Page 35 of The Orc Outcast's Conquest

She was so close to him. Right in front. Her fingers were soft as they grazed his wrist. Thank Fades he’d managed to sheath his claws already.

His mind caught up with him and he shook his head, forced the agony of her betrayal to dim.

This wasn’t like Yerina. There was no comparison. Miranda had been fleeing for her life and Yerina had been scorning him.

He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the pain of his former woman’s abandonment.

She dumped the water pouch out over his hand, rubbing it clean. Moving it around.

Searching for injuries?

“You’re okay. You’re okay,” she murmured half to herself. She was terrified.

Terrified for him. Not of him.

Govek did not know how to process this interaction, so he went still, allowing his woman to flutter her soft fingers over his flesh.

“It’s... it...” Her eyes were flooded with tears and her face was pale. “It was screaming.”

Govek gulped. Taking a deep calming breath, he came down from his raging. Found reason. “It is past its pain.”

She sniffled piteously, staring at the cat’s lifeless body. “It’s so pretty. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run.”

He wanted to tell her it was blighted. That it would have died, anyway. That the few agonies it had suffered at his hands were nothing compared to what it would have had to endure as it rotted away from the inside.

But another dreadful thought spiked in his system and drowned out his ability to speak.

He could not leave her alone in the woods.

Miranda would die. She would be picked off by a predator or injured by her own misstep. Likely only moments after she left his sight.

But he certainly could not take her to war with him.

He did not know what to do. Where would they go from here?

Fuck the Fades for giving her to him. For dropping her into his lap. They had been cruel to him for the bulk of his miserable life, and this was just one more blasted misfortune he would have to endure.

“Govek?” Her gentle, sorrow-laced tone was maddening. He willed her to be silent even as he swallowed the temptation to order her to say his name so sweetly again.

“Can you walk?” he whispered, glancing at her trembling knees. He did not wait for a reply. Instead, he lugged his discarded pack over his shoulder before scooping the woman off her feet.

She was so light it staggered him, but her frame was warm and supple against his bare chest. He relished the sensation, gulped as it soothed him. He tucked her into the crook of his arm as she squeaked with surprise.

“Where are we going?” she asked as he carted her off into the depths of the forest in the opposite direction of any human settlements.

He did not answer her—because he did not know.

Chapter

Seven

MIRANDA

Earth was gone, and Miranda had landed in a whole other kind of death trap.

For a brief, horrific moment, she understood why humans had hunted predators into extinction. That wild cat had been vicious, terrifying.

She did not know how to fight something like that. She’d barely survived the dogs.

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