Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The Province of Posen belonged to Prussia and therefore to the German Empire just as the western towns he knew did, but beyond the stations, official signs and uniformed railway employees, the countryside through which he had been travelling for the better part of the day was increasingly Polish in its villages, its churches, the names he heard called across platforms and, most noticeably, the conversations taking place around him that he still had to concentrate fiercely to understand.

Four months ago, Marco would not have understood them at all.

He had begun learning Polish almost as soon as the second letter arrived from Robert Lewandowski, because by then it had occurred to him that the address he had found so attractive precisely because of its distance came with the rather significant disadvantage of placing him among people whose language he did not speak. He had studied with a determination that surprised even himself, first with a grammar book and a small German-Polish dictionary, then with an elderly Polish man whom somebody in town had recommended and who charged very little for the privilege of correcting Marco's pronunciation twice a week.

Marco had written lists, copied sentences, labelled objects in his room and quietly repeated phrases while dressing in the mornings until, after four months, he could carry a simple conversation as long as the other person spoke slowly and did not expect him to discuss anything more complicated than food, weather, directions or the ordinary business of a household. Robert knew about his efforts because Marco had eventually become brave enough to write several lines of Polish in one of his letters.

There had been twelve letters altogether, beginning with the one Marco wrote in answer to a matrimonial notice he found in a newspaper left behind on his brother's breakfast table. The advertisement itself had not been especially romantic and had not pretended to be. Robert described himself as a Polish Alpha of thirty-two years, a farmer with his own house and sufficient land to support a family, and stated that he was looking for an Omega willing to marry, manage a household and, if possible, have children in the future. He had added that a widow or previously mated Omega would be acceptable and that he could correspond in German, and it was that line, together with an address so far from Marco's home that he had needed to find it on a map, that had made Marco tear the small notice from the paper and hide it in his pocket.

At the time, distance had mattered considerably more than Robert himself. Marco's old Alpha had been dead for nearly two years, although widowhood had brought much less freedom than Marco had once imagined it might. His husband had been almost twenty-five years older, a man with very definite ideas about how an Omega should behave and very little patience whenever Marco failed to meet them, and because Marco had entered the marriage young and with a family who considered the match fortunate, it had taken him years to understand that the constant fear inside his own home was not something he was supposed to admit to anyone.

When his Alpha died, Marco had remained in that home with the family, because there was nowhere else for him to go and because everybody initially behaved as though his position there would continue much as it had before.

The truth emerged gradually through conversations about inheritance that Marco was permitted to attend but rarely invited to participate in. The house had belonged to the family before the marriage, the business would pass to his husband's brothers, various accounts and investments were apparently more complicated than Marco had ever been told, and although nobody intended to put a widowed Omega into the street, there was equally little enthusiasm for giving him enough to establish an independent household. His own family had been sympathetic until sympathy began to cost them something. There were brothers with wives, children and houses already arranged around their own lives, and Marco understood long before anyone said it plainly that returning permanently would make him an obligation.

Once the first suggestions of another suitable Alpha began appearing in conversation, he understood what was going to happen if he waited for everybody else to decide his future. The only part of his second marriage Marco had been determined to choose for himself was how far away it would take him.

He had written to Robert that night. Three months later, with nearly everything he still owned packed into one suitcase, Marco stepped down from the train and saw the Alpha who had agreed to marry him waiting near the far end of the platform.

Robert had not sent a photograph, nor had Marco, but there was very little doubt about who he was. The station was small enough that only a handful of people were waiting, and Robert stood apart from them in a dark coat with his hat pulled low against the wind, watching the passengers leave the train with the focused expression of someone searching for a person he would have to recognize without knowing what that person looked like.

Marco had imagined him older. Perhaps it was the farm, the land and the endless discussion of cattle in his letters, or perhaps Marco simply found it difficult not to imagine husbands as older men, but Robert looked very much his stated thirty-two years. He was tall and broad without the heaviness Marco associated with his late husband, and there was something contained about him even from a distance, as though he was no more comfortable with the absurdity of meeting a stranger he intended to marry than Marco was. Their eyes met while Marco was still standing beside the train. Robert hesitated before coming toward him, which oddly made Marco feel better.

"Marco Reus?"

The German sounded different in Robert's voice than it had in Marco's head while reading his letters, more heavily accented and less effortless, although perfectly understandable.

"Yes. You must be Robert."

"I wasn't sure I would recognize you."

Marco managed a small smile. "I had the advantage. There aren't many Polish farmers waiting for husbands at this station."

For a moment Robert seemed unsure whether Marco was joking, then his expression changed just enough around the eyes for Marco to think he had understood.

"The train was late, so I was beginning to wonder whether you had missed the connection."

"I nearly did. There were two platforms and I misunderstood the man who gave me directions, but somebody eventually took pity on me and showed me where to go."

Robert's attention dropped toward the suitcase at Marco's feet, and instead of simply taking it he reached for the handle only after asking whether Marco would let him carry it. Marco released it immediately.

"Of course, thank you."

The suitcase was heavier than it looked, and Marco expected Robert to comment when he lifted it, but Robert merely adjusted his grip and led the way from the platform. The wagon waiting beyond the station was plain and sturdy, attached to a dark horse that immediately turned its head when they approached. Marco slowed without meaning to, although he hoped Robert would assume he was only watching where he stepped. Robert put the suitcase into the back before noticing.

"You wrote that you weren't used to animals."

"I am not, although I didn't realize until today quite how large a horse is when there isn't a fence between us."

Robert glanced at the animal, which had done nothing more threatening than continue standing where it was.

"He's quiet. You don't need to worry about him."

Marco believed Robert considerably more than he believed the horse, so he approached when Robert offered his hand and allowed himself to be helped onto the wagon. Robert's grip remained beneath his forearm only until Marco was steady, after which he went around to the other side, climbed up and gathered the reins without the unnecessary touches Marco had spent the previous several minutes preparing himself to tolerate. They were well beyond the station before either of them spoke again.

Marco found himself watching the countryside while occasionally glancing at Robert from the corner of his eye, trying to reconcile the person beside him with the letters he knew almost by heart. Robert had always been more communicative on paper, though even there he rarely wasted words on sentiment, and in person he seemed uncertain how much conversation the occasion required.

He asked whether Marco had eaten and whether he was warm enough, explained how long the journey to the farm would take and pointed out the road that led toward the nearest town, but otherwise appeared content to let the silence sit between them. Marco eventually decided to try Polish, partly because he had spent four months learning it for precisely this reason and partly because he wanted Robert to know that the effort had not been wasted.

“Is the farm much farther from here?”

Robert turned toward him with visible surprise, although Marco could tell from the pause that he had probably put the sentence together imperfectly.

“Not much farther, perhaps another three quarters of an hour. Your Polish is better than I expected from the letters.”

Marco had to concentrate on the answer before replying, and even then he chose his words carefully.

“Writing is easier because I can look at the book. Speaking is difficult when people are fast.”

Robert slowed his own Polish noticeably. “Then I'll speak slowly until you don't need me to.”

Marco looked at him for a moment before returning his attention to the road. There was nothing particularly affectionate in the offer and Robert had said it in the same practical tone he might have used to discuss the weather, but Marco was beginning to suspect that practicality was the form most of Robert's consideration took. They switched back to German when Marco ran out of vocabulary, and the remainder of the journey passed quietly enough that Marco gradually stopped feeling responsible for filling every silence.

The farm came into view while there was still enough afternoon light for Marco to see how much larger it was than he had imagined. The house stood at the edge of a broad yard with a barn and several smaller buildings behind it, while fields extended in long strips beyond the fences until they met a distant line of trees. There were cattle in the nearest pasture and chickens wandering freely through the yard and all towards the front door, and farther back Marco could make out another horse moving behind a fence.

Robert drew the wagon to a stop beside the barn and looked toward Marco, whose attention had unfortunately become fixed on a cow that had approached the nearest fence.

"They aren't going to come into the house."

Marco turned back to him. "I wasn't worried about that."

Robert's gaze lingered on him long enough to suggest he knew perfectly well that Marco had been worried about something.

Before going inside, Robert showed him the property, keeping the tour brief because he still had work to finish before evening. He pointed out the barn and stable, showed Marco the well and vegetable garden, explained which fields belonged to him and which belonged to neighbours, and mentioned that several men occasionally helped during the busier periods of the year. When they came close to the paddock, the horse inside approached the fence with enough enthusiasm that Marco stopped several steps behind Robert. Robert rested a hand against the animal's neck and looked back.

"You don't have to come closer. I only wanted you to know where everything is."

Marco was grateful that he did not attempt to cure his discomfort by insisting he touch the animal. They moved on toward the barn, where the smell and sound of cattle made Marco equally reluctant to enter, although he managed to stand inside the doorway while Robert explained where the cows were kept during bad weather. Eventually Marco asked the question that had been worrying him since he first saw the extent of the property.

"How much of this am I supposed to help with?"

Robert looked genuinely puzzled. "The farm?"

"The animals, the fields and everything else outside. I know I wrote that I have no experience, but I can learn if that's what you expect."

Robert shook his head while answering in German so there could be no misunderstanding. "I asked for someone to share the household with me, not another farmhand. If you want to learn anything outside later, I'll show you, but I have men who help when I need them and I can manage the rest."

Marco tried not to show how relieved he was. "I can take care of the house."

"I assumed you would probably prefer that."

"I would."

Robert gave him a brief, thoughtful look before leading him inside.

The house was warm, plainly furnished and much tidier than Marco had expected from a bachelor farmer, although the kitchen cupboards quickly revealed that Robert's idea of organization was based almost entirely on whether an object fit into the available space. He showed Marco the pantry, the wash area, the room downstairs that was mostly used for storage and the stairs leading to two bedrooms above. Robert's mother, he explained while they went upstairs, lived with his older brother and his family several miles away, although she visited often enough that Marco understood he would meet her sooner rather than later. The larger bedroom was clearly Robert's. It was also clearly intended to become theirs.

