Page 18 of The Orc Outcast's Conquest

Why did she keep touching him? Didn’t she see what he was?

“Before you said I belonged ‘with’ you, and now you say I belong ‘to’ you.”

He did not think there was much of a difference. This woman’s speech was so strange. Her every move and word clouded his mind.

He’d seen her fall out of the fucking sky like a Fades-blasted conjuring.

“Are you of the Waking Order?” Govek snarled, too low, too viciously. He’d terrify her, and she’d flee, and his instincts would force him to give chase.Such exertion would cause his puncture to worsen, and it would be sheer torture trying to hunt her down.

He should have bound her. Then she wouldn’t be able to run. The beastly desire had his fingers itching to retrieve the rope from his pack.

“You mentioned that already. Is it some sort of club?” She sidled up close enough that he could feel her warmth radiating against his tender flesh. She looked so fucking good in the cloak he’d made. He wished he could scent her again, but if he got too close, her tincture would wound him further.

But under it, on those few patches of skin not doused in the vile concoction, she smelled better than any female he had ever been near. Like honey and crisp morning sun.

Fuck! What was wrong with him? He should try to stop the imprint, not strengthen it.

She continued to chatter. “I’m not a member of any clubs. I don’t have time for them. I work two full-time jobs just to afford my apartment. Three, if you count the under-the-table babysitting gigs.”

His brow twitched. She sat on babies?

“Gosh, the Youngs asked me to babysit next week, didn’t they? They pay really good, but dang, it’s a chore. I love Taylor, but she’s a menace sometimes. Her tantrums are loud enough to piss off the next town over.”

The woman trailed off and a haunting expression dimmed her features. Her eyes grew misty, and her voice trembled. “They’re all dead.”

His claws extended. “Dead?”

She snapped to attention, hugging herself tight. Whatever had happened to these babies she’d sat on was clearly weighing on her mind.

And her existence wore on his.

“How did you get here?” Something wasn’t right with her. Humans didn’t have magic. She shouldn’t have been able to just appear.

Was she a trap? Why was she babbling about death?

Her haunted brown eyes pierced into his soul and hooked in his gut.

“I don’t know. I was in my world, and then I got chased off a cliff.” She shook her head, looked off into the woods again. “I must be dreaming.”

“In my world.” She was from a different world?

He should leave her here in the woods.

That thought had his veins bursting with heat, scorching him from the inside out.

He was imprinting hard.

And that was fucking nonsense, too. It should have taken at least the full length of a moon before imprinting even began. Yerina’s imprint hadn’t set inside him until almost a full season had passed.

Yet somehow, this woman was thoroughly embedded after he’d simply watched her fall out of the air.

He’d heard of instant imprinting before, but in legends—stories told to children. He had never heard of a single occurrence where it had been real.

“It’s so pretty,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I can’t believe my brain imagined all this. I hope I...” She stopped walking, her eyes skewered a golden coneflower, half withered in the mud at the base of a barren oak. “I hope I don’t come to before I die.”

His heart seized at the thought. “This isn’t an imagining, and you will not die, woman. You are my conquest.”

For the will of Fades! Why did he keep calling her that? She wasn’t his blasted conquest. He wasn’t going to take a conquest. He was going to war. To Baelrok Forge, where Karthoc’s legions trained.

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