Page 68 of Protective Pucking Orc

I looked down at the ice. At the enormous, patient male standing guard over his net, his goalie, his team—over the two humans up in the stands wearing his name.

I did know him.

I knew the exact set of his shoulders that meant worry. I knew he lined his fork up with the edge of his plate. I knew the sound of him not-leaving a hallway. And I knew—with a certainty that had nothing to do with logic—exactly what he’d been waiting for in our bed.

Not permission. Not even words. Just…

Me.

For me to step through the door he’d been holding open. Because my orc would stand at that threshold forever rather than pull me across it, and there was only one person in the world who could close the distance.

“Lila,” I said slowly, “when you accepted it—Kardok’s bond—was there a difference? Between saying yes and meaning it?”

Her eyebrows rose, and then her whole face went soft, like she knew precisely which conversation I was actually having.

“Night and day,” she said. “Saying yes was…was a decision, I suppose. Meaning it was—” she pressed a hand flat to her chest, right over her sternum, the exact spot Dakvaar always touched when he talked about his Kteer. “It was standing still and realizing the thing you’d been bracing against was the thing holding you up.”

Oh, said the sensible voice. And for once, it didn’t argue at all. Ay Dios, yes.

“Okay,” I breathed. My eyes were stinging. “Okay. I get it. I actually—I said yes days ago because I didn’t want to lose him, but I didn’t feel it, and I’ve been feeling terrible about that, like I was faking a language I couldn’t speak, and it’s—” I laughed, wet, and scrubbed at my face before Rosa noticed. “It’s just true. It’s been true this whole time. I know him like my own heartbeat.”

“Welcome to the club, sweetie.” Lila bumped her shoulder against mine, beaming. “It’s a very strange club, but the snacks are excellent.”

I burst into laughter, opened my mouth to agree⁠—

And the whole section around me burst into cheers, wrenching my attention away from Lila.

“Mama! Mama, look!” Rosa shot upright on my lap, pointing at the massive screen over center ice. “That’s me! That’s me!”

It was her. There we were, four stories tall on the jumbotron—me in my jersey, Rosa in her tiny one, caught mid-laugh, the whole home crowd cooing at the child in the family section while a little animated heart pulsed in the corner of the screen. Rosa went incandescent. She scrambled to her feet on my thighs, waving both arms at the ice, the screen, the entire universe.

“That’s me! I’m famous! Dak, look at me! Win the game, Dak! You gotta win!”

The section dissolved into laughter and applause. Holly filmed it. Lila had both hands pressed over her mouth to hold in her delight.

And down on the ice—I watched him do it—Dakvaar turned his head and found us. Found her—found me. And even from that distance, through the cage and the tusks and the game face, it rolled off him and up through the crowd and straight into my chest like a wave of warm water.

Pride. Joy.

Mine.

I felt it.

Not guessed it, not imagined it, but felt it, the way you feel the sun come out from behind a cloud. Three days ago, I would have called that a fantasy, and today I knew better. Today I had a name for it.

I put my hand up and waved back at my Mate while my daughter shrieked her joy beside me and a camera broadcast the two of us, glowing and unhidden, in our shared love for Dakvaar the Wall.

Because tonight? Tonight, after we tucked our sleeping daughter into bed—she was going to crash so hard after this excitement—I was going to walk through that door my Mate had been holding open.

All the way through.

Finally, said the voice in my head—and this time, it sounded exactly like a purr.

Chapter Fourteen

Dakvaar

We beat the Purple Punishers by one goal, and the locker room corridor was chaos of the best kind.