingers.

“What are you doing?” The Mavka asked with a tone of disbelief. “You are reaching into where he eats!”

“She trusts I will not hurt her. Don’t you, Reia?”

She nodded as she removed the stingers one-by-one.

“Yes, I guess that’s true. Why else would I reach into a Duskwalker’s mouth?”

“This is not believable,” the Mavka said, raising hand to tap at his snout.

Orpheus withdrew his tongue from the air when she thought she was done, and he checked by sliding it against the roof his mouth.

“Thank you,” he said, before he leaned forward and licked her right underneath her jaw.

She giggled in response, and the Mavka’s eyes turned a dark green, signalling his jealousy. Orpheus chuckled, feeling much, much better at seeing it. She is my human, Mavka. She trusts me. And he was proving it.

Even when she pushed his snout away to stop him after he did it again, his elevated mood didn’t dissipate.

“Reia, I have brought you a deer. You will have to cut it yourself since I cannot be near its blood, but I have brought you meat.”

“If I take what I need from it, will you both be able to eat it?”

His head cocked to the side as did the Mavka’s.

“You wish to share your food with me?” the Mavka asked.

“I got it for you, Reia.”

“But I won’t be able to eat that much before it goes bad. I don’t know how to dry meat.” She shrugged as though she didn’t see any issue with this. “Plus, he is our guest. We should feed him if we have food to share, and you should eat as well.”

But nothing will satisfy our hunger. No matter how much they ate, no matter how much they tried, they would always be hungry. It never ended, never let up, and no Mavka knew how to fix this problem they all faced.

“He is leaving soon,” Orpheus told them, making sure they both understood he wouldn’t allow another to linger near his home.

“About that,” Reia said with a little pout. Every time her bottom lip stuck forward, Orpheus had an overwhelming urge to lick it back into place. “He has something he wants to ask you. A favour.”

Orpheus tilted his head at him in question, and he stood to come a little closer.

“I want to do what you both have told me.” Then he gestured to them. “I want this. My own human.”

“And I told you how to do that. Where you must begin.”

He turned his eyes to Reia, making Orpheus follow his gaze. “But she has told me that I need to build a hut because humans will not like my cave. There are things I need.”

“What is it you are asking for?”

Hadn’t Orpheus done enough to help this Mavka? He’d given him salt, the seeds to grow dill, had given him advice.

“I have never been to the Demon village. I do not know what I am supposed to do there.”

“And you want me to take you?”

“Yes. You have been there.”

“No,” he bit, placing his hands around Reia and bringing her closer to be firmer between his spread thighs. “I will not leave her for that long.”

He wouldn’t have considered it before this day, and he definitely wouldn’t now after knowing she’d been attacked by a Demon within the circle. She was brave, too brave. She was a threat to herself, and Orpheus refused to leave her here by herself for days just to help this Mavka.

“Then take me with you,” Reia suggested, staring down at him since he was seated lower than her in her standing position.

“We are not ready for that.” In actuality, he wasn’t ready for that. He needed to make sure she would be safe since he’d been foolish with the last human he’d taken there.

There was only one way to guarantee her safety and she wasn’t ready for it. “It’s too dangerous.”