Page 21 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
IVY
T he rain starts before I even reach the bend in the road, big, wet drops that slap against the windshield like they’re furious I took so long.
The wipers are useless—smearing more than they’re clearing—and the dirt path that leads up toward the orchard has turned into something between a mudslide and a warzone.
If I wasn’t in Lettie’s deathtrap of a truck, I’d be worried about getting stuck, but the old beast barrels forward like it knows exactly where I need to go and doesn’t give a damn about niceties like traction or sanity.
I don’t know what pulls me out of bed and into the storm.
Maybe it’s the dream—the same one I’ve been having every night since I left, only sharper this time, more urgent.
Garruk’s voice echoing in that way dreams do, deep and low and cracked with something I don’t want to name.
Maybe it’s the way the orchard showed up in the corners of town—wilting vines on doorsteps, spoiled fruit where it shouldn’t be, whispers in the breeze that don’t belong to any wind I know.
Or maybe I just can’t take it anymore.
The aching.
The emptiness.
The way every morning feels like a mistake and every night stretches too long.
I don’t even knock when I pass the orchard gate.
I don’t need to. The trees know me. Even now, even after everything, I can feel them shift when I step into the grove, their branches arching overhead like ribs curling protectively around something precious.
Or maybe defensive. It’s hard to tell anymore.
The orchard doesn’t feel like it used to.
There’s a sharpness in the air, something wild and wrong, and when I close my eyes, I can feel the magic clawing at the edges of me like it wants answers I don’t have.
“Garruk?” I call, but the wind tears the word from my mouth before it can reach anything but branches.
The trees creak, groaning under the weight of the storm, and the lightning that splits the sky isn’t white—it’s green, and too close, and I swear the earth flinches beneath my feet when it hits.
My boots slip in the wet grass, and I catch myself on the trunk of a tree I used to climb as a kid—one that shouldn’t be leaning like this, shouldn’t be bleeding sap that glows faintly like old firelight.
I run.
Because something’s wrong.
Because I can feel him hurting.
The center of the orchard is pulsing, a dull glow at first, then brighter, wilder, like the land itself is caught between scream and collapse. And when I push past the last ring of trees and step into the heart of the grove, I nearly fall to my knees at the sight of him.
Garruk.
He’s on the ground—bare-chested, soaked, covered in mud and something darker.
His glyphs are lit up like embers, veins of gold and crimson threading down his spine and around his ribs like the orchard is trying to brand him from the inside out.
His left hand is buried in the soil, and his right is shaking, clutching a blade I recognize but haven’t seen in years, the ritual edge we only use when things are dire.
And gods help me, I know they are.
“Garruk!” I shout, stumbling toward him, falling beside him so fast I don’t even feel the way my knees hit stone.
He looks up, slow and dazed, his eyes flicking to mine with a kind of disbelief that carves something raw through my ribs. “You came back,” he rasps, like he doesn’t trust it’s true.
“I never should’ve left,” I say, hands already moving—checking his pulse, cradling his jaw, pressing my forehead to his so I can feel that flicker of heat beneath his skin and know he’s still here . “You idiot. You stupid, beautiful, infuriating idiot. What the hell were you thinking?”
His smile is crooked, lopsided, the way it gets when he’s too tired to fight me. “It was unraveling.”
“So you bled into the roots?”
He grunts. “It needed a tether.”
“ You’re the tether, you fool,” I hiss, my voice breaking, not because I’m angry, but because I’m scared. “Don’t you get it? You’ve always been the thing holding this place together.”
He closes his eyes. “Not without you.”
That undoes me.
That shatters whatever part of me thought I could keep distance between what I feel and what I show. I lean in, fingers in his hair, lips to his mouth, and I kiss him—desperate, trembling, rain-soaked and shaking.
And he kisses me back like it’s the only thing keeping him alive.
Around us, the orchard shifts.
The wind quiets, a little. The lightning pauses. The roots stop buckling underfoot.
“I’m not leaving again,” I whisper, pulling back just enough to press my hand to his chest, right over the center of that stubborn, stupid, fiercely loyal heart. “Do you hear me, Garruk? I’m not running anymore. You’re mine. And I’m yours. And if the orchard doesn’t like it, it can grow around us.”
He reaches for me, bloody fingers curling around my wrist, and the ground beneath us exhales.
The pulse of the bond isn’t a sharp thing—it’s soft. Slow. Like honey sliding down the throat or the weight of a quilt settling over you in winter. I feel it catch, then hold, then root itself deeper than anything I’ve ever known. It’s not just magic. It’s ours.
And when Garruk finally slumps against me, breath shallow but steady, I hold him like the orchard once held us—as something sacred, something wild, something worth the breaking.