Page 12 of Bound By Blood (Orc Warrior Romances #1)

The contradiction tears at me like wolf fangs, loyalty to the dead warring with obligation to the living. Tomorrow's council will demand a decision, and whatever choice I make will echo through generations of clan history.

She saved our brother.

The simple truth cuts through all the political calculations and strategic concerns. Eirian Thorne could have let Thrak die, could have weakened us through inaction disguised as incompetence. Instead, she healed, taught, and treated our people with the same care she'd show her own.

That choice demands an answer. The only question remaining is whether I have the courage to provide the right one.

The torches have burned to stubs when I finally leave the council chamber, but sleep won't come.

Instead, I pace the stone corridors of our stronghold, boots echoing against walls carved by my grandfather's generation.

These passages have witnessed three centuries of clan decisions, victories, defeats, and the slow erosion of everything we once considered permanent.

Trust is fragile. The phrase repeats in my mind like a war drum's rhythm, carrying me back twenty-seven winters to a battlefield that taught me the true cost of misplaced faith.

The morning mist clung to Thornfield Valley like burial shrouds, and I was seventeen winters old with my father's war-axe heavy in untested hands. First battle. First real test of everything the clan elders had taught me about honor, courage, and the sacred duty of protecting our people.

"Stay close," Korvak whispered beside me, his breath visible in the cold air. My blood-brother, chosen family bound by ritual scars and childhood oaths sworn over stolen mead. "Watch the eastern slope. Humans like high ground for their archers."

We'd grown up together, trained together, shared every scraped knee and bruised pride that marked the journey from boys to warriors.

Korvak was everything I wasn't, quick with jokes, gentle with wounded animals, able to find friendship in the most unlikely places.

Where I saw enemies, he saw potential allies.

Where I demanded absolute loyalty, he offered forgiveness.

"Remember what Father taught us," I replied, adjusting my grip on weapons that still felt foreign despite years of practice. "Honor above survival, clan above self."

Korvak's grin flashed white in the dim light. "Easy words before the blood starts flowing. Let's see how they taste with steel in our bellies."

The human forces emerged from the tree line like ghosts taking solid form, mounted knights in burnished mail, foot soldiers carrying the banner of House Redmere, and behind them the glint of steel that promised death for the unwary.

They'd come to claim disputed hunting grounds, to push Stoneborn boundaries back another mile toward the heartland.

"For the clan!" my father's war cry echoed across the valley, and three hundred voices answered with the roar of an avalanche given voice.

The charge began.

I remember fragments—the thunder of hooves against stone, the wet sound of steel finding flesh, the copper taste of blood and fear coating my tongue.

My axe bit deep into a knight's shoulder, sending him toppling from his mount in a spray of crimson.

Korvak fought beside me, his twin blades dancing through human ranks like silver lightning.

Then the trap closed.

House Redmere had hidden reserves in the eastern woods, exactly where Korvak predicted their archers would nest. Fresh troops poured down the slope while we were committed to the valley floor, caught between hammer and anvil with nowhere to retreat.

"Ambush!" someone screamed, but the warning came too late.

I found myself separated from the dominant force, surrounded by five human soldiers who moved with the coordinated precision of veterans.

My father's training kicked in, parry, riposte, use their numbers against them by forcing them into narrow approaches.

But training couldn't account for everything.

The knight who flanked me wore House Redmere's colors and carried a blade that sang as it cut air. He was older, experienced, scarred by battles I could barely imagine. When our weapons locked, I saw something in his eyes that terrified me more than death—pity.

"Yield, boy," he said, voice carrying absolute authority. "You've fought well, but this ends here. Yield, and you'll be ransomed back to your people unharmed."

Honor demanded I refuse. Clan law forbade surrender while strength remained in my limbs. Every lesson drilled into my skull since childhood screamed that death was preferable to the shame of capture.

But those weren't the words that came.

"I yield," I gasped, my father's axe clattering to bloody stone.

The knight stepped back, lowering his weapon with what looked like relief. "Smart choice. Wars end, boy, but dead men don't see peace."

