Page 31 of Loved By the Orc

“Stop!” Mr. Price squeezed my throat until I gasped and choked. “Come a step nearer and she dies!”

I saw Tark’s eyes widen but he stopped in mid-swing. Gripping the axe handle so tightly his knuckles went white, he glared at my boss.

“Take your fucking hands off my woman!” he growled. “Unless you have a fucking death wish!”

“I don’t think so.” The Mr. Price Monster gave him a smug smile—if a shark can look smug, that is. “This little slut was my assistant long before she was your girlfriend—she belongs tome.”

“The fuck she does!” Tark’s voice came out in a menacing roar. “Let her go!”

“No,” the Mr. Price Monster said coolly. “My, my—your rage issodelicious. And the way you feel so protective of her—lovely.”

“You Sin Sucking bastard,” Tark snarled. “Surely you know the minute you kill her, you’re dead too!”

“That’s only if you can catch me. Besides, I’m not going to kill her—I think I’ll take her with me,” Mr. Price told him. “I thought?—”

But what he thought was something we never got to hear. Because at that moment, my fingers started tingling and glowing again.

I didn’t hesitate—reaching up, I clamped my hand over the monstrous one that was closed around my throat.

“What?Ahhh!”the Mr. Price Monster screamed.

I could feel the power rushing through me—the mysterious energy that somehow changed what I touched. And this time, I did my best to direct it.

Faster!I thought at it.Faster—more!

My internal directions seemed to work because the hand wrapped around my throat was turning to goldfast—too fast for Mr. Price to squeeze my throat and kill me, thank goodness.

“No—no!”he roared and grabbed at his right arm—which was rapidly turning to either gold or a metal that looked like gold—and tried to pull it free.

He wasn’t successful—his long curving claws had wrapped almost all the way around my throat and they weren’t coming loose. But the momentary distraction was all the opening Tark needed.

With a deafening roar, he rushed forward and swung his axe just once, lopping off my boss’s head as neatly as man might swing a golf club. Mr. Price’s head went flying in a gout of black blood that spurted from the stump of his neck and then oozed all over the place.

His body remained in place for a second, then it crumpled to the ground, one long, golden hand still wrapped around my throat.

Tark was kneeling by me at once.

“Harmony? Baby?” he asked anxiously. “Are you okay? Please say you’re okay!”

“Get it off me!” I was yanking at the golden arm with my one free hand. “Please—get it off!”

“Stop touching it,” Tark said, frowning. “I think you’re the one that’s doing that—you’re turning him to gold, somehow.”

Indeed, the dead body of my old boss was continuing to turn to gold, right before my eyes. I realized that I was still clutching as the monstrous hand around my throat and yanked my hand away.

But it didn’t seem to help. No more of Mr. Price’s body turned to gold…but the golden part didn’t turn back to flesh either. I waited for a moment, hoping it would change but it just wouldn’t.

So there I was, lying on my side on the ground, still zip-tied to the chair by one wrist and both ankles, facing the dead body of a monster with a golden arm which was locked around my throat.

I can’t deny, I started to lose it.

“Please, get me out of here! Get it off of me!Please!”I begged Tark.

“I’m trying, Babygirl!” He did his best to pry the golden fingers from around my neck, but they were fused together and even he couldn’t break the solid bar of gold they had become. He tried, but he couldn’t get his own fingers between them and my throat without choking me.

At last he had to resort to chopping the arm off with his axe, just above the elbow which was where the gold part ended when I had let go of it to stop my magic. Then, kneeling beside me, he drew a knife out of his boot and quickly cut the zip-ties that held me to the chair.

I tried to sit up but the golden arm hanging from my throat was incredibly heavy. It was literally like trying to lift myself with an anchor tied around my neck.

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