Marco looked at the wide bed, the second space Robert had emptied in the wardrobe and the clean linens waiting near the washstand, and felt the nervousness he had managed to suppress throughout the journey return with uncomfortable force. Robert set his suitcase down.

"I have to go back outside for a few hours because I left work unfinished to meet the train, but there is food in the pantry if you're hungry. You can rest if you want."

Marco glanced toward the window, where the sinking sun made resting seem like an absurd suggestion. "I'll find something for dinner."

Robert seemed about to tell him that he didn't need to, but after looking at Marco for a moment he apparently thought better of it. "Whatever you find is fine. I'm not difficult with food."

Once Robert had gone, Marco remained upstairs only long enough to unpack before returning to the kitchen.

He needed the work. There was comfort in opening cupboards, identifying ingredients and learning where Robert had put things, because a kitchen obeyed rules Marco understood in a way this new marriage did not. He found potatoes, onions, carrots, preserved meat and enough herbs to make a stew, then discovered flour and began bread for the following day because the existing loaf was nearly gone. By the time Robert returned, the house smelled of dinner and Marco had set the table. Robert stopped just inside the kitchen, bringing cold air and the smell of earth in with him.

"You did all of this already?"

Marco became uncertain immediately. "I hope you don't mind. There was enough in the pantry, and I thought you would want something warm after working outside."

"I don't mind at all. Give me a moment to wash and I'll come back."

Dinner passed more easily than Marco expected, largely because Robert did not demand conversation from him. He ate everything Marco served, asked what Marco had used in the stew because it tasted different from the way he usually made it, and listened while Marco explained the herb mixture he knew from home. There were stretches when neither of them spoke, but Robert seemed comfortable enough with them that Marco gradually stopped searching for signs that he was expected to entertain him.

It was later, once the dishes were done and Robert had gone outside for one final check of the animals, that Marco began preparing for the part of the evening he understood considerably better.

He washed carefully and changed into the best nightshirt he had brought, brushed his hair until it lay properly and examined the faded mating scar near his neck before pulling the fabric slightly higher around it. Robert knew about the mark and had written months ago that a dead Alpha had no claim on Marco as far as he was concerned, but Marco still wondered whether seeing it in person might be different.

When Robert eventually came upstairs, he seemed tired enough that Marco almost felt guilty for expecting anything from him, although that did not change what Marco understood his responsibility to be.

Robert washed, changed and got into bed beside him. Marco waited for him to reach across the space between them.

Nothing happened for long enough that Marco began to wonder whether Robert expected him to make the first move, and eventually he gathered enough courage to speak into the darkness.

"Would you prefer me to turn around, or should I lie on my stomach?"

The mattress shifted slightly when Robert turned toward him, and Marco could feel his attention even though he could barely make out his face. Robert answered first in Polish, apparently forgetting for a moment that Marco could not follow him when he spoke quietly and without slowing himself down.

“I'm not going to force myself on you.”

Marco caught only enough to know that Robert had said something about himself and Marco, which did not help. "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that."

Robert remained quiet for a while before answering in German, and when he did, his voice sounded more uncomfortable than angry.

"You can sleep as you are. I'm tired, and you've travelled for three days, so there is no reason for either of us to do anything tonight."

Marco thanked him because he could think of nothing else to say, then turned toward the wall while Robert settled back onto his side of the bed. The relief that moved through Marco was so profound that it embarrassed him, especially because he had come here voluntarily and had spent four months assuring Robert that he understood what their marriage would eventually involve. He should have been grateful that Robert wanted him at all, and instead his body had been preparing itself for the night as though something terrible were about to happen.

Much later, when Robert's breathing had become deep and regular, Marco pressed his face carefully into the pillow and allowed himself to cry without making a sound. He could not have said exactly why he was crying, because relief was mixed with homesickness for a home he had hated, exhaustion from the journey and a growing humiliation that perhaps Robert's restraint had nothing to do with kindness at all.

Robert had not touched him at the station, had barely looked at him while Marco prepared for bed and had now gone to sleep with an untouched Omega lying beside him after deliberately advertising for a mate.

By the time Marco finally fell asleep, he had almost convinced himself that Robert simply did not find him attractive.

The following morning proved that whatever else Robert might think of him, he apparently had no intention of organizing his life according to the rules Marco already knew.

Marco woke to sunlight. For several disorienting seconds he remained beneath the blanket, trying to understand why the room looked unfamiliar, before the empty space beside him and the sight of his suitcase brought everything back at once. The light coming through the window was far too bright for early morning, and when he hurried downstairs and found the clock, the hands were already approaching ten.

Panic made him fully awake in an instant.

His former husband had expected him downstairs in the morning regardless of how late they had gone to bed, and Marco could remember more than one occasion when illness had been treated as an inconvenience rather than a reason to leave breakfast unattended. He had arrived in Robert's home only yesterday and had already allowed the Alpha to wake, dress, eat whatever he could find and begin work while his new Omega slept half the morning away.

Marco dressed with shaking hands, found no sign of Robert inside and immediately began preparing lunch, because there was nothing he could do about breakfast anymore. He was slicing bread when voices outside made him look toward the window. Robert was crossing the yard with another Alpha. Marco had seen large men before, but the blond stranger beside Robert seemed excessive in almost every respect, taller by several inches and broad enough that the shirt beneath his work clothes pulled across his shoulders. He was speaking animatedly in Polish while Robert listened, and although Marco could not hear the words through the window, the stranger's laughter carried easily across the yard.

Robert came inside alone several minutes later, while the blond Alpha remained near the door and waved when he noticed Marco watching. Marco raised his hand uncertainly.

Robert glanced behind him. “Go home, Erling. You have your own work.”

The blond Alpha answered something that made Robert look tired rather than angry, laughed again and finally walked off across the yard. Marco waited until he had disappeared before asking who he was.

"Erling Haaland. He has his own fields not far from here, but he works for me and some of the other farms when we need extra hands because he and his mate are still trying to establish themselves."

Robert noticed the food Marco had prepared and frowned slightly. "I thought you would still be sleeping."

Marco stared at him. "At ten?"

"You travelled for three days and barely slept on the trains. I didn't see a reason to wake you."

Marco could think of several reasons, all of which had once seemed so obvious that explaining them now felt impossible. "I should have made breakfast."

"There was bread." Robert said it without accusation, apparently considering the existence of bread a complete solution to the problem. Marco looked down at what he was preparing. Robert washed his hands and came to the table, and while they ate Marco eventually asked about the blond Alpha again, partly because he wanted to move the conversation away from his own failure.

"You said he came here with his mate. Is his family from this area?"

"Neither family is. They came here because there was trouble after they mated, and Erling needed somewhere far enough away that their relatives would eventually stop looking for them."

Marco paused over his food. "What kind of trouble?"

Robert considered how to explain it before answering. "He stole his Omega away."

Marco's attention immediately returned to him. Robert apparently saw the alarm on his face because he added that there was more to the story than that, but before he could explain further somebody outside called for him and he pushed his chair back. Marco watched him leave. Then he looked through the window toward the fields where the enormous blond Alpha had disappeared. Whatever else Robert might eventually tell him, Marco found it difficult to imagine a harmless explanation for stealing an Omega from his family.Still, the story wouldn't leave his thoughts.

They were halfway through dinner on the seventh evening when Marco heard a horse coming into the yard, followed by voices outside that were loud enough to reach them through the closed windows.

Robert stopped eating and listened for a moment, then set his fork down with the expression of a man who had just realized his quiet evening was over. Marco had barely asked what was happening when somebody knocked on the door. Robert went to answer it, and Marco recognized Erling as soon as the door opened. The blond Alpha stood beside a horse in the fading evening light, but he was not alone.

There was an Omega with him, apparently pregnant beneath his coat, whom Erling was currently trying to help down as though dismounting were a complicated procedure requiring both of his hands and his complete concentration. The Omega clearly disagreed.

"Erling, I can get off a horse by myself. You've watched me do it before."

Erling said something too quickly for Marco to follow, although his hands remained firmly at the Omega's waist until he was safely on the ground.

Robert looked as though he had no opinion on the matter at all. He simply stood aside to let them in. Marco knew immediately who the Omega had to be, and the realization made him sit a little straighter. This was Jude. For almost a week, Marco had been quietly thinking about the story Robert had told him. He had seen Erling several times since then, usually working somewhere with Robert or crossing the fields in the distance, and each time Marco had remembered that this enormous, cheerful Alpha had apparently stolen his mate away from his family.

The Omega Marco had imagined had been rather different from the one who now walked into Robert's kitchen, took one look at Marco and immediately smiled.

"So you do exist!" The German startled Marco almost as much as the greeting itself.

Jude noticed his surprise and laughed. "We lived in Germany for two years after we left home. You can speak normally with me." Behind him, Robert scoffed and Erling was taking off his coat.

"Hello, welcome. I'm Marco."

Robert had meanwhile closed the door and was looking at the two unexpected visitors with considerably less enthusiasm than Marco was. Jude seemed not to notice, or perhaps he simply knew Robert well enough not to care.

"You have had him here for a week," he told Robert, returning to Polish. "A whole week, Levy. I was beginning to think you were hiding him."

"I've been working."

"Everyone has been working. That isn't a reason not to introduce your husband to anybody."

Robert looked toward Erling, perhaps expecting some support, but Erling had already noticed the bread on the table and was reaching for a piece. Jude turned back towards him with a brilliant smile. "Anyways. I'm Jude and this is Erling. It's so good to finally meet you."

Before Marco could offer anything, Robert was already taking two additional plates from the cupboard.

"There's enough," Marco said quickly, getting to his feet. "I made more than we needed."

"You didn't know they were coming."

"It will still be enough." Marco took the plates from him and began serving while Robert found another chair. Erling sat down without hesitation, whereas Jude lowered himself much more carefully and immediately pushed Erling's hand away when the Alpha tried to help.

