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I can see his eyes, swollen as they are, and they are bright, sharp blue. He looks disoriented, and I get to my knees and instinctively stroke his bloody head.
“You’re fighting,” I murmur quietly enough that he can’t hear me.
His eyes roll back in his head, and for a second, panic streaks through me as I wonder if he is dying.
“And I can’t just let you die.” I am still too quiet for him to hear me.
Are you really going to let him die? You know exactly what it is like to fight to live. Are you just going to be complicit in someone else’s death? When you know you could have saved them? Even if it is an orc?
I sigh, still stroking his head. His eyes open again, and they fix on mine right away.
He opens his mouth and lets out a gurgling noise.
“Shh, don’t try to speak,” I tell him, and he shuts his mouth obediently.
Good, at least he isn’t stubborn,I think to myself.That should make this easier.
“Okay.” This time when I speak, I speak loudly enough for him to hear me. His gaze falls to my mouth, and heat flushes through my body. “I can help you. But it is going to hurt a whole damn lot. I hope you’re ready for that.”
I watch him to see if he understood what I said. He closes his eyes briefly and then opens them again.
They are the bluest eyes I have ever seen, and the color is only magnified by the tinge of red that flashes across his irises every time he blinks.
I turn to Safira, who is looking at me moodily.
She doesn’t like orcs any more than I do. None of the wolves do.
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
4
AMARA
Getting the orc back to the little shack I call home is no easy feat.
I have to threaten Safira and the others to help me drag him into the forest and through the clearing.
We take a break in the clearing, where I put my clothes back on before we continue into the forest.
We stop in another clearing, and that is where I remove the old, dead tree trunks that obscure my shack from prying eyes.
Inside, I position the orc on the floor in the space that I suppose could be called a kitchen. He is too large to go on my bed, and I know he’d break the table.
Safira is not happy about this new development. This is not how she wanted to spend her day.
The orc is unconscious again by the time I start a fire in the little hearth.
“Listen,” I tell her. There is a growl in my voice. She might not be able to understand my words, but she knows exactly what I mean when I growl at her. “This is not what you wanted, I understand. No one trusts orcs. I understand that, too. And I get that you’re the Alpha, but I am the leader ofthispack. I know what is best for all of us.”
She lays down, placing her muzzle between her paws, and watches me carefully as I go about healing the orc.
It requires a lot of me, and as I heat up a cleansing salve on the fire, I wonder what the point of this is.
“Let's hope he doesn’t kill me once he has healed,” I mumble to myself. I made the cleansing salve myself. When it is warm enough, I take about three feet of gauze, and I start to clean the orc’s wounds.
“You’re a big guy. How am I going to do your back?” At this point, I am talking to myself because Safira has left to communicate with the rest of the pack.
They’re close by, hiding in the undergrowth of the forest, but they’re avoiding the shack because they can smell him. The orc.
