Page 113 of Orc's Possession
“Telin!” I signal a nearby warrior to find the vekker responsible. Telin charges off at top speed, weaving through the humans still racing to escape our men.
I race inside the building behind me to remove any females before destroying it. Shock slams into me as I take in the sight of our graka… in a cell.
“Graka?”
“Verig?” she says, her voice falling. She left Atox when the humans shot him. Why did they imprison her?
“Thank god you’re here.” Her voice is weaker than I’m used to hearing from her. “Get me out of this cell. I want to go home.”
“You are home.”
“I mean back to the mountain. To Ossa and her kids. To—” She swallows, then squares her shoulders and lifts her chin, attempting to make herself look larger, more commanding. “You’ve never liked me, Verig, I mean Grak, but I am still orc.”
“I am not grak,” I say, trying to figure out what’s going on. But the image of my female slung over Baloc’s shoulder and that lustful look on his face distracts me too much to unravel whatever is happening here.
“Oh, I assumed after…” She inhales and wipes water that leaks from her eyes. “Whoever is grak now, isn’t he here to take me back?”
“Why would we take you back?”
She blinks twice, an astonished expression on her face. “Because I’m still orc.” She adds conviction to the word orc, saying it with pride. It appears Atox changed her, too. This is not the same female I escorted from this colony months ago.
“And I carry a baby that’s half-orc. He or she should be allowed to grow up near Ossa and her children. They’re the only family my baby will have. I can’t stay here. The humans want to kill my baby or sell us to the vints.”
“You carry Atox’s youngling?”
“Yes.”
Surprise then anger fills me. “You lie.” The words spring forth from my lips, making it clear this female would do anything to get out of her prison, one of her own making most likely.
Her eyebrows purse then narrow, anger mounting in her fragile features. “I’m not lying.”
“Atox would have told me if you carried his youngling.”
“I never got the chance to tell him before they killed him.”
“Before…” Vek, she thinks Atox is dead. So much becomes clear.
I shoot out of the jail in search of Atox. Two hundred feet away, he’s holding his sword in the air, giving the signal to withdraw and return home.
“Grak!” I call. “You’re needed here. Now!” I’ve left no room in my words or tone for Atox to ignore me or brush off my request, even in his foul mood. A grak always listens to his neld, even when he doesn’t want to.
He spurs his gorja through a string of burning homes, flames leaping high into the night, even as humans aim water cannons at them. One turns his water cannon on Atox as his gorja races by. The force of the water nearly knocks Atox from his mount, but he ignores it and the human, his focus on me. These humans don’t matter to him. Only one ever held his attention and his heart…
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ATOX
The moment the humans shoot me with a blast of water, I consider turning my gorja toward them and beheading them. But Verig’s voice shook in a way I’ve never heard. Something is very wrong.
As I swing down from my gorja, he blocks the door to the building. One draw of the air into my lungs and I know instantly my female, the one who said she loved me and then later left me, is inside.
Love is a human emotion, one I nearly succumbed to. I let her weaken me. Everyone saw it. Verig, my warriors, my people. Even Ossa. Though for the past month she’s chastised me daily for not attacking New Earth and reclaiming my female.
While I lay in bed healing, the few unmated orc females in Mount Racha presented themselves to me. All assumed I’d forget about my human.
I don’t want an orc female. I want the female who burrowed her way into my soul. The one I pledged myself to. The one who pledged herself to me.
Except she walked away.
