Page 50

May

We hijack the topic of the big meeting the next morning. After rehashing everything that happened with the Moon Goddess, Aldronn and I present our idea for Alarria’s future to the dragons, unicorns, cat sith, and cu sith.

There’s a shit ton of yelling and growling that goes on and on until Sheevora’s voice booms across the standing stone clearing. “Go back to your peoples and discuss this thoroughly before making any final decisions. I for one think this will come to pass. The doors of Faerie are now open. There’s no going back. We will reconvene in two weeks.” She launches into the air and changes into her huge dragon form right above us, the wind of her wings blasting across the clearing.

As everyone goes their separate ways, Dravarr stomps over. “You really want to do this?”

“We do.” Aldronn tips his head regally.

The warlord frowns. “My village will be changed.”

“It’s already changed,” Ashley says. “Look at all the witches, dragons, cu sith, cat sith, sprites and pixies already there. You didn’t have any of that before.”

“Putting the new center over here will actually help keep Moon Blade Village like it is. You won’t need to build new cottages or try to figure out where to house all the new fae. We’ll do all of that over here.” I wave to the large area of forest already cleared by the dragons. “We’ll even make sure there’s grazing land.”

“Good.” Starfall taps my shoulder. “Because I was about to remind you.”

A week passes, filled with love and sex and experimenting with all the different ways Aldronn’s two dicks can make my body sing. We also discover a million little moments of love. The flower he places on my breakfast tray each morning, the stories I tell to make him laugh, the simple contentment of snuggling on the sofa while he reads to me from his favorite books.

Since we can’t spend every single minute in bed, I also get to learn about running the kingdom. I sit in on Kronn’s briefings and use Luke’s translation crystal to read the paperwork. Then I help Aldronn delegate a bunch of the tasks he’s been doing. We hire accountants and scribes to keep track of village trade agreements, food stores, etc. And Aldronn appoints Kronn as his chancellor to handle village relations, since the guard has been by Aldronn’s side for over a decade and knows the job inside and out.

We also settle more fully into Moon Blade Village, and I meet several people, like Gerna, the herbalist who can drink everyone, including her brother Krivoth, under the table. Or Leyva, Dravarr and Rovann’s mother, who might like brawling more than any other orc I’ve met. Then there’s Reta the village weaver who makes me new underwear over and over, grinning each time Aldronn rips a pair with his tusks. “I’ve gotten quite used to it. That Ashley goes through several pairs a week.”

We spend every evening at the pub with the others, drinking and laughing. Sturrm’s singing voice is as beautiful as Aldronn said, and Selena’s been teaching him a few of her favorites to add to his repertoire. There’s nothing quite as good as hearing him croon a tearjerker of an orc ballad followed by the sweetness of a Billie Eilish song.

My pixies teach the rest of the tiny fae pizza ball, and now every evening the village green is full of the kids—and several adults as well—cheering on their favorite teams as the pixies have Olympic-level food fights.

Naomi takes Starfall to a unicorn conclave on the Umbriall Plains, and Aldronn and I go along for a quick visit so I can see the place my good friend calls home. It’s magical big-sky country, with a sea of silver and green grass that ripples in wind-tossed waves.

The unicorns approve our idea for the travel center quickly but are trying to decide who wants to stay in Alarria and who wants to go back to their home realm, where the grass is supposedly sweeter, the air balmier, and the sky an even more perfect shade of blue.

“Ha!” Starfall snorts when I say as much to her. “Others may think it, but I tasted the grass of Umbria, and it tasted like grass. Alarria is just as good.”

“It also doesn’t hurt that you’ll be queen here,” Aldronn says.

She taps him with her horn. “A queen who has alliances with the other rulers, no less.”

“Always, my friend. Always.”

We visit the dragon caves in the Dular Mountains. The caverns are as vast as I imagined, the dragon libraries the size of skyscrapers, full of scrolls as big as me. Since the Moon Goddess freed all fae chained to the Dark God’s thrall, shadow wyvern no longer attack the dragon home realm, Dularia. So a similar debate rages among the dragons about who wants to stay in Alarria. They haven’t yet ratified the idea for the travel center, but Sheevora seems to be winning them over.

Luke spends hours grilling me on every last detail of my quest—even the parts he was there for—and writes everything down on multiple scrolls. When he finishes, I ask him what he’s going to do next.

“Now that you’ve solved the mystery of the Moon Goddess, there’s not much scholarly work left to be done here in Alarria. And Dularia is even worse—it’s been very thoroughly studied.” He shrugs, the wings of his dual form rustling. “If I want to make a name for myself, I need to find fresh material.”