That's when Korvak appeared.

He came from behind like fury given form, both blades seeking the knight's unguarded back. Honor demanded he rescue his blood-brother, loyalty required he fight until breath left his body, and love—the deep, unshakeable love between brothers who'd shared everything—left him no choice but to attack.

"Drokhan!" he roared, and for one impossible moment I thought we might actually escape.

The knight spun faster than seemed possible, his blade finding Korvak's throat with surgical precision. Blood fountained across my face, warm and thick, carrying the metallic taste of betrayal.

Korvak fell to his knees, hands clutching the wound that would steal his voice forever. His eyes found mine, wide with shock and something that might have been forgiveness.

"Brother," he whispered, the word barely audible through the blood filling his mouth.

Then he died.

The knight who killed him cleaned his blade with mechanical efficiency, expression never changing from professional concentration to satisfaction or regret. Just another battlefield necessity, another problem solved with steel.

"He didn't need to die," the knight said, not unkindly. "You'd already yielded. The honorable thing was to accept quarter and live to fight another day."

But I understood then, with the clarity that only comes through devastating loss, that honor means different things to different people.

To Korvak, honor meant dying before abandoning his blood-brother.

To the knight, honor meant showing mercy to defeated enemies.

To me, honor became choosing my survival over my brother's life.

The humans ransomed me back to my father three days later, exactly as promised. I returned to find Korvak's funeral pyre cold ashes and his family asking questions I couldn't answer without destroying what little remained of my reputation.

"Where were you when he needed you?" his sister demanded, tears cutting tracks through the soot staining her cheeks.

I told them he died heroically, leading a charge against superior numbers. I told them his sacrifice saved a dozen clan warriors from ambush. I told them everything except the truth—that he died trying to rescue a coward who chose surrender over death.

The lies came easily. Too easily.

The memory fades as I reach the grotto's entrance, leaving me hollow and restless in the present darkness. That battle taught me everything about honor's true cost, about the decisions that echo through generations. Korvak died because I chose pragmatism over principle, survival over sacred duty.

Never again.

Every choice since then has carried his ghost, every moment of mercy weighed against the possibility of betrayal. Trust becomes impossible when you've seen how quickly it can kill those you love most.

But Eirian saved Thrak's life when she could have let him die. The parallel cuts deep when mercy and pragmatism aligned, when choosing kindness didn't demand anyone's death.

Maybe she's different. Maybe some humans understand honor the way Korvak did.

The grotto guard nods as I approach, recognizing my footsteps. "Chief. The human rests, but she requested permission to tend the healing fires. Said our injured might need attention through the night."

Of course, she did. Even in captivity, even facing an uncertain fate, she prioritizes others' welfare over her own safety. The contradiction doesn't escape my notice, our prisoner shows more concern for clan welfare than half our own people.

"Grant her limited freedom within the grotto," I decide, the words carrying weight of precedent and risk. "She may tend the fires, check on our wounded, use the herb stores as needed. But she doesn't leave this chamber without escort."

The guard's eyebrows rise slightly. Extended privileges for captives violate every security protocol we've established over decades of clan warfare. But he's seen Thrak's recovery, knows what Eirian accomplished when our own healers had given up hope.

"Understood, Chief. Any other restrictions?"

"Her movement is restricted to the healing chambers and the main grotto. No access to armory, food stores, or the passages leading to the surface. And post additional guards at all exits, visible but not threatening. She needs to understand that trust is fragile."

The guard salutes and disappears into the shadows, leaving me alone at the grotto's threshold.

Through the natural archway, I see Eirian moving among the injured with practiced efficiency, checking bandages and adjusting herb preparations with the focused attention of someone who genuinely cares about her patients' welfare.

What lies behind human eyes?

The question has haunted me since our first encounter on the battlefield, when her gaze met mine across a field of blood and death.

No fear, despite being surrounded by armed orcs who could have killed her without thought.

No hatred, despite watching her people fall under our weapons.

Just... determination. A steel-hard resolve to protect the dying knight beneath her hands, even if it cost her life.