Collar felt a wave of uncertainty roll through him as the door closed behind him. He’d seen that look. He knew Cloudy loved Rosemary more than anypony else in the world.

Romantically. Stars, stop thinking in straight Damme lines.

“She’s not going to have to choose,” Rosewater said firmly as she looked around. “We’re going to make sure that nopony needs to choose between loves.” She toured his room silently, sniffing here and there and letting her ears and tail twitch before she sat at the foot of the bed. “Cloudy loves you, Collar, and it would break her to have to choose, but… she has always looked for Rosemary first. From the first day I ran into her, she was disobeying orders to see her. Even a glimpse of her.”

He couldn’t say she was wrong. It hurt, stars it hurt. He hadn’t even considered that side of the equation, only that Rosemary…

“You would be okay with Rosemary being a part of our marriage?” He watched the complex wave of emotion pass over her, unable to say which was which or from what thoughts.

“It’s…” Rosewater raised a hoof and opened her mouth, closed it again and set the hoof against his chest, looking into his eyes.

“Complicated?”

She snorted a laugh. “Yes, stars. If you two had an honest attraction to each other, mutual, I would say yes. With caveats. Merrie marriages sometimes have them. A same-gender attracted stallion would marry a mare and a stallion to be with the stallion. The mare and the stallion would need to agree to it, and so would the other, but it’s been done and Rosemary knows a triad with just such an arrangement.”

“But… mother and daughter?”

She paused for a longer time this time, her eyes skittering away from his. “Rarely. Once or twice in history.”

“That’s about what I thought.” Collar let out a long, slow sigh and raised his hoof to cover her ankle, holding the hoof against his chest. “And I do love her, Rosewater. Maybe if I wasn’t also in love with you, or she were a few years older, it wouldn’t be so much of a problem. But somewhere along the way, I started seeing her… like you do. Almost. Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe something snapped when, in my head, she was no longer ‘Rosemary’ but the daughter I married into being the step-father of.”

She nodded, gnawing on her lip.

“Or… no longer only Rosemary. It was easier, until I saw you curled around her, I think, to think of you as basically unrelated. Stars, all of our intelligence said you were basically obligated to care for her on behalf of your aunt.”

“Your mother suspected otherwise.”

“She knew otherwise. But what could she do?” Collar dipped his head and caught her hoof with a spell to kiss her ankle lightly. “If she’d made any move to contact you or let our intelligence know, what would have kept you from following your mother, er, Carnation, into the annals of history, just another unfortunate victim of the war?”

She sighed and raised the hoof to cup his cheek, a spell of her own catching his chin lightly. “I don’t blame her or you. I chose my course. Nopony but I need answer for it.” Her lips touched his lightly, warm and soft and tasting faintly of wine and fish and spiced potato. “I made my bed. I’m only grateful I managed to fumble my way into making it somewhat well.”

“You do make a good bed,” he agreed, chasing her as she fell a step back, catching her with another kiss. “And we’re not going to decide anything tonight.”

“No, we’re not,” Rosewater agreed with a faint smile crossing her ears as she backed into the foot of his oversize bed. “Unless you want to talk about names?”

“Something to fit the Primrose family,” Collar murmured. “Raspberry?”

“Not until you get on your back, love,” Rosewater purred, nipping his neck and shifting so her hindquarters rested mostly on the bed, her legs tucking up one at a time underneath her, inching back, her rump shifting and tail raised high.

“As a name,” Collar purred, rearing up and setting both forehooves on either side of her. “Silly mare. Raspberry Primrose.”

“As long as it’s not more roses,” Rosewater said with a laugh craning her neck back to nip under his chin, drawing a shiver down his spine. “I think it’s high time my family broke away from a theme.”

“Oh?” Collar asked, watching as her tail flicked back and forth lazily, his desire growing as that swish twitched the muscles in her hindquarters, her hooves subtly shifting back and forth as the long, luxurious expanse of curly pink decorated his bed in waves. “I… happen to like pink. Roses.”

