The only silence came from the fire in their small cottage. Their children were asleep, they had been playing all day. Her son and his father returned from a long journey. They traveled with other villagers and of course the rumours didn’t take long to reach Freya’s ears. She looked at him, the man who had owned her heart since the very first moment, who sweep her off her feet when she was just a teenager, the man who claimed to love her just how she was: passionate, temperamental and a true fighter.
“So it’s true then…” she said quietly as she noticed his eyes on her. “When you were supposed to be taking care of our son you were whoring around with some foreign woman?” She asked dangerously calm and before she knew it, she slapped him hard. The sound of her hand smacking his cheek echoed across the living room, revealing how much he had hurt her. “Why did you do it? Am I not good enough for you?” She demanded, her tone quiet but full of anger.
Markus wasn’t so unwise as to not respond when Freya posed a question. No fear was too great for him to conquer–no arrow too sharp, no fall too tumultuous–but the sting of his lovers assault against his cheek left a blistering outrage that dug it’s fingers into his gut, twisting and mangling what patience he had left for her.
His teeth clenched tightly in his jaw, muscles working to keep him firmly in place, “Who is to say the woman was foreign?”
Damn his tongue–too often the fire in his belly got hold of it before his wits did. This wasn’t the time for spiteful humor. Tossing aside his meal, letting it scatter against the floor, he stood, with great reluctance, to his feet, chair squeaking with the release of his weight. Markus was a large man, it was often he destroyed anything that came across his path, even when he didn’t mean it. He came toe-to-toe with the braided blonde, eyes glinting hotly in the firelight, “You assume my imaginary whoring would take precedence over my blood and bone?”
He clenched her wrist in his own fist, before she took the ample opportunity to strike him again, “Answer wisely. I’ve had a long day.”
