Page 36 of Bound to the Orc Warlord

My knees grip tighter as Midnight banks around a tree, throwing my weight sideways. Pain flares through my shoulder as my body shifts, but I ignore it.

“Can you see anything? Can you see Ashley?” The unicorn’s eyesight is even sharper than an orc’s.

“Kind of busy here,” Midnight says, her pace never faltering. “With all thenotbreaking a leg or running into a tree.”

I grunt.

We erupt from tree cover onto the rocky bank of a rushing river. Midnight plunges into the clear water, her hooves sure and steady even on the algae covered stones. She pauses in the middle of the river, her sides heaving, and starts to drink.

Nymphs float to the surface, water foam hands tickling over Midnight’s stomach, their liquidy voices calling in burbles and trills.

“Please.” I lean over the unicorn’s side, trying to find a face in their swirling, dancing forms of flowing water. I’m unused to saying “please” to anyone, but for my moon bound, I will. “Please, have you seen someone fly past in the air above?”

Midnight adds her own ask to mine.

A nymph rises from the water in front of her, showing a head, two arms, and a torso, the exact shape changing and shifting as long strands of watery hair flow from crown to waist in a continuous waterfall. A diaphanous hand strokes down the unicorn’s nose, and a rilling voice says, “Yes, horned one. A female flew past overhead.”

I grind my teeth to keep from barking a command, but my knees tighten on Midnight, and she says, “Did you see the direction?”

The nymph’s hand makes a graceful arc through the air, tracing a path overhead in a rainbow of droplets.

“Thank you.” Midnight offers her horn, touching it to the nymph’s head.

The fae sighs happily and sinks into the river with one last wave of a water foam hand.

“Midnight.” Need tears at me, urging me onward.

“I know.” Her haunches bunch below me, and she springs forward, tearing through the water and up onto the opposite bank in a clatter of hooves on stone. Then we race through trees again, Midnight dodging and swerving and running as hard and true as her heart.

Up and down a series of gentle hills, she goes as time passes—too much time—and only her self-healing magic lets her run so far at this pace.

Finally, we break through another opening in the trees. A gentle waterfall splashes down a rock face into a round pond, its cliff blocking any easy way forward.

“Fuck.” Frustration eats at me as I slide from Midnight’s back, needing to give both of us a break.

My friend calls out, but no nymphs rise to the surface of the pond, which grows still once away from the waterfalls’ touch. Midnight dips her head and drinks, and I crouch to do the same, my eyes scanning the cliff the whole while.

I shove to my feet. “I’ll climb it.”

“What?” Midnight stomps a hoof. “With your injury? Reopening your shoulder wounds isn’t going to help Ashley.”

I glare at her.

She snorts. “You know I’m right.”

“You are.” Idespisethat she’s right, but I can’t stand the thought of failing to protect my bride. “Why do you think I’m so angry?”

I spin about, searching foranythingthat might help. The woods prove impenetrable, the trees thick enough to block all sight more than a few yards deep. “How far do you think we’ll need to veer off course to work our way around this cliff?”

“None. I think we veer off none.”

“What?” I turn back to her. “How can y—”

“Look!” she cuts across my words, jabbing her horn at the sky.

I follow it up to a black speck right at the edge of visibility. My breath freezes in my lungs as I watch it grow ever larger, a second dot appearing beside it.

They race toward us, going too fast… and yet I long for them to fly even faster.

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