Back at Moon Blade Village, Rune and Shadow are both restless, bickering constantly and continuing to spar daily in their were forms. Watching a werewolf and werepanther fight is next level, but it feels like they don’t know what to do with themselves.

“We want to be part of this new idea of yours,” Rune says, his ears perking up.

“Why do two weeks feel like an eternity?” Shadow grins. “I’m ready for the other realms to know the magnificence that is me.”

Aldronn and I also take a day to go with Wranth and Naomi to Avalon. Stepping through the door is a weird moment of disorientation, like when your foot reaches for a step riser that isn’t there, and you stumble.

We emerge in a small clearing in the middle of a forest. The ruins of the stone house look the same as before, but unlike the memory I saw in Aldronn’s mind, there’s a sun in the sky.

Wranth crouches and places his palms on the ground. “I think some of the magic is back.”

Aldronn repeats his actions, nodding. “I think you’re right.”

“The trees are still dead.” Naomi walks up to an elm or oak or something like that—it’s hard to tell without leaves—and pats the brown bark.

“Maybe,” Wranth says. “We can ask Gerna to come and check. She has plant magic.”

“No, the witch speaks true.” King Severin floats down from overhead, his shadow wings so eerily silent even Aldronn and Wranth jolt with surprise. The shadow fae lands on the ground, his wings sucking back into his body. “Titania freed us and fixed some of the realm’s hurts, but she did not fix all. She unlocked the stasis gripping the realm, but it turned out the stasis was the only thing keeping the trees partially alive.”

His voice is so carefully controlled it takes the brush of his mind against mine for me to realize he vibrates with rage.

“I’ve seen the tapestries of what Avalon should look like, green and alive. Yet I fly over acre after acre of dead forest.” His hands clench, his lips curling in a snarl that shows his fangs. “What Oberon took from us… What he still takes…”

Aldronn’s eyes narrow. “You have plant magic.”

“Indeed, I do.” Severin tips his head. “As you have elf ancestors, I have a few who are orc. It feels horribly ironic when confronted with this.” His fingers dance over the bark of a dead tree. Then he crouches and brushes crumbled leaves away from a tiny curl of green. “Still, all is not lost.”

His hand hovers over it, and it grows several inches before coming to a halt.

“That’s amazing,” I say. “You can grow it all back.”

“No.” Severin shakes his head. “Everything in Avalon is too fragile. If I pour too much magic into the new plants, it will twist them instead of aid them. My magic needs a thriving ecosystem to work to its full potential.”

“You can’t have Alarria.” Wranth’s voice goes cold, his hand chopping through the air like a sword as he points to the stone house. “Your people killed my parents and every other orc in Avalon. You don’t get to have your happy ending in the world we’ve kept safe.”

Oh, Wranth. My heart aches for the pain in his voice. I share a look with Naomi, who gives a sad nod that yes, all of that really happened.

“That was not me,” Severin protests. “And the shadow fae who did it were made to do so by the Dark God.”

Wranth growls, his fists balling, and Aldronn steps to his cousin’s side and sets a supportive hand on his shoulder. “It does not matter,” Aldronn says. “Such deep hurts cannot quickly be forgotten. There are other realms. Go to one of them. As King Wranth of the Avalon orcs says, Alarria will not be your home.”

Wranth turns and stomps for the door, Naomi hurrying after him. Aldronn pulls me along as well, but I can’t help but glance back one last time at Severin, his head bowed as he stares down at the tiny bit of green amongst all that dead brown.

Finally, the day comes for me to start picking up the pieces of my old life so I can braid them into my new happiness. Aldronn and I follow Naomi into the empty heart tree cottage set at the edge of the village.

Only it’s not completely empty. A crystal lies on the floor, the air above it swirling with distortion like heat waves radiating off sun-baked blacktop.

“Ferndale Falls, here I come,” I whisper and step out into the familiar forest of home, the rush of the waterfall audible.

“Ready?” Naomi holds out a hand. “I’ll take us straight to the bookshop.”

I shake my head and hurry past her. It’s only a few yards through heavy ferns before the narrow game trail opens up in front of the waterfall.

Aldronn steps close behind me and wraps me in his arms.

“This is the place Mom used to bring me.” I lean back into him. “This is the reason I love waterfalls.”

“You’re the reason I love waterfalls.” He projects an image of him between my thighs, eating me out at the falls in Alarria. We’ve been practicing our mental connection a lot this past week, both in bed and out, and when we’re close together, I can stay constantly tuned in to him.

“Still so dirty,” I tease.

We stand a little longer, and I let the peace of the place seep into me. Then I turn and stretch my hand toward Naomi. “Let’s go.”

