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Chapter twenty-one

Kai

I was pissed… One minute, I’d been ready to square up and face off against an orc, because it was clear he wasn’t going to leave my mate alone, and the next, there’d been a sharp blade pressed into my back and I realized Koth didn’t fight fair.

I wasn’t sure if I should have been more flattered or annoyed that he had to call in backup when it came to dealing with me. I landed firmly on the side of annoyed, because I had my hands tied up before I had a chance to try to do anything.

Koth leaned in close to me, his eyes narrowing as he looked me up and down. When he spoke, I didn’t recognize what he was saying—of course I didn’t. He had my collar gripped in his hand… and fuck, I felt really, really weird without it on.

I did hear him say the word Nash at least three times before I finally cut him off.

“Fuck, you really are obsessed, aren’t you?” I snarled the words, knowing he could understand me while he held the collar. There wasn’t really a point in trying to struggle—not when my arms were bound and there was an orc at my back with a knife pressed against my skin.

It didn’t stop me from letting out a low grunt and head-butting Koth when he leaned in closer.

The spatter of blue blood that spilled from his busted nose was almost worth it when he flipped the blade he held and hit me hard enough that my vision blacked out.

By the time I realized what was going on, I was being dragged through the trees in a direction I didn’t know… not really a shocker, though.

I could finally, maybe… maybe admit that I was pretty directionally challenged.

Just a little.

The orc behind me had my arms in a tight grip, but when I glanced over my shoulder, I only had to look up a little to meet his eyes.

Hm.

There was every possibility that I could do this, if I was careful. Or quick. Or reckless.

I knew which option I was going to choose before I’d even finished thinking of them.

“You probably can’t understand me, can you?” I said, and in response, the asshole behind me jerked my arms. “Cool. See, the thing is… I really need to get loose, because I’m pretty sure Nash is going to kill you and then me if he thinks I tried to run off again.” Another sharp tug to my arms and a frustrated growl let me know that he’d at least picked up a few of the words that time.

Probably the name Nash.

Maybe the word kill .

Good.

“You could just let me go.” I threw a smile over my shoulder and was rewarded with a punch to my side. As much as it hurt for the asshole to try to kidney shot me, it was what I’d been waiting for.

After all, if you wanted to hit someone, you had to let go of their arms.

And when he let go of my arms, I threw myself back as hard as I could and felt my head collide with his mouth and nose.

I guess he hadn’t been paying attention when I’d done it to Koth just a few minutes ago, because the low snarl of pain that escaped him came from the ground instead of from above me, and I whirled around before he had a chance to get up.

The smart thing to do at that point would have been to run, but my admission that I really had zero sense of direction in tandem with my need to make sure that there was one less person out there who wanted to hurt Nash seemed to war with the smart idea.

Since I didn’t have my hands untied, I kicked him as hard as I could in the side. He rolled over, trying to get to his feet with a low gasp of pain—it left him with his face at the perfect level for me to kick him again.

This time when he hit the ground, he did it with his eyes rolled back in his head and blood slowly oozing from the side of his mouth. His chest was still rising and falling, so I hadn’t accidentally killed him.

Which was probably good.

Even though that left me in a pretty precarious situation when I had to lean down and carefully grab the knife from his belt. It took me longer than I wanted to get my restraints cut, and by the time I did and had repurposed them to tie him up, he was already starting to squirm.

Thankfully, I wasn’t trying to get him anywhere. I used his knife to cut strips from his shirt and tied his legs together too. Then I stuffed a piece in his mouth for good measure.

I’d probably be able to figure out where I left him.

Probably.

That whole sense of direction or the lack thereof might come into play later… but…

Well, that was his own fault for capturing me, now wasn’t it?

With that handled and the only sound coming from him being low grunts of annoyance, I gripped the knife I’d used and spun in a slow circle.

Fuck… I was pretty sure Nash had told me something about directions and… flowers? Or trees? Or…

I glanced down at my would-be captor. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me how to get to the road again, would you?”

A sudden snarling sound in the distance snapped my head up. Obviously, it wasn’t the road I was looking for anymore. It had never taken Nash very long to catch up to me when I’d run off… this just wasn’t going the way it usually did.

I’d thought maybe he’d find me on the road and drag me off somewhere so we could fuck in the woods—maybe he’d spank me again and I’d get to suck his dick.

