Page 48 of Bound to the Orc Guardian

Sturrm keeps throwing little glances back over his shoulder, making sure I’m okay. Every time he does so, I catch his eye and smile, making him scowl.

I bite back a laugh. He’s not fooling me. Even with all this hurt he doesn’t know how to process, his big heart still shines through.

We keep walking. After another hour, Sturrm squishes through the narrow mouth of a tunnel, and I follow him into another of what I’m starting to call subway-station rooms, caves with multiple tunnels branching off them. This one’s covered in the same kind of glowing moss as the cavern we stayed in the night before, the pink, purple, and light-green brightness welcome after hours with only the glow stones to provide any light.

He stops and waits for the others to join us, so Bella can read the map and point us in the right direction.

She comes through with an audible scrape that makes me wince.

I hurry over to her and press a hand to her shoulder, sending a trickle of healing magic into her in a diagnostic scan. As expected, her sides glow red, the abrasions mild. I still heal them.

She lays her head on my shoulder and sighs. “Thank you. I like you.”

“I like you, too,” I whisper, throwing my arm around her neck and giving her a hug. Her purple scales are smooth and warm against my cheek.

“Aww.” Dash comes into the room. “Am I missing the big group hug?”

I bite my lip to muffle a laugh and lean over to offer him a hug, too. My magic reaches out in a quick check and repairs a tiny bit of muscle strain in his back. My logical brain says I do it to keep us all in tip-top form in case we run into trouble, but I also just love using my magic and knowing I’m helping people.

“Don’t expect me to hug you, unicorn,” Bella says.

Mischief glimmers in his golden eyes, even more brightly in this form. “I wouldn’t dream of it, dragon.”

The only one I haven’t gotten my hands on is Sturrm. While he frowns at the map, I edge over to him and lay a hand on his arm.

He startles and opens his mouth, but before he can protest, I’ve already sent my magic spooling through him. He’s astoundingly healthy. There’s not a single thing to heal.

At least not anything physical.

Because he flinches away from my touch, pain flashing through his dark eyes and making my heart hurt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Sturrm

By the goddess, it’s harder to keep my distance from Selena than I expected. Not a single moment passes that I’m not aware of her—the quick sound of her soft footfalls, the hitch of excitement in her breath as she steps into a new cavern, the warmth of her magic as she makes sure to heal the others time and again.

Even in the darkest of depths, I can’t escape her sunshine.

Her gentle touch on my arm and the way her magic sings through my body makes me long for her. I long to knot herand keep her for myself.

Yet as soon as we get to Moon Blade Village, the truth will come out that she’s bound to another, more worthy man. One young and full of life who will feed her joy with his own. One who won’t fail her when she needs him most.

I can’t bear the thought of her looking upon me with hurt and disappointment that I didn’t tell her this sooner. Better anything other than that.

The sooner we finish this quest, the sooner I’m out of my misery, and the sooner Selena gets to begin her joyful new life with her intended.

I spread the map across the floor in front of Bellavesaria. “Well?”

She studies it for several moments, then jabs a taloned foot toward one of the tunnel mouths. “That way.”

“You’re certain?” I squint at the parchment. Our way’s become ever more convoluted the farther we go, the tunnels weaving about one another in a chaotic dance.

“As certain as I can be,” she says, her wings rustling in agitation. “The closer we get to the center of the mountain, the less accurate the map gets. Adult dragons can’t travel these tunnels, and younglings aren’t supposed to, so all of the knowledge is secondhand.”

“If dragons didn’t make this map, who did?” Selena asks, eyes sparkling with curiosity. “And can we ask them for help?”

“We got the information from gnomes,” Bellavesaria says.

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