Hey everybody!

Just a short drabble-ish one shot for you guys, about how Dom came to terms with his feelings for Kel :)

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the charaters depicted below, they belong to Tamora Pierce

Hope you enjoy it!

~ Angie

Everything had started out so innocently. Just trying to break the ice. A turnover and a sparkle in the eye.

How was he supposed to know somewhere along the line he'd stop joking around. He wasn't sure quite when his flirtations had become serious. He thought possibly around the time that the Kennan boy had come along. It had given him a bit of a jolt to realise that other guys would be after her, and for some reason this bugged him. He had waved most of it off, he was just being protective of her, that's why he had an irrational hatred of the boy.

The men had noticed, of course they had. The court flirt hadn't even looked at another woman for the last few years. They didn't know for sure who the lady who had caught his eye was, but they suspected.

It took a suicide mission behind enemy lines to rescue refugees against certain odds for him to even admit to himself that maybe he thought of her as more than a friend. The sight of her humbled before her old training master expecting to be sent to Traitors' Hill. The iron grip around his heart, followed by the release of the breath he didn't even know he was holding, to think that maybe he liked liked her.

It took seeing her looking delightfully awkward in her gorgeous dress at her former knight master's wedding for him to think that maybe it was love. The dance when he held her close to him, staring down into her dreamy hazel eyes, and the light blush on her cheeks to convince him that it was love.

Love. That was a word he never used. Sure he had courted many girls in his time, but the word had never come to mind. It had always seemed too powerful before, but not now, now it felt like it didn't even begin to describe how he felt.

It took seeing her standing opposite him at his cousin's wedding with a far off look on her face while holding his gaze, to make him build up the courage to tell her.

It took him by surprise when during a slow dance at the reception, she got there first.

"I think I'm in love with you," she had whispered into his ear as he held her close, before she buried her head into his chest, face bright red. At first he was taken by surprise, frozen not knowing what to do next. He had tenderly brought a hand up to her face turned her head to face him. Leaning down he pressed his lips gently to hers, before pulling away to see a contented look on her face.

It took him two more promotions and three more years to pick out a ring. Two more months crawled by until they were finally in the same place again, when he proposed.

It had taken him seven years but finally he was here, feeling terrified and elated at the same time, waiting for her to walk through the doors at the end of the temple. The doors opened and there she was, looking resplendent in a wedding gown made especially for her by a dear friend. Once she was there he couldn't look anywhere else.

He had had no idea things would have escalated from that one turnover to marriage. As he leant in to kiss her at the end of the ceremony, he knew he wouldn't have had it any other way.

There you have it - I hope you enjoyed it! As ever please let me know what you thought in a review!

~ Angie