Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Keric
Smoke greets me when I open the cabin door.
Not dangerous smoke, just the acrid smell of something burning on the stove. Anna stands in the kitchen, waving a dish towel at a pan that’s producing an alarming amount of gray haze. Dinah watches from a safe distance, her small grey face judgmental.
“I was trying to make us a late lunch,” Anna says without turning around. “It’s not going well.”
Under other circumstances, I would smile. My female can organize an entire school department, survive three years on the run, and compile evidence that will bring down a US Senator. But she cannot cook.
She turns, dish towel in hand, and her expression shifts the moment she sees my face.
“What’s wrong?”
I don’t sugarcoat it. She deserves the truth, all of it.
“Someone leaked your location. They know you’re at an orc commune in Maine.
” Fear flashes across her delicate features before she controls it.
“Aldridge and Vance hired mercenaries. Four or five professionals. They’re equipped with scent bombs. ”
“Scent bombs.” Her voice is steady. “Like what happened to Garlen.”
“Yes.”
She sets down the dish towel. Turns off the stove and moves to sit at the kitchen table, her movements deliberate and controlled. This is a female who knows how to process bad news without falling apart. “How did they find out I was here?”
“We don’t know yet. We intercepted communication between Aldridge’s security team and the contractors, but it was incomplete, missing a few key details, but there was enough there to let us know they are coming and these humans somehow acquired scent bombs.
This makes them much deadlier than they were without them. ”
“Timeline?”
“The evidence goes public in ten days. They know they’re running out of time.”
Anna is quiet for a moment. Her hands rest flat on the table, perfectly still. Then she looks up at me with those dark eyes, and I see not just fear, but determination. Steel underneath the softness. “So what do we do?”
“I train you,” I say. “Starting tonight you need to know how to protect yourself if they breach the commune perimeter and then this cabin.”
She nods. That determined set to her jaw that I find incredibly attractive. “Okay. Show me everything.”
We start in the bedroom.
I lead her to the nightstand and crouch down, reaching underneath to reveal the hidden panel. “Panic button. Direct line to security. Response time is under two minutes.”
Anna kneels beside me, close enough that I can smell her shampoo. Something floral and clean that makes me want to bury my face in her hair.
Focus.
“This was installed while we were on the airplane,” I explain. “Kelt’s team upgraded the cabin’s security before we arrived. I hadn’t needed to show you yet, but now everything has changed.”
She reaches out, her fingers finding the button in the darkness under the nightstand. “I feel it.”
“Good. Practice finding it with your eyes closed.”
She does. Three times, four times, until her hand goes to it automatically. She’s a quick learner. I’m not surprised.
“If anything happens, you hit this first,” I tell her. “Before anything else. Even if you think I’m handling it. Even if you think help isn’t needed. You hit this button.”
“Understood.”
We move to the barricade procedure. I show her the heavy dresser, how to angle it against the door, where the door wedge is hidden.
“This buys you time,” I explain. “That’s all. Time for me to get to you.”
I demonstrate the positioning, then step back so she can try. But the dresser is heavy, awkward, and she struggles with the angle. I move behind her without thinking, my hands covering hers on the wood, guiding the movement.
Her back is nearly against my chest. I can feel the heat of her small body through the thin fabric of her sweater. The scent of her arousal spikes, mixing with the lingering fear, and my body responds instantly. My shaft thickens in my pants.
I force myself to step away.
“Like that,” I say, my voice rougher than intended. “You’ve got it.”
Anna turns to look at me. Her cheeks are flushed, her breathing slightly uneven. She knows exactly what she does to me. And I can smell that she feels it too.
We don’t acknowledge it.
We move on.
The weapons cache is next. I pull up the loose floorboard near the back wall, revealing the hunting knife hidden beneath.
“Security upgrade,” I explain. “Standard protocol for protected cabins.”
Anna reaches down and picks up the knife. Her hands are steady as she tests the weight, the grip. She doesn’t flinch away from it.
“Last resort only,” I tell her. “Your job is to survive until I reach you. Not to fight. Survive.”
“And if surviving means fighting?”
“Then you fight.” I show her the ax by the back door. “These are tools, not heroics. You use them to buy time, to create distance. Nothing else.”
She nods, still holding the knife. The blade catches the light from the window.
I’m impressed despite myself. Three years of running taught her to be practical. To adapt. To do whatever it takes.
“There’s something else,” Anna says. She sets the knife down and moves to her go-bag in the corner of the room. “Something I brought with me.” She unzips a hidden compartment and pulls out a small black case. When she opens it, I go still.