She laughed and rolled to her side, her lower hind leg extending slowly as she rolled ever so slowly almost to her back, stopping with her uppermost hindleg cocked, her bare belly exposed. White and toned with her winter coat coming in, she looked so soft, but the white faded to pink ever so little as her belly narrowed and her breathing shifted the smooth expanse.

“Raspberry,” Collar said musingly, licking his lips and taking his mind from the sight in front of him. “I do like the sound of the name. Raspberry Primrose. Colt or filly?”

Rosewater’s expression cracked. Just for a moment, and she didn’t try to put her mask all the way back on and try to pretend. “I don’t know.”

“What is it?”

“I wish we had more time, Collar. Not dribs and drabs as we can find them. To talk like this. Tease each other with names and dreams for the future.”

“We can arrange it.”

She patted the bed. “C’mere, Collar. I want to talk before we let passion take us, okay? Not about Cloudy and Rosemary. I know that’s tomorrow. About us. We’ve only had a chance to talk about bold strokes, and barely even those. And—” She pushed a hoof against his chest just as he moved to slide in alongside her. “—not who’ll run what council in the government. Just us. You and me, a mare and a stallion.”

“And the foal we want for ourselves.”

“Yes. Stars.” She laughed as he hopped up on the bed, her legs shifting to keep out of place, then one settling over his hindquarters and her forelegs around his neck. “How many?”

“Not ten, stars. Two? Three?”

“We’re pretty sure Roseate made a deal with something in order to have ten mares for daughters,” Rosewater said with a laugh and a roll of her eyes. “Or some alchemical experiment or magical spell gone awry. I’d like to have a colt and a filly. Maybe one more.”

“I’ve wondered what it would be like to have a younger or older brother or sister,” Collar murmured against her throat when she stretched out her neck to look over the edge of the bed. Kissing any part of her warmed his soul, feeling the vibrancy of life so close, the beat of her heart, the scent of her brushing against his nose so real and richly defined. “You’re using a new coat shampoo.”

“I was hoping you’d bury your nose in,” Rosewater murmured. “I want my children to be able to rely on each other if they need to. Love each other.”

“They will,” Collar said. Her coat was thicker just below her jaw, dense with warmth and her. “Why are we staring at the floor?”

She giggled, the sound so free in the moment that his heart ached. “I’ve never seen your floor. Not… in any detail. The carpet is very pretty. Have you made love on it before?”

“Have I—” He couldn’t help it, he started giggling too. “Stars, of course you would ask that. You don’t mind. You want to imagine Cloudy and I having sex in the middle of the room.”

“Mmm. Her. Maybe…” She sighed and shook her head. “I was thinking… us. Soon. If you want to try—”

“I want to look into your eyes, Rosewater. I want to… I want to share. I want you to see me, too. What you do to me.”

“What you do to me,” she purred. “On the bed?”

“I would like that very much,” Collar said cordially, grinning at her, still upside-down to the world. “Though, it would be rather hard without seeing where I’m going. My head down here, and my head… up there.” He shifted a leg under her outstretched thigh, brushing against thinner hair and feeling at last the faint nub of her teat pressing against his coat.

“Then…” Rosewater started to slip down, propelled by hoof against bed, forehooves landing, straightening, and Collar got a horrible, wonderful idea. “Collar!”

He laughed as he caught her by the legs, her hooves outstretched and spread wide against the bed, her tail hiking up with her laughter as she shook her mane and shot a mock glare back at him.

“What?”

“This is very undignified.” Her scolding tone lost all of its heat with the giggle that followed. She made only a token effort to slip free before she let out a shiver. “Stars. Your covers feel amazing on my belly, Collar.”

“Then this next part…” He pushed himself up and nipped the base of her tail and shivered as her tail snapped up and flipped over his neck, half the strands sliding off to pool over one leg. “Beautiful,” he purred against the quivering tail pressing against his chin and neck.

Rosewater’s answer was a shivering laugh and flattening herself against the bed more. “Mmm. Tease.”

