Page 17 of How To Woo A Warrior Orc

Wren snorts a laugh.

“Where’s Caelan?” I ask.

“He’s at the inn, he said he’d meet me here in a while. There’s a new witch in town, did you hear?”

“I did. I sent her to him.” My nose wrinkles as I realize the implications of that. “Ga’Rek said he’d give up his room—I didn’t cause Caelan to have to work more, did I?”

Caelan, an Unseelie fae, waltzed into our lives with Ga’Rek and another fae several weeks ago and promptly set his sights on Wren. The two of them hit it off immediately, and they’ve been adorable to watch, despite our initial misgivings about the Unseelie fae.

“No, of course not, don’t worry about that. He’s happy to have a willing victim for the new hospitality measures he’s implementing,” Wren tells me in a conspiratorial voice.

“Wha—what?” Anxiety makes my stomach churn. “I thought he was getting ready for the autumn festival visitors. What do you mean, victim? He’s not going to be up to any Unseelie tricks,right?’ The words burst out of me, my good mood gone in a second. “He promised me he was going to help.”

Wren glances down at me, alarmed. “That was a joke. He’s excited to have an actual guest stay so he can dry run things like laundry service and the menu and get feedback from someone besides his oldest friends.”

“Oh,” I say, my shoulders slumping in relief and sudden exhaustion. “Okay.”

“Piper, you still haven’t told me what you need me to do for the festival,” Wren says in a chiding voice.

“You’ve been so busy with work, and I know how stressed you were about getting the store solvent.” Wren owns the store next door to mine, a jewelry store full of bespoke and custom-enchanted pieces. She’s incredibly talented and finally seems to be overcoming a streak of very bad luck.

“Piper, you can’t just pretend like it’s all fine. We know you need help. We want to help with this.”

“What I need right now,” I say, a bit icily, “is some parchment and ink.”

I brush past her, making a beeline for the stall stuffed full of paper and parchment and quills and ink. The merchant who runs it has a shop in town too, but I hardly ever have time to run over there during the hours we’re both open.

Wren jostles my elbow as I reach for a deep emerald pot of ink, and I sigh, immediately regretting my defensive words.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, my fingers clamped around the ink pot.

“Don’t be. Just tell us what to do.”

“Caelan is already doing so much with the inn?—”

She waves a hand at me. “Not me and him, us, the coven, us. We all want this festival to be incredible. We want to help, but we don’t know what you need help with, or what you’ve already planned, or if you have a plan at all. We are happy to step in however you need.” She stares at me, crossing her arms over herchest. “And if you need us to simply step in and take over, we can do that too. Don’t even try to ‘I’m fine’ your way out of this.”

My mouth opens, then closes, and opens again.

“That’s a winning impression of a fish if I ever saw one,” a smooth male voice drawls, and sure enough, Caelan appears behind Wren, wrapping his arms tight around her and planting a kiss on her neck. “Have you convinced her to finally accept help?” he asks her.

Wren, the traitor, just raises her eyebrows at me.

I throw my hands up in surrender, almost managing to toss the ink pot in the air, too. “Fine. Yes. I need help.”

“That wasn’t so terrible, was it?” Caelan asks me.

I glare at him.

Wren just laughs, patting her wily Fae on his purple cheek. “Be nice,” she tells him.

“That’s so boring, though.”

“Are you looking for trouble, friend?” Ga’Rek’s voice is a rumble behind me, and before I can react, he’s also wrapping me in a backwards hug, his hand on my stomach sending butterflies reeling through me.

Oh, I could get used to this.

“Well, well, well!” Caelan says, a wicked grin on his handsome face.

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