Page 19 of The Orc Outcast's Conquest

She finally glanced away from the flower. “Your conquest, huh? What exactly does that mean?”

She didn’t know what a conquest was. Where the fuck was she from?

Govek ground his teeth.He should leave her here.

And then she reached out her blasted, warm, perfect fingers to touch his arm. It had been so Fades-wretched long since he’d been honored with such gentleness, and his mind was in blazing tatters.

And her imprint raged deeper.

“I will care for you,” he finally managed. The truth of it stung his throat. He’d spent far too many miserable hours trying to care for his prior woman, only to have it all crumble around him. He’d given everything to Yerina. All that he had the power to give.

And it wasn’t enough.

There was no overcoming his own vile nature and lack of control. He could only hide it for a short time before it finally bubbled to the surface.

“That sounds really nice,” she whispered.

His heart thundered so hard it warmed up his chest. Miranda’s eyes were so soft on him they may as well have been the rapids he’d just endured. She wrenched him under with her tenderness and he helplessly allowed her to batter him.

“Where are we going?” she asked before he regained his senses. “Or are we just going to wander about in the woods for a while? I’m fine with that, by the way. Wandering around. It’s...” She fixated on a flock of robins flying overhead. Their arrow formation pointed toward the Rove Tree, and Govek clenched his fists.

It was too blasted early for them to be abandoning the outer woods for the protection the Great Tree offered. Winter was coming on hard.

“Tough guy? You okay?”

He scowled. “My name is Govek, woman.”

“Call me Miranda, and maybe I’ll call you by your name, too.”

He growled low in his throat, the sound a threatening reverberation that sent the birds who had been chattering pleasantly into uneasy silence.

The female did nothing but raise her dainty brows in interest. She rubbed at her chest. An area he had been desperately trying to avoid staring at. “Ooh. That’s tingly. How do you do that?”

He had never met a challenge quite the likes of this human, and his curiosity grew greater than his reservations. He took a moment to examine her fragile form. She was average height for a woman, which meant she only came up to the middle of his chest. She was wearing fucking scraps, and the cloak he’d given her wasn’t tied together properly. Her waist was so slender he could span it with two hands. Her cheeks were ashen, the bags under her light brown eyes were heavy, and her hair was so matted and unwashed he could not discern what the actual color was.

She was not an impressive specimen to behold. Certainly not the kind of creature he would have thought could withstand his threats.

A caress to his forehead caused him to realize how close he had leaned into her.

Too close. The sweet, honeyed scent of her managed through his muddled senses and skewered his gut. It sent his mind spiraling into fractures and made his knees want to crumble.

Then her fucking tincture started to burn.

“You don’t look so good.” She stroked her fingertips along his forehead before covering it with her palm. “You’re really hot. Er—I mean temperature wise, not attractive wise. Not that you aren’t attractive because you totally are, I just—Dang it. Uh—” She backed away, cheeks bright pink.

Govek gulped, hardly able to keep up with her frantic babbling.

“Just... just forget I said anything,” she said. “You have a fever. Or I think you do. I don’t know what orc body temperature is supposed to be, but you weren’t that hot a few minutes ago. Are you sick?”

Fever? He forced himself to straighten, reassess his condition.

He pressed back his soaked woolen cloak to take stock of the gouge.

“That . . . looks bad.”

Distracted from the task, he glanced at Miranda’s pale face, her trembling frame.

“That looks like...” Her wide eyes fixed on his side. “Looks like something you might get from falling off a cliff.”

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