Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 32156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
I need to get to Gathred. I need to be by his side. I’m tough. I might not be able to kill many orcs but if they harm my mate I’ll sure as hell hunt down the one that does it.
“Gathred!” I call out as I move through the sea of orc legs. Swords and axes whistle as they’re swung above me, but I dodge and weave, and I don’t think any of them are really looking so far down. “Gathred!”
“Over here.” I hear his voice away to my left, and I follow it through the crowd.
I find him just as he thrusts his sword right through an orc face, and wrap my arms around his waist. I feel his arm go around my chest, and a second later I’m hoisted up onto his shoulders like a child being offered a piggyback ride.
“You’re safe with me, Aleena,” he says as he draws his sword back and launches a furious assault.
There are still tens, maybe close to a hundred Hzarka orcs here, despite the bodies piling up. And it’s clear that the Lakktra are beginning to tire. But it’s then that I see a face I recognize.
My father’s.
And with him, the orc I remember as Ragned.
“Stop this!” He bellows, but the fighting continues. “Stop this or I kill him!”
“No!” The word is out of my mouth before I have chance to check it, and my father’s eyes shoot up to mine. For a moment he just looks dazed, then frightened. I see him mouth some words but from here, with the fighting, I can’t hear them. “You have to stop,” I tell Gathred. “He’s going to kill my dad!”
Gathred glances up, then he growls with frustration and steps back. “Stop!” he shouts. “Everyone stop!”
And amazingly, they all do as he says. Lakktra and Hzarka alike.
“Give him to us, Ragned,” he growls. “Give him to us and we leave.”
Ragned shakes his head. He raises a knife to my father’s throat, pulling his head back to make the threat clear. “No. You leave, and I don’t kill—”
Then he stops.
The words die on his lips as his eyes pin somewhere to my right.
And as I follow his gaze, I see what he’s looking at.
Athaan is staring his way, and her ax has dropped to the floor, embedding in the lifeless corpse of one of her enemies.
Ragned’s grip on my father’s hair loosens, and the knife is suddenly forgotten, hanging loosely by his side.
“Who are you?” he calls out. It’s like the rest of us aren’t even here. Eerie.
“Athaan,” she replies. “You are Ragned?”
He nods. “I…yes. But you are Lakktra. How can we be…”
“It is awkward. Yes.”
“What’s going on?” I whisper to Gathred.
He jumps at the sound of my voice, then reaches up and takes my hand in his. “Not long ago, I wouldn’t have known. Now I do.”
“What do you mean…?” I glance at Athaan. She’s spellbound. The only time I’ve ever felt anything that would do that to me was— “Ohhh. Those two?”
“We don’t get to choose our mate,” he says, and I giggle as I kiss the top of his bald head.
Gathred raises his voice. “Ragned, let Erving go. That is all we ask.”
Athaan folds her arms over her chest. Two massive points like rifle rounds are standing out against her shirt, but she nods. “Yes. Let him go. Then we talk.”
Ragned draws a deep breath through his nose.
Then he lets go of my father completely, to murmurs of disapproval from his own orcs.
Will they really accept this? Won’t they just kill their leader and appoint someone else?
Apparently not, because as my father takes a few hesitating steps toward where Gathred and I are standing, the rest of the Hzarka part to let him through.
And I see the grin spread across Athaan’s face. “You did that for me.”
Ragned nods. “Now we mate?”
“Pfft. I’m not that easy,” she laughs, and I feel the laugh start in my own throat as my father comes closer and stands with us.
“What the hell just happened?” he says, as the three of us turn back toward the treeline, and Gathred sighs.
“I think we just signed a ceasefire.”
Chapter
Twelve
Gathred
My mate is more beautiful each day.
Today, her milk began to drip and I have been sucking at her nipples since last night.
“Papa.” She winces, holding the sides of my head, pushing me back. “They’re sore.”
I mumble around her nipple as I draw another sweep spray of her milk, rubbing the roundness of her belly, imagining there are triplets inside. I filled her with enough seed to breed a Lakktra army but her tiny body can only do so much.
“Papa likes you feeding him,” I mumble, pressing a finger into her tight hole, the wetness easing it inside as her walls tighten around me.
I give her what she told me is called a ‘finger bang’ until she forgets about her sore nipples and starts to moan and beg me to fuck her.