Page 34 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
The trees creak, groaning under the weight of the storm, and the lightning that splits the sky isn’t white—it’s green, and too close, and I swear the earth flinches beneath my feet when it hits. My boots slip in the wet grass, and I catch myself on the trunk of a tree I used to climb as a kid—one that shouldn’t be leaning like this, shouldn’t be bleeding sap that glows faintly like old firelight.
I run.
Because something’s wrong.
Because I canfeelhim hurting.
The center of the orchard is pulsing, a dull glow at first, then brighter, wilder, like the land itself is caught between scream and collapse. And when I push past the last ring of trees and step into the heart of the grove, I nearly fall to my knees at the sight of him.
Garruk.
He’s on the ground—bare-chested, soaked, covered in mud and something darker. His glyphs are lit up like embers, veins of gold and crimson threading down his spine and around his ribs like the orchard is trying to brand him from the inside out. Hisleft hand is buried in the soil, and his right is shaking, clutching a blade I recognize but haven’t seen in years, the ritual edge we only use when things are dire.
And gods help me, I know they are.
“Garruk!” I shout, stumbling toward him, falling beside him so fast I don’t even feel the way my knees hit stone.
He looks up, slow and dazed, his eyes flicking to mine with a kind of disbelief that carves something raw through my ribs. “You came back,” he rasps, like he doesn’t trust it’s true.
“I never should’ve left,” I say, hands already moving—checking his pulse, cradling his jaw, pressing my forehead to his so I can feel that flicker of heat beneath his skin and know he’s stillhere. “You idiot. You stupid, beautiful, infuriating idiot. What the hell were you thinking?”
His smile is crooked, lopsided, the way it gets when he’s too tired to fight me. “It was unraveling.”
“So you bled into the roots?”
He grunts. “It needed a tether.”
“You’rethe tether, you fool,” I hiss, my voice breaking, not because I’m angry, but because I’m scared. “Don’t you get it? You’ve always been the thing holding this place together.”
He closes his eyes. “Not without you.”
That undoes me.
That shatters whatever part of me thought I could keep distance between what I feel and what I show. I lean in, fingers in his hair, lips to his mouth, and I kiss him—desperate, trembling, rain-soaked and shaking.
And he kisses me back like it’s the only thing keeping him alive.
Around us, the orchard shifts.
The wind quiets, a little. The lightning pauses. The roots stop buckling underfoot.
“I’m not leaving again,” I whisper, pulling back just enough to press my hand to his chest, right over the center of that stubborn, stupid, fiercely loyal heart. “Do you hear me, Garruk? I’m not running anymore. You’re mine. And I’m yours. And if the orchard doesn’t like it, it can grow around us.”
He reaches for me, bloody fingers curling around my wrist, and the ground beneath us exhales.
The pulse of the bond isn’t a sharp thing—it’s soft. Slow. Like honey sliding down the throat or the weight of a quilt settling over you in winter. I feel it catch, then hold, then root itself deeper than anything I’ve ever known. It’s not just magic. It’sours.
And when Garruk finally slumps against me, breath shallow but steady, I hold him like the orchard once held us—as something sacred, something wild, something worth the breaking.
CHAPTER 22
GARRUK
The rain sighs into a drizzle as Ivy helps me rise, her touch both forest-quick and steady. Beneath the canopies, the air shifts - damp earth and impending blossoms, like the orchard itself holds its breath. Her palms smooth away the mud from my chest, leaving streaks of cleanness in their wake. "Still think you're alone?"
"Not anymore." My voice scrapes rough as bark.
Her fingers trace the arc of my jaw. "Prove it."
