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Chapter 33: Giving birth
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MARRYING HER ENEMY Chapter 34: Haggoz and Keanna
Much later, Akari was doodling on a pad of paper by her bed while Nikolai dozed beside her. She poked Nikolai in the side and held out the paper to him. “I like this name,” she said, pointing at the name she’d written. “Nicole. It’s so much like Nikolai, and since it’s also my middle name, I was thinking…” she looked up at her husband and smiled. “It will represent me some too. What do you think?” “Yes, it’s good. But I don’t like the way you spelled it. We’ll spell it N-i-k-o-l. It’s a good, strong name and looks more like mine.” Akari rolled her eyes and smiled. “Okay, Nikol it is, but the next one will be named after me.” “Anything you say, my dear wife. I’m very easy to get along with.” He looked up at Akari as she laughed. “Why is that so funny?” He pulled Akari's hand to his lips and kissed it. “I apologize for ever believing you could have been involved with FeRes. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for not totally believing you and for sending you away when I did. If it’s any
MARRYING HER ENEMY Chapter 35: Punishment
Akari scooted back against Nikolai as she spooned him. The hard, steely planes of his body felt so much warmer than any human’s. It was always surprising to Akari and felt wonderful in the middle of the night in this cold palace.The weather at the Kingdom was considered fairly cold year round by human standards. And a Werewolf had warmer body temperatures, a characteristic that may have evolved due to the colder climate, so that's why Nikolai didn’t always understand how chilly Akari found the palace to be and often complained about how warm he kept their room. The temperature outside rarely rose above forty degrees, and despite the braziers that were kept running full blast day and night for the comfort of the humans inhabiting the king’s quarters, it was still downright cold in the ancient stone palace for Akari and the king’s human consort, Beatrice.Akari and Nikolai had sex before they settled in for the night. Actually they had fallen off each other in exhaustion after making
MARRYING HER ENEMY Chapter 36: Workout with mother-in-law
Since Akari had first heard of them, she had been fascinated by the concept of the Exhibition Games. They were a popular, once quite bloodthirsty sport that took place in the national arena, though now, prisoners were no longer executed in this way, and it was rare that a serious injury ever even occurred. Akari knew Nikolai loved nothing better than to fight in the Exhibition games, held every Eightday, which was a non-work day for most on their cities, and sometimes Akari went with him to cheer him on from her seat in the king’s box. Akari liked to watch the matches, but after a while she found it boring to simply look on, and more and more the idea grew in her mind that she wanted to be out on the field herself. Now she’d come up with this great idea for the humans to form their own team and Nikolai had immediately shot it down. Akari had made the wager to gain his agreement, as she knew Werewolves loved gambling. At the games, the young men bet wildly on each match and small fort
MARRYING HER ENEMY Chapter 37: Staff Sergeant Keanna Neely
In one of the towers of the king’s vast palace, the man formerly known as Staff Sergeant Keanna Neely pulled one of the fur blankets more closely around her shoulders and snuggled down into the bed, trying to stay warm. She wished for Haggoz’s warmth behind her, but Haggoz had left before it got light. He rarely stayed with her all night, and on the rare occasions she did fall asleep after their lovemaking, he left as soon as he awoke. Keanna was lucky, she supposed, that her bed was heaped with furs and quilts. Though Haggoz played the elaborate game of pretending he wanted hrr to suffer, he didn’t mean for her to go without creature comforts. Her room, though isolated in a tower far away from the king’s quarters, was kept warm with braziers and a fire in the fireplace. She had an elderly male servant who brought her food to her each day, a man named Sung-la, who never said much of anything to her, just swapped out her food trays and cleaned her room. She had learned a great deal
MARRYING HER ENEMY Chapter 38: Keanna's son
Keanna had always known that she was considered to be a very good-looking woman. Although she wasn’t conceited over it—it was a simple matter of genetics, after all, and it was only through sheer luck that she had won the equivalent of the genetic lottery. Most of her striking good looks came from her mother, anyway. Then as if God or fate or somebody had decided such beauty was enough luck for one person’s lifetime, her mother had died when Keanna was only a baby, struck down by a huge falling limb from a tree as she walked home from work one day. Keanna knew her only from a picture hanging on the wall in her childhood bedroom. Her father had remarried when she was only five years old. The new wife didn’t want reminders of his former wife hanging around the house, so she had put all the pictures away, except for the one picture in Keanna's room taken not long before his mother’s death. She wasn’t smiling in the image. In fact, she was looking off camera over the shoulder of the per
MARRYING HER ENEMY Chapter 39: Heart to heart talk with Queen mother
Nikolai was sitting beside his father in the king’s council room, listening to the Minister of Home Affairs explained his report. Normally, the report would have held his interest, but today he was too concerned about Akari and her state of mind. Since the baby had come, and for some time before that if she was honest, Akari had been restless and moody. Some of the irritability was perhaps due to changes in her body since the injections to alter her womb had stopped, but that didn’t account for all of it. Akari could go from charming and sweet to bad-tempered and intractable in mere minutes and no matter how much Nikolai wanted it not to be true, he was sometimes afraid she was regretting her decision to stay with him. Their sex life was still off the charts, and he loved Akari and the baby more than he would ever have thought possible. Akari said she loved him just as much. But they argued a little too often and even though making up aft
MARRYING HER ENEMY Chapter 40: Haggoz Dilemma
Word had reached Haggoz just as he was leaving a meeting with the king and his council that the prisoner might be ill. It had alarmed him, and he had quickly made an excuse to the king and rushed from the chamber as soon as he could to go check on her. Love had come late in life to Haggoz, and when it had, it hit him hard. Werewolves matured early and Haggoz had been not quite thirty years old when he first met Keanna. Werewolf males usually were mated and raising children by their early twenties, but the war had been far more important to Haggoz. He was content with casual partners, having no wish to tie himself down and have a nursery full of children like some of the younger officers. He was from a noble house and had first asked to become a warrior at age twelve, anxious to get away from his mother and her cruelties. He had worked his way up through the ranks, aided by battlefield promotions and a few desperate skirmishes with the Federation forces in which he and his men had ma
MARRYING HER ENEMY Chapter 41: 2 Years Ago
Keanna had lost track of how long she’d been in the tower. Months, certainly. She didn’t think it was a year yet. The only bright spot in her days continued to be Haggoz’s visits. After her heartfelt confession to him, Haggoz still remain the same.Although he had kept her out of the general prison population and made sure she was properly fed and taken care of. He still refused to give her his forgiveness. With a lot of extra time on her hands, Keanna had many hours to daydream, to remember. She thought often of how it had all begun—this all-consuming passion she and Haggoz had for each other, right from the start. She certainly never would have believed it could have happened when they first met on that windy, storm-swept day. Yet that day on the docks had started this journey and had led her to fall desperately and irrevocably in love and banish any idea she’d ever had of killing Haggoz. She sometimes wondered how she could have ever ev
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