Page 16 of The Orc's Bonded Bride (The Five Kingdoms #3)
CHAPTER 16
L yric paused at the edge of the glade where Egon had decided to stop for the night, her breath catching in her throat. The setting sun filtered through the canopy of ancient oaks, casting dappled golden light across a carpet of wildflowers. A small stream trickled over moss-covered stones, its gentle burbling the only sound breaking the silence.
“It’s perfect,” she whispered.
Moving with surprising grace for someone his size, he took off his pack and set it beneath a broad oak. His massive hands, capable of such destruction, now worked with careful precision as he arranged stones for a fire pit.
“Found it on my way to your village,” he said, not looking up from his task. “I thought we might need somewhere safe to rest.”
She sank onto a fallen log, her legs grateful for the reprieve after hours of hiking. She watched him work, struck by the contradiction of him—this warrior who had torn apart armed men now humming softly as he gathered kindling.
“How do you do that?” she asked.
He glanced up, golden eyes questioning. “Do what?”
“Find beauty in all this chaos.” She gestured vaguely at the world beyond their sanctuary. “After everything that’s happened…”
His hands stilled. He straightened, rolling his broad shoulders before meeting her gaze.
“When you’ve seen as much ugliness as I have, you learn to notice the good things.” His voice was low, intimate in the quiet glade. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
She nodded and looked around the glade again—truly looked. Tiny blue butterflies danced over purple coneflowers. The stream caught the last rays of sunlight, turning to liquid gold. Above them, the first stars appeared in the eastern sky.
For years, she’d focused only on survival. Even her garden had been practical first, beautiful second. But here, miles from everything familiar, she felt something long-dormant unfurling in her chest.
“It reminds me of a story I heard once,” she said softly. “About sacred places where the Old Gods still walk.”
He smiled—a rare, unguarded expression that transformed his scarred face.
“Maybe they do,” he said, striking flint to steel. Sparks caught the dry tinder, and a small flame bloomed between his hands. “There is a shrine high in the mountains dedicated to the Old Gods. My brother went there to pray for an answer for our people.”
“Did he find one?”
He smiled again. “In a way. His mate fell out of the sky and into the lake next to the shrine.”
“Really?”
“Really. He believes that the Old Gods are at work in our lives.”
“Do you believe that?”
He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with the question. “I’m not sure I believe they are that interested in my life, but I did ask them to give me a purpose.”
“A purpose? Not a mate?”
“I didn’t think I was worthy.”
Her heart ached for him, and she hugged her knees to her chest, watching the flames dance in the growing darkness. Memories flickered like the shadows around them—of a younger Egon, of herself before life had hardened her edges.
“Do you remember the night we snuck onto the merchant’s roof?” she asked, her voice barely audible above the crackling fire.
His eyes gleamed in the firelight. “To watch the summer stars.”
“You knew all their names.”
“I made most of them up,” he admitted with a soft chuckle.
She smiled despite herself. “I believed every word.”
The silence between them felt fragile, weighted with unspoken truths. She traced patterns in the dirt with a stick, gathering courage.
“I thought about you,” she finally said. “After you left. I’d see something beautiful or strange and think, ‘I need to tell Egon about this.’” She swallowed hard. “It took me years to break that habit.”
He remained still, his massive form silhouetted against the flames.
“We were just children,” she continued, “but what I felt for you wasn’t childish. It was…” She struggled to find the words. “It was the first real thing in my life.”
The stick snapped between her fingers, and she tossed it into the fire, watching sparks spiral upward.
“I used to imagine you’d come back. That you’d appear one day with that crooked smile, and everything would make sense again.” Her voice grew steadier as the words finally escaped. “When you didn’t, I convinced myself I’d imagined what was between us. That it had meant nothing to you.”
She finally looked up, meeting his golden gaze across the flames. The vulnerability in her own voice surprised her.
“But it wasn’t nothing, was it? Not to me, and I don’t think it was to you either.”
She held her breath, watching his expression shift in the firelight. His massive shoulders hunched forward, as if bearing an invisible weight. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough with emotion.
“I didn’t leave because I wanted to.” He stared into the flames, refusing to meet her eyes. “I left because I had to.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She’d imagined this conversation a thousand times over the years, but now that it was happening, she found herself terrified of what might come next.
“I don’t know if you remember what it was like in Kel’Vara at that time. Lasseran’s lies had started to take hold. Orcs were treated with suspicion, fear, even hatred.”
“I remember,” she said softly. He’d tried to shield her from it but she’d heard some of the hatred flung at him and seen the nights he’s come back hurt and bleeding.
“The night before I disappeared,” he continued, “I was arrested—not because of any of the things I had actually done, but simply because I was an orc. They threw me in a cell under the Black Keep. I was terrified, not so much for myself but because I knew you were alone, unprotected. A nobleman came to see me. He offered to arrange for my freedom—as long as I fought for him.”
“That’s why you became a fighter?” she asked slowly.
He shrugged, looking back into the flames.
“I agreed, on one condition—that he provide for you. That you were fed and clothed and educated.”
The pieces suddenly fell into place, and a small, wounded sound escaped her throat. All these years, she’d believed herself abandoned, unwanted.
“It was Lord Sarnak, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You never said goodbye,” she whispered.
“He wouldn’t permit it. And once he knew I cared about you, he had a weapon to hold at my throat.” He gave her a tortured look. “But he didn’t keep his word, did he? I finally earned enough coin to buy my freedom but when I went to his house to find you, no one even knew who you were.”
“Oh, they knew who I was,” she said bitterly. “He did keep his word—I became a servant in his household but I was also fed and clothed and educated.”
“I don’t understand. Why did no one admit that they knew you?”
