Page 58 of Halfling
Perhaps it’s better this way. Anything more would kill me faster than this fucking knife wound.
He and the stories and the elders had been right—it all had led to the ruin of him. Letting someone close, letting her fill up all the dark, empty corners of his heart had ruined him. She’d expanded and enriched his life, made room for herself there, and without her, everything had already begun to collapse.
It was why few orc-kin survived long when they lost their bonded mate. They didn’t want to.
And she’s not even my mate. Never will be.
She’d asked him to take her home and protect her—he’d done neither. Why would she want a male like him? A male whose own mother didn’t want him? Just like the boy he’d once been, hoping one day his mother would come back to take him with her; just like the youth he’d been desperate to please and provide for a clan that loathed him and used him…just like that, he’d foolishly hoped that maybe, perhaps…this time…
Sorcha would never be his.
And yet he’d let her ruin him for anyone else. There’d be no other for him. He didn’t want another. He didn’t want companionship or clan or contentment. He wantedher.Orek had known what it was to lust and long, but now he knew what it was towant.
I just want her.
So, so badly, he thought he heard her calling his name.
Orek groaned, hoping the noise would wake his ears from the delusion. Already hallucinating—he was worse off than he thought.
He clasped the blanket tighter to his side.
It wasn’t in him to simply give up, even if that would’ve been the easier, more merciful thing to do. He knew the wound would heal eventually, but he had his doubts about the heartache. How long would it take to forget her scent? The curve of her smile? The different cadence of her laugh and her grumble?
Never,his mind hissed.
He didn’t want to forget.
Orek groaned again. Fates, what a miserable wretch he was.
“Orek!”
His heart lurched painfully in his chest, another tendril of hope trying to take root, but he quashed it ruthlessly. He couldn’t bear another.
It’s not her. It’s not—
“Orek! Orek, if you can hear me, make noise!”
The breath shuddered from his lungs in a pained wheeze. His ears rang with the sound of her voice, so near, so clear it defied being his imagination.
But no, surely it couldn’t…surely she couldn’t…
His head turned in the direction her voice had come from, and he peeled his eyelids open. The forest had long since gone dark, the trees mere silhouettes against the soft bluish-black of night.
At first, he believed the faint but growing glow of light to be a trick of his stupidly hopeful heart. But then…it got brighter, casting great bars of light between the trees.
He watched in stunned silence as something substantial passed between the trees behind the light.
A horse and wagon followed the general direction of the river, but it wasn’t what had everything inside him going still.
“Orek!” she called again.
Sorcha.
My mate. My female.
Sucking in a breath that filled his lungs and everything else, Orek called back, “Here!”
A gasp from somewhere close, the loud slap of boots, and then he drowned in her scent.