Marco served Erling first, then Jude, and had just returned to the stove when Jude called after him in German. "Are you going to eat too?"

"Yes, of course. I'm only getting more bread."

"There is bread."

By the time he came back, Robert had disappeared into the pantry and returned with a bottle and two small glasses. He poured something amber for himself and Erling, then brought Jude the fruit drink Marco had found earlier in the week. Jude accepted it without comment, which made Marco suspect that this was a familiar arrangement. Dinner resumed with four people instead of two, although Marco barely managed to eat for the first several minutes.

Jude had questions about everything, and Marco found himself answering them while passing bread, refilling Jude's bowl and getting up once more when Erling asked if there was any more stew. There was, fortunately.

Jude wanted to know where Marco had lived, how terrible the three-day journey had been, whether he understood Robert when Robert forgot to slow his Polish down, and what Marco thought of the farm.

"The house is lovely," Marco said as he sat down again. Jude waited. Marco knew exactly what he was waiting for. "The animals are... taking longer."

Robert looked into his glass, but Marco noticed. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Oh. He told you."

Robert did not need to answer because Erling was already smiling. Jude looked delighted.

"Is this about the chickens?" 

"They asked why you ran across the yard."

Marco smiled, not knowing what to say. "I did not run across the yard."

Robert lifted his eyes to him, and Marco could see enough amusement there that he knew arguing about the exact speed of his retreat would accomplish nothing.

"...The chicken was following me," he explained to Jude instead. "I didn't know they did that."

"They do when they think you have food."

"I had already given them the food. There was no reason to continue following me."

Jude laughed loudly enough that Erling joined in despite probably understanding only half of the German conversation. Marco tried to look offended, but it was difficult when Robert was hiding a smile behind his glass. The conversation moved on, and Marco gradually became less conscious of the fact that there were two Alphas at the table. Jude made that surprisingly easy. He spoke to Marco as though they had already decided to like one another, occasionally slipping into Polish when talking to Robert or Erling and then returning to German without hesitation. What Marco could not stop noticing was the way he behaved with Erling.

Jude was not disrespectful, exactly, but he certainly was not careful. When Erling interrupted to correct some detail about their time in Germany, Jude waved him off and continued his story. When Erling reached across to put more meat onto his plate, Jude moved half of it straight back again because he had already said he was full. Erling complained about that in Polish, Jude told him he was welcome to eat it himself, and a minute later they were discussing something else as though nothing had happened.

Marco kept waiting for some small sign that Jude knew when he had gone too far. There never seemed to be one. Even stranger was the fact that Erling did not appear to require it. He was attentive to Jude almost constantly, though so casually that Marco doubted either of them noticed anymore. He moved Jude's glass closer when it drifted out of reach, kept an arm along the back of his chair, and noticed immediately when Jude shifted with a small grimace.

"Your back?" Erling asked. Jude nodded, and Erling's hand moved down to rub at the place without interrupting the conversation. Marco looked at them for a little too long.

This was not what he had imagined when Robert said Erling had stolen his Omega. Jude caught him watching, although if he found it strange, he gave no indication. Instead he asked Marco whether Robert had taken him into town yet.

"Only from the station. I haven't seen anything else."

Jude turned immediately toward Robert. "You've had him here for seven days."

Robert continued eating. "I know how many days he's been here."

"And he hasn't even seen the town?"

"We've had work."

Marco nearly pointed out that they had not had work because Robert had specifically forbidden him from helping with the farm, but he decided it was safer not to involve himself. Robert looked at him instead.

"We have to go tomorrow anyway."

Marco paused. "For the registration?"

Robert nodded. "After the animals are fed. It shouldn't take long, and afterward we can stay for a while so you can see the town properly."

Marco had expected the registration. Robert had explained before he arrived that there would still be papers to complete once he was here. He had not expected the second part. "We can stay?"

"If you want to."

Marco lowered his eyes to his plate because his pleasure at the suggestion felt embarrassingly obvious. "I'd like that."

Jude seemed satisfied and returned to his food. A little later, Marco began clearing the table while the others were still finishing their drinks. Jude offered to help, but Marco refused before he could even get out of his chair, pointing out that he had ridden all the way there while pregnant and could at least remain seated long enough to finish what Robert had poured him. Jude looked amused by being ordered about in somebody else's house, but he stayed where he was.

Marco carried the dishes away while continuing to answer his questions from across the kitchen. It was strange how easy the conversation had become. Jude's German meant Marco did not have to plan every response, and Jude seemed perfectly capable of talking enough for both of them whenever Marco became quiet. Behind them, Robert and Erling had settled into their drinks, speaking in Polish about something to do with work the following week. Every now and then Jude interrupted them from across the table to correct something, even while Marco was speaking to him. Nobody appeared surprised when he did. Marco was beginning to think that might be the strangest part of all.

Much later, when the house was quiet again and they were lying in bed, Lewy asked whether Marco had liked them.

Marco thought briefly of Jude talking across the dinner table as though they had known each other much longer than an evening, and of Erling quietly moving his chair away from the draft while Jude complained about being fussed over.

"Yes," he said, settling a little more comfortably beneath the blanket. "I liked them."

Lewy seemed satisfied with that, and after wishing him goodnight, he turned onto his side. The space between them remained as it had every night since Marco arrived, neither of them reaching across it, although tonight Marco found himself noticing it a little less.

Marco was awake before Robert the following morning. He remained still for a while after realizing it, listening to the quiet breathing beside him and watching the first grey light appear around the curtains. They had gone to bed later than usual after Erling and Jude left, and Marco had expected Robert to sleep longer because of it, but habit apparently reached him even in sleep.

Within a few minutes he stirred, opened his eyes and looked briefly confused to find Marco already awake. "Good morning."

"Good morning."

Robert pushed the blanket aside and sat up. Marco did the same, although he stayed on the edge of the bed while Robert began dressing.

"We don't have to leave particularly early," Robert said. "I need to feed the cows first, and then we can go."

Marco nodded. "I'll make breakfast."

Robert glanced at him while buttoning his shirt. "You could sleep another hour."

"I'm already awake."

Robert did not argue. Marco was grateful for that. He had thought about the town several times before falling asleep, which felt faintly ridiculous now that morning had arrived. There was nothing remarkable about going somewhere to sign papers, and he had lived in towns considerably larger than the one Robert had described. Still, he found himself choosing his clothes more carefully than usual after breakfast. He brushed his coat, changed his shirt twice and eventually stood in front of the small mirror upstairs wondering whether the second one actually looked any better than the first.

He was fixing his hair when Robert appeared in the doorway. "The wagon is ready."

Marco turned. "I'm coming."

Robert's eyes moved over him briefly before he stepped back into the hall. "You look nice."

Marco looked at himself in the mirror again after Robert had gone. It was a simple compliment, offered almost absent-mindedly, and yet he found himself smoothing the front of his shirt once more before following him downstairs.

The journey into town felt much shorter than the one from the station had a week earlier. Perhaps it was because Marco recognized parts of the road now, or because he no longer had a suitcase beside him and the sick feeling of wondering what would be waiting at the other end. They spoke a little more as well. Robert pointed out the road toward his brother's farm and another leading to Erling and Jude's cottage, then showed Marco where several neighbouring properties began and ended. When they passed a small church, Marco asked about it in Polish, and Robert answered in the same language, slowing himself automatically whenever Marco's expression showed that he was losing track.

By the time they reached town, Marco had almost forgotten why they were going there. He remembered as soon as Robert stopped outside the administrative building.

The papers.

Marco followed him inside. The office was warmer than the street and smelled faintly of ink, paper and smoke from the stove in the corner. There was nobody waiting, and the man behind the desk looked up as they entered.

"Lewy."

The other Alpha was somewhere around their age, perhaps a little younger, with fair hair and a neat appearance that made him look distinctly out of place beside Robert's work-worn coat. He said something to Robert in Polish about finally bringing the mysterious new husband into town, then looked at Marco. His expression changed slightly.

"Marco Reus?" Marco stared at him. The German was effortless.

"Yes."

The man smiled. "Toni Kroos. It's nice to hear someone from home again."

The relief Marco felt was immediate and stronger than he expected. After a week of concentrating on Polish whenever Robert was not speaking German for his benefit, hearing somebody use his own language so naturally made something inside him loosen. Then Toni came around the desk. Marco caught his scent. Alpha. His body reacted before his mind had properly registered it.

He moved slightly toward Robert and clasped his hands in front of himself, suddenly much more conscious of the unfamiliar man approaching. Toni stopped at a perfectly polite distance. If he noticed the reaction, he gave no indication.

"I have most of the paperwork prepared already. Lewy came in before you arrived and made sure we had everything."

Marco looked at Robert. "You did?"

"It was easier than bringing you here and discovering something was missing."

That was sensible enough that Marco should probably have expected it. Toni returned to his desk and motioned for them to sit.

The process itself was less ceremonial than Marco had imagined. There were names, dates and places of birth to confirm, Robert's property and household to record, and several questions Toni translated into German even when Marco understood the Polish version. He seemed to move between the two languages without thinking about it, speaking Polish to Robert one moment and German to Marco the next. Everyone else called Robert Lewy, apparently. Toni did it so naturally that Marco began to wonder how long it would take before he stopped looking around for another person whenever he heard the name. Then Toni placed another document in front of him.

"I need your signature here."

Marco reached for the pen. His eyes moved over the page first. His own name was there, followed by Robert's, and beneath it the space where Marco was expected to sign. For a moment, the office seemed quieter than it had been before. The last time papers concerning Marco's marriage had been placed in front of him, there had always been somebody else explaining what had already been decided. His father, his husband, one of his husband's brothers.

Even after the funeral, documents had appeared that Marco was expected to acknowledge without truly having any power over what they contained.

