He gives her the chance to walk with him, to be alone with him as they rarely were able to do with his primary position as guardian of his brothers’ Sadim. He is glad for the busyness, truth be told, as it had made withholding from his wife easier to bear through the last season and then plenty of time till now. He had been determined to follow, to the letter of the law, his oaths… but in his subtlety he is only too lucky that his Wife hungered for him as much as he did for her. She understands what he means in inviting her out to the dunes, even beyond simply being alone with her.

At home, he would have been wed off to whomever his father willed - if anyone at all - and his first time with her would have been more duty than desire. At home, his brother would have been asked to approve of her, to permit his coupling with her. At home, priests would have told him the appropriate time and the appropriate way. While all the brothers had spent time with the Priestesses for their first time, Aldebaran most recently of all, that coupling would not have been the last formally dictated one in the least.

It is why they were here, having witness the devastation in their eldest known brother - they had convinced him and each other to flee.

But he knew that here he would choose to follow his brother’s example. Here he knew he would take his Daughter of Allat to the dunes and when she agreed to his walk, he would take the gift that patience had bought him. It was to be the tradition now, he thinks, inviting the chosen Wife to accompany their inviting Husband out into the Dunes - to find each other between the breasts of Mut and the bosom of Geb and quench the fires of Min and Qetesh in one another. It would be a more private endeavor, at least, than doing so where he was named Sultan. Unlike the cavern of Rigel, the farflung Oasis of Aldebaran, and the duo-Oasis of Antares -- he was Sultan over the common-wellspring Oasis that housed their guests. His privacy had to be bought in slivers and bites.

When she sidles in beside him, it feels at last like the tension of the day had been soothed. "I was only so eager to be free of you when you were not mine to have. You baffled me and my reaction to you was dangerous while there was every possibility that you were able to marry another." His eye peeks at her from the corner of his eye, his voice growing dangerously deep as The Shadow peeked out of his eyes at her. "You know I would not have withheld myself if I had allowed myself to dream and lost you to another."

But thankfully, The Shadow fades as if seeking somewhere else in the night to do mischief and leaving Atair only glowing with the moon the brighter for it’s absence. "The night is kind tonight," she says and he lets the corner of his mouth twitch, for she was always the one to break the silence he often maintained simply to tweak her whisker… only she returns with a new game all her own, "Tell me your thoughts husband, where do they wander under the stars?"

It was a trick, but he is not clever as he might have been on less bountiful nights, so to speak. "To the vows I spoke when the winter’s full moon shone on us and I promised to give everything I had this season to you alone." He can see the tremors her hammering heart causes and it makes his blood run hot and his confidence become too stalwart for any rejections in play she might choose to feign. He wonders if it is because he did not play her game, dodging around his desires like he had done since they had met-- save when he confessed the abyssal-deep yearning he held for her. He can feel her, wedged into his side, tense in a way that almost made him understand the yearning of a wolf looking upon a deer who had spotted him.

"You accepted my invitation out into the Dunes," he says huskily and with no sign of turning from his purpose, "You knew of how my brother and his Mira came together between Mut and Geb out in the wilder dunes, and still you said yes." He stops his forward walk, ears pointed at the only thing left in his view. "Your trembling tells me even if you didn’t know my purpose then-- you know it now." This time his voice is softer, more kind than hungry - a voice meant to be heard as an offer of escape, though he was not so mastered of himself as his brother was.

"If you cannot accept me, Wife, turn slowly and walk back to my brothers…." there is tension and even a little pain in the offer, ears flicked back to half pin into his mane as if he fought to give the escape breath in words. "If you do," he steps twice backwards and lets his voice deepen as it had when he was at his weakest against his yearning for her. "then run." And on that last word, the predatory nature that had so long been stamped out in him was given just a little bit of slack to it’s rein.