“But you love it when I tease you.” Collar shifted to lay half on his side, the pressure to let go and let his arousal grow shivering his coat as his head swelled into the cool air and against the warm bed covers. “Stars…”

“Mmm. You smell lovely,” Rosewater said, raising her head and taking a deep breath, her marks brightening just before a shudder ran down her spine and flicked her tail away and to the side. The sight was breathtaking, pink tender skin parting as her clitoris swelled, glistening darker skin flush with desire and heat inviting him to explore.

She smelled enticingly, arousingly femine, sharper than he’d ever smelled her as he pressed his nose to her lips, breathing in slowly as he ran his lips from her quiveringly erect clitoris to the apex of her folds, drinking in her aroma like he imagined she could from a distance and feeling her heated embrace waiting for him.

He groaned as he laid his chin on her back, closing his eyes as his erection stiffened, the flat flare against his belly pulsing just off-beat from the thudding of his heart. “Stars, you smell wonderful.” A deeper scent than he’d ever smelled from her before.

“My cycle, maybe,” Rosewater said in a deep, throaty voice, making his shaft twitch at both the sound and the implication. “It…”

He pressed his ankle lightly against her loins under her and she shifted a hind hoof to plant it under her, stumbling on her planted forehooves. “It’s starting?”

“Maybe, stars, Collar. Warn a mare before you give her something to rut against.”

“Is that what that was?” He mused, grinning at her over her rear and bending to nip at her still shivering tail. “Mare has a need to rut against something?”

“You, silly stallion. Let me up.”

“Mmm.” Collar nibbled at the base of her tail again, luxuriating in the way she quivered and the fragrance of her grew more intense briefly with every wink of her folds. “But you like being teased.”

He waited until she raised her head again, a glower forming along with a smile, before he ducked down to lathe his tongue along her sex from swollen nub to her deeper cleft.

Before he’d even slipped his tongue more than an inch into her, she pushed off the bed and landed on her side, laughing and rolling on the rug before he had a chance to figure out what had happened. One moment, he was tasting her musky, tangy arousal all around his tongue, and in the next moment, she was on her hooves again, tail lashing, her breathing heavy, and giggling as she stamped her hind hoof.

“What?” He watched, mesmerized, as a droplet trailed down her hind leg, growing smaller and smaller until it clung to her coat and disappeared. He shivered.

“My back or yours?”

“Well, I mean. Last time it was mine?”

She shivered from head to tail then raised a hoof and set it on the bed, her eyes suddenly…

“I’ll be gentle, love,” Collar promised her, standing up himself, and shifting back to give her room. “Unless you want to—”

“No.” She sucked in a breath. “No. I’ve… I’ve never been on my back while a stallion mounted me. I want to try, Collar.”

He nodded slowly. “You’ve not been with a lot of stallions?”

The look she gave him was curiously uncertain. She’d never openly talked about her past lovers before, nor compared them to each other. That wasn’t something that was done in Merrie culture—not, at least, by polite ponies.

“Dazzle,” she said slowly, bobbing her head. “Harvest, and my first, Vale.” She took a step onto the bed, her hind legs stretching out, then dragging forward as she languished in a long, slow stretch. “And you. Does… it bother you at all?”

“No.” Clear and unambiguous. Even in his Dammer mindset, all that mattered was that she was here with him now. He didn’t know what he would feel if she did accept another stallion as a lover, later. And it doesn’t matter now. “Get your beautiful butt up here and let me help get you comfortable, lovely mare.”

“You love my butt,” she purred, tail flagging to the left, then the right, before flipping up over her back and spilling her tail hairs over her white coat. It was art. Watching her climb up, slinking along almost like a cat, her hind legs and fore barely keeping her above the bedsheets.

“I dooo,” he purred, drawing the word out and dipping himself lower, following her as she crawled towards the center of the bed large enough for the both of them to lay back to back and still not reach the edges.

She winked at him once, with her eyes, then again with her marehood before she stopped and rolled to her side. “I’m ready, Collar.”

