Page 22 of Orn and the Real Girl
I rolled my eyes, hefting my hay bale higher so that I could let Brekka pass behind me with her pail of fresh milk. “Will you never show me any kindness?” I teased.
She snorted. “Maybe if you and your mate weren’t so godsdamnedloudall night long, I’d be in a better mood.”
I laughed. “Alright, fair. And sorry, Brekka. We don’tmeanto do it—“
“But you’re too busy trying to see who can fuck whose brains out fastest, I know. Like I said, I canhearit.”
“Hopefully not too much longer,” I added, my face hot with the embarrassment of being caught. But unable to stop my chest from puffing out with pride. Iwasvery good at making my mate scream with pleasure, after all. And what was more of a boast than that? “Our cabin’s nearly done, now.”
If I wouldn’t have made sure the rest of the coven was taken care of first, we wouldn’t have had to torture them for so long with our…nocturnal athletics. But I’d insisted, and Sara—ever the kind and generous soul—hadn’t fought me on it. So ours was the last to be finished in the hamlet that had sprung up around my once-lonely cabin.
I adjusted my grip on the bale of hay I carried and coughed nervously. “It’s not…it’s notreallya problem, is it?”
Brekka laughed, but not unkindly. “No, you great big dear. Truth is more often than not I can barely hear you over the sound of my lady-love wailing away…” Her gaze went soft and sweet. “Salerah’s fires, I hope she gets over that cold soon.”
I chuckled, returning her affectionate goodbye, then continued on to the expanded barn. I dropped the bale just inside the doors, then went back out and over to the pen, where Gehyta was doing her best to keep the goats, Ruff and Tumble, from picking on our sweet dairy cow, Maisy. At the sight of me at the fence she bleated, her short tail waggling sweetly, and left the goats to their mischief to greet me.
“Hello, my little queen,” I murmured, rubbing her velvet-soft nose and scratching through the silky locks of her long neck. “Are you having trouble with your subjects, again?”
She huffed, butting my chest gently, and I chuckled, scratching behind her ears to try and ease her stress. The goats kept hermightybusy.
While I was scratching Gehyta’s ears, the long locks on her back stirred, something moving quickly beneath them, and soon Lena had was on top of my aerlanis’ head, gently nosing at my hand for her own scratches. I laughed, obliging the little snake, her tiny black eyes closing and her delicate forked tongue tasting the air and my skin. “How do you manage to hold onto Gehyta without any limbs, little one?” I mused.
“She says she is very strong, and that is how. Naturally,” a sweet voice said behind me, my heart soaring in my chest at the sound.
I spun to behold my beautiful mate and daughter, my smile becoming beaming. “My loves,” I called, leaving the animals to their games and meeting the two people who held my heart and soul in their small hands.
They both returned my smile, Aora’s revealing the wide gap in the front where her baby teeth had fallen out recently.“Pacha!” she said—“father” in her mother tongue, she’d told me, bringing me to tears. Her large brown eyes gleamed in the bright light, the blue of the sky reflected in the gleam of her deep brown skin. She came from a remote people on the southern shore of Cillure, far beyond where I’d ever been. Mother Tonn had been gone for months fetching her, but as soon as she’d caught sight of the neglected child, she’d known the long journey was more than worth it.
She had been retrieving a part of our large, messy family, after all.
“Pacha, guess what!”
I lifted Aora into the air and perched her on my hip. She was growing quite tall, but was still thin from her years of malnourishment, and hardly weighed a thing. “What is it, my girl?”
“Morrasays she’s going to set it up for me to find my familiar, and soon!” she crowed, her little legs kicking me in her excitement. “I’m so excited!”
I laughed, tucking a loose tendril of her kinky-curly hair behind her ear. We’d have to redo the twisted knots that covered her scalp soon, I noted. “Do you have any idea yet of what it will be?”
Sara shook her head, one hand plucking a dried blade of grass from our daughter’s long dress while the other snaked behind me and grabbed my ass. I managed to avoid jolting, our years of doing exactly this having trained it out of me, but I could not stop the heat that bloomed all over my face. “We don’t go into our vision ceremony for our familiar with any hopes or expectations. Isn’t that right, lovey?”
Aora nodded, beaming at Sara. “Exactly,morra!” She turned to me, rolling her large eyes. “Obviously,pacha.”
I laughed, hugging her close. “Of course. Forgive this old man his forgetfulness—“
Sara swatted my arm with a snort. “’Old man.’ As if you are ancient instead of barely into your thirties.”
“Have you heard my knees in the mornings, lately? Sounds like ice cracking during the spring thaw—“
“Sorry to interrupt, my dears,” a soft voice interjected from behind Sara, and we both startled at the sudden appearance of Mother Tonn. Being only a witch, she wasn’tsupposedto be able to teleport…but in the three years I’d known her, I’d come to wonder. “But we have a visitor. He insists on seeing Orn. He says he knows him…from the Fenns.”
My stomach dropped, ice slushing through my veins. “The…the Fenns?” I repeated, dazed. Aora squirmed, tugging at my hand.
“Pacha,you’re squeezing too tight!”
I loosened my grip at once, pressing a kiss to her forehead in apology. “I’m sorry, little love.” I turned to Sara. “Can you take her? In case it’s…” Trouble? Bad news? I had no way of knowing, but I knew that whatever would have brought an orcish man to find me from all the way in the Fenns wouldn’t be good.
“I can, but I’m still coming with,” my mate answered, taking our daughter.
