Page 8 of Bound to the Orc Warrior

Pressure squeezes on me from all sides. All of the past times I teleported were completely effortless. This time’s the opposite. Sweat trickles down my face, down my back, and tickles between my breasts. I strain harder, my muscles shaking, my face scrunching.

Home.Home.HOME.

HOME!

With a huge pop, something rips.

I fall to hands and knees, scraping my skin on asphalt. But I don’t even care, because it’s familiar old asphalt, turned graywith age, and my hometown’s most hated pothole sits only a couple of feet away.

Strong hands wrap around my shoulders, pulling me to my feet, and Main Street comes into view, the dusty windows of the closed ice cream parlor right in front of me.

I did it! I’m home!

I turn, ready to thank whichever of my neighbors just helped me up. Only, it’s not one of them. Shock freezes all of my muscles as I suck in a startled breath.

The green elf stares down at me, his dark eyes wide and wild. “By the goddess,whatdid you do?”

CHAPTER FOUR

Wranth

Zephyr races through the forest, living up to her name. We pass through a stand of blue birch, the leaves dancing in the wind, their bright color competing with the occasional patch of open sky. Dawn stirs the world to life around us, golden larks taking to the air in trills of song.

“Left,” I say. The summons the goddess placed in my heart combines with my tracking magic to give me an innate sense of where we should aim. “Go left.”

“Certainly,” Zephyr says, her tone dry. She tips her head so her silver horn points at the blue birch in the way. “I’ll plow us straight into that tree.That’lldefinitely get us there faster.”

A growl rumbles deep in my chest.

“You’ve told me three times.” She tosses her head, flipping her long white mane. “Leave the running to the expert.”

“We’re getting close.” I bend lower over her withers, silently urging her to greater speed. “The directions grow ever more precise.”

“A few inches either way won’t matter,” she says. “If we’re heading for a standing stone, we’ll find it. Those things aren’t exactly hard to miss.”

I grunt. She speaks true. As long as we’re anywhere close, we’ll find the twenty-foot tall pillar of granite.

With my bride waiting on top.

I duck a low branch, the leaves a soft slap against my forehead, and we leave the birch trees behind as the pines reinstate their claim on the forest. Zephyr’s hooves race across the moss-covered ground, leaping clumps of ferns and sending tiny chipmunks scurrying in flashes of black-striped orange.

As soon as there’s a break in the trees, she pivots left, and the building pressure inside my chest eases slightly.

“Thank you, my friend,” I murmur, knowing her keen fae hearing will pick up the words.

She huffs in answer, a sound anyone else might interpret as disdain. Yet after all our years together, I know it for pleased amusement.

Back when first training to be a guard, I went to the Umbrialll Plains with a group of other young hopefuls. New recruits had to be accepted by a unicorn mount to be considered for the king’s guard. Various unicorn herds sent their young warriors to meet us, interested in forming closer alliances with the orc king. We camped there for a week, and only two of the five of us found mounts, me not being one of them. The wily old drill sergeant claimed it as par for the course, saying not everyone was meant to be a king’s guard.

Yet I, the foundling of Elmswood Keep, had no other place in this world. What else could I be if not a member of the king’s guard? Frustration rode me, and I stalked off into the grassplains, finding an empty spot where the land formed a shallow bowl just deep enough to hide me from easy view. There, I took out my anger by fighting off imaginary foes. I worked through the moves again and again, my sword a silver blur whistling through the air.

Then a female voice spoke from behind me, “Well, it’s no horn, but you’re not completely hopeless with that thing. I suppose you’ll do.”

I whirled to find Zephyr watching me with sharp blue eyes and an even sharper horn. She stood tall, her white coat gleaming in the sunshine that sparkled on her silver mane and tail. It turned out she was almost as much of an outcast as me, unable to get along with the matriarch of her herd.

It was the first time anyone had chosen me.

We’ve been together ever since. Besides Sturrm, she’s my truest friend, and she’s run herself to the bone these past few days in order to carry me to my bride.

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