Page 55 of Protective Pucking Orc

“We started over with nothing; I’d get a job and we’d stay in a city for a few months or more—we were in Albuquerque for almost a year—before there’d be a call or an email or something from my old life, warning me Anthony had tracked us down. I thought, last summer, that coming to Bramblewood, hiding in such a sweet small town…I’d be able to outsmart him. He wouldn’t expect that.”

When I blew out a sigh, Dakvaar growled, “But he tracked you down.”

I nodded slightly.

“He told me he wanted Rosa back. He’d made a deal with Degas for…”

I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

But Dakvaar nudged me gently. “For what, dkaar?”

“For her,” I rasped. “In ten years, Degas will take her, the way Anthony…”

Oh, Dios.

Dakvaar went rigid beneath me.

Not the fast, hot fury I’d seen in the parking lot—not roaring, not claws. This was worse. This was stillness so complete I could feel his pulse hammering through the arm wrapped around me, the only sign that anything was happening at all beneath that frozen calm.

“Say it,” he said, very quietly. “All of it. I need to hear the whole of it, dkaar, so I know exactly what I am protecting her from.”

So I did.

I told him the rest—the way Anthony had said it to me in that parking lot, flat and reasonable, like he was discussing a college fund instead of a debt paid in flesh. Sixteen, that was the age Degas wanted her. Ten years from now, and Anthony had said it like a kindness, like he was giving her time, and I’d wanted to claw his eyes out, and I hadn’t been able to do anything but bleed on the pavement instead.

When I finished, the bus was silent except for the hum of tires and Rosa’s soft, even breathing between us.

“That wasn’t the first time he’d hurt you, was it?” Dakvaar asked in a curiously flat voice.

“No,” I whispered, and felt him tighten his hold on me.

“He will not touch her.” It wasn’t an opinion or a belief, but a vow; certain and untouchable. “Not now. Not in ten years. Not ever.”

“You can’t promise that.” My voice cracked on it. “Nobody can promise that.”

“I can.” His mouth pressed to my temple, marking me as surely as Anthony’s fists, but more perfectly. “And I have.”

I didn’t ask him to explain further. I wasn’t ready to know exactly what an orc meant by made known, not tonight. I only knew that when he said it, something in my chest that had been clenched for years loosened, just slightly, for the first time.

I pressed my face into his shoulder, breathing him in—sweat and ice and, underneath it, that thread of cinnamon that made my mouth water even now, even exhausted, even wrung out from crying.

“Dakvaar.” My voice was barely a whisper as I repeated my question. “Did you mean what you said? In the hallway?”

He went still again, but differently this time—not rage, something more like…uncertainty. As if he thought I might take it back for him.

“I meant it,” he said. “I love you, Sofia. I have for longer than I understood what I was feeling. I will say it as many times as you need to hear it, until you believe me.”

I thought about Anthony, who had said those words to me so often a lifetime ago, and made them into a cage.

This didn’t feel like a cage.

This felt like the first safe place I’d stood in years of running.

“Okay,” I whispered, and let my eyes fall shut, Rosa’s small weight warm between us, Dakvaar’s heartbeat steady under my cheek. “Okay.”

I let myself believe him. Just this once. Just enough to sleep.

Chapter Eleven