I didn’t think it would be…

Well. This?

But it was, and there wasn’t anything I could do to change that now, so I headed off toward the angry voices as quietly as I could. Something in my chest was pulling me in that direction—something caught behind my ribs like an invisible line leading me to where I needed to go.

To Nash.

It was ridiculous, and it didn’t make any sense. Neither did I half the time, so I went with it.

It took a good ten minutes of trailing after the noises before I finally caught up to them, and that was only because they’d stopped a few minutes before I did. Light filtered through the trees in front of me, and the noises were closer now.

Close enough I could make out that I couldn’t make out a damn thing they were saying.

Close enough I could still recognize the tone of one of the voices, even though I had no idea what the words were.

Except one.

My name.

Nash was saying my name, and all I wanted to do was run through the clearing to save him like we were in some kind of action movie.

That would probably be a really bad idea, especially since I didn’t know how many people were in the camp ahead of us, so I slowly made my way to the edge of the trees instead.

My eyes caught his form right away—he was tied in a sitting position to some kind of pole on the opposite side of the little camp. The only good thing about the situation was the fact that it looked like there were only a handful of enemies… because that’s what they were, wasn’t it?

Enemies.

People who wanted to hurt Nash.

People I would hurt if I had to, if it meant protecting the man I loved… because I still hadn’t actually told him I loved him, had I? We’d fucked, and he’d marked me, and we’d called each other mates, but somehow that word had never really come up.

I wanted to tell him.

I needed to tell him. Which meant that I needed to get him untied.

It was really more a question of how I was going to make that happen without alerting everyone in the camp to the fact that I was there. They were probably going to get curious anyway when their buddy didn’t show up with me. For all I knew, I hadn’t tied him up well enough, and he was going to show up and ruin everything.

I needed to do something, and I needed to do it now .

And somehow, I knew that meant I needed Nash.

It really was lucky that Koth seemed to be more interested in himself than anything happening around him. He was standing with a small group of orcs—three, from what I could see—and there was a smirk on his face. He was probably telling them some huge lie about how he’d captured Nash, but judging by the familiar band of fabric I saw around Nash’s arm—streaked with my blood—I knew exactly how he’d actually done it.

He’d come because he thought I was in danger.

He was probably standing still because he thought I was tied up somewhere.

Which meant the first order of operations was to make sure that he knew I was fine.

I stepped forward, trying to make sure I didn’t get into Koth’s line of sight while I wiggled just outside the tree line. Nash’s eyes were all for the men to his right, but I saw his shoulders tense. When I shimmied again, feeling like a bit of an idiot for practically dancing while there were people with sharp blades close by who wanted to take my head off, his gaze turned in my direction.

The second his eyes made contact with mine, I saw emotions flood across his face—fury, shock... and then the sweetest relief I’d ever seen.

He didn’t have to say anything for me to realize this wasn’t one of those typical situations I read about in books.

He wasn’t trying to valiantly tell me to go so I could save myself and leave him behind.

He wasn’t jerking his head and struggling, willing to sacrifice himself because I was some little damsel who needed help.

Once he looked me over and realized I was fine, his eyes moved to the left.

To the pile of his belongings that had been stripped from him.

To the blade I’d seen him take off so many times before he went to bed.

I pressed my back to the tree I was peeking around and nodded. He wasn’t telling me to go—he was showing me where I could help him… and as much as I would have liked to charge in and grab the blade and start swinging…

Well, I knew better. Obviously I’d gotten my ass kicked once by Koth already—if I tried to fight him again, especially when he was in his own space with backup…?

Well, that wasn’t going to do me a damn bit of good, was it?

But if I had Nash to help…

Well, shit. I wasn’t sure there’d be a damn thing we couldn’t do.

His eyes stayed fixed on me for another second and then I nodded once, hoping he’d realize that I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but I was going to do it to the best of my ability. The only thing I could think of was to slip back into the line of trees and make my way across the clearing as quietly as I could. There was just one problem… That drop-off Nash had mentioned before, the one that apparently traveled for miles where a river had cut deep into the earth a long, long time ago, ran all along the left side of the camp.

There was no way for me to get completely behind him. Which meant there was no way for me to sneak across and cut him loose before someone noticed me.

Some of the assholes in the group had bows, and I was pretty sure they’d shoot me without hesitation if it meant they would keep me from rescuing a furious Nash. So… the best I could do was…

Well…

Improvise.

