"My Lord," Cook stammered. "What are you doing down here?"

"I can't come down to my own kitchen?" Even among the noise and heat of the kitchen Tynne's voice carried.

I peeked around the wall. What was Tynne doing down in the kitchens? My hands froze, finger-deep in sticky dough. A few of my fellow dough-maids shot me looks.

"It's just not the usual, young lord," Cook said, then he shrugged and gestured to the kitchens with his ladle. "I can imagine why you're here, though. She's over there."

"Keep a civil tongue in your head," Tynne growled. Some of the kitchen staff quailed, and Cook went as pale as the squishy dough under my fingers.

Tynne didn't wait for anyone to reply and instead strode over to my table. His hair had just been cut, cropped close, and he was wearing human-form hunting attire. But his eyes were the glossy, molten amber of the strongest wolf shifters, and they warmed when he smiled at me. There was a possessive glint in them that always made me tingle. He was dangerous... but not to me.

He looped one big arm around my waist and practically scooped me off my feet. I squeaked. He leaned close. "Come outside."

"Tynne, I'm working," I whispered, holding my doughy-fingers up and away from his nice clean shirt. I glanced around the kitchen, blushing as hot as if I'd been working the oil pot.

"Come on." He hefted me against his hip and carried me out the back door of the kitchen into the small cobblestone square lined with all of Cook's and the Gardenerer's carefully grown herbs.

"Tynne!" I hissed. "I'm working! What's going on? Put me down!"

He deposited me on the ground. I flicked my hands. Ug, I was covered in dough. I toweled my fingers off one by one on my battered, floury apron. Some of the kitchen crew watched us from the door. I tried to ignore them. After being in the stifling kitchen all day, the summer air felt amazing.

"I had to sneak down into the kitchens," Tynne told me. "So Mother wouldn't catch me. She'll never look for me there."

"It'll get back to her that you were down there," I said.

He smirked. "She can yell at me then."

He grabbed one of my hands as soon as it was clean and tugged me deeper into the garden. We weren't supposed to be out here. The head gardener would have a snit. The herbs and delicate fruits that grew out here were well... worth more than I was, easily. Not much grew in the contaminated soil of the world, and the head gardener was very careful to source and find soil that was as clean and pure as possible for the herbs, and to bring in the best water.

Water was hard to come by. It almost never rained, and the water that came up out of the ground was fouled, and sometimes undrinkable, even for plants and pigs. The herbs were delicate, so to preserve their flavor, the gardeners brought in water from a pond miles outside the enclave that was a little more pure than the local water supplies.

"Where are we going?" I asked as he kept pushing deeper into the garden until we got to the old iron gate that was twisted with a raspberry brambles. Raspberries were about the only berry that grew around here, and they grew like weeds. The obnoxious briars covered the other side of the wall and crawled over top of it, and twisted through the gate. It did a pretty good job deterring wandering tomcats of all species. Back here out in this overgrown corner nobody could see us.

"Just here," he said, gripping both of my wrists in his hands and tugging me against his strong body. "It's not where we met, but it's pretty close, isn't it?"

"Not even," I laughed. We'd met out beyond the enclave where there was a tumble of wild raspberry bushes taller than I was. I'd been sent out to pluck berries and had to go deep into the brambles to get what the crows hadn't gotten. This slightly tame tumble that the gardener kept butchered back with generous applications of his machete was no comparison.

Tynn bent and kissed me. He meant it to be a quick kiss, but lingered, growling in his throat like wolf shifters did, and then he nipped my lower lip. His body got hard against me.

"Tynne," I said breathlessly, "this is what you brought me out here for?"

"No, but you taste so good. Like salt." He growled again and released one of my hands so he could use it to fondle one of my breasts.

"Salt doesn't taste good," I teased. "I probably just taste like kitchen sweat."

He pulled away and rolled his eyes. "You know I don't like it when you talk like that."

Like what? A kitchen maid? Because that's what I was. I ignored it and gave him my best I'm waiting look.

He released my wrists. "So the Churn event is in a few days."

"And?"

"I want to go. For us to go," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"I want us to go. It's in this enclave this year. It won't be back for another few years." He reached for my hands and wrapped his fingers around mine.

"Have you been talking to Luci?"

"Your friend? No."

"Because she suggested I suggest it to you."

