Page 18 of Orc's Possession
“Grak? It’s a…” Nice name? Eh, maybe, to an orc. “A strong name.” I throw in a nod to show my approval.
“Grak is not—” He stops mid-sentence to take a knife out from the leather straps across his chest. I bob in the water, wondering if I can out-swim him. Then he slams the flat side of his blade against his chest, over his heart before sheathing it.
“Was that a salute of some sort?”
“Your Grak honors you, female. Return to shore,” he orders, as gruff as ever.
Against all sense of self-preservation, I reach up and touch the spot behind his right ear. Given Grak’s thicker skin, I nearly miss the hard lump of a language chip there. He’s been speaking inEnglish, so it makes sense he has a language implant, but there are times like now that he refers to himself as Grak instead of using a pronoun. I guess these language implants aren’t perfect.
“I wasn’t sure you had a language chip,” I explain as I remove my hand.
“All of our top warriors have them. It became necessary when we realized we were not alone on Kovos.”
“You came here without knowing there were other species?”
“We did not have a choice. This is where the cendagi programmed the ships to land when we fled Orcos. We did not have a fleet or pilots to fly ships.”
“Fled? I didn’t think orcs fled anything.”
His eyes flare. Shit, I’ve insulted him. I turn to swim back to the shore when I notice the other orcs there. “I want to go home, Grak. To my people. Surely there’s another way to repopulate your species?”
“We are your people now, Paloma,” he says in a low voice.
Another moment of understanding stretches between us. Neither of us wanted this. Duty, obligation, maybe even fate, threw us together. He didn’t take me to harm me, and maybe my father didn’t betray me out of hate, even though it feels like that. This orc, this massive male who keeps saying I’m his, may not be the enemy, but that doesn’t mean I have to cooperate with him. His goals and mine do not align. How do I make him understand that?
Grak plucks a leaf from my hair, and then his fingers trail down my cheek, barely grazing my skin. I see a softness in his eyes. He’s not a monster, just another being trying to survive Kovos.
A noise on the shore lifts Grak’s chin. He tilts his head slightly, his ears taking in his men standing at the water’s edge, listening, watching us. When his eyes don’t leave me, it feels like we are a team and his men are the enemy. That false sense ofbelonging shatters into a million pieces as he grabs me by my blouse and swims ashore.
“Grak, where did you find her?” the tallest of the orcs asks in English. They all have language chips, but this is the first they’re speaking so I can understand them.
“Hiding.”
I noticed he doesn’t say where.
“Take her.” Grak shoves me in the direction of the youngest of the orcs, the male who had been driving the cart. He’s standing apart from the warriors.
“Vip oska agatti, dox?” the young orc asks me.
Okay, then, I’m not the only one without a language chip.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I reply.
He’s younger and smaller than the warriors. In some ways, he reminds me of Renata, my youngest sister. Probably because he has that innocence about him mixed with the desire to please those around him, as if he’s struggling with adulthood. And he has a fresh cut on his cheek, straight and long. It looks too clean to have been from a tree branch. Either way, it’s clear he got hurt while looking for me. I reach up to wipe a spot of blood away.
His mouth opens slightly, then he reaches out and touches my face, mirroring my actions.
Before I can register what’s happening, the male is lying flat on the ground and Grak has his sword tip to the male’s cheek.
“You don’t touch what belongs to me.” Grak slices the young male’s cheek, a fraction of an inch from the other wound. A matching cut.
It all sinks in. Grak punished him earlier for my escape.
A mixture of horror and rage swirl together inside me. He hurt this orc—a male I’m more and more convinced is a teen—all because I escaped. I hadn’t even escaped! I’d merely hidden beneath the hay.
I charge at Grak, who turns in time to move his sword away.The male is quicker than me. I would have impaled myself without intending to.
Grak sweeps my feet from under me, knocking me on my ass with very little effort. The sword tip now rests against my cheek.