He looked at Robert. Robert was waiting. He did not tell him to sign. Toni did not either.

Marco lowered the pen to the paper and wrote his name. When he was finished, Toni took the document back, checked it and added it to the others.

"There. That was the important one."

Marco rubbed his thumb against the side of his finger where a little ink had stained it. "That's all?"

"Almost. I need Lewy to sign one more thing, and then you're free."

Robert took the pen and Marco watched him sign.

Something about seeing both their names on the same papers made the entire arrangement suddenly more real than sleeping beside him for the past seven nights had managed to do.

They were married.

Toni finished whatever still needed to be done, gathered the documents and explained which copies they would receive. Marco listened carefully until Toni mentioned that he could come back if he ever needed anything explained or required help with official German paperwork. Marco glanced at Robert before answering. Again, the movement happened without thought. Robert caught it this time.

"Of course you can come here if you need something," he said. "You don't have to ask me."

Marco felt Toni's eyes on him and immediately wished the floor would open beneath his chair.

"Okay."

Robert looked as though he was not entirely convinced, but thankfully he did not pursue it. Toni only returned to organizing the papers. A few minutes later, they were outside again. Marco drew a deep breath of cold air. Robert looked at him.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. I thought it would be more complicated."

"Toni likes making things sound complicated because it makes him feel important."

Marco glanced back toward the building. "Does he?"

Robert's mouth moved slightly. "No."

Marco realized a second too late that he had been teased. He looked at Robert, but the Alpha had already begun walking. Marco hurried after him. The main street was busier now than it had been when he arrived by train, although busy was perhaps generous. There were several shops, a bakery, an inn, a butcher and a few carts moving between people on foot. Marco was taking everything in when he noticed an elderly woman standing outside the bakery looking directly at him. He smiled politely. She smiled back. Then she turned and called something through the open door. Another woman appeared. Marco kept walking.

"Robert."

"Hm?"

"Why are they looking at me?"

Robert glanced toward the bakery, where both women suddenly became very interested in a basket of bread. "You're new."

"That cannot be enough to make two grown women come outside."

Robert considered this. "You're also foreign, basically. And an Omega," Robert added.

"That doesn't help."

"And you married me."

Marco stared at him. "Is that the interesting part?"

"Lewy! Is that our new bride?" came a shout down the street.

Robert raised a hand in acknowledgement. A man outside the butcher's was staring at him too.

"This is awful."

Robert finally smiled. Not much, but enough for Marco to see it. "You wanted to see the town."

"I wanted to see the town. I didn't know the town wanted to see me."

That earned him a quiet laugh. It was the first time Marco had heard it. 

Once Marco stopped paying attention to everyone who looked at him, he began to enjoy himself. The town was small enough that Robert seemed to know almost everybody they passed. Robert showed him the places that would actually be useful first. There was a general store where Marco could buy most things for the house, a butcher Robert trusted, and a bakery that Robert claimed was unnecessarily expensive despite buying bread there when he was too busy to make the trip home for lunch. Marco was surprised when Robert also pointed out which shopkeepers spoke German, apparently having thought about this before bringing him. They had just left a small shop selling fabric and household goods when Marco noticed the horses farther along the road. There were several gathered near a large stable at the edge of town, and Marco instinctively slowed. Robert noticed immediately.

"We aren't going to the horses."

"I'm not afraid of every horse I see."

Robert looked at him, then toward the animals. Marco adjusted his coat. "I only noticed them."

"Of course." Marco was beginning to recognize that particular tone.

A man emerged from the stable before they reached it, wiping his hands on a cloth as he came toward them. He was an Alpha, which Marco could tell even before he was close enough to scent properly, and there was something about him that made Marco instinctively move nearer to Robert. He was dark-haired and strongly built, with a face that seemed severe even when he was not frowning. The man's expression changed when he saw Robert.

"Lewy, I thought that was you."

Robert greeted him with considerably more warmth than Marco had expected, and they exchanged a few words about one of the horses before the man's attention shifted toward Marco.

Robert seemed to remember his manners. "Marco, this is Sergio. He and his family have land south of ours, and he works with the horses here as well."

Sergio offered his hand rather than coming any closer. His German was heavily accented, but understandable.

"It's good to finally meet you. We've heard quite a lot about Lewy's German husband."

Marco shook his hand carefully. "I hope not too much."

Sergio smiled, and the change made him look considerably less frightening. Before Marco could decide whether that was reassuring, someone called Sergio's name from inside the stable. An Omega appeared a moment later. He was fair-haired and slight, dressed much more practically than Marco would have expected from someone married to an Alpha who apparently owned land, and there was a streak of dirt along one sleeve where he had clearly been doing something near the horses.

He said something quickly to Sergio in Polish before noticing Marco. His entire attention shifted.

"Oh, you're Marco."

Marco understood that easily enough and answered in Polish. "Yes. It's nice to meet you."

The Omega smiled. "I'm Luka."

He continued speaking, but much faster now, and Marco managed perhaps half of the next sentence before losing him completely.

"I'm sorry," he said in German. "My Polish isn't that good yet."

Luka switched to German immediately, although his was clearly less comfortable than Jude's.

"Mine is not very good either." Marco smiled. "Then between us we might manage one language."

Luka laughed, and the small awkwardness disappeared. Robert and Sergio had already returned to discussing horses, leaving Marco and Luka beside them.

Marco was grateful for it. Luka was quieter than Jude had been the night before and seemed content to let the conversation develop slowly, asking how Marco was settling in and whether he had ever lived somewhere so rural before. When Marco admitted that he had not, Luka glanced toward the stable.

"You don't like horses?"

Marco wondered how everybody kept discovering this. "I don't know them very well."

"You can come here sometime. I'll show you the quiet ones."

Marco looked toward the nearest horse, which was currently pushing its enormous head over a fence. "I think I would prefer to begin with something smaller."

Luka followed his gaze and laughed. "We have a pony."

Marco wasn't entirely sure that was what he had meant. Sergio came over while they were talking and handed Luka a pair of gloves he had apparently left somewhere. Luka thanked him, then immediately pointed out a tear along one finger and told Sergio that he had promised to repair it. Sergio examined the glove before answering in Polish. "I said I would do it tonight."

"You said that yesterday."

"Then I will definitely do it tonight." Luka gave him a look that suggested he had heard this before, but there was no tension in the exchange. Sergio tucked the damaged glove into his own pocket and touched Luka briefly at the back as he moved past him, already returning to his conversation with Robert.

Marco watched him go. The interaction had been so ordinary that nobody else appeared to have thought anything of it.

Luka had corrected his Alpha in front of other people, and Sergio had simply accepted the complaint and taken the glove with him. After Jude the previous evening, Marco was beginning to wonder whether he had somehow found the only village in Posen where Omegas did whatever they pleased. Luka turned back to him.

"We should go into town together one day. Have you met your neighbors? Jude comes sometimes too, although he walks very slowly now and complains the whole way."

Marco smiled at the thought. "Oh, yeah. I can imagine that."

"There isn't much here, but it is better when you have somebody with you."

The invitation pleased Marco more than he expected. He had not thought much about friendship before coming here. His attention had been occupied by Robert, the marriage and the far more immediate question of whether he had made a terrible mistake. The possibility that there might be people here who wanted his company had barely occurred to him.

"I'd like that. Perhaps when Robert and Sergio have time for us to go."

Luka looked at him with mild confusion. "Sergio doesn't have to come."

"No, I meant when they agree that we can."

The confusion remained. Marco wondered whether his German had been unclear, although Luka had understood everything else. Before either of them could explain further, a child around eight years called for Luca from isndie their stable. 

"We'll arrange it later. Jude will probably arrange it for us if we don't."

That sounded entirely believable after the previous evening. Marco smiled and said goodbye, while Luka hurried back toward the stable.

As Marco and Robert continued along the road, Marco glanced behind them once. Sergio was holding the stable door open while Luka spoke to him, apparently still discussing the damaged glove. Whatever Luka said made Sergio shake his head with a smile before following him inside.

Marco turned forward again. Robert had been quiet since they left.

"What?" Robert glanced at him.

"I didn't say anything."

"You looked at me."

"I was wondering why Sergio and I need to agree before you can go into town with Luka." Marco felt his steps slow slightly.

"Because Luka asked me to go with him."

"I heard that."

Marco waited for the rest of the question, but Robert seemed to be waiting for an explanation instead.

"I assumed we would ask you first."

Robert was silent for a moment, and Marco immediately wondered whether he had said something foolish. When Robert answered, his voice was calm.

"You don't need my permission to go into town, Marco. If you want to go somewhere with Luka, you can go."

Marco looked at him. It seemed too simple, and perhaps Robert saw that in his face because he continued before Marco could respond.

"I'd like to know where you are so I don't worry if you don't come home when I expect you, but that's different from asking whether you're allowed to leave."

Marco nodded slowly. He understood the words perfectly well. It was what to do with them that was more difficult. "All right."

Robert watched him for another moment, then continued walking without asking why Marco had assumed otherwise. Marco followed beside him. For the rest of the way through town, he found himself thinking less about the shops and considerably more about the fact that apparently, if Luka came to the house tomorrow and asked him to go somewhere, Marco could simply put on his coat and leave with him. He wasn't sure he believed that yet.

Still, he liked knowing Robert had said it.

Over the next few days, Robert began building something beside the barn.

Marco noticed the first morning because Robert carried several lengths of timber across the yard before breakfast and left them stacked near the fence. By the afternoon there were posts in the ground, and the following day he came home from the fields early enough to spend the last hours of daylight working on whatever it was becoming.

Marco did not ask. There was always something being repaired or replaced on the farm, and Robert seemed to have an endless list of things that required his attention. A loose hinge appeared to offend him personally. He had already fixed the latch on the pantry door without mentioning it and replaced a cracked board on the back steps that Marco had barely noticed. By the third evening, however, Marco could see wire stretched between the posts and a small wooden shelter taking shape against one side. He stood at the kitchen window with a dishcloth in his hands and watched Robert fasten another section of wire. The chickens wandered around his boots while he worked. 

