Page 39 of The Orc Outcast's Mate

“People other than soldiers. Women, children, elderly?”

Govek swallowed hard, brows furrowing. Then he shook his head and she let out a breath of relief.

“So, you went battle crazy and killed soldiers?”

“Who they were does not matter. All lives are precious. Magic should never be used to cause harm. It should not even be possible to do so.”

“Govek, if you lashed out because you were being attacked that is completely different from attacking someone unprovoked. You know that, right?”

“They weren’t attacking me. They were trying to flee and I . . . I still . . .”

“You still what?”

His hands were back in his hair. “I lost my mind, Miranda! I blacked out. I ravaged them. By the time I came to they were fucking pulp.”

Miranda managed to withhold a flinch at that mental image even as prickling coursed down her spine. “But something must have happened to make you do that. Something must have set you off. What was it?”

Govek’s eyes were stricken and lost. He stalked away from her. Into the kitchen.

Why had he killed them so brutally? Was she safe with him?

“Govek, tell me. I. Want. To. Know. Your. Reasons.”

“They fucking slaughtered him.” Govek whirled around, eyes wild, muscles bulging, frame terrifyingly huge. Miranda would have bolted had she not been frozen to the spot.

“They flayed him. Stuck him on a spit. Fucking cooked him alive.”

Miranda sucked in a hard breath. She already knew the answer before she asked, but she needed to hear it from him. “Who?”

“My brother.”

Chapter

Six

GOVEK

The words felt like fire on his tongue. Choking him. Suffocating him.

And they would not stop coming.

“Tavggol was there to fucking trade. He trusted them—enough that he refused Karthoc’s protection—and on the final meeting, they stole the boons he had brought in good faith and butchered him like an animal.”

Miranda’s eyes went huge, her body flinched and shuddered, and she gripped her hands together about her chest.

Fuck, he should never have lost himself. Should never have spoken of this.

His hands trembled, worthless claws curling as he remembered that day. He could feel the soldiers’ ticky blood. Their bones cracking, snapping like twigs with a satisfying crunch. Their gut-wrenching wails.

Spirals of magic had made his movements quick, his aim sure. Conjuring with the Fades made him even more deadly, helped him cut down every wretch faster and more brutally than any other warrior orc ever could.

He’d do it again in an instant.

He was a monster.

“Sit down here.”

The order came crisp in his blistering mind, and he snapped up to find Miranda pointing to the couch. He gulped. He could not get close to her now. Not while his rage was so thick.

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