Page 6 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc

GARRUK

T he orchard breathes wrong today.

Not the slow, steady pulse I’ve learned to live by—the one that hums low beneath the bark, steady as heartbeats and just as ancient.

No, this is something else. The rhythm’s erratic, spiking.

Uneasy. The trees shift their branches without wind, leaves rustling like restless fingers, and the moss at the base of the old hollies has turned a shade too bright, the green bleeding toward gold before the season’s called for it.

The land is stirring in ways it shouldn’t.

And every time she steps near it—every time Ivy walks these rows like she’s still deciding whether to hate or mourn them—the orchard strains toward her like a dog desperate for a voice it remembers. I feel it, a pull in the pit of my gut that burns with every footprint she presses into the soil.

I’m repairing the northern fence when I feel the snap.

It’s not a sound—more like a jolt, a tug at the center of the glyphs carved into my spine, yanking me like a fish on a line. I drop the hammer and take off running, past the ridge trail, over the dried creek bed. The air turns sharp, tinged with magic. Static bites at the edges of my teeth.

I find her standing at the base of the breath-stones.

Three of them, clustered like crooked teeth from the earth, grown from magic and grief, older than the orchard and twice as stubborn.

We don’t go near them when the land’s active—not without precautions.

But Ivy’s just standing there, head tilted, eyes wide like she’s listening to something far away.

Then it hits.

A flare.

A surge of wild, root-fed energy coils from the breath-stones and lashes out. It’s pure orchard fire—uncontrolled, unfocused, raw. The color of molten gold and blood, twisting through the air like a whip. If it touches her?—

I don’t think. I don’t breathe. I run.

I tackle her with enough force to knock both of us backward, the flare grazing past my back and lashing into the nearby elder tree. Bark explodes outward in splinters and sap boils at the wound. I land hard, pain blooming up my spine, and I feel the glamour break.

No more illusion. No softening.

I rise in full form—my orc self carved into sharp angles and jagged lines, skin the color of iron moss, glyphs searing across my shoulders like fire caught in skin. The flare’s heat has woken something in me, something I’ve spent too long pressing down under ash and duty.

I turn—and she’s looking straight at me.

Her lips are parted, her chest heaving, curls half-wild and eyes locked onto mine like she’s trying to figure out what she’s seeing. No fear. Not like I expect. Not like I deserve.

I start to step back. I can’t—shouldn’t—let her see me like this.

She moves first.

Her hand lifts, slow and careful, and presses flat against my shoulder. Her skin is warm, soft. My breath catches like a snapped bowstring.

“You’re beautiful when you’re mad,” she says, and it’s not a joke. Not teasing. Just quiet, awestruck truth.

I go still.

She’s seen me.

Not just the careful silence, not just the gruff lines I keep drawn around my life. She’s seen the full thing—the wild glyphs and the tusks and the broken fire inside my bones. And she hasn’t stepped back.

“Ivy—” I try, but my voice fails.

She keeps her hand on me. “Don’t run.”

“I didn’t want you to see this,” I rasp. “Not like this.”

“Why?” Her thumb brushes the edge of a scar near my collar. “Because I’d finally see the real you?”

“Because I didn’t want to ruin the memory.”

“What memory?”

“Of you looking at me without flinching.”

“I’m not flinching,” she says.

And she’s not. Not even a little.

The trees quiet again, like they’re listening.

I glance toward the breath-stones, still pulsing faintly, like they’re trying to decide whether to strike again. “Those stones haven’t flared like that since your mother died. They’re supposed to be dormant.”

“Well, maybe someone forgot to put up a sign.”

I huff out a breath that might’ve been a laugh in another life. “You shouldn’t have gone near them.”

“You shouldn’t have kept them a secret.”

She’s right. Of course she’s right. I should’ve told her days ago—should’ve walked her through every bloodline knot her father left behind. But every time I try, my throat closes, and I remember her sixteen-year-old face, full of trust I didn’t think I deserved.

“I was going to tell you,” I say.

“Just like you were going to tell me you glow when you’re pissed off?”

“I don’t glow. I ignite.”

“Semantics.”

Her fingers trail down the edge of a glyph that curves along my forearm. “What are these?”

“Old language. From before the orchard settled. They mark guardianship.”

“Of the land?”

“And now, maybe... of you.”

That freezes her. She steps back half a pace, brows drawing together. “That’s not a small thing to say.”

“I know.”

“I’m not something to be claimed, Garruk.”

“I don’t want to claim you,” I say, softer than I mean to. “I want you to stay. That’s different.”

The wind shifts again, carrying the scent of scorched bark and her perfume, that lavender-cedar thing that shouldn’t unsettle me but always does.

She looks at me for a long time—searching, testing, weighing the shape of what I just said.

Then she nods once, sharp and decisive. “Then show me everything. The orchard. The glyphs. The bond you’re so scared to name.”

My chest aches.

“Alright,” I say.

She steps closer again, still wet from the mist, cheeks flushed, hair tangled, and she’s never looked more rooted than she does in this moment.

And this time, when I offer my hand, she takes it without hesitation.