“I’m not,” he answered her, slinking up alongside her, his cock straining to keep above the sheets and not drag a trail of precome into the fabric. He wasn’t entirely successful, couldn’t keep the flex up, and dipped now and again and once more before he was laying behind her, his hind quarters barely on the bed, his hips trying to tell him to thrust with or without being inside her.

He ignored the instinct and used a spell to help her roll to her back fully, raising his head to avoid the swing of a hoof and thigh before she curled it close before relaxing both, letting her legs splay open for him, baring herself as she had never been before.

Her snowy coat shivered across her barrel, an avalanche of motion he followed down to her taut stomach, the hair growing shorter and finer, snow giving way to mottled pink and paler flesh where her thighs began, a valley of confection to lick and nibble at his leisure.

Even her teats were stiff, the pink nubs darker with arousal, the spare flesh around them pliant to his lips and tongue, softer than any other part of her save her thick, flexing folds. She gasped when his tongue touched the left, moaned low and deep in her throat, almost gutteral when he suckled and pressed his teeth in, letting her feel the nip before he gently pulled. Her thighs rose to trap his head as she writhed, her forehooves reaching into the air, down towards him, then above her head to press against the headboard.

Did she mention she liked having her teats toyed with? He couldn’t remember, but now he knew. “Oh, now that was something I want to hear again.”

“Do it again.” Her voice was still almost guttural, deeper and more visceral than he’d ever heard from her. He felt her need through her voice, her desire for more.

“I’m not sure I’ll last that long, love,” he said with insincere apology. He wanted to, but the ache at the base of his shaft begged for release. “I still want to try for a foal tonight, love, and I’m not sure the bed is as eager as you.”

“Tease,” she said in that same, low voice that set his mind back a step into a more primitive time. A time when food and mating were at the top of the ladder of important things. Primal. But her thighs fell away again to give him a better view of what his teasing had wrought. A tremor low on her belly, a shiver and shake running up her legs to curl her hind hooves pointlessly in the air, digging at imaginary ground and sending answering tremors down her tendons.

As he raised himself and Rosewater dragged her hooves from the headboard to reach for him, the look of naked lust in her eyes faded as the immediate pleasure waned. He paused with his cock bobbing to almost touch her cleft and met her eyes. Stars, he wanted to slide into her immediately, but…

“I love you,” she said, voice cracking from deep to her normal over the words.

“I love you, Rosewater,” Collar said, voice husky with need and want and more than he could describe. The mother of his foals was here, only the act separating the want from the truth.

He set his forelegs on either side of her barrel and craned his neck forward to meet her in a deep kiss, her hooves cradling his cheeks and stroking from jaw to muzzle as her tongue parted his lips and he met her halfway.

The kiss still pulled him as he tried to find her with his shaft’s head, sliding along her belly first and making her gasp, then resetting his hind hooves and rocking his hips back to press against her folds.

Then she winked and he slipped into her, the explosion of warmth around flesh exposed to cold air making him suck in a breath and pull back from the kiss to sink in halfway, his hips moving before he could slow himself.

She gasped and wheeled a hind leg in the air, then pressed her slender calf to his hindquarters and held there, shaking.

“Okay?” He gasped, holding back.

“More than,” Rosewater said, her voice hitching again at the raw, naked feeling of him, the heat of him so close, but with no weight pressing her down, the musky heat of his stallionhood permeating the room and mingling with her own cycle-borne tang. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow night. Soon.

She hadn’t been prepared for how raw and immediate it would feel when she was no longer freezing her cycle in place. Carnation had told her it would feel… more when she’d gone through puberty and learned about the dry emotional, philosophical, and biological explanations of what was waiting for her, but hearing it and feeling it were so very different. The difference between book knowledge and experience.

“Collar,” she moaned, her hind feet trying to find the purchase her mind said should be there, failing, and wheeling in the air until she found his flanks and held him in place. “Stars, Collar…”

She could feel every inch of him, pulsing counterpoint to her heartbeat and the flexing of her instincts, heat building slowly and steadily just behind her belly and spreading out from there as twitches and twinges along her legs and through muscles and nerves she rarely felt.