“Because Lord Sarnak had a son—a very charming, handsome son—and I was lonely.” And she’d wanted so desperately to be loved.
His growl reverberated through the glade, and she gave him a startled look. His eyes had turned black again.
“He wasn’t unkind to me,” she said quickly. “He may have even loved me a little, but that only made it worse as far as his mother was concerned. She wasn’t about to let her precious son become involved with a nameless servant. She sent me away—that’s how I ended up in the old Kingdom.”
“When was that?”
“Five years after you left.”
“And a year before I came looking for you.” He growled again. “They were so fucking convincing. ‘Oh no, sir. We never heard of a Miss Lyric.’”
“What did you do then?”
“Orcs were even less popular by then so I joined a group of mercenaries. I was convinced that all I was good for was fighting. But it ate away at me and one day I just couldn’t do it anymore. That’s when I left and headed to Norhaven.”
“And found your brothers.”
“Yes.”
She rose from the log, her legs unsteady as she circled the fire. He remained motionless, watching her approach with an expression of raw vulnerability that made her chest ache.
“So it wasn’t that you didn’t want me with you,” she said softly.
A bitter laugh escaped him. “Lyric, leaving you was like cutting out my own heart. Every day I wondered where you were, if you were safe. If you hated me. Eventually I convinced myself it was better that way—that you deserved someone whole, someone human.”
She stood before him now, close enough to see the firelight reflecting in his eyes.
“It wasn’t rejection,” he said. “It was the only way I knew to love you.”
Her heart thundered in her chest as she moved closer to him. The heat from the fire warmed her skin, but it was nothing compared to the warmth spreading through her at his confession. All these years, she’d built her life around the certainty that she’d been abandoned—that she hadn’t been enough. The truth changed everything.
He tracked her movement, wary and hopeful all at once. She saw the tension in his broad shoulders, the way he held himself perfectly still, as if afraid any movement might shatter this fragile moment between them.
She reached out, her fingers trembling slightly as they brushed against his scarred cheek. His skin was warm and rough beneath her touch. He closed his eyes briefly, leaning into her palm with such naked vulnerability that her throat tightened.
“Look at me,” she whispered.
When he opened his eyes, she saw the same boy she’d known—the one who’d named stars for her, who’d given her his food when she was hungry, who’d made her laugh even in the darkest corners of Kel’Vara. He was still there, beneath the scars and the pain and the years between them.
The realization washed over her like spring rain, washing away years of doubt. This wasn’t the impulsive longing of her youth or the desperate need for connection that had haunted her lonely nights. This was deeper, steadier—a recognition of something that had always been true.
“I want to be with you,” she told him, her voice steady despite the fluttering in her chest. “Not because of who you were then, or who I thought you might become. I want to be with you now—scars, Beast curse, everything. All of it.”
His expression transformed, disbelief giving way to something like wonder. The firelight cast half his face in shadow, but his eyes glowed with an intensity that made her breath catch. She’d never been so certain of anything as she was of the words she’d just spoken.
“You can’t mean that,” he said, his voice rough. “You don’t know what I’ve done, what I am.”
“I know enough.” She kept her hand against his cheek, feeling the subtle shift as he swallowed hard. “I’ve seen your gentleness with Samha. I’ve watched you rebuild my fences and tend my bees. I saw you transform to protect that girl.”
His big hand came up to cover hers, engulfing it completely. The contrast should have frightened her—his strength could break her without effort—but she felt only safety in his touch.
“I’m not the boy you knew,” he warned.
“And I’m not that girl anymore.” She smiled at him, feeling tears prick at the corners of her eyes. “We’ve both changed. But some things remain.”
She leaned forward, close enough to feel his breath against her face. The world narrowed to just this moment—the crackling fire, the night sounds of the forest, and his golden eyes reflecting the flames.
“I spent so many years convinced I was better off alone,” she whispered. “Building walls to keep everyone at a distance. And then you walked back into my life, and suddenly those walls didn’t seem so necessary anymore.”
His free hand hesitantly rose to brush a strand of hair from her face, the touch so gentle it nearly broke her heart.
“I never stopped caring for you,” he admitted, his voice barely audible. “Even when I convinced myself I had no right to.”
She closed the remaining distance between them, pressing her lips to his. For a heartbeat, he remained still, as if afraid to shatter the moment. Then his arms encircled her, drawing her against his chest as he returned her kiss with a tenderness that belied his strength.
The past that had haunted her—the abandonment, the loneliness, the unanswered questions—dissolved like morning mist under the sun’s warmth as she melted into him. For the first time since he’d reappeared in her life, she wasn’t kissing a memory or a ghost of what might have been. She was kissing him as he was now—scarred, powerful, and somehow more real than the boy she’d once known.
When they finally broke apart, she kept her hands on his broad shoulders, unwilling to lose the connection. The weight that had pressed against her heart for so long had lifted, leaving her breathless with unexpected lightness.
“I’ve imagined this moment a thousand times,” she confessed, her voice soft in the firelit darkness. “But the reality is so much better.”
His laugh vibrated through her where their bodies touched. His golden eyes, once so guarded, now shone with open wonder as he looked at her.
“I never let myself imagine it,” he admitted. “It hurt too much to hope.”
She traced the edge of a scar that ran along his jaw, no longer seeing it as a mark of what had changed but simply as a part of him—the male who had chosen her safety over his own happiness.
“No more secrets between us,” she said. “No more noble sacrifices. Whatever comes next, we face it together.”
The smile that spread across his face transformed him. In that moment, she saw clearly what they could be to each other—not just echoes of a shared past, but partners in whatever future they might forge.
“Together,” he agreed, the word a promise that resonated in the quiet glade.