The following afternoon, Robert moved them. Marco watched from the safety of the doorway while he carried the birds one after another into the enclosure. They protested loudly, flapped their wings and behaved as though Robert were committing a terrible crime against them, but eventually all of them were contained behind the wire. Robert closed the gate, tested the latch twice and then stood back to inspect his work.

The yard looked strangely empty. For the first time since Marco had arrived, there were no chickens scratching beside the steps, wandering beneath the kitchen window or appearing without warning when he opened the front door. Robert collected his tools and started toward the barn.

"Robert?"

He stopped. Marco looked from him to the enclosure. "Did you build that because of me?"

Robert glanced toward the chickens as though there might be some other explanation. "They kept frightening you."

Marco felt an immediate need to defend himself. "I wasn't frightened every time."

"You wouldn't use the front door yesterday because two of them were standing on the step."

"...They were blocking it."

"They weigh less than your boots."

Marco gave him a look, but there was no real mockery in Robert's face. He shifted the tools under his arm and nodded toward the new enclosure. "They need to be kept in one place anyway. This is better. We'll let them out when you don't mind them." It was said so matter-of-factly that Marco could almost have believed Robert had been planning it all along. Almost.

"Thank you."

Robert gave a small nod before continuing toward the barn.

The next morning Marco carried the kitchen scraps outside without checking through the window first. He realized that halfway across the yard.

Usually he had developed a ridiculous little routine around the chickens. He would look outside before leaving the house, locate as many of them as possible and then choose whichever route allowed him to avoid them. More than once, he had gone through the back when they had gathered near the front entrance. Now they were all behind the wire. Marco approached the enclosure with considerably more confidence than he had ever approached a loose chicken. Several of them noticed the bowl in his hands and came running toward the fence. He stopped automatically.

They stopped at the wire. Marco looked down at them. "That's much better."

The chickens did not seem to agree.

He opened the small hatch Robert had made along the side and tipped the scraps into the feeding tray. The birds immediately crowded around it, pecking furiously at potato peelings, bits of cabbage and the ends of carrots. Marco closed the hatch and remained there. There was something rather different about them when they could not suddenly run at his feet. From this side of the fence, he could watch them properly. One of the smaller hens managed to steal a piece of cabbage from another and hurried away with it, only to be pursued around the enclosure until she dropped it. Another had somehow climbed onto the roof of the little shelter and appeared uncertain what to do now that she was there. Marco leaned against the fence.

"You aren't very clever, are you?" One of them looked at him.

He stayed until they had eaten almost everything.

The following day he brought their scraps again, and this time he did not step back when they hurried toward him. He had begun recognizing them, although he would have denied this if Robert asked. There was the small brown one who stole food, a speckled hen who seemed to spend most of her time trying to escape the others, and an enormous white one Marco remained suspicious of because she stared at him far too intently.

On the third morning, he saved a heel of bread specifically for them. He tore it into pieces before taking it outside. The brown hen was first to the tray.

"I knew you would be."

He was still watching them when he heard Robert crossing the yard behind him. Marco turned and found him carrying two empty milk pails. Robert's eyes moved from Marco to the chickens and then back again.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Robert continued toward the barn, although Marco was almost certain he saw the corner of his mouth move.

By dinner that evening, Marco had decided he wanted to thank him properly. Robert came in later than usual and washed at the basin while Marco put the last of the food on the table. He looked tired, with dirt still beneath his fingernails and a smear of something dark along one sleeve, and Marco suddenly thought about the hours he had spent building the enclosure after already working all day. He waited until they were eating before speaking.

"I wanted to thank you again."

Robert looked up from his plate. "For what?"

"The chicken coop."

"You already thanked me."

"I know, but I didn't realize how much better it would be."

Robert continued eating, apparently content to let Marco explain. "I took their food out this morning, and I stayed for a while. They're not so bad when they aren't able to follow me."

"They were following you because you fed them."

"I understand that now."  After a moment, he added "I think the brown one is my favourite."

That got Robert's attention. "The brown one?"

"The smaller one. She steals from the others."

"Oh, lord.." Robert only said, taking another bite of his food. "Now that you know and like them, I won't be allowed to use them anymore, will I?"

Robert's expression softened, and Marco realized that he was smiling too.

It was easier after that.

They talked about the chickens for a while, which somehow led to Robert telling him about the first cow he had been given responsibility for as a boy and how he had cried when his father sold her. Marco found this difficult to reconcile with the man sitting across from him now, and Robert clearly regretted telling him as soon as Marco began asking questions about a twelve-year-old Robert crying over a cow. The conversation moved on to the farm, and Marco admitted that he knew almost nothing about what Robert actually did during the hours he was gone. Robert explained some of it, and Marco found himself asking more questions than he normally would. He learned which fields belonged to Robert and which belonged to his brothers, why Erling sometimes appeared before sunrise and disappeared again before lunch, and why Robert had spent most of the previous week complaining quietly about rain only to become equally dissatisfied when there had been none for three days.

By the time their plates were empty, neither of them got up immediately. Marco sat with his hands around his cup and listened while Robert told him about one of the horses getting loose the previous winter. There was something unexpectedly pleasant about discovering that Robert could talk quite a lot when given a subject he knew well. He was still reserved, still inclined to think before answering, but the silence between his sentences no longer made Marco wonder whether he had said something wrong.

Eventually Robert glanced toward the dark window and seemed to realize how late it had become. "We should sleep."

Marco agreed, although he found himself almost disappointed that the evening was over.

Upstairs, everything was as it had been every night since his arrival.

They changed, climbed beneath the blankets and settled on their respective sides of the bed. Robert wished him goodnight, and Marco answered him. The familiar space remained between them. Marco lay awake for a little while, but tonight his thoughts did not return to his first husband or to the questions that had troubled him since arriving here. Instead he thought about fresh timber and wire, about Robert spending his evenings building an entire enclosure because Marco was frightened of a handful of chickens, and about the fact that Robert had never once made him feel foolish for it when it actually mattered.

Four months earlier, Marco had sat with Robert's first letter in his hands and tried to choose between men he had never met. He had known almost nothing about any of them beyond what they chose to put on paper. In the end, distance had decided much of it. Robert had lived far away, farther than anyone Marco knew, and that had seemed reason enough to keep answering him. Perhaps he had been lucky.

Marco turned his head slightly on the pillow and looked at the shape of Robert in the darkness.

He had chosen a good Alpha.

The thought settled somewhere warm inside him, and for the first time since leaving home, Marco allowed himself to believe it without immediately wondering how long it would last.

Luka came to visit three days later with a toddler on his hip and a basket over his other arm. Marco saw them through the kitchen window before he heard the knock.

Luka was trying to keep hold of the child while simultaneously closing the gate behind himself, and neither task was being made easier by the little boy twisting around to stare at the chickens. By the time Marco opened the door, Luka had managed the gate but lost the argument about walking. The boy was on the ground and heading determinedly toward the coop.

"Sorry," Luka said, shifting the basket into his other hand. "He saw the chickens."

Marco looked toward the child, who had stopped directly in front of the wire and was now speaking to them with great seriousness. "He's welcome to them."

"That's Tomas. He's my youngest."

Marco remembered Sergio mentioning children when they met in town, although he had not known how many. "Where are the others?"

"School. Which is why I brought this one. He's the only one still small enough to follow me everywhere."

"New coup, is it?"

"Robert built this because they kept frightening me." Marco answered with a smile.

"Really?"

"He worked on it after the fields for several days."

Luka's amusement softened. "That sounds like Lewy. Good for you."

Something about the way he said it pleased Marco.

They eventually persuaded Tomas away from the chickens with the promise of something to eat, and Marco brought them inside. Luka had brought a small cake from the bakery, which he claimed was the only reason he had been able to convince Tomas to leave town without Sergio. Marco made coffee while Luka settled the boy at the kitchen table with a piece of cake and strict instructions not to dismantle it before eating it. Tomas dismantled it immediately.

Marco liked having them there. He had become accustomed to the quiet of the house, but the presence of a child changed it completely.

Tomas talked constantly in Polish, most of it too quick and indistinct for Marco to understand, and Luka translated whenever necessary. Within half an hour there were crumbs beneath the table, a wooden spoon had disappeared from the kitchen, and Marco had been shown the same smooth stone from Tomas's pocket four separate times. He admired it every time.

"He's usually at home with me," Luka explained while Marco refilled their cups. "The others are gone most of the day now. Next year he'll start too, and then I suppose I'll finally have a quiet house."

"You don't sound pleased about it."

"I'm going to be miserable."

Marco smiled and sat opposite him again. Tomas had abandoned his cake and was now pushing two pieces of crust around the table as though they were horses. Luka watched him for a moment.

"He'll probably be our last."

"Probably?"

Luka sighed. "Sergio would have six more if I agreed."

Marco looked at him in surprise. "Six?"

"He says four isn't a large family."

"You have four already?"

"Three in school and this menace." Tomas looked up at the sound of his mother's voice, smiled broadly and returned to his bread. Marco had assumed Tomas was one of perhaps two. Four seemed an enormous number of children to him, particularly when Luka did not look much older than Marco.

"Does Sergio really want more?"

"Of course he does. Sergio likes babies. He gets to hold them when they're clean and happy and then walks around looking very proud of himself."

Marco laughed. Luka took another drink of coffee before adding, "Unfortunately for Sergio, he isn't the one pushing them out, so he doesn't get much say in it."

Marco nearly choked. Luka looked perfectly content with what he had said. "You tell him that?"

"I've told him exactly that."

"And he doesn't mind?"

"He can mind as much as he wants. I'm still not having another baby just because he likes the idea of one." There was no challenge in Luka's voice and no indication that this was some ongoing battle within their marriage. He spoke about Sergio wanting more children in the same way he might have spoken about Sergio wanting a different horse or another field. They disagreed. Luka had decided. Apparently that was the end of it.