“Stars, you feel…” Then he slid deeper, his eyes closing and mouth dropping open as heat and fullness she’d longed for pressed into her. He didn’t slam himself to the hilt, didn’t do more than push to the medial ring, to where she could feel him meet more resistance, felt more heat, more pressure. But still more room. “Coll…”

“Not…” He huffed and shifted his hind legs again, pulling free briefly so only his swollen tip was still inside her, gasping at the no doubt cold air around his slick skin. “Stars, not… done it like this before.”

“Take—” Rosewater’s throat seized up as he slid deeper into her again, passing the medial ring past her greedy embrace and deeper into her, the heat and presence of his cock displacing the empty ache in her belly. “Take your time!”

“Hard to,” he panted, his cheek resting against the base of her neck as he rested, squatted over her in what had to be the most awkward position for a stallion to rut in. Ponies weren’t built to rut low to the ground. “Stars.”

But the angle, the way his shaft rubbed against her clitoris as he tried from different angles, the soft skin pressing against her and warming away the minor chill.

“We can try it more traditionally,” Rosewater breathed in a lull between trying to sink deeper into her.

“Want to see you,” he grunted, his forehooves trembling. “Want to see you when it happens.”

“Oh, love…” Rosewater trailed a hoof down his shoulder. “It might not be tonight.”

He shook his head. “Maybe not.” He grinned then, irrepressible. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t love seeing when you come.”

“Switch?”

Collar pushed himself up slightly higher and looked down at where their bodies joined. “If I pull out, Rosewater, I’m going to come. I’m pretty sure you can’t get pregnant through your belly. As fascinating—”

“Then rut me,” Rosewater laughed, reaching up and pulling him back down. “Come inside, Collar, if you’re that close. And we can switch for the next round.”

“It’s… uh.” Collar pulled back from her. “Kinda hard low to the ground.”

She giggled and pushed him up, keeping her hooves on his breast while he settled in, looking between them as he adjusted position again, rocking back and forth and staying firmly inside her. “Lesson learned.”

“Sorry.”

“We’re both learning, Collar. Each other more than anything. It’d be easier from the edge of the bed, maybe.”

“Oh, it is. I’ve done that with Cloudy, I just thought…” His cheeks reddened further.

“Then that’s what we’ll do next time,” Rosewater said gently. “I’m glad you had that experience with her, Collar, and you will have it again if you want it.” She tapped his breast lightly. “I’d hope you’d both want me there, too.”

“Stars, yes. Yes,” Collar said, nodding swiftly and rocking his hips forward, burying himself deeper into her, the angle too steep to do more than get another few inches past his medial ring, but stars, the view…

Just watching him disappear into her, feeling the weight of him inside her and over her, the pressure pushing deeper into her, his thickening head spreading her wider and making that full feeling grow tighter until she felt she should see it against her stomach.

She never saw her belly bulge, but watching as he slid out of her, his copper toned flesh mottling towards the middle twitching just before he rocked forward again and feeling every slow centimeter pressing past resistance, heat and lightning in her loins growing, her belly flexing as she tried to arch her back out of pure reflex, angling for more of him inside her, deeper to make that dam finally burst.

“Close,” Collar groaned as he pulled out again, shifting hind legs briefly at the verge of slipping out of her entirely, his scrotum tightening almost out of sight, the sway of his testes lessening. “A-are—you?”

“Come,” she commanded him. “I want to feel it, come inside me, Collar. Now.” Electric pleasure filled her as she said the words, as she watched his eyes widen and a smirk flit across his lips before it was gone, his jaw dropping open as he obeyed and sank in faster this time, his cock bending alarmingly for just a moment before he grunted and shifted, and suddenly he was more fully inside her, his body tensing for a moment, then rocking forward again.

He came.

