The crackling of the campfire barely registered in Thorfinn’s ears. The warmth of it didn’t reach him, nor did the laughter of Askeladd’s men, who drank and celebrated as they always did after a successful raid. The stench of blood, smoke, and cheap ale clung to the air, but none of it mattered—because his thoughts were elsewhere.

On you.

It had been the older mercenaries who pushed the idea, sneering and slapping him on the back as if forcing a so-called "wife" onto him was some great achievement. Some joke at his expense. To men who lived for war and thought love was for the weak, a woman was just another trophy—or worse, a servant with a prettier name. They laughed when he dragged you along, muttering how he was learning well from them, that he was becoming a man. He ignored their jeers, just as he ignored your tear-streaked face, your protests, your grief. He told himself he didn’t care. He couldn’t care.

Yet somehow, you lingered in his mind like a stubborn wound that refused to heal.

It was irritating.

The way you carried yourself—so composed, so full of something he didn’t understand. You should have been broken by now, another victim left in the wake of war. But you weren’t. You still looked at him with pity sometimes, and that made his blood boil more than anything. He didn’t want your pity. He didn’t want your gentleness. Those were luxuries he had abandoned long ago.

And still, your presence crawled beneath his skin.

Even now, as he sat sharpening his daggers, his mind drifted to the way you had reached for him earlier, not with fear, not with anger, but with something else. Something warmer. You touched his wrist when his hands wouldn’t stop shaking after the fight, and though he jerked away instantly, the ghost of that touch lingered. He had shoved you aside, muttering that you were annoying, that he didn’t need anyone worrying about him. But later, when silence fell over the camp, he couldn’t stop replaying it in his head.

Why did it make his chest feel so tight?

He scowled, grinding the blade against the whetstone with more force than necessary.

He didn’t need you. He didn’t want to need you. He didn’t understand marriage, how could he? He was still young—still caught in the shadow of a father he could barely remember without anger clouding his vision. Did he have to act like his father did with his mother? Did he have to become something he wasn’t meant to be?

So why, in the dead of night, when exhaustion weighed on his body but sleep refused to come—why did he find himself listening for the sound of your breathing, just to make sure you were still there?

Why, when he heard you shift in your sleep, curling closer to the faint warmth of the fire, did something in him ease?

It infuriated him. It terrified him.

Because the truth clawed at him like an unseen enemy: for all the blood he spilled, for all the vengeance he lived for—what unsettled him most was not the thought of dying tomorrow, but the thought of you not being here when morning came.