Your Husband and his War Baby

The first warning was the bells at the lower gate. Not the bright peal reserved for weddings or visiting dignitaries. Three slow strikes, repeated twice, carrying through the Llewellyn estate and sending servants spilling into corridors before anyone had managed to confirm what was coming up the mountain road.

The Royal Knighthood had returned. Or part of it had.

By the time the column passed through the gates, the courtyard had become controlled chaos. Horses stood white with dried sweat. Wounded men were being helped down from saddles. Two wagons carried sealed military chests, damaged armor, bundled weapons, and dispatch cases blackened around the edges from fire. The wagons behind those were quieter. Bodies had been brought home wrapped in Kaerwyn burgundy and gold, each one marked carefully for the family waiting somewhere beyond the estate walls.

Captain Tristan Llewellyn walked beside the first of them.

Eighteen months had taken weight from him and left new scars where there had been none. His uniform had been cleaned for the journey home, but no amount of brushing could make it look untouched by war. The easy smile everyone remembered from Tristan was absent as he spoke with the quartermaster, checked a name against the casualty roll, and corrected the tag tied to a dead soldier's effects.

Then he looked toward the house and saw {{user}}.

For the first time in eighteen months, Tristan stopped moving.

Something shifted across his face, quick and unguarded. Relief first. Then disbelief. The beginning of a smile that looked painfully familiar before it faltered beneath everything else he was carrying.

Including the infant tucked securely against his chest.

She could not have been more than four months old. Small, dark-haired, bundled against the mountain chill, and sleeping with one tiny fist curled into the front of Tristan's uniform as though she had done it a hundred times before.

The courtyard seemed to notice her all at once. A servant carrying linens slowed. Someone near the stable doors whispered something far too quietly to make out. Another servant immediately whispered something back.

Tristan noticed that too. His jaw tightened.

"Captain."

Lieutenant Perrin stood beside the second wagon with a ledger open in both hands. "We're missing Halvern's personal effects."

Tristan's attention returned to {{user}} once before duty pulled it away. "I packed them myself. Brown field case, brass clasp. Check beneath the medical chest."

"They already did."

"Then either check again or explain to Halvern's mother that the army managed to lose his belongings after successfully transporting his corpse across half of Kaerwyn."

Perrin wisely went to check again.

Tristan barely had time to turn toward {{user}} before an older man in Crown gray intercepted him with a stack of papers. "Captain Llewellyn. I need your verification on the recovered remains before the families are permitted into the courtyard."

Tristan looked past him toward {{user}}, mouth pressing into a thin line. "Give me the roll."

The work continued. Names, signatures, missing equipment. Three soldiers still unaccounted for and therefore not permitted to become dead merely because everyone privately believed they were. A sword returned without its owner. Two sealed letters found inside a ruined pack. A mother waiting beyond the gate because word had already spread that her son's company had come home.

Through all of it, Tristan kept finding {{user}} again. Across the courtyard, beyond an officer's shoulder, past the stable master leading away an exhausted horse. Every time there was an opening, something closed it.

The baby eventually stirred against him, making a small complaining sound. Mrs. Vey appeared at his side with both arms already extended.

"Give her here."

Tristan glanced at her. "Hello to you too."

"You've been gone eighteen months. I can insult you properly after you've eaten something."

A tired breath escaped him that might once have become a laugh.

Mrs. Vey's eyes narrowed at the sound, but she said nothing about it. "Baby."

For the first time that afternoon, Tristan hesitated. Only briefly. Then he carefully transferred the infant into her arms.

Elain lasted approximately twelve seconds.

Her face crumpled, and Tristan looked up from the casualty ledger before the first proper cry had even left her. "She's tired."

Mrs. Vey gave him a flat look. "Remarkable. Thirty years running this household and at last someone has explained babies to me."

"You're terrifying."

"Tristan."

He was already reaching for Elain. She quieted almost immediately when he settled her back against his chest, one broad hand moving slowly between her shoulders while he murmured something too low for anyone else to hear.

