Page 14 of Bound to the Orc King

“Too many? What do you mean?”

“You’re supposed to cook them before eating them to break down a pre-toxin they contain.” She shrugs and tosses a handful into her mouth. “But a few won’t hurt.”

“Orcs don’t have that problem.” My hand falls from where I’d been reaching to pluck her another bunch. “I didn’t realize humans were so fragile.”

“Hey! Don’t call me ‘fragile.’” Her eyes spark. “Besides, you weigh about four times what I do, so you’d need to eat a shit ton of berries to have the same effect.”

My eyes narrow. No matter her protests, this incident has reminded me that humans aren’t as hardy as orcs. As useful as my bride’s magic is, it isn’t defensive. Faerie holds as many dangers as wonders.

My life is dedicated to serving my people. But a new protectiveness swells in my chest, more acute and piercing than anything I’ve felt before.

May ismine.

CHAPTER SEVEN

May

Despite my protest, Aldronn pulls me away from the elderberries and hoists me onto Starfall’s back.

“Really ripe elderberries have very little of the pre-toxin,” I say. Mom always showed me how to wait until the tiny berries were a dark purple-black before letting me eat a few when we picked them for jelly.

“You keep saying that word as if it means nothing.” He settles in behind me. His thighs clamp around mine, his large body engulfing my back.

A shiver of awareness goes through me, and I can barely squeeze out, “What word?”

“Toxin,” he growls.

“I know what it means! I studied!” You don’t backpack around the world without learning everything you can about the places you’re going to. I like to visit nature preserves as much asbig cities, and knowing what you can eat in the wild is an interest I picked up from Mom. “The leaves and flowers are much more dangerous, and the berries when they’re green are bad, too. But with ripe ones, you have to eat alotfor it to be a problem, and there’s no way I’m eating three pounds of elderberries in one go.”

He grunts—fuckinggrunts—but doesn’t say anything as the unicorn takes off again.

“Why are you going all He-Man on me?”

Aldronn growls, “I don’t know what that means.”

“Why did you overreact about the elderberries?”

“I did not overreact—I acted decisively. There’s a difference.”

“Not much of one from where I’m sitting,” I say.

Starfall snorts. “She has a point.”

“I can’t bear the thought of you injured in any way.” His fingers dig into my stomach as he pulls me more tightly to him, and he leans over to growl in my ear. “The mate bond tugs me this way and that, demanding I protect you, until I am a puppet dancing on strings.” His deep voice drops impossibly lower, the sound raising goosebumps all over my body. “I am a king, unused to being commanded, unable to be gracious about it. Yet know this, my little queen. I will protect you unto my dying breath.”

My heart skips at the promise in his words, but my rebellious nature won’t let it go. “You literally just met me.”

“It doesn’t matter. We are already bound. I am yours.” His breath washes hot over my ear, sending tingles rushing through me. “And you aremine.”

Is he telling the truth? I grip my crystal and scrunch my eyes closed, but no matter how hard I try, nothing happens. Stupid power. Why is it so erratic? Then I snort. It’s me, the hot mess. Why would my magic be any different?

If Aldronn’s not used to being commanded,I’mnot used to anyone having my back. Sure, at home in Ferndale Falls, I’ve got my friends and my dad and the entire town watching out for me. But when I travel, all I can count on is me. Every stranger might be truly nice… or waiting to take advantage. This mind reading thing would have been really useful over the last few years. Sometimes it’s so hard to walk through the world as a woman alone, and it totally sucks.

The streets of a new city that looked so happy in bright daylight turned sinister after sunset, when there aren’t enough lights. The youth-hostel host who stared at my backpack just a little too hard when I asked if I could leave it for the day, making me weigh the pros and cons of lugging it around versus “losing” an item or two.

All of it’s worth it, though. Because otherwise, I never would have met the elderly woman on the train in Belgium, who shared some of the best chocolate I’ve ever tasted. Or the boy at the Taj Mahal, who offered to take my picture and—instead of running off with my phone like the guidebooks warned—played with the camera settings until he got professional-level shots better than anything I can do. A thousand little kindnesses, all out there, waiting to be found.

Nothing tops the way Aldronn fought the ogre for me, though. Everything he told me about this new world makes it clear that Mom’s stories covered only the sweet side of Faerie. It’s far more dangerous than children’s tales.

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