A handgun. Compact, well-maintained. Human weapon.
“You have a gun.”
“Glock 43.” She checks the chamber with practiced ease—the motion smooth, automatic. “I got my concealed carry permit two years ago. Took classes and I practiced at the range whenever I could.” She meets my eyes. “Three years on the run, Keric. I wasn’t going to do it unarmed.”
I stare at the weapon in her hands. Orcs don’t use guns.
We consider them tools for those who lack the strength to fight without them.
Our ancestors hunted with spears, with bows, with their bare hands.
Even now, when human law allows us to own firearms, most orcs refuse. It feels like admitting weakness.
I know better, of course. The Army trained that romanticism out of me.
I was part of the first all-orc unit—twelve of us who proved that orcs could follow human military protocol, could operate as soldiers within their chain of command.
I qualified expert on every weapon they put in my hands.
I’ve seen what guns can do, how fast they can end a fight.
But I still don’t like them. Now that I’m out, I don’t carry one. Don’t keep one in the cabin. There’s something about pulling a trigger that feels like cheating—like skipping the part where you prove you’re strong enough to protect what’s yours.
Anna isn’t an orc, though. She’s a human female, half my size, being hunted by men who want her dead. For her, a gun isn’t weakness. It’s survival.
“You know how to use it,” I say. Not a question.
“I’m a good shot.” There’s no bravado in her voice, just fact. “Not great. But good enough.”
I watch her handle the weapon—finger off the trigger, muzzle pointed safely down. She knows what she’s doing.
“The knife and ax are last resorts,” I say slowly. “But this...”
“This gives me a chance.” She looks up at me. “If they breach the cabin. If you can’t get to me in time. I’m not going to just hide and hope.”
I experience a fierce, aching admiration for this female who has spent three years fighting to survive—and never stopped preparing to fight harder. “Show me,” I say.
She raises an eyebrow.
“Show me your stance. Your grip.”
Anna’s lips curve slightly. She ejects the magazine, checks the chamber again—empty—then assumes a shooting stance. Feet shoulder-width apart. Arms extended, slight bend in the elbows. Two-handed grip, firm but not rigid. It’s textbook. Clean. Whoever taught her knew what they were doing.
“Where do you aim?”
“Center mass,” she says without hesitation. “Don’t try for headshots. Don’t try to wound. Center mass, keep shooting until the threat stops.”
I nod slowly. “Good.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“Six years in the Army. I’ve fired more rounds than I can count.” I pause. “I just prefer not to anymore.”
Her eyes search my face, curious. But she doesn’t push.
“If they come,” I tell her, “and you have to use that—don’t hesitate. These men are professionals. They won’t hesitate either.”
“I know.”
“And Anna.” I wait until her eyes meet mine. “If you shoot one of them, you run. You don’t check if he’s down. You don’t wait to see what happens. You shoot, and you run.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment. Then she nods. “I can do that.”
I believe her.
Finally, we move to escape routes. I lead her to the back window and show her the latch, how to open it silently.
“If I tell you to run, you go out this window,” I say. “Don’t hesitate. Don’t look back.”
I’m standing close behind her as she practices the latch. Too close. My breath moves the short hair at the nape of her neck and I watch goosebumps rise on her skin.
“There’s a path through the forest.” My voice is low, barely above a murmur. “Fifty yards straight back, then turn left at the boulder with the split top. Follow the creek downstream. It leads to the main commune.”
She turns the latch, opens the window and closes it. Again. Again. Memorizing the motion with her body. Then she pauses and looks up at me. “What if you can’t follow me?” she asks quietly.
“Then you keep running. You find Kelt, find my parents. They’ll protect you.”
“Keric—”
“Promise me, Anna.”
She’s silent for a moment. “I promise.”
I step back before I do something stupid, like pull her against me and claim her mouth the way I’ve been dying to do for days.
We stand in the dim light of the bedroom, both breathing harder than the training warrants. The tension between us is a living thing, coiling tighter with every moment we spend in close quarters.
Anna turns to face me fully. Her glasses catch the afternoon light coming through the window. Those dark eyes hold mine without flinching. “You really think they’ll come?”
I hold her gaze. “I think they’ll try.” A beat of silence.
My hands ache to touch her and my chest burns with the need to close the distance between us, to pull her into my arms and show her exactly what she means to me.
Instead, I let my voice drop lower. “I also think they’ll fail.
Because I won’t let anyone take you from me. ”