Page 43 of Bound to the Orc Renegade

By the time I return, the sprites have gone to bed, dotting the top of the bluebells on the far side of the field from where Storm grazes.

While I tend the fire and cook our food, Taylor continues to practice, even though her shoulders droop with exhaustion.

I call to her, but she’s so focused she doesn’t hear me, so I stride over and wrap my hands around her shoulders, making her jump. “Come and eat.”

“But—”

“Mist hunted, and I’ve cooked you dinner,” I growl. “You will eat it while it’s hot.”

I march her over to the log I pulled in front of the fire and set a pewter plate in her hand, filled with mushrooms and fiddleheads sautéed in deer fat and a thick slice of venison.

At the first bite, she perks up, chewing rapidly. “Wow, this is good.”

“You’re hungry,” I say, ripping off a hunk of meat with my tusks.

“It’s still good.”

I grin, pleased, and we eat in silence for several minutes, both too hungry to talk.

When she finally slows down, she says, “Sorry about that. I can get really focused when I’m learning a new skill.”

“I noticed. It’s the kind of concentration warrior training requires, but you weren’t one on Earth, were you?” She told meshe had no magic there, and she’s too small to be much of a fighter without it.

“Not in the way you mean, but I fought a lot in games.”

“Why fight at all if you were playing games?”

“For fun and…” She gives a jerky one-shouldered shrug, then blows a puff of air up through her bangs. “I had a brother who died.”

A jolt of shock goes through me. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” Taylor offers me a soft smile. “I never knew him—it happened before I was born. My brother’s why I got into video games. When I was seven, Dad left, and Mom was… sad. I went into my brother’s room and found his stuff. He had this old Play Station.”

“Play Station?” I frown at the unfamiliar words.

She waves a hand. “It’s a thing you play games on. The important part is I thought if I could be more like my brother, my father would come back. I practiced really hard and got good at the games, so I could show him. It didn’t work—Dad still left—but I fell in love with video games.”

“Your father left you?”

“Well, officially he left Mom, but yeah, I guess he left me, too.” She gives another of those jerky half shrugs. “It’s pretty common. Lots of couples who lose a child end up divorced. Divorce is super common in general.”

I tear another piece of meat from the bone, spending the time chewing to think furiously. I don’t like the way her voice sounds when she talks about this “divorce.” This fragmentation of her parents’ marriage clearly bothers her more than she wants to admit.

“I will never leave you, my bride,” I assure her. “There will never be any of this ‘divorce’ you speak of.”

Her eyes and mouth go wide. “What if you change your mind? What if you don’t want me?”

“It will never happen. I am yours forever.”

My words are truer than ever. The more I get to know her, the more I love her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Taylor

Krivoth’s words ring through me with the sound of utter conviction. He fully believes what he says.

A little bit of the tension I always carry inside of me unwinds. I don’t usually talk about the divorce. When Dad left, Mom wasn’t sad—she was devastated. So I hatched my plan and practiced my brother’s video games for hours every day. I kept at it until I reached a level higher onSuper Mario Brothers 3than my brother ever had. On his next visit, I pulled Dad into Jason’s room, talking a mile a minute the whole time as I blazed through one level after another. I was so proud that I’d learned the game and beat Jason’s high score. Surely Dad would be proud, too. He gave me a soft smile and said, “You’re a lot like your brother.” But he still left.

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