Calrel_04

  Last night marked the night Leo learned that some woman's period didn't end after one or two day.

  Sera, despite her embarrassment, had ughed at the face he made when she told him about those special days of the month.

  With his pride bruised, Leo wasn't about to let Sera sleep in peace, not until he was satisfied with his revenge.

  In the end, he brought Sera to orgasm three times with his fingers, turning her into a quivering mess, before finishing with his cock sandwiched between her soft thighs. Leo was quite proud of himself.

  BANG BANG BANG

  The door shuddered in its frame.

  Leo jerked upright. Sera startled awake with a gasp, her hand pulling the thin bnket up to cover her almost naked body, her eyes wide and disoriented.

  "What..."

  BANG BANG BANG

  "Leo!" A woman's voice, sharp and furious. "Open this door right now!"

  Sera's eyes flew open.

  "Oh, gods," she whispered, her body going rigid against him.

  That voice.

  "Shit," he was already moving, throwing off the bnket, searching for his trousers. "Shit, shit..."

  There was only one reason for his dear mother to come over and abuse his poor door with her wrath - she knew. Marsh couldn't keep the secret for just one night.

  "So much for a reliable brother," Sera hisses, coming to the same conclusion. She scrambled for her own clothes. Her top was tangled around her torso, her hair a wild mess, her cheeks flushed with sleep and...other things.

  BANG BANG BANG

  "I know you're in there! I can hear you moving! Open this door or I swear to the gods I'll..."

  "One moment!" Leo called out, hopping on one foot as he yanked his trousers up. "Just...give us a moment..."

  Sera was gring at him. The gre of a woman who had been caught in a compromising position by her mother-in-w and knew exactly whose fault it was.

  "I'm counting to three, Leo! One!"

  "Two!"

  Leo threw the bolt back and yanked the door open just as the word "Three!" was echoing across the yard.

  Maren didn't wait for an invitation. She pushed past Leo the moment the door cracked open, her sharp eyes sweeping the small room - the rumpled bed, the scattered clothes, the two flushed and disheveled young people who clearly weren't expecting company. Her mouth presses into a thin line.

  She was a tall woman, with the angur build of someone who had spent a lifetime working harder than her body should allow. Her dark hair, streaked with silver at the temples, was scraped back from her face in a severe knot that did nothing to soften the sharp pnes of her cheekbones.

  She would have been beautiful once, before poverty and disappointment carved it all away.

  "So it's true," she said. Her voice was ft, but Leo could hear the anger shimmering beneath. "My son has completely lost his mind."

  "Ma..."

  "Don't 'Ma' me," she rounded on him, and Leo took an involuntary step back. He was taller than her now, but what good would it do against his own mother?

  "Dar came to our house this morning," Maren hissed. "Do you know what she told me?"

  Leo didn't answer. They both knew what Dar told her.

  "She told me that my youngest son, the one who was beaten half to death not two weeks ago, decided to go into the dungeon. The dungeon, Leo. That pit full of monsters and poison and gods know what else. She told me you dragged your brother into it, got him injured..."

  "Marsh's injuries aren't serious..."

  "He has cuts on his arms and bruises around his throat!" Maren's voice rose as she poked his chest with enough force for it to hurt. "His wife is beside herself! His pregnant wife! And you! You stupid, reckless, idiotic boy..."

  Then, Maren's gaze shifted to Sera, who was standing by the bed in her rumpled clothes, her hair still wild, her expression carefully bnk.

  "And you."

  Sera's chin lifted. She said nothing.

  "I thought you had more sense," Maren's voice was cold now. "I thought...when you married him, I thought maybe you'd be good for him. Keep his feet on the ground. But instead you're encouraging this?"

  "I didn't..."

  "Don't lie to me," Maren stepped closer, and Sera held her ground, but Leo could see the tension in her shoulders. "I know what you've been doing. How you've been pushing him to 'be more,' to stop being so passive. And now look what's happened. He almost got himself killed trying to prove something to you."

  "That's not fair," Sera said quietly.

  "Fair?" Maren ughed - a sharp, bitter sound. "Don't talk about 'fair' with me. My son could have died, then..."

  "That's enough."

  Leo's voice cut through the room as he moved to stand beside Sera.

  "The dungeon was my idea," he said. "Not Sera's. Not Marsh's. Mine."

  "Leo..."

  "I asked her to come with me. I asked Marsh to come with me. They agreed because I convinced them, not because they pushed me into it."

  "She's been filling your head with..." Maren's eyes narrowed.

  "She hasn't filled my head with anything," Leo kept his voice steady. "I made this choice because we're poor, Ma. We're barely surviving. One bad harvest, one illness, one injury, and we're done. The dungeon is dangerous, yes. But poverty is killing us slowly, and I'd rather risk dying fast than watch my wife starve."

  "But..."

  "And then when Sera and I have children...you don't want your grandkids to live in poverty, right, Ma?"

  That silenced Maren immediately, and she wasn't the only one who suddenly became quiet. Next to Leo, Sera was now trying to drill holes into her shoes with her eyes, her face beet red while pinching his waist from behind.

