He Lost His Family in the Snow, He Returned to Save Them novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Guest

Ren asks pardon before the whole court and Min-jun lodges him under guard; in the cold bathhouse he serves his rutting husband, and sees a man in Ren's doorway wearing Jae-won's seal.

"A dream," Min-jun had told Seo-jun at dawn, when his voice came back. "A bad one. You were in it."

Seo-jun had looked at him a long moment and let it lie, and the look said he would ask again.

Ren Ito walked into the great hall at noon with snow on his shoulders and his long black hair loose.

He was twenty-five, and he looked at Min-jun and no one else.

Min-jun sat on the carved chair with the elders on his left and his husband on his right.

The last time he had seen that face, it had been behind the bars of a cold cell, and Min-jun had signed the order that put it there.

"Prince," Ren said, and knelt. "Five years. I did not expect you to see me."

"Say what you came to say."

"That I was a coward, and I took your father's coin and ran." Ren lifted his eyes. They were wet. "I never spent it. I came to give it back, and to ask your pardon."

A murmur went round the hall.

Seo-jun's hand moved on the arm of his chair, a small stiff motion, and Min-jun covered it with his own.

He felt the hand turn under his and grip tight.

"You have it with you?" Min-jun asked.

"In my saddlebag. The seal is unbroken."

"Then it is returned." Min-jun kept his voice flat. "You are a guest of Wolfhold until the new moon. The guest wing. A guard on the door, for your safety."

Ren's mouth curved. "For my safety."

"The road is long, and there are wolves."

"Kindness, as always."

Min-jun did not answer.

Seo-jun rose.

"Prince Ren, I am Han Seo-jun," he said, and gave a small, correct bow. "You'll eat with us tonight. My son would like to hear about the roads you've seen."

Ren looked at him for a long moment, and the warmth in his face went careful.

"You are kind, Prince Han."

"I try to be."

He sat down again, and under the table his fingers dug into Min-jun's palm hard enough to hurt.

An hour later, in the corridor behind the hall, Min-jun found him pressed against a pillar with his eyes shut.

He smelled of cedar smoke and heat, and the guards at the end of the passage were looking very carefully at the ceiling.

"Seo-jun."

"I can't think." His voice was low and rough. "He was talking, and all I could think of was your neck."

"Come."

Min-jun took his wrist and led him through the kitchens and down the back stairs to the bathhouse, where the stone pools were cold from the mountain spring and nobody went before evening.

He barred the door.

Seo-jun leaned on it with his chest heaving, flushed to the ears.

"I'm sorry. I don't know why this keeps happening."

"Stop apologizing."

Min-jun pushed him down on the wide stone bench by the water and knelt between his knees.

Seo-jun's eyes flew open.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you think?"

"You can't. You're the prince."

"I'm your husband." Min-jun unlaced his trousers. "Hold on to something."

Seo-jun's cock sprang out hard and wet at the tip, with the swell at its base already rising.

Min-jun had spent his whole life being served.

He leaned down and took the head into his mouth, and the taste of him was salt and smoke.

Seo-jun's hand went into his hair and clenched.

"Min-jun. Oh, fuck."

He took more of him, and more, until the thick length bumped the back of his throat, and he swallowed around it.

Seo-jun cried out and thrust up, then froze.

"Sorry, I'm sorry."

Min-jun pulled off with a wet sound and looked up.

His own mouth was slick and red.

"Do it again," he said.

Seo-jun stared down at him.

Something in his gentle face changed, and the hand in Min-jun's hair gentled and then tightened.

"Open," he said.

Min-jun opened.

Seo-jun fucked into his mouth in slow, deep strokes, and every time Min-jun's nose hit Seo-jun's belly, Min-jun hummed around him.

Between his own legs the slick was running down his thighs.

He pushed a hand into his trousers and stroked himself, desperate, shameless, and Seo-jun saw it.

"Look at you," he groaned. "My proud alpha."

Min-jun moaned around his cock.

"Stay there. I'm going to come in your mouth."

He did, with a shuddering curse, hot and thick, and Min-jun swallowed all of it and kept stroking himself, then spilled over his own fist a moment later with his forehead pressed to Seo-jun's thigh.

They sat in the cold stone quiet for a while.

Then Seo-jun pulled him up into his lap and kissed the taste of himself from his mouth.

"You are going to tell me what's going on," he murmured.

"Not today."

"But someday."

"Someday," Min-jun said, and meant it.

Through the high window above the pools, he could see across the yard to the guest wing.

A man was coming out of Ren's door, wrapped in a plain brown cloak.

He turned his head to check the corridor, and a silver ring flashed on his hand: a wolf, with plum blossoms around it.

It was the seal of the Southern King's eldest son, Han Jae-won, cut small for the man who carried his letters.

Min-jun had found that seal on Ren's papers in the first life, a week after the funeral, and it was a week too late.

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