Page 143 of Halfling
Orek bounded to his feet, letting the hatchet fly. It sank into Silas’s back, and the tracker arched, arms flung wide in a rictus of agony.
End it.Finish what I should’ve in that river.
Silas got a leg under him, turning to block Orek’s next strike, but he wasn’t quick enough. Orek jerked the hatchet from Silas’s back, dragging another snarl of pain. The blade flashed as it swept across Silas’s neck, blood spurting and steaming from the open wound.
The tracker gurgled, sprawling to the frozen ground.
End it.
Orek kicked Silas to his back and fell upon him, driving his knife into the tracker’s chest. Silas clutched uselessly at Orek’s arms, claws digging into his leathers.
End it end it end it.
Orek drew the knife back, blood gushing from the wound gaping in Silas’s chest. The knife sank in again to the hilt, and the tracker jerked and went still.
Not enough. Destroy the threat.
The handle went slippery in Orek’s grip, slicing his own hand as he drove it again and again and again into the orc’s chest.
His rage made him blind and deaf to anything but the dark chasm he made in the tracker. His arm shook violently with fatigue, but he didn’t stop, couldn’t stop, sank his blade again and again into the threat.
Orek only stopped when the blade caught between ribs and stuck. He couldn’t pull it out again, the handle too sticky and slick with blood and gore.
Panting in his haze, Orek stared down at the mess he’d made of the tracker.
Skin and chest muscle had been split apart, baring glossy red organs that sat still in the cage of white ribs. He stared at the heart, sliced almost in two, daring it to beat.
But Silas was perfectly still beneath him, dark eyes half-closed and mouth cracked open, just revealing that macabre split tongue.
Orek’s lips peeled back from his teeth and he roared at the dead tracker.
Cruel, vicious, stupid bastards, coming afterhis mate,thinking they could threatenhis mate!They just couldn’t let him go, forget her and keep to their miserable lives in those damned mountains—no, they had to reach their fucking fingers all the way across the land to try and snatchhis mate!Orek wouldn’t have it. They wouldn’t have her. Not his mate,his,she washis.
Not my mate. Never my mate.
It took a long while, but the rage slowly began to bleed away, leaving Orek shaking as he stood and stumbled away from the corpse. His breaths came in heaving pants, the cold air burning him from the inside. His gorge rose looking at what he’d done.
He’d killed kin.
Worse, he’d led kin straight to Sorcha and her family.
And there may be even more on their way.
The thought of Krulhere,in the beauty of the home Sorcha loved, made Orek shudder.
I did this. I brought danger to her door.
He’d been stupid, so enamored and besotted with his mate that once they left Cara and Anghus’s farm, he hadn’t thought to continue covering their tracks. He’d been a fool, so sure they’d left his clan and the past behind—that whatever lurked on the Brádaigh lands must have been human.
But it washimwho brought this upon Sorcha.
Fates, I’ve failed her.
His mate, his beautiful, soft mate—he hadn’t saved her at all. When she looked at him like he was a male worth a damn, it was a lie. He was worthless, a male unable to protect his mate. Didn’t matter that he’d eliminated this threat; more was coming, something far worse that he couldn’t save her from.
And it’s my fault. Stupid, so stupid.
Krul would raze this place and do far worse to all the humans here. And Sorcha, his beautiful mate, would suffer most.
