Page 54 of Her Orc Protector

"I've been thinking," he said finally, not quite meeting my eyes. "Maybe we could find something. Together."

The words hung in the air, deceptively simple. But I understood their weight, the future they held tangled within them.

I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. "You don't have a place," I said softly. It wasn't a question—I knew he'd been staying at the barracks when he wasn't with the caravan.

He looked up then, his gaze steady and clear. "No. Not yet. But I'd find one. If you wanted."

The earnestness in his expression made my chest ache. This wasn't Gavriel's polished certainty, his practiced charm that had always felt like a finished tapestry—beautiful, complete, with no room for my thread.

This was Uldrek offering a beginning. Raw materials. A question mark where a period might have been.

I didn't answer right away. Instead, I let myself feel the weight of the choice before me. Not just practical considerations—though there were many—but the deeper truth of what he was asking. Did I want to build something with him? Something real, beyond the claiming mark, beyond the necessity that had brought us together?

Outside, the rain tapped gently against the roof, steady and patient.

I reached for my mug again and held it between both hands, the warmth grounding me. For years, the only future I let myself imagine was one I built alone—no doors left open, no hands reaching for mine. I didn’t trust anyone to stay. And I hadn’t trusted myself not to make the wrong choice again.

But here was Uldrek, not asking me to leap, not demanding promises. Just offering space. The invitation to choose something together.

I lifted my gaze and met his.

“We’d need a large door,” I said quietly. “Thick walls. I don’t like drafts.”

His face broke open into that rare, crooked grin that undid me every time. “I was thinking good windows,” he said. “For the view.”

The smile tugged at my mouth before I meant to give it. “You think we’ll have time to look out windows?”

“I hope so,” he said, a little softer now. “Would be nice. Someday.”

Someday.

That used to be a word I avoided. It sounded too much like hope—not sharp or urgent, but slow and dangerous, like rising floodwater. Now, sitting across from this man at a scarred tablewarmed by candlelight and cooling tea, the word didn’t scare me the same way.

“Okay,” I said, barely above a whisper. “We can look.”

He blinked, uncertain for just a second, like he hadn’t expected me to say yes. But then he leaned back in his chair, that wolf’s fang at his throat catching the firelight. His eyes found mine, and something settled in them—less surprise than relief.

A promise that he meant it. That he’d follow through.

A floorboard creaked above us—probably Hobbie moving Ellie in her sleep. I reached forward, gently clinking my mug against his. The soft ceramic tap felt oddly like a vow.

“To doors. And windows.”

Uldrek huffed a laugh. “And locks,” he added. “Strong ones.”

“And pie,” I said seriously. “If we live together, someone needs to learn Fira’s recipe.”

He arched an eyebrow at me. “You volunteering?”

I grimaced. “Absolutely not. Have you seen what I do to kitchens?”

He chuckled low in his throat, and for a few heartbeats, all I could feel was that sound warming the corners of something long-frozen inside me. That laugh—rough and real—wrapped around something I didn’t know I needed: comfort with no attached conditions.

For a long while, we simply sat there. Just breathing in quiet air, drinking tea gone lukewarm, and listening to the slow hush of the rain sliding down the shutters. That was the thing I hadn't expected when I first came to Everwood—peace that smelled like woodsmoke and honey pie, not spells and wards. Peace that sounded like shoulder-shaking laughter and a mug clinking gently on scarred wood.

“I don’t know how to build anything real anymore,” I said into the hush. “Not really.”

Uldrek reached across the table, not for my hand, but to nudge my mug toward me again. Just that—a gentle insistence not to stop.

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