Page 15 of Bound to the Orc Warrior

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m not much of a rider.” I took a basic riding course as a teen, having fallen in love with the idea through books. Turned out, my riding fantasies were better left between the pages.

“You’re doing fine,” he says, his voice so deep I feel it vibrate in his chest where my back presses to it. “You’re already finding the gait.”

Startled, I realize he’s right. My feet might not be in the stirrups—I couldn’t reach them even if he weren’t using them—but my legs aren’t hanging limply. My knees grip Zephyr’s sides just enough to have some control over my body. But the realreason I’m holding my seat so well is the way Wranth supports me.

Or I should say, the way myhusbandsupports me.

Oh, hell no. That’s some messed up shit right there. A goddess married me to him before we even met? It doesn’t matter how sexy I find it in books, this is real life.Mylife. I didn’t make the decision to finally start living only to be tied down in a new way.

I grab my crystal, squeeze my eyes shut, and chant under my breath, home, home, home.

Pain flames through my body, burning along my nerves. I can’t control the mew of discomfort that escapes me.

“What is it?” Wranth’s hand tightens on my stomach. “What’s wrong?”

“I tried to go home,” I say. “But it hurts.”

“You’ve overused your magic.” His voice is an upset growl.

Upset because I’m in pain or upset because I admitted I tried to leave?

How should I know? He’s astranger. I don’t know anything about him but his name and that he’s an orc. Whatever that is. Guess I should have read more regular fantasy.

We circle a wide rhododendron with frilly pink flowers set among the waxy, dark-green leaves. The pines around us gleam with vibrant health, their color a bit more real than the trees of Ferndale Forest. It’s the same for the ferns, which spread wide fronds of the richest green, topped by curlicues of fiddleheads. Even if my hometown is famous for the ferns that surround it, they don’t look as good as this—they don’t feel like magic.

The unicorn picks up speed, the big cat loping at our side—or as at our side as he can get in heavy forest. Shadow’s shape flickers through the trees, there one second and gone the next. I could swear he actually disappears, but that’s impossible, right? When he catches me staring, he offers me a bright-white grin fullof teeth that seems to linger in the air as the rest of him slides into transparency.

“Did he just disappear?” I point to a clump of ferns, the fiddleheads still bobbing from Shadow’s passage, but decidedly empty of cat.

“Humph!” Zephyr snorts. “Cat sith tricks are the only thing that lets him keep up with me.”

“Now, now, unicorn,” Shadow purrs, voice filled with amusement, “it’s not as if it’sthathard. I’m barely using the shadow roads.” His smile reappears, hanging in midair right by our side.

I gasp and point again. “Okay, I didnotimagine that!”

The rest of him comes into view, a swirl of smoke-gray hair flowing and moving and making it hard to tell exactly when he’s all “there.”

“It’s his magic,” Wranth says. “The cat sith walk the shadow roads that cut through all of Alarria, letting them travel from place to place faster.”

“Letting them cheat, you mean,” the unicorn grumps.

“Hah! Don’t lie, unicorn. You’d do it if you could,” Shadow says. “And it’s not just Alarria. If the doors of Faerie were open, I could walkallthe realms.” He grins over at me, his green eyes sparkling. “Which is why you, my dear, are so very, very fascinating.”

“Tell me about these doors,” I say. “I need to understand what happened, what I did.”

“The doors of Faerie used to connect all its various realms and even your world,” Wranth says.

“Stories say we used to go and toy with the mundane humans.” Shadow grins. “It was great sport.”

“Unicorns never wasted our time with such pranks!” Zephyr tosses her head, making the spiraling grooves of her horn sparkle silver in a ray of sunlight.

“Because you’re too boring.”

“Because we had better things to do!”

“Focus! None of this is helping Naomi.” Wranth snaps, his fingers curling into my stomach, making me aware of him all over again.

Zephyr leaps over a fallen log, and I could swear she puts a bit more kick in the jump than necessary.

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