The feeling of fullness doubled as a ripple ran along his shaft, thickening and pressing against her own body clenching down tight around him, anticipation and her own mounting pleasure making her clench tighter, her hindlegs pressing tight against his flanks, hooves curling in the air.

The first spurt came a heartbeat later with a grunt from Collar as he leaned into it, pressing against her forehooves, his head dropping and eyes closed tight for only a moment before snapping open again, a grin on his lips turning into a grimace.

Heat more than before filled her, liquid and intense, and the feeling of being too full intensified, swelling against her trembling canal, his head keeping it in, thick and pulsing like waves rushing up a river, pushed by the inexorable tide, hotter than her own, thicker than hers, and…

Another pulse ran along his cock, another grunt as he pulled against the bed and into her, the spray of seed coming on its heels, filling her more and this time his head wasn’t enough to contain it and she felt tickling bubbles of seed flowing through her against the tight confines of her sex, writhing and shifting as her muscles contracted.

“Stars!” She panted as a wave of euphoria rose up from her loins, followed in an instant by a wash of heat like the backlash of an inferno coursing through her and setting her coat to stand on end from the crown of her head to her shoulders, tingling in its wake.

The fire faded swiftly, but the euphoric daze remained, clouding her mind until the third, and then the fourth thrusts came a second later, a heartbeat apart as Collar’s jaw clenched, a groan of pleasure rising up like an avalanche flowing against gravity.

The feeling of euphoric bliss deepened, and the full feeling slackened off as the hot, musky fragrance of fresh come filled the air as the first trickle spilled free to pool against her dock, the heat shocking after the cool air.

He relaxed, his shaft starting to soften immediately, the head still thick and tight inside her but sliding out as the pressure keeping it in place slackened and her own body helped to push him out.

“Stars.”

That was all he got out as he rose on shaky hind legs, the sound of him pulling free almost lost in the combined panting, but not the sight of him. The pink and copper tip, mottled and thick at the tip, quickly losing girth as his cheeks turned flush and his belly tightened, was a beautiful sight. Off-white cream trickled from his tip to patter against her belly in little droplets of molten pleasure before he stepped to the side awkwardly and slumped to the bed beside her.

“Four times,” Rosewater murmured in his mane, staying on her back for the moment and simply letting the lethargic bliss that followed seep into her mind. “Last time was three.”

He swallowed thickly before speaking. “You… were able to keep count?”

“Mmm.” Rosewater reached down to press a hoof against her belly. “When I can feel it coming before it hits… it’s like… just the way you were pressing against me. You get thicker when you’re about to ejaculate.”

“You…” Collar swallowed again. “You didn’t mention that last time.”

“The angle,” Rosewater purred. She rolled over to lay her hind legs against his flank, one over the other, not quite on her side, but easier to nip his cheek. “You were pushing against my clit. Hard… not to notice.”

“Mmm.” Collar kissed her lightly on the lips, then rested his horn against hers. “Maybe we save this position for… another day? It was awkward, but if it did that much for you…” He let it trail off and swallowed again. “Did we remember to bring water in?”

Rosewater laughed softly. “It… kind of got lost in the shuffle, I think.” She rolled away. “I know where the kitchens are. You need warm water. Not ice cold.”

“But—”

“But I’m painted in your come?” Rosewater slid from the bed and raised her tail, glancing back on him. “You did paint a lovely scene of stallion virility all over my white canvas. It’s a good thing white is the same color as come.”

“But—” Collar stared after her. “The smell? And can’t you use a spell to clean yourself off?”

“I could.” She paused, then clucked her tongue. “Rut me with a sideways poker. Rutting Treaty.”

“The latter sounds painful, the former sounds improbable,” Collar teased, winking. “We should have a guard on duty who can vouch for you. I think Sunrise? She was going to take first shift. Then Platinum was supposed to come in until morning.”

Rosewater sighed and rubbed at her face with a hoof. “I’ll see if she’s just outside or…” she finished making her way to the door and opened it, making Collar yelp and roll away.

