Page 6 of Claim
“Amma gave us some old orc stories to watch, legends and fairy tales, I guess.Seems like challenging the i’lva was actually kinda popular.”
He huffed out a breath.“And how did most of those stories end?”
“Um…” She twisted her lips to one side.“Mayhem and bloodshed?”
“Exactly.Such orc comedies are not the basis for transgalactic business ventures.”
“Uh…”
“And so I shall go alone.”
For a moment, she didn’t respond.Then a faint breath leaked from her.“I suppose that’ll make it easier to come up with a singular look for you: nobody to match.”
As it should be.An apex stood alone.
***
But during the uroondu relaxation cycle at the gather-hall, while Mag sat with his brother watching the others play a game called Ghost in the Graveyard, he was informed that he had made a mistake.
“Why don’t you choose June as your date?”Sil had just been released from the bone menders that had repaired his lower arms, broken while protecting his wife-mate.Now he was grimacing as he tried to angle his synthetar around the attachments of the muscle rebuilders that sent intermittent electric shocks through his limbs to continue his healing.
Mag reached over the table to increase the gain, jolting a yelp out of his brother and a discordant twang from the instrument.“Don’t hold back.I need you strong for the Luster.”
“I don’t need to be that kind of strong,” Sil protested.“Also, I have two other arms.”
Mag grunted.Perhaps he should’ve tasked Amma with finding six-armed brides from the IDA to keep his orcs striving.He reached for the control again.
Stubby Earther fingers wrapped around his wrist.“Nah.That’s enough.”
“Song of my heart, my sweetness,” Sil said gently.“We don’t lay hands on the apex.”
“I do when he’s hurting my mate.”Kinsley’s gray-blue gaze was like an iron-core asteroid, promising damage if there was a collision.A warning echo glinted from the sung stone on her finger.
Sil sighed.“Kinsley…”
“No.”Mag sat back, freeing himself from her grip.“Your wife-mate knows her place: with you.I apologize.”He tried to stop there, but to his disgust, the words kept coming.“I know your healing can’t be rushed.But tearing through the shuttle wreckage to find you, seeing you shattered, was…bad.I would’ve given you my arms, brother.”
Kinsley nudged onto the bench next to Sil, tucking herself carefully against his wired elbow as if making herself another one of his instruments.“Must be hard to feel like you have to oversee everybody and everything all the time.”
“Not feel,” Mag said.“I am the tallest.Idooversee everybody and everything all the time.”
When she sucked in a breath, Sil lifted his wife-mate’s hand to brush his lips over the ring he’d made for her.“Leave him be, heartsong,” he murmured.
The gentle sympathy—worse because it wasnotscornful—made Mag bristle.“It is my name on our contracts.Which makes it my debt to pay if we can’t.”
“We either stand together or spiral apart,” Sil said.“A little something I learned as the cosmic dust caught fire around us.”
“Together,” Kinsley murmured, angling her face for a kiss between Sil’s tusks.The gemstone in her ring flared even brighter, a joyful paean to the power of the i’lva.Both the sung stones and the i’lva had seemed like myths, lost to the orcs along with their homeworld—found again with their Earther wife-mates.
Since Mag couldn’t fight his brother—at least not when he only had two working arms—he just grunted again and averted his gaze from their i’lva.As apex, he might oversee everything and everybody, but he didn’t need to seethat.
Instead, his wandering gaze tracked some of his orcs and the Earthers poking around the columns and corners of the gather-hall.The uroondu was a designated third of the ship’s cycle dedicated to personal pursuits beyond work or rest, and at the moment it appeared the pursuit was literal.
In a very uncrusher-like voice, Teq suddenly shrieked, “Ghost in the graveyard!”and wheeled on one heel to race across the hall.The big orc had his hatchling, Oliver, tucked under one arm, and as he passed his future wife-mate, Adeline, he grabbed her around the waist to carry them toward the dais with the apex seat.
Mag frowned.“This is a strange pastime of fear and fleeing and phantoms.”
“It’s fun,” Kinsley said.“You should try it.Your throne is the safe base where the ghost can’t touch you.”