Marco looked down into his coffee. He was still finding these things everywhere. Jude could tell Erling to stop fussing over him. Luka could decide whether he would have another child. Robert could be told that dinner was late or that Marco disliked something, and nothing terrible seemed to happen afterward. Perhaps Marco had known, abstractly, that other households were different. Knowing it and sitting at a kitchen table while another Omega laughed about telling his Alpha that his opinion did not matter were not quite the same thing.

"Did your first Alpha have children?"

The question caught off guard him so completely that he looked up at once.

Luka's expression changed. "I'm sorry. You don't have to answer that."

"No, it's all right." Marco wrapped both hands around his cup. "He didn't."

Luka waited, and because he did not immediately ask anything else, Marco found himself continuing. "He didn't like children very much."

That was one way of putting it. For an instant Marco remembered another kitchen, considerably larger than this one, and a voice from the adjoining room raised loudly enough that everyone in the house could hear it. He remembered being told that children were expensive, inconvenient and noisy, and that a man of his husband's age had no interest in beginning all of that now. He remembered standing with one hand over a stomach that had not yet changed enough for anybody else to notice.

Marco pushed the memory away.

"Was he much older than you?" Luka asked.

"Twenty-five years."

Luka's fingers tightened slightly around his cup. Marco noticed because Luka immediately relaxed them again.

"I was seventeen when we married," Marco continued. "He was already established. His family owned quite a lot, and I moved into their house."

"His family lived there too?"

"His mother and one of his brothers. Another brother lived nearby."

"That must have been crowded."

"It was a large house." Marco smiled faintly, because that seemed to make the distinction clear. There had always been enough rooms. Privacy had been the thing in short supply.

Luka glanced toward Tomas, who was now trying to balance a third piece of bread on top of the first two. "How long were you married?"

"Nearly twelve years."

"And then he died?"

Marco nodded. "Last winter."

"I'm sorry."

"...He had been ill for a while." Marco only replied. 

Luka looked at him for a moment before taking another drink. Marco appreciated that too. People usually expected grief from a widowed Omega. His own family had certainly expected it, particularly when there were neighbours present. He had become very good at lowering his eyes at the right moment and allowing people to imagine whatever sorrow seemed appropriate. Luka did not ask whether Marco missed him.

Instead he asked, "Did you stay with his family after?"

"For a few months."

"Was the house his?"

"Mostly his family's."

"And the land?"

"The same."

Luka's expression remained carefully neutral. Marco knew that look. He had seen it on people before when they were trying not to say something impolite.

"I wasn't entitled to much," he explained. "There were no children, and his brothers had been part of the property long before I came. It wouldn't have made sense for me to keep any of it."

"After twelve years?"

Marco shrugged. "It wasn't mine."

Luka's eyes dropped to his coffee. Marco had the strange feeling that he had said something wrong.

"My family let me come home for a while," he added, wanting to make the situation sound less unpleasant than Luka apparently found it. "There wasn't really room for me permanently, though. My younger brother has a mate now, and they live there with my parents. So it was better for everyone if I found another arrangement."

"Another Alpha."

"Yes."

"And that's how you found Lewy."

Marco nodded. There was considerably more to it than that, of course. Advertisements passed from one household to another, letters written under the supervision of relatives who wanted to know whether the man answering had property and whether he intended to provide properly for an Omega approaching thirty. His mother's increasingly pointed comments about how fortunate Marco was that anybody might still be interested. His father's insistence that he could not simply remain in their spare room indefinitely.

Marco had cared about only one thing at first. Distance. Then Robert's letters had arrived, and there had slowly been other things to care about.

"He was the farthest away," Marco admitted.

Luka looked up.

Marco smiled a little. "That sounds terrible."

"No."

"I didn't choose him only because of that. We wrote for months. I liked his letters."

"But you wanted to leave."

"Yes."

Luka's expression remained composed, although something in his eyes had changed. Marco wished he had not said so much. He looked toward Tomas instead. The boy had given up on the bread construction and was eating it again.

"My old Alpha wasn't very easy," Marco said after a while. "He had particular ideas about how things should be done, and I wasn't always very good at doing them that way."

"What happened when you didn't?"

Marco glanced back at Luka. There was nothing casual about the question now.

"He got angry."

Luka waited. Marco felt an old, familiar instinct telling him to explain properly, because saying only that made his husband sound worse than he had any right to make him sound.

"He worked hard. There were expectations on him, and his health wasn't good toward the end. Sometimes I made things more difficult than they needed to be."

Luka's face did not change. That was almost worse. Marco looked down at the table. He could still remember the last truly bad fight with uncomfortable clarity. He had been pregnant for barely two months. Nobody knew except him and the doctor he had visited quietly after days of suspicion. He had spent three days trying to decide how to tell his husband, frightened because he already knew what the answer would be, and then the argument had happened before Marco ever managed it.

He remembered shouting. His husband's hand around his arm. The edge of the table against his stomach. Pain later that night. Blood the following morning. Afterwards there had been no reason to speak of children again. Marco had never been pregnant again.

Across from him, Luka was saying something, and Marco realized he had missed it. "I'm sorry?"

"I asked whether you were all right."

"..Oh, yes, of course."

Luka watched him for another second. Marco smiled.

"I'm fine."

He was grateful when Luka accepted the answer. At least, he pretended to. Tomas rescued them both a moment later by knocking over his cup. Luka caught it before much spilled, Marco fetched a cloth, and the conversation moved naturally toward children who apparently possessed no sense of where their elbows were. They did not return to Marco's marriage.

When Luka eventually prepared to leave, Marco packed the remaining cake for Tomas and found a small piece of carrot that the boy insisted on taking to the chickens. They went outside together, and Marco showed him how to put it through the feeding hatch without opening the gate. Tomas squealed with delight. Marco laughed and kept one hand on the boy's shoulder while the chickens crowded around them. Luka stood a little way behind, watching.

"You really aren't frightened of them anymore."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"You were just closer to that white one than Tomas was." Marco looked at Helga, his favorite chicken. "Robert built a very strong fence."

Luka smiled.

Before leaving, he touched Marco lightly on the arm. "Come to ours next time."

"I'd like that."

"And if you ever want to talk about anything, you can."

Marco knew what he meant. He also knew there were things he would never tell him. Still, the offer left him strangely warm after Luka and Tomas had gone. He remained by the gate until they disappeared down the road, then returned to the chicken coop and watched the hens search the ground for anything Tomas might have dropped. He thought of Luka saying that Sergio had no say in whether another child came out of his body, and despite everything, Marco smiled. It was an extraordinary thing to say about an Alpha. Even more extraordinary was the growing suspicion that Sergio would probably agree. 

After weeks of grey skies and damp ground, they woke to a morning so bright that Marco opened the kitchen window while making breakfast and left it that way. True spring was truly here. By midday the sun had warmed the yard enough that he decided it was ridiculous to eat inside, so when he saw Robert coming back from the fields, he carried their lunch outside instead.

Robert looked surprised to find him arranging bread, cheese and the remains of yesterday's roast on the small table beside the house.

"I thought we could eat here."

Robert glanced at the sky as though checking whether Marco had somehow misunderstood the weather. "All right."

They ate with the sun on their faces and the sounds of the farm around them. Robert told him that the weather would probably turn again before spring properly settled, while Marco insisted that he was choosing to believe winter was finished because he had already washed and put away several of his heavier things.

"You'll be taking them out again next week. This isn't the west."

"Then I won't tell you."

"I'll notice when you're wearing them."

"I'll wear them only when you're outside."

Robert looked at him over his cup. "That seems practical."

"It is. I'll be freezing, but I'll win the argument."

Robert laughed, and Marco joined him, enjoying how much easier that had become between them. Robert was still quiet by nature, but Marco no longer mistook every silence for displeasure, and lately he had begun discovering that there was something rather funny beneath all that seriousness when Robert could be bothered to show it.

For a while afterward they simply sat there, talking occasionally and letting the afternoon stretch around them. Marco could not remember the last time he had eaten a meal without immediately thinking about what needed cleaning afterward or whether somebody was waiting for him to do something else. Robert seemed in no hurry to return to work either. It should have left Marco entirely content. Instead, as he watched Robert lean back in his chair with his face turned toward the sun, the old question returned.

Robert still had not touched him. It had been weeks now, and Marco could no longer explain it as consideration after a long journey or discomfort with a stranger suddenly sharing his bed. They knew each other better now.

Robert laughed with him, sought him out in the evenings and had spent several days building a chicken coop simply because Marco was frightened of the birds, yet every night he climbed into bed and remained on his own side. Marco knew Alphas had needs. His first husband had made certain he understood that. The thought had begun occurring to him lately that perhaps Robert was simply satisfying those needs elsewhere.

There were hours every day when Marco had no idea where he was. There were trips into town, neighbouring farms, people Robert had known for years. It would hardly be difficult. Marco looked at him across the table and felt his pleasant mood dim at the possibility.

He had never expected Robert to love him. That had not been part of their arrangement, and expecting it would have been foolish. Still, he had begun to hope that Robert might at least want him.

Marco asked Robert twice before he left. The first time had been at breakfast, when he explained that Jude intended to collect him sometime before midday and that they were going to Luka's together.

Robert had looked mildly confused by the explanation and reminded him that they had already discussed this. The second time came when Marco heard the carriage approaching and saw Jude sitting at the front with the reins in his hands, waving. 

"You're certain?"

Robert looked up from where he was sorting through something beside the barn. "Marco, go and see your friends."

"I only meant because I'll probably be gone through lunch."

"I know."

"And you don't need me here?"

Robert's expression softened slightly. "I'll survive until you come home."

Marco still had the strange sensation that he was forgetting something when he climbed onto the carriage beside Jude several minutes later. Jude, by contrast, seemed to have no concerns whatsoever.