It was probably a good thing I’d read so many books after all, because at least I was slightly prepared for this situation, even if my preparation wasn’t exactly realistic.

I moved as close to Nash as I could, and every time I peeked through the trees, his eyes were still on me. Now that he knew I was here, he could probably sense me just as much as I could sense him. There was almost something comforting about that, knowing that no matter what happened, we weren’t going to get ripped apart again. I had a feeling Koth wouldn’t let us live that long if things went south anyway.

In theory, it would be good if I could get something to him so he could get himself loose before I came charging in as backup. I wasn’t exactly sure how to do that, so the best I could manage was to slip around the last tree in the clearing and try to judge the distance between us.

It wasn’t perfect.

None of this was perfect…

And I realized if I went through with the plan forming in my mind, there was every chance Nash might just kill me when all was said and done anyway. But if they saw me cutting him loose, they’d probably kill one of us.

If they thought I was coming in to rescue him with guns blazing, they’d probably still kill me… but they’d do it slower.

I had a feeling from the look on Koth’s face and the sadistic edge to his expression that he’d want to draw it out if he was given the chance. Especially if Nash had to watch it happen.

I was putting a lot of faith in maybes and the fact that I believed Nash wouldn’t let anyone hurt me… but what else was I supposed to do?

I think Nash could tell that I was about to do something either really brave or really stupid, because he shook his head… but…

Well.

Permission. Forgiveness. The same thing still applied.

I tossed the knife I’d lifted from the other orc and silently patted myself on the back when it landed right by his bound hands. I was lucky they’d tied him up in a sitting position, because I didn’t trust myself enough to lob the blade into the wooden pole he was tied to. As it was, it only took him a little bit of squirming before he had it concealed behind him, and I was more than confident that he’d be able to get himself free undetected.

Well.

If he had a distraction.

Yeah, he was definitely going to be mad at me later.

I made my way back around through the trees, so when I popped out this time, it turned everyone’s attention fully away from Nash. That meant when I let out a really loud and obnoxious yawn with my hands above my head so they could all see I clearly wasn’t armed, no one was looking at my mate when he started to cut his hands free.

I was the only one who saw the way his eyes were as wide as dinner plates, and the pinch of his mouth that told me I was in serious trouble when this was all over with.

As long as we both got out of this alive so I could be in trouble, I’d call that a win.

“Listen… I know you probably can’t understand me… which… I’m not actually sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. It means when I call you names, you aren’t going to be able to understand what I’m saying. At the same time…” I shrugged, keeping my palms out because the asshole with the bow had it raised and pointed straight at my chest now. Just like I thought—I would have totally gotten sniped if I’d tried to come out guns blazing. “I really wish I could call you some names you’d understand. I should have asked for a language lesson, I guess.”

And then, because I figured it was pretty universal when given with the right gusto, I lifted my middle fingers and flipped them off.

There was a faint snort behind them, and I started walking forward so Nash and his damn noises didn’t catch their attention before he was free.

“Listen, Koth. Buddy…” I turned to him and raised my hands, trying to pantomime the best I could what had happened in the woods. “Your guard was pretty shit. I just… headbutted him into oblivion.” My eyes trailed to his slightly swollen nose, and I gestured to it with a grin. “Kind of like I did with you, right?”

That seemed to get through to him, because he let out an angry snarl and started stalking toward me.

And I really, really hoped that Nash was good at cutting ropes, because I had a feeling he was going to beat my ass for taunting him… and if I had to, I’d take it to make sure that this all went smoothly.

But I really, really didn’t want to have to.

I took a step back and held my hands up innocently, but I didn’t dare look over his shoulder to see what Nash’s progress was. Instead, I pouted. “What’s wrong, tough guy? Sad that a widdle biddy human got the better of you? Aw, fuck you.” I dropped my eyes to his injury again and gave my best charming grin before I blew him a kiss.

And Koth charged at me.

Maybe Nash had been waiting for that, or maybe it was the sight of it that gave him the adrenaline he needed to get through the rest of his ropes. Whatever it was, there was a sudden snarl behind the group as the orc with the bow fell to the ground with a loud snap.

I’d only knocked my guy out; Nash had broken a neck with ease. His eyes were filled with murder, and they were all for the orc coming straight for me.