  Leo tried his best not to wince in pain.

  "You're just like your father," finally, Maren huffed out a resigned sigh. "Hard-headed, love to do things your way without discussing it with anyone. Half of the white hair on my head came from him, and the other half is thank to you and your brother."

  She gred at Leo, but the fury from before was no longer there.

  Sera finally stepped forward. She pced her hand gently on Leo's arm, a silent request for him to let her speak.

  "Mother," she began, and her voice was calm and clear.

  "The dungeon was indeed Leo's idea, but he didn't just run off and do it. He talked to me," she squeezed Leo's arm. "We discussed it. He told me what he wanted to do for our future. And as his wife, it's my duty to support him."

  Maren stared, her lips parted slightly, as if she was going to say something, but swallowed it back down.

  "And you know my father was a guard. He trained me," Sera's posture straightened. "I will keep your son safe. We watch out for each other. We won't be reckless."

  Maren was silent for a long, heavy minute. She stared at Sera as if seeing her for the first time. Then her gaze shifted back to Leo. The anger in her eyes had cooled, repced by a weary resignation that seemed to settle into the lines of her face.

  She finally let out a long, slow breath.

  "You have your own family now. Do whatever you want," she said, her voice ft. "It's not these old bones' pce to butt in."

  Maren didn't give them a chance to respond. She turned toward the door, her shoulders slumped as if carrying an invisible weight. She was almost out the door when she paused, her back to them, her hand on the frame.

  "And you, Leo," she said without turning around. "Bring Sera over for dinner sometimes. Your father worries. He didn't say, but I know that old fool thinks it's his fault for not providing enough for you, so you have to go into the dungeon."

  Then she was gone.

  Leo and Sera shared a gnce. He then gave her a grateful nod.

  "I need to go out for a bit."

  He dug into their money pouch, counted five silvers, before chasing after Maren.

  Leo didn't have to run far to catch her.

  "Ma!" He called out.

  "Go back to your wife."

  "Let me walk with you," he said, falling into step beside her.

  "I'm only walking to my own house, which happens to be less than two hundred paces that way. I'm not an old woman who needs an escort," Maren grumbled. But her steps faltered. She shot a look at him from the corner of her eye and her lips tightened.

  Leo just chuckled. He saw it, the way a muscle jumped in her cheek. The faintest tug at the corner of her mouth, a ghost of a smile she immediately suppressed as she huffed and turned her face away.

  "Alright, alright," he relented, holding up his hands in mock surrender. He then leaned in, letting a conspiratorial grin spread across his face. "But at least let me tell you how much I earned from my first dungeon run."

  Maren paused, one foot hovering over a mud puddle. Her curiosity finally broke through her resolve, a crack in the wall of her composure.

  "How much?"

  Leo's eyes darted around, making sure that there wasn't anyone around, before whispering to her.

  "Seventy-seven coppers, and fifteen silvers."

  "HOW...!?"

  Maren shrieked, but stopped herself short. She gnced around, looking just like her son, before whispering back.

  "How much? Fifteen silvers?"

  "And seventy-seven coppers. A third of that is Marsh's share."

  "That can't be right," she whispered, the words dripped with disbelief. She shot him a suspicious look. "Did you actually go into the Pit? Or did you just knock over some poor fool on the road? Because that Sam, you know? He came out of there two months ago missing two fingers and all he had to show for it was forty-three coppers. Not even enough to pay the healer."

  "Mr. Peterson's son? Yeah, I've heard about him," Leo nodded, not at all disturbed by his mother's accusation. "And you know me, Ma. I'm too much of a coward to break the ws."

  "The 'you' that I knew was also too much of a coward to go into that hell hole! And you knew?" she hissed. Her fingers dug into his arm with a grip that spoke of the strength from wringing out undry for over thirty years. "If you know about Sam, then why would you be so stupid..."

  "Ma, Sera and I have decided. Like you said, we have our own family now," Leo sighed and cut her off. "We can't just keep borrowing from you two. And now that we can earn more money, you and Da can have an easier life too."

  "Keep it. We don't have that many years left to live, don't waste your hard-earned money on us," Maren waved her hand. The two of them had arrived at the entrance to her house.

  His parents' cottage was a mirror image of his own, but shrunken. The thatch on the roof was patchier in pces, and the timber walls more weathered.

  The yard, hemmed in by a sagging fence of driftwood and stones, was perhaps half the size of Leo's own, crowded to the edges with useful clutter - a stack of split firewood leaning against one wall, a mending bench with a broken hoe resting atop it, coils of rough rope hanging from pegs.

  "We're at my house. Go home. Or you need to watch me feed the chickens too?" Maren shooed Leo away, and before he could reply, she'd already crossed the yard with a surprising speed for someone her age.

  He hesitated for a moment, debating whether or not to look for his father, but then he remembered that Ronan should be at the field at this time.

  He sighed and walked away, not toward his own house, but to Marsh's.