Page 19 of The Orc's Captive Bride
She was so small and fragile, but she’d turned to him for protection instead of running away in fear. Something in his chest shifted, opening up in a way that felt dangerous and inevitable all at once.
Mine.
The thought felt different this time. It was more than his Beast’s possessive snarl. It was something quieter, deeper, and infinitely more terrifying.
Her fingers tightened on his tunic as she said something else in that liquid language of hers, still pressed against his chest like he was shelter instead of storm.
This changes nothing, he told himself firmly.I have a duty. A mission. Delivering her to Lasseran is all that matters.
But when he looked down at the wild auburn hair pressed against his tunic, at the small form seeking comfort from the very thing that should have frightened her most, he knew he was lying.
Something had changed.
He just didn’t know what to do about it.
They rode hard that afternoon.He set a pace that would have his fellow orcs grumbling and humans collapsing, pushing the horses to their limits and beyond. The remaining two males—Brennik had stayed behind, nursing his injuries and his bruised pride—struggled to keep up, their mounts lathered and heaving by each evening’s camp.
Thea never complained.
She sat in front of him on his great stallion, his oversized tunic riding up her thighs, and her hands gripping the saddle with white-knuckled determination. He could feel her exhaustion in the way she leaned back against his chest as the day wore on. Could see it in the dark circles forming under her eyes, visible even through those strange glass things she wore.
But she never asked for a break. Instead, she asked questions.
“Khorrek.” His name sounded different in her mouth, the harsh consonants softened into something almost musical.
He grunted acknowledgment and she pointed at a bird wheeling overhead with that questioning sound.
“Velrach.”
“Velrach,” she repeated, mangling it slightly before she tried again. “Velrach.”
Better.
She pointed at a cloud formation, a new type of grass, a rock outcropping, anything that caught her attention, and each timeshe absorbed the word he gave her, storing it away in that frighteningly quick mind.
By the second day of hard riding, she was constructing simple sentences.
“Khorrek… thrak… vorak?”
Khorrek’s horse goes?
It wasn’t quite right—the verb form was wrong—but close enough that he understood.
“Kel’Vara dresh,” he corrected. To Kel’Vara.
“Kel’Vara.” She rolled the words around her mouth like she was tasting them. “What is Kel’Vara?”
Two days. She’d been learning for two days and she was already forming questions.
“Bahkar.” City.
“Bahkar,” she echoed. “Lasseran in Kel’Vara?”
“Lasseran ek’shol Kel’Vara,” he corrected. Lasseran rules Kel’Vara.
He could practically see her mind working, cataloging words and building connections.
“What is Lasseran?”
