Chapter 6
Dawn crept into the watchtower like a thief.
Delia watched the slow dissolution of darkness, the gray light seeping through the ruined walls and the open doorway, spreading across the stone floor toward the dying fire.
She hadn't slept again after the nightmare.
Couldn't. Not with his words echoing in her head, replaying themselves over and over until they'd worn smooth grooves in her thoughts.
Instinct tells me you matter.
She didn't know what to do with that. Didn't know how to fit it into the framework of her life, where she'd always been the afterthought.
No one had ever said she mattered. And now this orc—this massive, terrifying creature from her childhood nightmares—had knelt in the mud and told her she mattered, and she didn't know how to make that real.
The light continued its advance.
And as it did, the shadows that had hidden Ralvar began to peel away.
She'd seen him in darkness and in firelight. Seen the shape of him, the silhouette, the gleam of tusks and the brightness of those strange amber eyes. But that wasn't the same as seeing him—not really—and when the dawn finally reached him, Delia's breath caught in her throat.
He was sitting where he'd been all night, on the far side of the burned-down fire, his back against the watchtower wall.
His weapons lay beside him—the blade she'd watched him clean for hours, a smaller knife, something that might have been a hand axe.
His hands rested on his thighs, palms up, loose and open.
But that wasn't what stopped her breath.
It was the size of him.
The darkness had hidden something. Some trick of shadow had softened his edges, made him seem merely large instead of massive.
But in the sunlight, there was no softening.
His shoulders were impossibly broad, stretching the worn leather of his vest until she wondered why it didn't simply tear.
His arms were thick as tree limbs, corded with muscle that moved beneath green skin like something alive and separate.
His thighs, where his hands rested, were as wide as her waist.
He was built like a fortress. Like a wall. Like something meant to hold back armies.
And his face—
The war-marks she'd glimpsed last night were clearer now: dark lines that traced his cheekbones, his jaw, the column of his throat, disappearing beneath leather and emerging again on his arms. Some were geometric and precise; others curved like waves or wind.
Scars interrupted them in places—a pale slash across his shoulder, a ragged line on his forearm, a nick in the curve of one tusk.
The tusks themselves were larger than she'd realized. They rose from his lower jaw, curving upward past his lips, polished smooth and ivory-pale. Weapons born of his own body.
He should have been horrifying, every inch of him designed for violence, for war, for the brutal efficiency of a predator at the top of his chain. This was the monster from the stories. This was the orc that human mothers invoked to make children behave.
But his hands were still open.
And when he noticed her watching him, he didn't move. Didn't reach for his weapons. Didn't do anything except meet her gaze, steady and patient and somehow, impossibly, gentle.
"The rain stopped," he said.
"I noticed." She didn't know why she was speaking. Why the fear that should have choked her felt distant instead, manageable, like a storm that had moved to the horizon. "Does that mean they'll—the guards—"
"They'll search." He said it simply, factually, without any attempt to soften it. "The storm will have slowed them, though. Washed away the tracks."
Delia's stomach lurched. "How long?"
"A day. Maybe two." He rose in a fluid motion that shouldn't have been possible for something so large, all that mass moving with a grace that made her think of predators again—lions, wolves, creatures built for hunting. "We have time."
We.
The word snagged in her head, caught there like a thread on a rough nail.
We have time. As if they were a unit, a pair, as if her fate had somehow become entangled with his.
Ralvar crossed to his pack and returned with something wrapped in cloth. He set it beside her on the furs—more dried meat, more of the dense bread, a waterskin—then stepped back again, maintaining that careful distance.
"Eat," he said. "And let me look at your injuries."
There was no demand in the words. No command. Just a simple statement of what needed to happen, delivered in a voice that somehow left space for her refusal.
She didn't refuse.
The food was easier this time. She still ate quickly, but without the desperate, animal edge of the night before.
Her body had stopped shaking at some point, and the warmth of the fire's embers, the dryness of his tunic against her skin, the solidity of ground beneath her, all conspired to make her feel almost human again.
Almost.
Ralvar waited until she'd finished, then crossed to her side and lowered himself to one knee.
Up close, he was even more massive. His knee was level with her shoulder. His hands, when he lifted them toward her, were easily twice the size of hers, the fingers thick and blunt, the knuckles scarred.