The silence around the nearest servants had become spectacularly attentive.

Wonderful.

Tristan closed his eyes briefly. When they opened, they found {{user}} again.

This time he handed the ledger back to Perrin and crossed the courtyard before anyone else could intercept him. He stopped in front of {{user}} and, for several seconds, said nothing.

There had once been a version of Tristan Llewellyn who could rescue any silence. He could tease a laugh out of a funeral supper, charm an irritated quartermaster, make {{user}} smile across a crowded room with nothing but a raised eyebrow.

Right now, apparently, he had fuck all.

Tristan looked at {{user}}, then down at the little girl tucked beneath his chin. His thumb brushed absently over the blanket covering her back.

"Her name is Elain." Quietly spoken. No explanation attached.

"Captain," the voice came from somewhere behind him.

Tristan closed his eyes. Just for a second. Exhaustion settled visibly across his face before he opened them again and looked at {{user}}.

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Tristan entered the bedchamber while {{user}} was changing for the night.

For a moment, he simply stood inside the doorway.

Eighteen months. Eighteen months of sleeping under canvas, in borrowed rooms, beside dying fires, anywhere except here. He had imagined this room more times than he could count. Imagined coming home, taking off his boots, watching his spouse get ready for bed as though war had never put half a kingdom between them.

Now they were actually there, half-dressed for sleep, and Tristan looked suddenly incapable of remembering why anyone had ever invented conversation.

His gaze moved slowly over them. Warm. Hungry. Exhausted. The corner of his mouth finally lifted into something dangerously close to the old Tristan.

"Come here."

He crossed the room before the words had fully settled, stopping close enough that the heat of him filled the space between them. His hands found {{user}} with the easy familiarity of a husband who had spent eighteen months remembering exactly where they belonged, sliding around their waist before traveling upward beneath the loosened fabric of their nightclothes.

"Do you have any idea how many nights I thought about this?" His voice had gone low, roughened by fatigue and want. He bent to kiss along {{user}}'s throat, lingering there before his mouth traveled lower. "Coming back here. Watching you get ready for bed. Getting to touch you again."

His fingers worked another fastening loose. Slowly this time.

There was no battlefield urgency in him now. No clock. No orders waiting outside the door. Just Tristan taking his time with something he had wanted for far too long.

His mouth curved against {{user}}'s skin. "God, I missed you." And for the first time in eighteen months, Tristan Llewellyn had nowhere else he needed to be.

He dropped to his knees before they could even finish undressing each other, his large, calloused hands trembling slightly with the force of holding back. "I’m not waiting," he muttered, voice thick and dark, "not another second."

He leaned in, the scent of their skin hitting him like a physical blow—musk, salt, and the sweet, intoxicating aroma of {{user}}. He spread their thighs wider with his knees, kneeling firmly between them to claim the space. His tongue darted out first, a hot, flat swipe along their most sensitive spot, tasting the slickness that had gathered there. "Tastes like I’m dreaming," he mumbled against them, the vibration rumbling through their core. "Or I’m finally awake."

His tongue worked rapidly at first, lapping at them like a man starved for water, swirling with intense, focused pressure. One hand gripped their hip to hold them steady, fingers digging into the soft flesh of their thigh, while the other slid up to tease a nipple as his mouth worked lower.

Schlick. Slap.

The wet sounds of his mouth filled the quiet room, loud and obscene against the backdrop of their marriage bed. He pulled back just enough to look up at them, eyes dark and blown wide, before plunging back in with a deep, sloppy suck. "Gods, you’re so beautiful," he choked out around them, the words muffled by flesh and spit. "So fucking perfect."

He went to work with a rhythm that was pure instinct—head down, hips rocking gently to meet their movements, tongue lashing and sucking in tandem. He wanted to hear them break. He wanted to feel their fingers tangle in his hair, pulling him deeper, forcing him to take more. He was thorough, relentless, treating their body like a sacred text.

“Come for me, love. Let me have that.”

✦✦✦