Page 21 of Orn and the Real Girl

ORN

THREE YEARS Later

“Oy, move your great green arse!”

I rolled my eyes, hefting my hay bale higher so that I could let Brekka pass behind me with her pail of fresh milk. “Will you never show me any kindness?” I teased.

She snorted. “Maybe if you and your mate weren’t so godsdamned loud all night long, I’d be in a better mood.”

I laughed. “Alright, fair. And sorry, Brekka. We don’t mean to do it—“

“But you’re too busy trying to see who can fuck whose brains out fastest, I know. Like I said, I can hear it.”

“Hopefully not too much longer,” I added, my face hot with the embarrassment of being caught. But unable to stop my chest from puffing out with pride. I was very good at making my mate scream with pleasure, after all. And what was more of a boast than that? “Our cabin’s nearly done, now.”

If I wouldn’t have made sure the rest of the coven was taken care of first, we wouldn’t have had to torture them for so long with our…

nocturnal athletics. But I’d insisted, and Sara—ever the kind and generous soul—hadn’t fought me on it.

So ours was the last to be finished in the hamlet that had sprung up around my once-lonely cabin.

I adjusted my grip on the bale of hay I carried and coughed nervously. “It’s not…it’s not really a problem, is it?”

Brekka laughed, but not unkindly. “No, you great big dear. Truth is more often than not I can barely hear you over the sound of my lady-love wailing away…” Her gaze went soft and sweet. “Salerah’s fires, I hope she gets over that cold soon.”

I chuckled, returning her affectionate goodbye, then continued on to the expanded barn.

I dropped the bale just inside the doors, then went back out and over to the pen, where Gehyta was doing her best to keep the goats, Ruff and Tumble, from picking on our sweet dairy cow, Maisy.

At the sight of me at the fence she bleated, her short tail waggling sweetly, and left the goats to their mischief to greet me.

“Hello, my little queen,” I murmured, rubbing her velvet-soft nose and scratching through the silky locks of her long neck. “Are you having trouble with your subjects, again?”

She huffed, butting my chest gently, and I chuckled, scratching behind her ears to try and ease her stress. The goats kept her mighty busy.

While I was scratching Gehyta’s ears, the long locks on her back stirred, something moving quickly beneath them, and soon Lena had was on top of my aerlanis’ head, gently nosing at my hand for her own scratches.

I laughed, obliging the little snake, her tiny black eyes closing and her delicate forked tongue tasting the air and my skin.

“How do you manage to hold onto Gehyta without any limbs, little one?” I mused.

“She says she is very strong, and that is how. Naturally,” a sweet voice said behind me, my heart soaring in my chest at the sound.

I spun to behold my beautiful mate and daughter, my smile becoming beaming. “My loves,” I called, leaving the animals to their games and meeting the two people who held my heart and soul in their small hands.

They both returned my smile, Aora’s revealing the wide gap in the front where her baby teeth had fallen out recently.

“Pacha!” she said—“father” in her mother tongue, she’d told me, bringing me to tears.

Her large brown eyes gleamed in the bright light, the blue of the sky reflected in the gleam of her deep brown skin.

She came from a remote people on the southern shore of Cillure, far beyond where I’d ever been.

Mother Tonn had been gone for months fetching her, but as soon as she’d caught sight of the neglected child, she’d known the long journey was more than worth it.

She had been retrieving a part of our large, messy family, after all.

“Pacha, guess what!”

I lifted Aora into the air and perched her on my hip. She was growing quite tall, but was still thin from her years of malnourishment, and hardly weighed a thing. “What is it, my girl?”

“Morra says she’s going to set it up for me to find my familiar, and soon!” she crowed, her little legs kicking me in her excitement. “I’m so excited!”

I laughed, tucking a loose tendril of her kinky-curly hair behind her ear. We’d have to redo the twisted knots that covered her scalp soon, I noted. “Do you have any idea yet of what it will be?”

Sara shook her head, one hand plucking a dried blade of grass from our daughter’s long dress while the other snaked behind me and grabbed my ass.

I managed to avoid jolting, our years of doing exactly this having trained it out of me, but I could not stop the heat that bloomed all over my face.

“We don’t go into our vision ceremony for our familiar with any hopes or expectations. Isn’t that right, lovey?”

Aora nodded, beaming at Sara. “Exactly, morra!” She turned to me, rolling her large eyes. “Obviously, pacha.”

I laughed, hugging her close. “Of course. Forgive this old man his forgetfulness—“

Sara swatted my arm with a snort. “’Old man.’ As if you are ancient instead of barely into your thirties.”

“Have you heard my knees in the mornings, lately? Sounds like ice cracking during the spring thaw—“

“Sorry to interrupt, my dears,” a soft voice interjected from behind Sara, and we both startled at the sudden appearance of Mother Tonn.

Being only a witch, she wasn’t supposed to be able to teleport…

but in the three years I’d known her, I’d come to wonder.

“But we have a visitor. He insists on seeing Orn. He says he knows him…from the Fenns.”

My stomach dropped, ice slushing through my veins. “The…the Fenns?” I repeated, dazed. Aora squirmed, tugging at my hand.

“Pacha, you’re squeezing too tight!”

I loosened my grip at once, pressing a kiss to her forehead in apology.

“I’m sorry, little love.” I turned to Sara.

“Can you take her? In case it’s…” Trouble?

Bad news? I had no way of knowing, but I knew that whatever would have brought an orcish man to find me from all the way in the Fenns wouldn’t be good.

“I can, but I’m still coming with,” my mate answered, taking our daughter.

“Obviously,” Aora added, grinning at her joke.

My instinct was to deny them, to send them far away fast as I could, but I knew all that would come of that would be a heated lecture and an arm sore from all the slaps I’d get for my “hyper-masculine posturing”.