"Erling told me not to drive too quickly," he informed Marco as soon as they were moving. "Then he told me to avoid the road past the mill because it's uneven, and then he checked the harness after I'd already checked it myself. Twice." Marco had to concentrate on the Polish, but Jude had learned by now to slow down around him.

"He worries about you."

"He is driving me insane, that's what he does." Jude said it affectionately. He was getting bigger, or at least he appeared so to Marco, who found himself glancing nervously at Jude's stomach every time the carriage hit a rut. Jude seemed entirely unconcerned. He managed the horse comfortably with one hand and spent most of the journey telling Marco stories about people they passed, including a complicated account of a disagreement between two neighbouring families over a pig that Marco only half understood. By the time Luka's house came into view, Marco knew which farmer watered his beer, which woman at the bakery had once thrown a loaf at her husband, and considerably more than he needed to know about Erling's inability to mend a shirt properly.

Luka came outside when he heard them approaching, with Tomas toddling after him.

Jude barely waited for the carriage to stop. He handed Marco the reins, climbed down with an ease that made Marco's stomach drop and immediately bent to scoop Tomas into his arms.

"Jude!"

Jude turned with the child already balanced against his hip. "What?"

Marco stared at him. "Should you be doing that?"

"Doing what?"

"Jumping! Carrying him!"

Tomas had wrapped both arms around Jude's neck and appeared delighted with the arrangement. Jude looked at Luka.

"Am I allowed to carry your child?"

Luka considered it. "You can keep him if you want."

"Noooo," Jude said, kissing Tomas noisily on the cheek. "I only want him for ten minutes."

Marco climbed down much more carefully than Jude had. Luka laughed and ushered them inside. He had prepared bread, cheese, boiled eggs and a warm potato dish for lunch, and the three of them crowded around the kitchen table while Tomas moved between their chairs. Jude kept him on his lap until the boy became more interested in stealing food from Luka's plate, at which point he was returned to his mother.

It was easy in a way Marco still wasn't accustomed to. There was no Alpha at the table and nobody whose mood needed watching. Luka complained about Sergio leaving muddy boots directly beside the door despite being told repeatedly not to, Jude told them about Erling attempting to make three different breakfast menues two mornings earlier and nearly ruining a pan, and Marco laughed until his face hurt when Jude insisted that Erling could manage several acres of land but apparently became helpless when confronted with pregnancy cravings.

Eventually Jude leaned back in his chair and rubbed both hands over his stomach. "I'm exhausted."

"You look tired," Luka said.

"Thank you. That's exactly what every pregnant Omega wants to hear."

"You were just complaining about being tired."

"Complaining about it and wanting confirmation that I look terrible are different things."

Marco smiled into his cup. Luka ignored him. "Are you not sleeping?"

"Not much."

"Because of the baby?"

Jude made a face that Marco couldn't immediately interpret. "Not entirely."

Luka understood before Marco did. "Oh."

Jude laughed. "Don't look at me like that."

"I'm going to have a word with that boy."

"Erling?"

"Who else? You need sleep, not him fooling around."

Jude's laughter became louder. "What exactly are you planning to tell him?"

"That you're nearly ready to have his child and he can leave you alone long enough to get some rest."

Marco looked between them. Jude was still laughing. "I don't think Erling is entirely the problem."

Luka raised an eyebrow. Jude lowered his voice slightly, although there was nobody around except Tomas, who was sitting on the floor attempting to put a wooden animal into one of his shoes.

"Nobody warned me about this part. I want it more now than I did before. Much more."

He looked at Luka expectantly. "You know what I mean."

Luka scoffed. "Not with Tomas. Sergio could barely get near me for months."

Jude stared at him. "Really?"

"Really. I couldn't stand his scent some days. He'd come into bed and I'd tell him to turn around."

"And he did?"

"Of course he did. What else was he going to do?"

Jude laughed again. "Poor Sergio!"

"Don't feel sorry for him. The man has four children. He's been lucky often enough."

Marco smiled because they were laughing, although he had become acutely aware of his own hands around his coffee cup. The conversation itself was not shocking. Married people shared beds. Omegas became pregnant. Marco had spent most of his adult life married and understood perfectly well what happened between an Alpha and an Omega. It was the way they spoke about it that left him uncertain. Jude was complaining because he wanted Erling more than usual. Luka was laughing about months when he had not wanted Sergio at all, as though both things were equally ordinary and neither required explanation. Sergio had apparently been told to keep his distance and had simply done so. Erling, from the sound of it, had the opposite problem because his heavily pregnant mate was still interested enough to lose sleep over it.

Marco could not think of a single thing to contribute.

He had always understood that part of marriage as something an Alpha needed and an Omega provided. There could be pleasant moments, certainly, and it had not always been terrible with his first husband, but whether Marco himself wanted it had never seemed particularly relevant. His husband had wanted him, and that had been enough to determine what happened. Apparently Luka and Jude thought differently.

Jude noticed his silence eventually. "What about you?"

Marco's stomach tightened. Luka immediately reached across the table and slapped Jude lightly on the arm. "Leave him alone."

"I was only asking."

"You ask everybody everything."

"And people usually answer."

Marco laughed with them, relieved when Luka changed the subject before Jude could try again. Still, while the conversation moved on and Tomas climbed beneath the table in search of something he had dropped, Marco found himself thinking of Robert.

Every night Robert lay beside him without touching him because, apparently, he did not want to do anything Marco had not agreed to. Until now Marco had only wondered what was wrong with him that Robert did not seem to need what every other Alpha needed. For the first time, another question occurred to him. He wondered what Robert would do if Marco wanted it too.

It was much later than Marco had intended when Jude finally brought him home. The sun was already low enough to throw long shadows across the yard, and Marco had spent the last part of the journey checking the sky as though that might somehow make the carriage move faster. He had enjoyed himself, more than he wanted to admit after initially worrying so much about leaving for an entire afternoon, but enjoyment had turned gradually into unease once he realized how many hours had passed.

Jude noticed, of course. "Lewy isn't going to be angry with you."

Marco looked at him. "I didn't say he would be."

"You've looked toward the sun six times since we left Luka's." Marco decided not to answer that. Jude dropped him at the gate with a promise that they would do it again soon, and Marco thanked him before hurrying toward the house.

Robert was nowhere in sight. The barn was quiet, the wagon was gone, and when Marco stepped inside and called his name, nobody answered. He had not returned yet.

Relief came first, followed almost immediately by guilt at feeling relieved.

Marco took off his coat and went into the kitchen, already calculating how quickly he could prepare dinner. He stopped when he saw the pot on the stove.  Marco lifted the lid and found potatoes, onions and pieces of meat cooking together in a thick broth. Beside the stove was half a loaf of bread, already cut, and Robert had even left two bowls on the table. For several moments Marco simply stood there with the lid in his hand.

Robert had made dinner.

The idea should not have seemed extraordinary. Robert was thirty-two years old and had lived without a mate for years; obviously he knew how to feed himself. Marco had simply never seen him do it because, since arriving, Marco had made sure there was always food waiting before Robert came inside. He lowered the lid again and stared at the pot.

By the time Robert returned, Marco had set the table properly, warmed the bread and checked the stew often enough that there could be no reasonable doubt about whether it was ready. Robert came through the door looking tired and windblown, but his face changed when he saw Marco.

"You're back."

Marco had not expected the simple pleasure in his voice. "Yes. I'm sorry it got so late."

Robert hung his coat by the door. "Did you enjoy yourself?"

"I did. Luka made lunch, and Tomas was there, and we stayed much longer than I realized."

Marco hesitated before adding, "Jude drove me back."

"Then I'm glad you went." Robert went to wash, and Marco began serving the stew.

"It smells good."

"It should. I made it."

Marco looked at him. "I know."

Robert dried his hands and sat down while Marco carried the bowls over.

"Thank you for making dinner."

"You don't have to thank me for feeding us."

"I do. I should have been home in time to do it."

Robert's spoon paused on the way to his bowl. "Why?"

"Because I usually make dinner."

"You were with your friends."

"I know, but I didn't mean to stay so long. It won't happen again."

Robert looked at him more closely. "...What won't happen again?"

Marco was already regretting having said it that way. "Coming home this late. I'll make sure I'm back earlier next time so I can cook for you."

It was silent for a while.

"You don't need to do that."

"It's all right. I don't mind."

"Marco, I didn't make dinner because I was angry that you weren't here."

"I know."

Robert set his spoon down. "Do you?"

Marco looked at him. The question sounded sharper than anything Robert had said to him since his arrival, and the old instinct to smooth things over came immediately.

"Of course. I only meant that the house is my responsibility, and you work all day. I don't expect you to come home and cook because I've been visiting people."

"I came home before you, so I cooked."

"Yes, and I'm grateful."

"Then why are you promising it won't happen again?"

Marco wished he had simply thanked him and kept quiet. Robert leaned back slightly, frustration beginning to show in his face.

"You've asked me three times whether you're allowed to visit Luka. This morning you asked again after I'd already told you yesterday that you could go. Now you've come home and you're apologizing because I had to put potatoes in a pot."

"I said I'm sorry."

"That's exactly what I mean."

Marco's face grew hot. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"I don't want you to say anything. I want you to stop looking at me as though you're waiting for me to punish you every time you do something I haven't personally told you to do."

The words hurt more than Marco expected. He looked down at his bowl. Robert was quiet for a moment before continuing, less sharply now.

"I'm not him."

Marco's fingers tightened around his spoon. "I never said you were."

"You don't have to."

That made him look up. Robert's frustration had not disappeared, although there was something else beneath it now, something closer to hurt.

"You ask permission to leave the house. You apologize if dinner isn't ready. If I sound annoyed, you start explaining yourself before I even ask what happened. I know where you learned that, Marco, and I don't like being treated as though I'm going to do the same things."

"I don't think you're the same."

