Page 29 of Bite Sized Bride
The sight of him is a physical blow. Fenris stumbles back, his face draining of all color, a choked gasp escaping his lips. Kael is a ten-foot-tall nightmare of scars and cursed flesh, his amber eyes blazing with a cold, possessive fire. He positions himself between me and Fenris, a silent, immovable wall. He looks at the piece of meat in Fenris’s hand, then at me, and lets out a low, rumbling growl that is a clear and unambiguous statement.
She eats what I provide.
The power dynamic in our small, desperate group has just been brutally, terrifyingly established. Fenris is our guide. I am the negotiator.
And Kael… Kael is the monster who owns me.
16
KAEL
The human, Fenris, calls this place safe.
He found it for us—an old hunter’s cabin, tucked away in a fold of the hills, its roof sagging, its walls covered in a thick blanket of moss that makes it all but invisible from a distance. It is a good hiding place. The scent of old wood and animal musk is strong here, a thick cloak that masks our own trail.
But it is not safe.
Nowhere is safe. Not while the master breathes. Not while the ghost of the orc inside me remembers what it is to be hunted.
I watch Fenris from the dark corner of the cabin that I have claimed as my own. He sits by the small, smoky fire he built, sharpening his pathetic wooden stake with a shard of flint. He is wiry and quick, his bright blue eyes constantly moving, assessing. He smiles too easily. His story about his daughter, Elara, is a well-crafted thing, full of a grief that feels almost real.
Almost.
My primal instincts, the ones that have been honed by the curse into a razor’s edge, scream that he is a threat. He is a variable I cannot control. He looks at Mikana when he thinks I am not watching. He looks at her with a hunger that is not forfood. It is the hungry look of a starving man seeing a feast he knows he cannot have. It makes me want to rip his throat out.
Mikana, however, seems to blossom in his presence. She talks to him, another human, another survivor. Her voice, usually so quiet and measured, has a lighter cadence. She even laughs once, a soft, startled sound that is the most beautiful and painful thing I have ever heard. Painful, because I am not the one who caused it.
I do not like it. I do not like him. But I tolerate his presence. For her. Because she believes we need him. And her belief is a chain I am only just learning how to wear.
When night falls, Fenris announces he will take the first watch outside. “You two get some rest,” he says, his smile too wide, too friendly. “You look like you’ve been through the Thirteen Hells.”
He has no idea.
He slips out of the cabin, leaving us alone in the flickering firelight. The small space is suddenly charged, the air thick with the memory of our last night together in the cave. The memory of her touch.
Mikana does not look at me. She busies herself by the fire, tending to a small pot of water she is boiling with some herbs she found. My herbs. The ones I pointed out to her, my rough grunt of a word—Heal—the only instruction. She is making a poultice for my wounds.
She approaches me, her movements hesitant. The scent of her—of clean water and crushed fylvek grass—is a balm to the simmering rage that Fenris’s presence ignites.
“This will help,” she says softly, holding a small, damp cloth filled with the mashed green paste. “The arrow wound… it looks angry.”
She kneels before me. I am sitting on the floor, my back against the rough-hewn wall, and still I tower over her. She hasto reach up to touch my shoulder. Her fingers are so small, so delicate against the scarred ruin of my hide.
Her touch is a quiet fire. It does not burn with the raw desperation of the cave. It is a slow, deliberate warmth that sinks past the skin, past the muscle, and into the very core of my being. It is a conscious choice. She is choosing to touch the monster.
She works in silence, her brow furrowed in concentration as she cleans the wound and applies the poultice. Her touch is firm, professional, but every brush of her fingers against my skin is a spark that threatens to ignite a forest fire inside me.
The orc ghost inside me is stronger now. It remembers things. It remembers the quiet intimacy of a mate tending to her warrior’s wounds after a battle. It remembers the pride, the honor, the profound connection of it. This is a ritual as old as my lost clan.
When she is done, her hand lingers on my shoulder. Her thumb strokes the edge of one of the hardened, cursed plates of my skin.
“Does it hurt?” she whispers, her gaze fixed on the wound.
Everything hurts,I want to say.Being in this body is a constant agony. Remembering is a torture. Forgetting is a void. The only thing that does not hurt is you.
But the words are too complex, a tangled knot in my throat.
“No,” I manage to grunt. A lie.
