Page 19 of The Orc's Protection
“I would be,” she says, and I can tell from her clipped tone that she’s noticed more than she’s letting on. “I’ve been curious about orc traditions since the Emergence, but there aren’t many opportunities for non-orcs to learn firsthand.”
“Then it’s settled!” Grulk declares, heading for the door before I can object further. “Vraag will bring you tomorrow night. Seven o’clock. Wear something comfortable; we celebrate properly.”
The door closes behind him, leaving an awkward silence. Ms. Walker looks at me expectantly.
“Is that… would that be okay?” she asks when I don’t immediately speak. “I don’t want to impose if it’s a private cultural event.”
I should explain. Should tell her about orc traditions regarding protection garments, about what arriving together at a clangathering would signify, about how she’s currently wrapped in what any orc would recognize as a claim.
Instead, I hear myself say, “You would be welcome.”
“Great!” She smiles, and the sight of her genuine enthusiasm does something strange to my breathing.
“I should resume my security rounds,” I say finally, needing distance to clear my thoughts.
“Of course.” She smiles again, still wrapped in my coat. “And thank you again for this. It’s saving my life today.”
As I depart to continue my patrol, my thoughts remain in disarray. I’ve allowed a misunderstanding to develop—one that grows more complicated with each hour she spends marked with my scent, each interaction that any orc would read as deliberate intent.
The honorable course would be to explain everything immediately: the significance of the coat, the implications of attending a clan gathering together, the meaning other orcs would attach to her wearing my scent.
Yet as I patrol the empty morning hallways, I hesitate. Years of maintaining protocol, of perfect integration compliance, of keeping humans at an enforced distance.
Perhaps Grulk has a point. When do we start living again?
The question follows me as I complete my rounds, with no easy answer in sight.
Chapter Eight
Riona
The coat is still on the arm of the couch where I left it last night.
I noticed it this morning when I made coffee. I noticed it again when I moved from the kitchen to the living room with my mug and found somewhere else to sit. I’ve been noticing it all day in the peripheral way you notice something you’ve decided not to look at directly—the way it takes up space, the way the sleeves still hold the shape of being pushed up by someone trying to free her hands.
It’s enormous. It smells like cedar and something deeper, and I know this because I wore it for hours yesterday, and apparently that’s long enough for a scent to become a problem.
I make a grocery list I don’t need. I reorganize a bookshelf that was already organized. Sometime around two I sit down to read and manage four pages before I realize I’ve been staring at the same paragraph for twenty minutes and the coat is in my direct line of sight and I have a gathering to go to in five hours with the man who owns it.
I put the book down.
The thing is, I want to go. That’s what I keep running into every time I try to talk myself into a manageable level of calm. Not dread, anticipation. The kind that hums low and doesn’t leave. I’ve been interested in men before. I know what that feels like. This is something with more gravity than that, and it arrived before I had the chance to decide whether to let it. The thing is, I’ve spent a very long time being careful about exactly this kind of thing.
The coat sits on the couch. I sit on the other side of the room.
At 4:43, I pick up my phone and call Kendra.
She arrives twenty minutes later with a bakery box she doesn’t need an excuse for and stops two steps inside my door. Her eyes go straight to the coat on the couch. She doesn’t say anything. She sets the box on the counter, takes off her jacket, and sits down at the opposite end of the couch from the coat with the careful deliberateness of a woman making a point.
“That’s not yours,” she says finally.
“No.”
“Whose is it.”
“It’s not a question when you say it like that.”
“Whose is it, Riona.”
