Page 113 of Bound to the Orc King

“Indeed we will.”His eyes grow heated.“But first I get to knot you many, many times.”

“Are you thinking dirty, filthy thoughts?”I tease.

“Around you, my love?”He gives me the wicked smirk that makes my heart skip.“Always.”

Aldronn crushes me to him and kisses me with a passion that makes the rest of the world fall away. The whole village cheers us on, but it barely registers.

Nothing exists but this man and his kiss and the love that flows straight from his heart into mine.

EPILOGUE

May

We hijack the topic of the big meeting the next morning. After rehashing everything that happened with the Moon Goddess, Aldronn and I present our idea for Alarria’s future to the dragons, unicorns, cat sith, and cu sith.

There’s a shit ton of yelling and growling that goes on and on until Sheevora’s voice booms across the standing stone clearing. “Go back to your peoples and discuss this thoroughly before making any final decisions. I for one think this will come to pass. The doors of Faerie are now open. There’s no going back. We will reconvene in two weeks.” She launches into the air and changes into her huge dragon form right above us, the wind of her wings blasting across the clearing.

As everyone goes their separate ways, Dravarr stomps over. “You really want to do this?”

“We do.” Aldronn tips his head regally.

The warlord frowns. “My village will be changed.”

“It’s already changed,” Ashley says. “Look at all the witches, dragons, cu sith, cat sith, sprites and pixies already there. You didn’t have any of that before.”

“Putting the new center over here will actually help keep Moon Blade Village like it is. You won’t need to build new cottages or try to figure out where to house all the new fae. We’ll do all of that over here.” I wave to the large area of forest already cleared by the dragons. “We’ll even make sure there’s grazing land.”

“Good.” Starfall taps my shoulder. “Because I was about to remind you.”

A week passes, filled with love and sex and experimenting with all the different ways Aldronn’s two dicks can make my body sing. We also discover a million little moments of love. The flower he places on my breakfast tray each morning, the stories I tell to make him laugh, the simple contentment of snuggling on the sofa while he reads to me from his favorite books.

Since we can’t spendeverysingle minute in bed, I also get to learn about running the kingdom. I sit in on Kronn’s briefings and use Luke’s translation crystal to read the paperwork. Then I help Aldronn delegate a bunch of the tasks he’s been doing. We hire accountants and scribes to keep track of village trade agreements, food stores, etc. And Aldronn appoints Kronn as his chancellor to handle village relations, since the guard has been by Aldronn’s side for over a decade and knows the job inside and out.

We also settle more fully into Moon Blade Village, and I meet several people, like Gerna, the herbalist who can drink everyone, including her brother Krivoth, under the table. OrLeyva, Dravarr and Rovann’s mother, who might like brawling more than any other orc I’ve met. Then there’s Reta the village weaver who makes me new underwear over and over, grinning each time Aldronn rips a pair with his tusks. “I’ve gotten quite used to it. That Ashley goes through several pairs a week.”

We spend every evening at the pub with the others, drinking and laughing. Sturrm’s singing voice is as beautiful as Aldronn said, and Selena’s been teaching him a few of her favorites to add to his repertoire. There’s nothing quite as good as hearing him croon a tearjerker of an orc ballad followed by the sweetness of a Billie Eilish song.

My pixies teach the rest of the tiny fae pizza ball, and now every evening the village green is full of the kids—and several adults as well—cheering on their favorite teams as the pixies have Olympic-level food fights.

Naomi takes Starfall to a unicorn conclave on the Umbriall Plains, and Aldronn and I go along for a quick visit so I can see the place my good friend calls home. It’s magical big-sky country, with a sea of silver and green grass that ripples in wind-tossed waves.

The unicorns approve our idea for the travel center quickly but are trying to decide who wants to stay in Alarria and who wants to go back to their home realm, where the grass is supposedly sweeter, the air balmier, and the sky an even more perfect shade of blue.

“Ha!” Starfall snorts when I say as much to her. “Others may think it, but I tasted the grass of Umbria, and it tasted like grass. Alarria is just as good.”

“It also doesn’t hurt that you’ll be queen here,” Aldronn says.

She taps him with her horn. “A queen who has alliances with the other rulers, no less.”

“Always, my friend. Always.”

We visit the dragon caves in the Dular Mountains. The caverns are as vast as I imagined, the dragon libraries the size of skyscrapers, full of scrolls as big as me. Since the Moon Goddess freed all fae chained to the Dark God’s thrall, shadow wyvern no longer attack the dragon home realm, Dularia. So a similar debate rages among the dragons about who wants to stay in Alarria. They haven’t yet ratified the idea for the travel center, but Sheevora seems to be winning them over.

Luke spends hours grilling me on every last detail of my quest—even the parts he was there for—and writes everything down on multiple scrolls. When he finishes, I ask him what he’s going to do next.

“Now that you’ve solved the mystery of the Moon Goddess, there’s not much scholarly work left to be done here in Alarria. And Dularia is even worse—it’s been very thoroughly studied.” He shrugs, the wings of his dual form rustling. “If I want to make a name for myself, I need to find fresh material.”

Back at Moon Blade Village, Rune and Shadow are both restless, bickering constantly and continuing to spar daily in their were forms. Watching a werewolf and werepanther fight is next level, but it feels like they don’t know what to do with themselves.

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