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“I want to have a little girl, Soo Yeon,” Ban Ryu whispered a couple of hours later as he lay holding his wife in her bed.  A bed that now belonged to them both.

She glanced up in surprise.  “You do?”

He nodded.  “And she’ll look just like you.”

She smiled at him as the sweetness of his words enveloped her soul in a warming balm.

“And I want to name her Sook Min.”

“Sook Min?” she queried, quite lost.

“After my eomma.”

“Oh.”  The sound escaped her mouth as a puff of air.  Then she frowned as she gazed up at him questioningly.  “Do you remember your eomma, Ban Ryu?”

He squeezed his eyes shut.  And pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Not really,” he whispered.  “Beyond knowing that she was the one kind influence during my childhood.”

“We will most definitely have a daughter then.  So we can honor your eomma by naming her Sook Min.”

He smiled down at his beloved.  “I just adore you, Soo Yeon.”

“I know,” she peeped up at him with a satisfied smile curving her lips.

“Oh, you know, do you?”

“Mm-hmm.  After all, you braved a mentorship with my appa just to marry me.”

He chuckled.  Then he sighed.  “That I did.  But, Soo Yeon…”

“Hmm?”

“Your appa isn’t that bad.  In fact, he’s…quite a generous man.”

“My appa is a darling, Ban Ryu.  You can go ahead and say it.”

“I am not going to say that,” he scoffed.

“Hmm.  All right.  Then say it about me.  I take after him, you know.”

He laughed suddenly.  “So I’ve heard.”  Then he reached for her to test those waters again.

“What have you heard?” she queried abruptly as he drew her close to him and slid his hand down her naked hip.

“That you get your passionate soul from your appa.”

“Oh, really?”  Her face lit up with surprised delight.  “Then he cannot take me to task for what I’m about to do.”

Ban Ryu was still chuckling as her lips claimed his a moment later.  And one of her hands slid down his own hip.

After a few glorious moments, she breathed into his ear, “I am so grateful Appa let me marry you.”

“I know I am too,” he murmured.

She turned to gaze back up into the eyes of the most noble man whom she knew.  “I love you,” she whispered.

“I know that too,” he smiled.

Right before he brushed his lips softly across hers again.  And held her tight.  He was never letting Soo Yeon go.  Not ever again.  He had finally tasted a little tenderness.  In a most unexpected place.

As he held her close and kissed her pretty lips, he marveled at his surroundings.  Safe at home.  In the bosom of his appa’s enemy.  At the hearth of his own very best friend.  And in the embrace of his entire family.  The best of whom had today agreed to be his wife.

Over the last year, Ban Ryu had learned that the war was very different from what he had been raised to believe it was.  His enemy hadn’t been living across town in a nobleman’s house.  His truest foe had been attempting to destroy him from boyhood from within his own household through the most vicious form of control.  Abusing his own appa.  The truth had always been displayed before Ban Ryu in horrifying shades of violence.  Yet the fears of a tiny boy had grown into the terrors of a young man as he had tried to outwit a cruel leader.  He’d had to choose between loyalty to his own appa and his cause and the increasing loveliness of Jin Heung’s vision of the future.

Thankfully, by siding with the true king, Ban Ryu had finally seen that dreadful man’s reign of terror cut short.  Minister Park had come to a bitter end.  Even whilst that little boy had finally found his place…both in society and in life.  He was now part of the Kim household.  And he couldn’t think of a better one to which to belong. 

He had never felt as loved as he did in Soo Yeon’s arms.  But he had never felt as respected as he did in the presence of her appa.  Lord Kim Seub.  An honorable man who knew Ban Ryu’s worst secret yet still deemed him worthy of sharing his prestige.  That brave hwarang shook his head as he continued to marvel at the wonder of being accepted.  Just as he was. 

Of being declared truly…

Noble.