Semua Bab MARRYING HER ENEMY : Bab 31 - Bab 40

Akari looked so small lying in the hospital bed that was designed to fit werewolves. Nikolai was sitting beside her bed, holding her hand and smoothing the hair from her face, thinking of how badly he wanted to spank her little ass when she woke up. He wouldn’t, of course, or at least he wouldn’t until she’d safely delivered the baby and recovered her health. Then she’d give her nightly spankings, no matter how prettily she begged him to stop. In fact, the idea of the spankings and her begging made Nikolai hard that it makes him uncomfortable sitting in the chair. Nikolai heard Akari sighed in her sleep and he immediately leaned over and gently kissed her still pale face. Even though the doctors had assured Nikolai that both Akari and the baby were fine, he can't stop worrying.. That fall had been a shock to Akari's system, that the doctor actually had given her a mild sedative just to calm her down, which was why she was still sleeping. The doctors wanted to keep her until morning

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

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

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

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