Kane looked at her for a long moment under the moonlight.
Marisa still sat on the fallen trunk, cloak open, the wrap doing almost nothing to hide the full shape of her breasts or the dark shadow between her thighs.
The almost-kiss hung between them, unfinished and deliberate.
He set Mjoldr aside again.
"I won’t wait till the trial."
Before she could answer, he stepped in, hooked both hands behind her knees, and lifted.
Marisa’s eyes widened a fraction as he set her legs over his shoulders and dropped to one knee in the leaf litter.
The position opened her completely.
The thin wrap fell aside. Kane leaned in and inhaled the warm, clean, faintly musky scent of her cunt at close range.
Marisa’s body gave a single, sharp tremor, but she didn’t pull away.
Kane’s voice was low against her inner thigh.
"Your brother. He likes you?"
"He does."
Her answer came a little tighter than before.
"In more than a sisterly way."
Kane dragged the flat of his tongue slowly over her clit, tasting her properly for the first time.
Marisa’s breath hitched. A small, controlled sound escaped her throat.
"Angh..."
He licked again, slower, mapping the sensitive bud with deliberate pressure.
"Your brother wants to fuck you?"
Marisa’s fingers curled against the bark of the trunk. Her voice stayed steady even as her thighs flexed on his shoulders.
"It’s complicated. It has been a tradition in the deeper bloodlines for a long time. The strongest male keeps the strongest female close. Blood is secondary to power. He has never forced the issue. He is waiting for me to accept it."
Kane closed his mouth over her clit and sucked gently, then harder, tongue working in tight circles.
Marisa’s head tipped back.
The refined composure she wore as a second skin cracked just enough for another low sound to slip free.
He pressed deeper, tongue sliding down through her folds and pushing inside her, tasting the slick heat that had gathered while they walked and argued and almost kissed.
Her body lost the fight against gravity.
She fell back onto her elbows on the trunk, long black hair spilling over the bark, chest rising and falling faster.
Kane kept her legs locked over his shoulders and ate her out with focused, unhurried hunger, tongue thrusting deep, then returning to her clit to suck and flick until her hips tried to lift into his mouth.
"And yet," he said between long, wet strokes of his tongue, "here you are letting a barbarian put his mouth on you because your visions said so."
Marisa’s amber eyes were half-lidded, fixed on the canopy above them. Her voice came out rougher.
"The visions showed me the endings where I stay at his side. None of them leave this empire standing when the sky breaks. The endings where I stand with you are fewer, but they are the only ones that still have packs left to fight. I chose the variable that changes the board. If that means your tongue is between my legs on the open road while my brother’s soldiers hunt the main tracks, so be it."
Kane pushed his tongue deeper, curling it inside her, then dragged it back up to her clit and worked the swollen bud without mercy.
Marisa’s thighs tightened around his head.
A longer, broken sound left her. Her breasts shifted with every unsteady breath.
She was close; he could feel it in the way her cunt fluttered against his mouth, but he did not take her over the edge.
He stopped.
Marisa made a sharp, frustrated noise when the contact disappeared.
Kane lowered her legs carefully, rose to his full height, and looked down at her sprawled on the trunk, wrap open, cunt glistening in the moonlight, dignity frayed but not broken.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"That’s enough for the road."
Marisa pushed herself upright, breathing harder than she wanted to show.
She pulled the wrap back into place with deliberate movements, though the fabric clung damply between her thighs.
"You’re cruel."
"I’m practical. Same as you."
Kane reclaimed Mjoldr and rested it across his shoulder.
"I will breed you inside his palace. Now we talk about the fight. No more visions. No more offers. Tell me how Grathak actually ends people who walk into his hall alone."
Marisa studied him for a long moment, amber eyes still dark with the arousal he had refused to finish.
Then she exhaled, and the political mask slid back into place, thinner than before but functional.
"He will not kill you on the first meeting. That would be wasteful. He will measure you. Publicly. There will be an audience, high-ranking beast warriors from the packs that matter, a few of the deeper bloodline heads, possibly the guardian’s lesser attendants if he wants the pressure higher. He will ask questions designed to force you into open statements about Menual, about Milfheim, about me. Then he will offer a demonstration. Strength against strength. Not a full trial to the death, not yet, but enough blood and broken bone that the packs understand the difference in scale."
Kane nodded once.
"And if I put him down in that demonstration?"
"Then the real trial becomes inevitable, and it becomes public. The packs will demand it. He will not be able to refuse without looking weak. That is the path the clearer visions follow." Marisa adjusted the cloak around her shoulders.
"If you hold back and only match him, he will keep testing. If you lose cleanly, he will offer you a place in the deeper pens as a curiosity and a warning. The only outcome that changes the board is the one where you stand over him, and the packs see it."
"And the guardian?"
"It will be watching. It always watches when the emperor steps into an arena. Whether it intervenes depends on how far the fight goes and whether my brother calls it. I have never seen a vision where the guardian takes his side against you. That does not mean it will take yours."
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