As soon as she stuck her head out, Sunrise startled and glanced at her. Then sniffed. Creamy cheeks turned crimson in a moment. “M-my lady?”

“Would you mind sending a servant or a guard for some water? I’m afraid my backside is rather impolitely appointed.”

“Y-your backside.” Sunrise glanced along her, stopping and snapping her eyes back to Rosewater’s grinning face. “Uh. Of course. Poppy!” she yelled. “Water for… for Lord Collar, please. He’s, um. Unable to get out of bed.”

“Thank you, Sunrise.” Rosewater was about to close the door when she caught a questioning look from her. “Yes?”

“It’s… nothing, my lady.” The pegasus glanced left, then right down the hallway as Poppy made his way towards them. “I was… curious. About how things will be after. The war, I mean. How do you want them to be?”

Rosewater glanced over her shoulder to see Collar trying unsuccessfully to appear as a cushion under the sheets. “Tonight might not be the best time.”

“Oh! Stars above, I didn’t… I should—” Sunrise cut herself off and took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking all night, my lady. Well. For the past hour or so. Or more. Really since… the—the you know.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about it for a lot longer, and… equality. Choice. But also unity of purpose.” Rosewater shrugged and leaned in close to Sunrise’s ear. “But talking about that while I’m filled to the brim with my husband’s seed is hardly the proper time.”

Cheeks that had been red turned scarlet and ears flattened into her mane as Sunrise stammered an apology.

Rosewater laughed and nipped her cheek. “A tease at your expense, but truth, too. I know you want to know, and I know we haven’t had a chance to sit down and talk but time and place, Sunny.”

“O-o-of course!” Sunrise turned away, facing out as her training said, her cheeks and neck red as rose petals. “I apologize. We.. it gets boring.”

Poppy passed them by, his brows raised at his fellow guard, and he offered a smile and a nod to Rosewater. “Your sister sends her well-wishes.”

“My thanks, Poppy. I’ll return them on the morrow if I’m able.”

“She would greatly enjoy that, my lady. She misses her family dearly. Those that aren’t insane.” And then he was gone down the stairs, leaving Rosewater to stare after him, lips pursed. “How is Glory doing?”

Sunrise startled. “Bored. Lonely, I think. She’s been here longer than Rosemary, but she’s handling it… better? I want to say better, but she’s also sleeping a lot.” Her left ear twitched and a moment later Rosewater heard it, too. Hooves coming up the stairs, muffled by the carpet, and before she could process that, a stallion’s head appeared over the lip of the landing.

Rosewater thought she recognized him. It wasn’t Poppy, but he recognized her of course.

Her thoughts froze again as she realized what it must look like…

“Flare Star,” Sunrise called out, raising a hoof.

“S-Sunrise,” the stallion called, swallowing and flicking a look from her to Rosewater and back. “I-is she—”

“I invited her in,” Collar said from behind Rosewater, rearing up to lay a foreleg across her shoulder and leaning out to look down the hall. “Flare. Good to see you.”

“Uh. G-good to see you, too.” The Dammeguard stood there for another long, long moment before he dropped his head in a bow. “I-I will check the other wings, my lord.”

“Thank you for your diligence, Private.” Collar nodded to him and kissed Rosewater’s ear lightly. “Come back to bed, love. It’s cold.”

“It is.” Rosewater giggled. “I guess you’ll have to warm me up.”

The private fled and Sunrise, rather than turning a red unmeant to be seen by mortal eyes, giggled along with her.

“Teasing,” Rosewater told her calmly as she backed into the room, “is immensely fun when it’s meant in good fun. I hope your watch is quiet, Sunny, and your sleep calm.”

Then she closed the door and re-engaged the silencing warding as she prepared for a second round of making love with Collar.

Author's Note

The epic, sexy conclusion of... the last chapter.

Anywho. Not much to say here. Rosewater may or may not be pregnant with tonight, but they had fun, and discovered that ponies aren't really meant to, uh, do it like that. Not easily. But they still had fun.