Page 28 of Enchanted with the Orc (The Kingverse Orcs #4)

I didn’t respond to him, just holding him close, comforting myself while I comforted him. I hadn’t been held like this— allowed myself to be safe and vulnerable in someone’s arms—since well before I’d met David.

“That’s when I started my plan,” I told him, tucking my face against his throat, surrounding myself with his heat and scent.

Filling myself up with safety in the face of a memory that made me feel everything else.

“He pulled me up by my hair and took me to the bedroom. He locked me in and I didn’t know how to escape but I knew I had to.

I had to get away or he’d kill me and my baby.

I had to go home, but he knew where I would go, and I wasn’t powerful enough to do the protection spell on my own. ”

“A protection spell?” he asked, stroking my hair with gentle fingers.

I nodded, sniffling against his skin. I should be mortified that I was getting my tears and snot all over this male, but I couldn’t find it in myself to feel that way. Not with Enka.

“It’s a specific one. One that makes us untraceable,” I murmured, wrapping my arms around his neck, twining my fingers into his thick, dark hair. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I just needed to be closer to him. “So that he’d never be able to find us.”

“Were you able to do that?” he asked, and I gave a slow nod.

“But not then. It was…after Gabbi was born. Before that, it was hard to sneak out of the house. And he had so many cameras everywhere. It was like a prison,” I said, moving even closer until I found myself on his lap.

He was stiff for a long moment, before he stroked a hand down my back and he relaxed under me. I released a relieved breath, melting against him. I continued talking, pretending that this was completely normal for friends . That I wasn’t clinging to him like a long lost lover.

Friends hug, I lied to myself.

“But then it got worse,” I explained and he released a shuddering breath.

“Worse?” he breathed, and he shuddered under me. “Dear Gods, he was a complete monster already.”

I couldn’t stop the little laugh that left me. I nuzzled against him, and ignored the way he twisted his hips away from me.

We’re friends. Just friends.

“Yeah, well, once Gabbi was born, he was much worse. He kept telling me that I was paying too much attention to her.” I couldn’t keep the disbelief from my voice. “Even though she was a newborn. He said I should be paying more attention to him because he’d given her to me .”

The scoff that left him was loud and obnoxious and it made me fall in love with him a little. I stopped that train of thought right away, shoving it to the back of my mind, deciding that I was going to lay my entire story out for him.

“I took her to the pediatrician without him one day when she had a fever,” I sighed, my fingers clenching in his shirt again at the memory.

“She was so tiny and so hot . I didn’t have any support.

No one I could call. He’d broken my old phone so I didn’t have any way to contact my coven.

They were all already in hiding so there was no way to reach them except for their personal numbers and like a complete idiot, I’d never memorized any of them.

And he monitored everything I did, so I couldn’t go out looking for them. ”

I had to stop, my anger bubbling up until I was talking so fast I was unintelligible. I needed to slow down. I had to explain everything to him so he knew what we were dealing with .

“He’s obsessed with me, I think. I don’t know what it is about me, but if I could change it, I would.”

That was when he pulled me away, glaring down at me.

“There is nothing about you that needs to be changed. His issues are his ,” he growled, and I marveled at how this big orc with fury in his eyes didn’t make a single ounce of fear bubble inside of me.

I nodded, cupping his cheek, and he softened right away.

“Sorry,” he whispered and I shook my head.

“No, I like it,” I told him. “You getting worked up at what a dick he was,” I added, with a small smirk. “It’s fun to watch.”

His watery laugh was disbelieving and he nuzzled his nose against mine. “Well, get used to it. I hate him.”

“Me too,” I giggled, so close to him that if I leaned forward an inch I could kiss him.

And fuck , did I want to kiss him. I looked away, burying my face against his chest again, away from temptation.

“But I can’t figure out why. I’m not special in any way.

So the lengths that he went to watch me was insane.

All the cameras, and I assume everything had tracking devises, because he always found me. ”

He tugged me closer, as if he needed to feel me as much as I needed to feel him. Which was impossible.

“That day, I took her to the doctor and when I got home, he was back from work and he was waiting. The Goddess Mother had to have blessed us because the doctor gave her some sample medicine she had while we were there,” I explained, shaking my head.

“So she was already doing a little better. She was sleeping, but when I got home, he didn’t believe me.

He thought I’d gone to meet someone or I’d tried to leave or something. ”

I released a heavy breath. “I wish that was it. Because he took her from me that night.”

“What?” he asked, his fingers tightening on my back, squeezing me tighter than he probably meant to.

“He took her?” His voice was dark and furious, shaking with the kind of emotion that only someone who loved a child could ever understand.

He wanted to protect her while her biological father had done the opposite.

“Yeah,” I admitted, sniffling into his shirt again. “I’d thought I was scared before. Every time he hurt me, I thought I’d been as scared as I possibly could be, but I was wrong. I didn’t know what fear was until he locked her in a bedroom on her own while she was sick.”

“Alone?” he growled, and every inch of his body was tense.

“Alone and sick,” I gasped, sobbing now.

“She was so little, and I could hear her screaming on the other side. I begged him, but he wouldn’t let me go to her.

He said—” I had to cut myself off as I sobbed harder.

“He said that it would teach me that she wasn’t as important as he was.

That if I thought I could leave him for anyone else, he was going to take her and never let me see her. ”