Now a frown passed over his face, but he quickly hid it. "I thought you'd be happy."

"I am happy. I'm just... shocked!" I got quiet when I was shocked. Being quiet was pretty smart, instead of making a lot of screaming or gasping noises that would draw attention. "It... it's just sudden."

"Mother and Father are getting on a wild tear again about me not having settled down with a proper lady-shifter." He said with a sly smile.

"Oh no." My insides sank. "Is it bad again?"

"Worse than ever." He stopped smiling instantly and his face hardened over. "I don't want to talk about it. So, you'll come to the temple with me tomorrow and we'll get our Trinkets?"

"Are you nervous?" I asked. Tynne normally did have such an eager, anxious tone.

He laughed, but it sounded uneasy.

"We don't have to do this," I said. "Your family's not going to forgive you for going to the Churn. They don't know you're doing it, right?"

"Let me worry about my family."

"But... what's going to make them less angry? They will never forgive us if we just go off to the Churn." I bit my lower lip. Maybe it'd be better if Tynne just dug his heels in, instead of going right to the Churn. His family would hate me either way. Going to the Churn would make them really hate me, because then they'd be stuck with me. It's not like Tynne would take any lovers that might have his bastard pups, because we'd have Trinkets. The person who had the matching Trinket was your true love. You didn't fuck around on them. Tynne didn't have any bastards, and he didn't have any skirts.

He just had me.

As long as his parents thought that Tynne might lose interest in me, they weren't going to try to kill me or my pups. They might actually come to tolerate me. But if they saw that Tynne and I were the real thing...

"Theia, nothing's going to make them less angry," he said, annoyed. "Let me worry about the consequences."

"I was thinking about our pups," I said.

He shuddered. "Let's not talk about pups."

I didn't reply. He tugged me again and drew me deeper into the brambly shadows. "Say yes, Theia. We need to do this. It's the only way. Come with me to temple tomorrow."

He turned me around so my back was against the old stones. A couple of brambles dug into my back. I flinched, but he was already kissing my neck and fondling my thigh. "Yes."

He groaned and pushed himself against me, and started to yank my shirts up towards my hips in his big hands. "Gods, I want to play with your tits, but I need your pussy. Turn around. I don't have a lot of time."

I obdiently turned around, ignoring the sharp thorns pricking my skin. He pushed my skirts over my ass with one hand, and I heard him freeing his cock with the other. His breathing was heavy. He steadied my hip with one hand, then pressed close, pushing his thick cock inside me. I gasped in pain. "Hey, slow down."

"You'll get wet once I'm inside you," he laughed by my ear, nipping me, covering me with his whole body, "you always do. I'm big."

I bit my lip as he filled me completely and he groaned into my neck, holding my hips tight with his big hands. He started to move, and he murmured, "See? You're getting wet already. Nice and slick."

He pushed harder and deeper. My body rubbed the rocks. I panted as he moved inside me. He wasn't going to last. I could already feel it on the way he held my hips pinned under him and the grunting with each thrust, and the groan in his ragged breathing.

"Fuck," he bit my earlobe.

"You know the rules," I rasped.

"Just once," he groaned, "damnit, Theia, let me finish in you once."

"That's...not...the rule." I got out around his heavy strokes. "Take it out, Tynne!"

"Don't you want to get knotted by a wolf-shifter?" He bit my neck. "Imagine my cock lodged up in you. It's amazing for both of us."

"Take it out," I said. "You can do finish inside me after the Churn."

"Theia," he groaned, burying himself again, "don't--"

"Take it out, Tynne!" my voice cracked.

He snarled and yanked away from me, and with one hand spun me around. He grabbed his dick, face dark and pissed off. He tugged his cock with a few tugs and groaned as white fluid splattered the ground and the hem of my fallen skirts.

He flicked it off his hands and tucked himself back into his leathers. "That's getting old, Theia."

"You know why I've never let you do it," I said. I didn't want a baby. He didn't want a bastard. It was that simple. I couldn't afford any of the fancy herbs to make sure I didn't have a baby, so he had to pull out. That simple.

"Two years, Theia," he said. "You know how much I hate you telling me take it out?"

"Why are you so angry? We're going to the Churn in a few days, aren't we? After that you can knot me all you want."

He smirked. "Get back to work, Theia. I'll meet you at the temple tomorrow."