Page 9 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll

TESSA

I tell myself it’s just the cider fumes.

Or the stress. Or the eighty-three things I still have to do before the gala kicks off in three days.

But none of those excuses explain why my hands are trembling like autumn leaves when he walks past me carrying a crate of sugar pumpkins like they weigh less than a basket of daisies.

He’s rolled his sleeves up again.

Which should be a minor detail. Innocuous. Irrelevant.

But it’s not.

Because now I’m staring at the striations on his forearms, the way his muscles flex with every step, how the veins along the backs of his hands catch the morning light like they’re just as carved as the signs he’s been making.

I know those arms. I know what they feel like wrapped around me in the dark, what they sound like when they pin me gently to his chest and promise forever in the space between breaths.

I also know better than to get lost in that memory.

“Crates go by the cider press,” I say, trying to sound like someone who isn’t internally short-circuiting.

Drogath just grunts his acknowledgment and turns, boots crunching over the gravel path between the barn and the tasting tent.

He doesn’t look at me.

Not right away.

But the moment he sets the crate down and turns back, his gaze catches mine like a hook in the gut, and I know he feels it too. The pull. The way we keep orbiting each other like we forgot how to stay apart.

I pivot quickly and pretend to reorganize the garlands that do not need reorganizing.

“Table three needs a replacement,” Bramley calls from across the lawn, waving a clipboard like it insulted him. “Top’s wobblier than my knees in a frost snap!”

“On it!” I call, and Drogath is already moving beside me before I can protest.

“I’ll carry it,” he says, already reaching for the rickety table.

“You know, there are other villagers with working arms,” I snap, though my tone comes out more flustered than firm.

His brow arches, just slightly. “But none this efficient.”

“You’re such a show-off.”

He shrugs. “You noticed.”

Ugh. Infuriating orc.

Even worse? Attractive, helpful, good-with-wood-orc who knows I used to sigh every time he muttered those gravel-edged tribal sayings under his breath like they meant something sacred.

I push that thought deep into my mental compost pile and return to the garlands, looping dried apple slices and velvet ribbon through the arch near the drink booth. I’m halfway up the step stool when I realize I need one more strand, and without thinking, I turn and reach behind me.

A hand meets mine. Large. Warm. Rough calluses brushing my fingers.

We both freeze.

His palm closes gently around the garland— and my hand—and for the briefest, breathless moment, I forget what I was reaching for in the first place.

My stomach swoops. My fingers tremble. Electricity flares straight up my arm and races down my spine.

And then I drop the garland entirely.

It lands in a pile of hay with a pitiful plop .

“I’ve got it,” I mumble, hopping down too fast and nearly twisting my ankle in the process.

Drogath steps in immediately, steadying me with one hand at my waist. “You alright?”

“I’m fine,” I say quickly. “Fine. Peachy. Just overly enthusiastic about gravity.”

His lips twitch like he wants to smile, but he doesn’t. He steps back. Gives me space.

I retrieve the garland, brush off a speck of straw, and jab a finger toward the arch. “That one goes there. And yes, I know it’s not symmetrical, but not every decoration has to be aligned like a battle formation.”

“You sure?” he mutters. “Could’ve sworn the goal was harvest joy, not architectural chaos.”

I glare at him, hands on hips. “You do know this is a festival, right? Not a corporate retreat?”

“You’re the one who asked for structure,” he says, voice dry as burnt oak. “I’m just trying to follow orders.”

“You make it sound like I’m leading a militia of pumpkins.”

“You basically are.”

I roll my eyes so hard they might never come back down. “By maple’s mercy, you are impossible.”

And that’s when he mutters it—low, under his breath, rough and fond and cursed with memory.

“By iron’s mercy.”

My head snaps up.

He doesn’t notice at first, still busy securing the garland with a bit of twine. But when I stare too long, he finally glances over and raises a brow.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I say, too quickly. “It’s just… I haven’t heard you say that in years.”

“Still remember it?”

“Of course I remember it,” I say, voice softer now. “You used to say it every time the kettle boiled over or a goat kicked you.”

He chuckles under his breath. “It’s a good curse. Gets the point across.”

I smile without meaning to, the kind that slips out sideways before you can stop it. “I used to tease you for it.”

“I remember,” he murmurs.

And there it is again—that moment, that space between breath and decision where everything feels like it might unravel into something we can’t take back.

So I step away.

I focus on wrapping raffia around a cider sign and not the fact that my heart is trying to escape through my ribs.

An hour later, I find myself tucked behind the tasting tent, wiping cider off a spilled crate of mugs and trying not to think too hard about the fact that I am most certainly not unaffected by him.

Then I hear laughter—bright, messy, childish—and peek around the canvas.

He’s crouched near the cider booth, massive frame half-shadowed by the tent, surrounded by a cluster of kids.

Little ones.

Three of them—Maeve Fendril’s twin boys and young Elsie Carrow, still clutching a wilted dandelion in one sticky hand.

He’s telling them a story, his voice pitched low, tusks catching the lantern light just enough to look a little magical. Something about forest giants who build bonfires from fallen stars. Elsie gasps, her little hand clasped over her mouth.

One of the twins reaches up to touch his tusk, and Drogath doesn’t flinch, doesn’t shift away. He leans closer, lets the boy explore, patient and kind in a way that tears something open inside me.

He’s good with them.

Gentle in a way you’d never expect from someone built like a mountain.

And watching him—crouched in the flickering dusk, surrounded by joy and soft hands and everything he once thought he couldn’t have—I feel something inside me bend under the weight of it all.

I never stopped loving him.

I just buried it. Under work. Under flowers. Under fear and routines and the belief that love wasn’t something safe enough to want anymore.

But it’s still there.

Still blooming wild in the places I forgot to prune.

And I don’t know what to do with that. Not yet.

So I gather the empty mugs, press my hand to my chest like I’m trying to steady the bloom, and head back inside before I do something reckless like hope.