In a blink, we stand inside her bookshop, surrounded by shelves full of romance novels. A display table set up near the front is covered in monster romance, including some books with guys photoshopped to look like orcs.

I hold up the latest by Lara Jade. “Been doing a little inspirational reading, have we?”

Naomi laughs. “They’re popular now. People saw Wranth and Aldronn when they saved the town from sluagh. I convinced everyone it was a movie, but they’re still interested in orcs.”

Aldronn reaches over my shoulder and lifts the book higher, staring hard at the cover.

From this close, I can see the graphic designer did a really good job. The cover model has the same color skin as my husband, the same type of tusks, and the same long, straight black hair. “He looks like a real orc.”

“He looks like Brokk,” Aldronn says.

“What?” Naomi rushes over to us, snatching the book from my hand. “Oh, my god! Why didn’t I see it before?”

Before I can ask who Brokk is, the door slams open. Hannah runs into the room, her arms thrown wide. “May!”

“Hannah!” I dart forward, meeting her halfway.

She leans over to wrap her arms around me, all tall and thin and beautiful. Then she pulls back and grips my shoulders to hold me at arm’s length. “Let me get a look at you!”

I drink her in, too. Everything from her porcelain skin to her smooth waterfall of straight brown hair looks as perfect as always. Hannah’s always been the most together of the three of us, the one who kept even Naomi, who can get lost in the good book, on track all through high school. It’s almost a little surreal to see human clothes again, but my friend looks great in dark jeans and a tailored top unbuttoned one button too far—her one tiny act of rebellion.

“May, you’re glowing! Naomi told me a little, but you have to tell me everything!” Hannah tugs me over to the burgundy velvet couches that make up the reading area at the side of the store.

We sink onto the comfy cushions, and I wave Aldronn over. “Aldronn, this is my other best friend, Hannah. Hannah, this is my husband, King Aldronn of Alarria, but you can call him Aldronn.”

“Your husband?” Her eyes go wide and she waves her finger back and forth between me and Naomi. “What’s up with the two of you not only marrying really hot fae but also marrying freaking kings ?” She gets so excited her voice gets louder and louder until she shouts the last word.

Naomi plops onto the couch on my other side. “What can I say?” She spreads her hands and looks at me.

I finish her sentence, just like we used to do in high school. “If you got it, you got it.”

The three of us break into laughter, the two of them collapsing against me so I’m caught between all their friendship and joy.

Aldronn settles into one of the comfy chairs opposite, a pleased look on his face. “I already met Hannah once before, but it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance again and to know you’re such good friends with May.”

“Oh, girl.” Hannah elbows me. “You got a good one.”

I grin and nod. “I totally did.”

“Wait until you hear about May’s witch power,” Naomi says.

“What is it?” Hannah says. “You have to tell me!”

“Mind reading.”

“ No! That’s so cool! I hope I get a cool one!”

“Wait, you’re a witch?”

“Supposedly.” Her mouth twists. “But I have no freaking clue what my power is.”

“Ferndale Falls has a lot of witches,” Naomi says. “But without the Moon Goddess to activate their powers, there’s a lot to figure out.”

“Yeah, no goddess for me.” Hannah pouts. “Boo.”

“Hey, the goddess wasn’t all that.” I wag my thumb back and forth between Naomi and me. “We’ll help you figure it out.”

“You bet we will,” Naomi says.

“We’re witches, bitches!” I say.

“Oh, I like that!” Hannah says. “‘Witches Bitches.’ That could be the name of our Ferndale Falls coven.”

“We could make T-shirts,” Naomi says.

I laugh. “I’d wear the shit out of one of those.”

“You guys are the best.” Hannah leans closer. “Now tell me all about your adventure.” She sticks her tongue out at Naomi. “Naomi wouldn’t tell me anything fun.”

“I was chosen to free the Moon Goddess from god prison,” I say.

Aldronn’s voice in my head sounds amused. “God prison?”

“I’m making it exciting.” I grin at him, then launch into the entire story.

When I finish the big finale, Hannah says, “Eee, that’s so exciting!”

I lift an I-told-you-so eyebrow at Aldronn, who smirks.

In all of her excitement, Hannah’s mind brushes against mine. All I feel is happiness for me. There’s none of the doubt or disbelief old May would have expected. It seems I really did judge my friends through the lens of my own issues. These two women have always had my back.

“I’m so happy for you, May,” Hannah says.

“Not gonna lie. I’m pretty damned happy for me, too.” I wrap an arm around each of them and hug them to me. “And I’m so thankful for the two of you. Thanks for sticking with me for all these years while I figured my shit out.”

