41 parts Complete MatureHer family gave shelter to a band of weary travelers. A meal by the fire, a kindness freely given - nothing more.
But five years later, Thorin Oakenshield remembers. With Erebor reclaimed and his crown secure, the King Under the Mountain seeks to repay a debt long left unsettled. Yet when he returns to the farmstead, he finds not a warm hearth but ruin - and the woman who once caught his eye standing alone among the ashes of her family's sacrifice.
What begins as honor quickly becomes something deeper: laughter breaking through grief, quarrels sparking into kisses, and two stubborn souls learning to fight not against one another, but for each other. As shadows stir once more and Erebor itself calls him home, Thorin must decide if love can be more enduring than stone - and if he dares to claim not just a kingdom, but the heart that has been his all along.
A tale of memory, fire, and fate - where debts are paid not in gold, but in love and when love blooms promise is kept.