Page 17 of Bound to the Orc Warlord

My bride repeats the word, pressing a delighted kiss to the unicorn’s nose.

“I like her,” Midnight says. “She clearly has good taste.”

I grunt, fighting down the smile that attempts to curl my lips. It’s no good encouraging Midnight—it’ll only make her even fuller of herself.

After one last adjustment of the saddle, we’re ready to go. I reach for my moon bound bride—

A dark shape hurtles out of the sky, crying in a piercing voice, “There you are! I found you!”

Ashley jolts, her eyes widening in surprise.

And flies away from my reaching arms, up into the sky.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ashley

A dark shape dives toward me. Oh, god. Oh, god! The freaking horrible bird thing is back! The anxious desire to escape races along my nerves in an icy lightning strike of fear.

I fly up into the air, moving faster than I did yesterday.

Dravarr bellows, “Drevistie!”

Blue leaves slap my face as I crash through the outer edges of a tree. I break out into the clear air above it, blinded by the bright sun rising over the horizon.

Another shriek followed by wing beats—loud wing beats, not the flutter of multiple birds. By the time I twist to put the sun at my back, the green dragon’s flown up to meet me.

“Oh, god, it’s you!” A hiccupping laugh of embarrassment escapes me.

It keeps pace as I come to a halt, so that it hangs in the air in front of me. Leathery wings snap wide, cupping the air, their color lightening to the bright green of new spring leaves when fully extended in the sun. The dragon cocks its head to spear me with one intelligent eye, and it stretches a front foot toward me, something clasped in its claws.

I reach out, and it drops a crystal onto my palm. A flash of electricity zips through me.

“Did it work?” the dragon asks in a young male voice. “Can you understand me?”

“What?” I jolt in surprise. The dragon really does talk, just as I thought! “Yes!”

“Good. We should join the others.” Wings tucked, he starts to dive.

“Wait!” I flutter a hand. Once I have his attention, I say, “I don’t know how.”

“How to dive?”

“How to dive. How to fly.” I spread my hands wide. “How to controlanyof this.”

As if to prove my point, a gust of wind blows me sideways. With much more of this, I’ll lose sight of the clearing and Dravarr.

“I’ll help.” The dragon flies up… and lands on my head.

“Hey!” My hand pats at the sleek scales on his side. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you down.”

And it’s true—I’m sinking. I may weigh nothing right now, but the dragon does. We drop slowly through the air, the rounded top of a blue tree rising to meet us. My feet break through the first layer of leaves, and a bird startles away in a fluster of cheeps and flapping yellow wings.

I want to grab onto something, but in this part of the tree, all the branches are tiny little pencil sticks instead of something strong enough to hold me if my weight returns.

Finally, a wider branch emerges below me right as more and more thin branches slow my descent. The dragon’s weight isn’t enough to push us both through the thicker growth of the tree. I loop my arms over the branch, catching it in my armpits and clinging as we jerk to a halt with a rustle of leaves.

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