"Your arms first." It wasn't a question, but he still paused, still waited, until she gave him a small nod.
Then he touched her.
His fingers were warm. That was the first thing she noticed—warm against her chilled skin, impossibly gentle as they turned her arm to examine the scratches she'd earned in her flight through the forest. She'd barely felt them at the time, the adrenaline blocking everything out, but now she could see them clearly: thin red lines crisscrossing her forearms where branches had whipped at her, darker scrapes where she'd fallen.
They weren't deep. Nothing serious. But Ralvar examined them like they mattered, turning her arm this way and that.
"These need cleaning."
He reached for his pack, pulling out a small clay pot and a roll of clean cloth. The pot contained some kind of salve—sharp-smelling, herbal, cool when he spread it over her scratches.
Delia watched him work.
She shouldn't have. Should have looked away, focused on the wall, the fire, anything except the massive orc warrior kneeling beside her, his attention fixed on her arms like they were the most important things in the world. But she couldn't stop watching.
His face, in concentration, lost some of its ferocity. The hard lines of his jaw softened slightly. His amber eyes, fixed on her scratches, held something that looked almost like—
Concern.
"Why are you helping me?" The question came out before she could stop it. Too abrupt. Too raw.
Ralvar's hands paused. He didn't look up. "I told you why."
"The pull."
"Yes."
"But—" She struggled to find the words, to articulate the thing that kept snagging in her thoughts. "You said it was instinct. That it just... happens. That you don't choose who you feel it for."
"I didn't choose." His hands resumed their work, wrapping clean cloth around her forearm with precise, efficient movements. "But I chose to act on it. I chose to offer you shelter instead of leaving you to die. Those choices are mine."
"But if you hadn't felt the pull—"
He finished wrapping her arm and sat back slightly, though he didn't rise. "The Mountain Clan does not leave helpless travelers to die in the cold. Regardless of species."
Something about the way he said helpless made her bristle. Just slightly. Just enough to feel almost like herself again.
"I'm not—"
"You were freezing. Your ankle was injured. You were alone in unfamiliar territory with enemies pursuing you." His gaze finally lifted to meet hers. "You were helpless. That isn't an insult. It's a fact."
Delia opened her mouth. Closed it. He wasn't wrong, and they both knew it.
"Other arm," he said.
She offered it.
This time she was prepared for the warmth of his hands. For the way his fingers dwarfed hers so completely that when he turned her wrist, her whole hand disappeared within his grip. For the methodical efficiency of his movements.
He finished wrapping her other arm and sat back, hands resting on his thighs.
"Among my people, caring for something fragile is considered an honor." His eyes held hers. "Not an insult."
Delia's throat felt tight.
"Now your ankle."
She'd been dreading this.
Her right ankle had swollen badly overnight.
She could feel it pressing against the leather of her shoe, could feel the throb of blood and damaged tissue with every heartbeat.
She'd been trying not to think about it.
Trying not to consider what it meant for her ability to run, to escape, to do anything except sit here and be helpless, just as he said.
Ralvar was already reaching for her foot. "May I?"
She nodded.
He unlaced her shoe, each tug precise and controlled. When he finally eased the leather away from her foot, Delia hissed through her teeth.
Oh.
It was worse than she'd thought. The ankle was purple and swollen, distended to nearly twice its normal size. She could barely see the bones beneath the puffy, discolored flesh.
"That's... bad," she whispered.
Ralvar's jaw tightened. It was the first real reaction she'd seen from him. The first crack in that stoic mask.
"Can you move it?"
She tried. Pain lanced up her leg, so sharp and sudden that she gasped.
"Don't." His hand closed around her calf, holding her still. "Don't force it."
"Is it broken?"
He probed gently along the swollen flesh, his fingers finding bone beneath the damage.
"A bad sprain," he said finally. "Possibly a small fracture. The bone isn't displaced."
"Can I walk on it?"
The look he gave her was answer enough.
"You can barely move it, and you're asking if you can walk?"
"I have to be able to—" Her voice cracked. The reality of her situation crashed back in—the guards, the search, the inability to run. "If I can't walk, I can't—"