Page 47 of Enchanted with the Orc
I couldn’t stop the little laugh that left me. I nuzzled against him, and ignored the way he twisted his hips away from me.
We’re friends.Justfriends.
“Yeah, well, once Gabbi was born, he wasmuchworse. He kept telling me that I was paying too much attention to her.” I couldn’t keep the disbelief from my voice. “Even though she was a newborn. He said I should be paying more attention to him because he’dgiven her to me.”
The scoff that left him was loud and obnoxious and it made me fall in love with him a little. I stopped that train of thought right away, shoving it to the back of my mind, deciding that I was going to lay my entire story out for him.
“I took her to the pediatrician without him one day when she had a fever,” I sighed, my fingers clenching in his shirt again at the memory. “She was so tiny andso hot. I didn’t have any support. No one I could call. He’d broken my old phone so I didn’t have any way to contact my coven. They were all already in hiding so there was no way to reach them except for their personal numbers and like a complete idiot, I’d never memorized any of them. And he monitored everything I did, so I couldn’t go out looking for them.”
I had to stop, my anger bubbling up until I was talking so fast I was unintelligible. I needed to slow down. I had to explain everything to him so he knew what we were dealing with.
“He’s obsessed with me, I think. I don’t know what it is about me, but if I could change it, I would.”
That was when he pulled me away, glaring down at me. “There isnothingabout you that needs to be changed. His issues arehis,” he growled, and I marveled at how this big orc with fury in his eyes didn’t make a single ounce of fear bubble inside of me. I nodded, cupping his cheek, and he softened right away. “Sorry,” he whispered and I shook my head.
“No, I like it,” I told him. “You getting worked up at what a dick he was,” I added, with a small smirk. “It’s fun to watch.”
His watery laugh was disbelieving and he nuzzled his nose against mine. “Well, get used to it. I hate him.”
“Me too,” I giggled, so close to him that if I leaned forward an inch I could kiss him. Andfuck, did I want to kiss him. I looked away, burying my face against his chest again, away from temptation. “But I can’t figure out why. I’m not special in any way. So the lengths that he went to watch me was insane. All the cameras, and I assume everything had tracking devises, because he always found me.”
He tugged me closer, as if he needed to feel me as much as I needed to feel him. Which wasimpossible.
“That day, I took her to the doctor and when I got home, he was back from work and he was waiting. The Goddess Mother had to have blessed us because the doctor gave her some sample medicine she had while we were there,” I explained, shaking my head. “So she was already doing a little better. She was sleeping, but when I got home, he didn’t believe me. He thought I’d gone to meet someone or I’d tried to leave or something.”
I released a heavy breath. “I wish that was it. Because he took her from me that night.”
“What?” he asked, his fingers tightening on my back, squeezing me tighter than he probably meant to. “He took her?” His voice was dark and furious, shaking with the kind of emotion that only someone wholoved a child could ever understand. He wanted to protect her while her biological father had done the opposite.
“Yeah,” I admitted, sniffling into his shirt again. “I’d thought I was scared before. Every time he hurt me, I thought I’d been as scared as I possibly could be, but I was wrong. I didn’t know what fear was until he locked her in a bedroom on her own while she was sick.”
“Alone?” he growled, and every inch of his body was tense.
“Alone and sick,” I gasped, sobbing now. “She was so little, and I could hear her screaming on the other side. I begged him, but he wouldn’t let me go to her. He said—” I had to cut myself off as I sobbed harder. “He said that it would teach me that she wasn’t as important as he was. That if I thought I could leave him for anyone else, he was going to take her and never let me see her.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Enka
Rage was a living thing inside me.
I was flooded by the need to find that pathetic male and string him up by his balls. He’d left Gruk-ir on her own when she was sick and too little to fend for herself. I couldn’t imagine what kind of monster could do that to her and then rub it into Tasia’s face.
Especially when she would have been crazed with worry. Even now, my extremities tingled with a panicked need to comfort her. I took a deep breath, holding her shaking form against me as she sobbed and I vowed to avenge every tear that she wept.
My useless murmurs and the stroke of my hand on her back couldn’t take away her pain and I knew it. I’d have to fix that, but until I had the male in front of me, all I could do was focus on my female and what she needed. And that was the priority anyway.
I’d get him eventually. This moment etched his eventual demise into my brain, but not until my mate felt safe enough for me to go hunting.
“I couldn’t get to her,” she whispered, reliving the trauma in her head. “And I begged him. I was on my knees. I did… whatever he told me to.” She ducked her face into my chest again and I ground my fangs together so hard I wondered if I was going to crack them. “But he still didn’t unlock the door. He went to sleep, but I stayed at the door, listening to her cry.”
I pressed kisses to the top of her head, listening to the recrimination in her voice. She was angry at herself, and I wished she could see that there was nothing she could do. That he was a monster who had hurt them both and it wasn’t her fault.
“I tried to pick the lock, but I didn’t know how and I didn’t have any way to look it up,” she sniffled. “He password protected the computer and only let me use it when he was standing behind me.”
I frowned, my brow dropping low as I realizedjusthow much control he’d held over my female. Both the big and little ways he’d trapped her in his abusive cycle.
What a fucking asshole.