But in truth, I was relieved that they would be by my side. In this, and in all things.

I steeled myself, taking a deep breath, and followed Mother Tonn to the rough gate we’d erected soon after our return from the cult.

At first, all I could make out through the slats was a large figure cloaked in faded gray homespun.

But as I neared the figure turned, revealing a face that stopped me in my tracks.

“Lyrosh?…” I breathed, Sara’s hand on my back barely registering.

“Orn,” my eldest brother returned with a curt nod. “You seem to have made out quite well in the north,” he added, throwing me a knowing look and nodding his clean-shaven head at a clump of witches huddled together by the nearest cottage.

“They’re not my harem,” I growled, settling into a fighting stance subconsciously. “They are my family. Sisters and mothers. Only one is my mate, and I will not have you insult her by insinuating something so—“

“Alright, no need to get so testy,” Lyrosh interrupted, holding up his palms in supplication. “Now that you say it, you do have a look about you I’ve seen on other mated orcs. Something…settled. Content.”

If Lyrosh and myself had been different men, I would have said that in that moment there was something jealous and wistful in my brother’s expression.

But there was no way that strong, brave Lyrosh would be jealous of me.

It had always been that he was my family’s greatest pride, and I their greatest shame.

He seemed to shake himself mentally, then drew himself up straighter, his shoulders back and his bold chin high. “I would ask that I join you, Orn.”

I blinked, shocked. As if sensing my discomfort, Sara came in closer, leaning her soft warmth into my body, reminding me she was there, and that she could be my strength, if I needed it.

Lyrosh tracked her movements, and this time it was clearer—Lyrosh was envious of me, and it had something to do with Sara.

Was he jealous of my having a mate? Odd beyond measure, I thought.

Aloud, I said, “I must ask, brother: what is it that brings you here? And why would you wish to join me here in my exile?”

Lyrosh’s posture wilted by the smallest measure, and if I didn’t know him so well I would have missed it.

“I had a vision. Several months ago, but it has haunted me ever since. It was so tame, so domestic, but you were there, and with you was a warm golden…presence. It called to me, but I did not see who it may be.”

My brow furrowed. “A vision?”

Lyrosh nodded, rolling his eyes, just as dark as my own, but with a hard sharpness to them, like an obsidian blade.

“I have never put stock in such silly things as dreams, but something about this one would not be ignored. And when I told our parents of it several weeks ago, they said that I should seek you out and track this presence as best I can. That something cast in sacred gold is always important in a vision.”

A pang of longing shot through me at the mention of my parents, and Sara pressed in still closer.

I put an arm around her, drawing from her silent support, and took a breath to calm my racing heart.

“And you have come here because I was in this vision? Are you not banished now because of your association with me?”

Lyrosh rolled his eyes. “You were not banished in shame, Orn. You left of your own volition. You called it banishment, but you were always the only one.”

I snorted, my arm tightening around my mate and child ever so slightly. “Perhaps, but not a soul fought me, or tried to change my mind. I have never been a true orc, not there, and so the only course was banishment, was it not?”

Lyrosh waved a hand through the air, as if to dispel my words. “I don’t wish to re-hash this right now, brother. Will you have me or not?”

“I don’t know, I hedged. “I will have to consult the others, take it to a vote, perhaps—“

“Of course, we’d love to have you!” Sara interjected, shooting me a look that told me not to object.

My protest died on my lips. “You are family, are you not? And so long as you follow our few rules, you are welcome to stay as long as you might need.” A sharp pinch to the soft flesh of my inner arm made me jump, but I nodded along reluctantly.

“Yes, I suppose you can stay, then,” I grumbled, feeling a little stung at my mate taking control of the situation away from me like that. But when I looked down at her face, already turned up to me, I could not help but soften. She guided me a little ways away, and leaned in close.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said softly, “I know it was your situation to handle, but it felt…necessary. To let him in. And I know how hard things having to do with your family are for you. Does it bother you a lot, that he’s here now?”

I was still a little annoyed, but I considered her words.

She was no great prophetess, but she had a knack for feeling out where a stone was meant to lie.

And aside from my pride, was there truly a reason to keep Lyrosh away from my home?

I sighed, feeling my proverbial hackles lower.

“I suppose not,” I grumbled, stroking her soft cheek with one finger to soften my words.

“But I must warn you that things between me and other orcs are…difficult. Especially since I was banished. So this—well, it might prove disruptive to our peace here.”

She nodded, grabbing my hand to nuzzle her face into my palm.

When she met my gaze, the saucy look in her eyes had me forgetting all about orcish hierarchy and customs and familial bonds.

“He can try to disrupt the peace,” she said softly, her voice both lilting and full of dark promise.

“But he’d never manage it. Not with an entire coven at your disposal. ”

Aora, who had been quiet and doing her best to follow our conversation, nodded and giggled. “No one’s more stronger than morra, pacha. We’ll protect you.”

My throat tightened with emotion, the protective flame mirrored in my family’s eyes bathing me in a holy kind of warmth. I pulled them to me roughly, holding them tightly in an embrace I poured all my love and thanks into.

“You’re right, my starlight,” I said to Aora, kissing her cheek.

“Lyrosh doesn’t stand a chance against you.

” I kissed my mate next, drinking her in like a parched man drinks down fresh, cool water.

She hummed softly, returning my kiss with as much passion as I gave, and my heart flew to nest among the heavens.

She was right—no one, not even my brother, would be able to harm this.

I broke the kiss but stayed close, one hand cupping the back of her head. “I love you, Sara. Until the stars fade from the sky.”

She kissed me again, Aora making a sound of disgust from her perch on Sara’s hip. “And I love you, Orn. So much.”

And my heart was full.