“Are you kidding?” Naomi says. “I only just got my life sorted.”

“I’m still a work in progress,” Hannah says.

“You? Miss ‘I’ve known I wanted to be mayor since high school’ Hannah? Girl, you’ve spent your whole life as the dictionary definition of ‘together.’”

“Yeah, I try to make things look good from the outside. It’s kind of expected if you want to be mayor.” She taps a finger to her temple. “But in here it’s all ahhhhhhh.” Hannah throws up her hands and shakes them wildly, like jazz hands on a caffeine bender.

“Hey.” I grab one of her flailing hands and squeeze. “I didn’t know that. If you ever want to talk and be messy and shit, you know I’m your girl.”

“And me.” Naomi reaches over to tangle her fingers with ours. “I’m always game for some real talk.”

“See?” I say. “You two are the best.”

“ We’re the best. All three of us,” Hannah says. “Now tell me more about these dragons.”

“The two dicks?” Naomi makes an upside down V with two of her fingers, waving them near her crotch.

“What? No!” Hannah says, sounding both horrified and fascinated. “I meant more that if they know a lot of magic history and scholarship, they might have a way to tell what kind of witch I am.”

“Oh.” Naomi’s eyes twinkle as she hooks a thumb toward me. “Because if you want to know about two dicks, May here’s your girl.”

“I feel like there’s somewhere else I should be,” Aldronn says, his lips twitching as Hannah’s shocked gaze bounces back and forth between the two of us.

When she murmurs a dazed, “Two?” we all burst out laughing.

An hour later, Hannah needs to return to work. I walk with her to town hall, chatting all the way, and take a leisurely stroll back along Main Street, taking in the familiar sights of all the adorable gingerbread-trimmed buildings.

Ferndale Falls really does feel different now. Magic tingles in the air, filling it with a feeling of potential. I don’t need Aldronn’s premonition magic to know big changes are on the way for my small town. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen here next.

When I get to the bookshop, Naomi pulls my backpack out of her backroom. “I kept it for you instead of returning it to your dad. I didn’t want him to worry.”

I plug in my phone. Hannah and Naomi blew up my messages those first few days they thought I was missing, but thankfully there are only a few missed texts and one voicemail from Dad. It’s hard to believe I haven’t been gone that long, since my entire life has changed so completely, but for him it’s only been a regular couple of weeks.

I shoot him a quick text, telling him I’m okay and I’ll get in touch soon. I need to figure out how to have the whole “my husband is an orc and all that stuff Mom always said about Faerie is true” convo.

Naomi teleports us to the waterfall and goes back to her bookshop, needing to do some paperwork before returning home to Moon Blade Village.

Aldronn sets down my backpack, which he insisted on carrying, even after I told him I’ve lugged it halfway around the world by myself.

“I know you can do it, my queen.” He pulls me into his arms as we take a moment to look out at the waterfall again. “But if I’m with you, you don’t have to do everything yourself. I’ll always help.”

I sigh happily and lean back against him, enjoying watching the water pour down in a continuous stream, a perfect place made more perfect by sharing it with the man I love.

“Well, Mom,” I whisper. “I’ve got quite the story this time.”

Aldronn continues to hold me as I tell her about Aldronn and everything that happened in Faerie, including the pixie friends I made and how she was right about my crystal necklace being magical. I finally finish and stand still for a while longer, feeling her with me here, in this place she loved so much.

Then I turn within the circle of Aldronn’s arms so I can look up at him. “Thank you for being so patient.”

“It was nothing less than you deserve.” He brushes a lock of hair from my face, his eyes so full of love my heart skips.

I stretch up on my tiptoes, body begging for a kiss.

“Well, this is certainly interesting,” a resonant voice says. It sounds familiar, but I shouldn’t be hearing it here .

I spin to find a leather-clad man resting a hand against an ash tree, tendrils of smoke rising from the tattoos covering his bare arms. A hungry look carves his cheekbones into knife blades as his green eyes take in the woods around the falls.

Severin, king of the shadow fae, has followed us to Earth.

Thank you for reading Bound to the Orc King . I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Want more May and Aldronn? Read on for a special bonus story!

Ready to find out what happens when Severin meets Hannah? Dive into Faking with the Fae King , book one of Ferndale Falls Forever , a new cozy fantasy rom com series set in your favorite magical small town! Get ready for magical mishaps, smoldering fae men, adorable animal familiars, and more mischievous pixies than you can shake a stick at! This series is packed with zany humor, low-stakes adventure, sizzling romance, and a group of witchy gal pals you’ll want to hang out with forever!

All I have to do to save my magical small town is fake marry a shadow daddy. What could go wrong?