"Then why are you frightened of me?"

"I'm not."

Robert's expression told him he did not believe that. Marco felt suddenly, miserably exposed. He had not told Robert much about his marriage, and he certainly had not intended for Robert to collect the pieces himself and then place them on the table between them.

"I don't know what else you expect from me," he said. "I came here to be your mate. You work, I take care of the house. I thought that was what we agreed."

"It is, but taking care of the house doesn't mean you aren't allowed to have a life outside it."

"I understand that."

"You're saying you understand it while promising you'll never make me cook my own dinner again."

Marco pushed some potato around his bowl without eating it. Robert exhaled and rubbed a hand over his face. Neither of them spoke for a while. Marco wanted desperately to get up. Clearing the table would give him something to do, and the kitchen would give him somewhere else to be, but Robert was still eating. Leaving in the middle of dinner after upsetting an Alpha felt impossible, even now, even here. So he remained in his chair. Robert eventually finished, though he ate less than usual.

Marco waited until he put down his spoon before gathering both bowls and carrying them into the kitchen. He washed them immediately. His eyes had already begun burning, and he blinked hard while filling the basin, annoyed with himself for reacting this way.

Robert had not shouted. He had not threatened him or called him useless or demanded to know where he had been. He had made dinner and told Marco that he was allowed to spend time with his friends. Somehow Marco had still managed to ruin the evening. He scrubbed the first bowl longer than necessary. The tears came quietly enough that he hoped they would stop before Robert came in. He wiped his cheek against his shoulder and reached for the second bowl, concentrating on the water and the cloth in his hands. He did not hear Robert enter until he spoke behind him.

"Marco."

Marco quickly wiped his face. "I'll be finished in a minute."

"I don't care about the dishes."

"I know." Robert was silent behind him, and Marco hated that he could feel himself beginning to cry harder simply because he knew Robert was watching.

"I'm sorry," Robert said. Marco shook his head. "You don't have to apologize."

"I was waiting for you."

Marco's breath caught. Robert stepped closer. "Not because dinner wasn't ready. I was waiting because I wanted you home."

There was something almost unbearable about hearing it said that simply. Marco pressed his lips together, but another tear escaped anyway.

"I'm sorry."

Robert closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he crossed the remaining distance between them. He did not ask Marco to stop crying or tell him that there was nothing to be upset about. He simply reached for him, one hand settling at the back of Marco's neck while the other arm came around his waist, and pulled him firmly against his chest. Marco went still.

For weeks he had wondered what Robert's hands would feel like on him. He had lain beside him in the dark and imagined those hands reaching across the mattress for reasons he understood, reasons that belonged to an Alpha and the Omega sharing his bed. He had never imagined this. Robert held him as though there was nowhere else he needed to be.

The realization broke whatever little control Marco still had. He caught at the front of Robert's shirt and bowed his head against his shoulder, trying to breathe through the sudden, humiliating sob that escaped him. Robert's arm tightened immediately, drawing him closer until there was no careful space left between them, while his hand moved slowly over the back of Marco's head.

"I'm sorry," Robert murmured against his hair. "I don't want you to be afraid here."

Marco shook his head against him, although he could no longer have said what he was denying.

Nobody had ever apologized to him for frightening him before. His old Alpha's anger had always become Marco's responsibility in the end: something he had caused, something he should have anticipated, something he could have prevented if he had been quieter or quicker or more agreeable. Even after years away from him, Marco still knew how to stand beside an angry Alpha and search backward through everything he had done until he found the mistake.

Robert was standing in his kitchen telling him that the anger had been Robert's mistake. Marco cried harder.

Robert did not seem embarrassed by it. He held him through all of it, occasionally rubbing his back or pressing his cheek against Marco's hair, and after a while Marco stopped worrying about what he must look like. His arms found their way properly around Robert's waist, and when he finally allowed his weight to rest against him, Robert adjusted without hesitation and held him closer.

It was warm there. Safe, Marco thought before he could stop himself, and the word frightened him almost as much as it comforted him.

When his breathing eventually began to settle, neither of them moved apart.

Their routine continued, but after that evening in the kitchen, something small had changed between them. Robert touched him more.

It happened in ordinary moments, often so casually that Marco wondered whether Robert even noticed. A hand settled against his back when Robert passed behind him in the kitchen, fingers briefly covered his when he accepted his morning coffee, and one particularly cold morning Robert reached over without a word and pulled Marco's collar closed before going outside. Marco noticed every single time.

When Marco nearly slipped on the wet steps, Robert caught him around the hips and held him until he was steady. When they sat together after dinner, Robert occasionally rested a hand against his knee while they talked. Even in bed, where they still kept mostly to themselves, their feet or arms sometimes brushed beneath the blankets, and neither of them immediately moved away anymore.

The worst was the fence. Robert needed him in the barn one afternoon and called him outside, but Marco stopped when he reached the pasture fence and looked toward the gate farther down.

"I'll go around."

Robert apparently considered that unnecessary. Before Marco properly understood what he intended, Robert reached across, put both hands around his waist and lifted him straight over the fence. Marco landed on the other side with Robert's hands still securely around him.

"There," Robert said, waiting until Marco had his balance before letting go and heading toward the barn.

Marco followed him without saying anything, his heart beating so hard that he was grateful Robert was walking ahead of him.

By then, that was becoming the problem. The touches were innocent and brief, but Marco had started waiting for them, noticing when they happened and noticing even more when they didn't.

Jude had reached the stage of pregnancy where visiting apparently meant arriving at somebody else's house and immediately lying down.

He had been stretched across Robert and Marco's couch for nearly an hour, one hand resting on his stomach while Marco worked dough at the table. They had talked about everything from the weather to Luka's children before Marco, mostly out of curiosity, asked how long Jude and Erling had known each other before Jude decided to leave with him.

"A week, maybe."

Marco stopped kneading. "A week?"

"Before I knew I loved him. We didn't run away after a week."

"That's not much better."

Jude laughed and shifted against the cushion. "Everybody said that. My parents said I was too young to know anything about love, and my father kept telling me that in another year I'd barely remember Erling's name."

"How old were you?"

"Seventeen."

Marco gave him a look. Jude immediately pointed at him. "You were seventeen too, and you knew you loved your Alpha enough to marry him, didn't you?"

Marco's hands slowed in the dough. He folded it eventually over itself and pressed the heel of his hand into it. Jude, fortunately, did not wait long for an answer.

"I knew with Erling because he never lied to me. Not even when lying would have made things easier. If I asked him something, he told me the truth, and if the truth made me angry, he let me be angry." Jude smiled to himself. "And he never laughed at me."

Marco glanced over.

"Well, he laughed at me constantly," Jude corrected. "He still does. But he never laughed at me in that horrible way people do when they want you to feel stupid. He laughed with me."

Marco pressed the dough forward again.

"He used to bring me things," Jude continued. "Nothing expensive because neither of us had any money, but there was always something. Once he walked nearly an hour because I'd mentioned liking these sweets from one particular shop. Another time he gave me flowers he'd stolen from his mother's garden."

Marco smiled despite himself and folded the dough again.

Robert had never brought him flowers.

Instead, he had spent several evenings after working all day putting posts into the ground and stretching wire between them because Marco was frightened of chickens. He had made dinner when Marco stayed too long at Luka's. He had shown him which shops in town had German speakers, told him he could leave the house whenever he pleased, and lately seemed incapable of walking past Marco without putting a hand somewhere against him.

Jude was still talking, listing things Erling had done when they were younger, but Marco had stopped listening to every word.

Robert was truthful with him. Robert had never made him feel foolish for being afraid, even when the thing frightening him really was rather foolish. Robert made his life easier here on this farm. The thought settled uncomfortably in Marco's chest.

He pushed harder into the dough. For a while, the kitchen grew quiet, then Marco heard Jude sniff.

He looked up. Jude had turned his face toward the back of the couch and was wiping quickly beneath one eye.

"Are you crying?"

"No."

"You are."

"I'm pregnant. I'm allowed."

Marco wiped the flour from his hands and watched him with concern. "What's wrong?"

Jude gave an embarrassed little laugh. "Nothing. I was talking about home too much." Marco understood then.

Jude rubbed a hand over his stomach. "I miss them sometimes. My parents are still furious with me, obviously. I broke the promise they'd made to another family, disappeared with an Alpha they didn't approve of and then spent two years in Germany, so I suppose I gave them plenty to be angry about."

"Do you speak to them?"

"Sometimes. Not properly." Jude sighed and stared at the ceiling. "They'll come around eventually."

He said it with enough confidence that Marco wondered whether Jude truly believed it or had simply repeated it often enough that he needed to.

"My younger brother might come," Jude continued after a moment. "Jobe. He keeps asking questions in his letters about how far the journey is and whether Erling has enough room, which means he's thinking about it even if he hasn't said so."

"You'd like that."

"I'd love it." Jude's expression brightened through the remaining tears. "He has to come eventually anyway. He's going to be an uncle."

Marco smiled. "Does he know?"

"Of course. I wrote to him immediately. He'll pretend he doesn't care and then be unbearable when he gets here."

Marco returned to his dough, giving Jude time to wipe his face without being watched.

"What about Erling's family?"

Jude's answer was only a shrug.

Marco waited, expecting more, but Jude merely adjusted the cushion beneath his head and looked toward the window.

"That's more complicated."

For a while the only sound in the room was the steady push of Marco's hands against the dough. His thoughts returned, despite himself, to what Jude had said before. Truthfulness. Kindness. Being laughed with instead of laughed at. Small gifts that mattered because somebody had paid attention. Marco looked toward the window and caught sight of the chicken coop beyond it.

He pressed his hands into the dough again.

Seventeen-year-old Jude had apparently needed only a week to know.

Marco glanced toward the window again, his eyes settling on the little coop Robert had built for him. Then he went back to the dough before Jude could notice the smile he was trying very hard not to have.