Chapter 7
The human woman had been watching him.
Targesh knew the precise moment she appeared at the courtyard overlook. The back of his neck prickled, and his weight shifted a half-step left, toward the overlook wall, where a figure stood motionless against the stone.
He did not look.
He continued the drill, moving through the forms with Kethrak and Durgan, forcing his focus onto the familiar rhythm of strike and counter. Thirty years he had trained in this yard. He knew every crack in the packed earth, every worn spot where generations of warriors had planted their feet.
He had never been distracted by a woman watching from above.
She was still there. He could feel her gaze like pressure against his skin, and when the wind shifted, he caught—
The scent hit him like a fist to the chest.
Attraction. He identified it automatically, before he could decide whether he wanted the information. Ink and cold paper, her constant undercurrent. Beneath that, the copper-bright note of quickened blood. Skin flushed despite the morning air.
Durgan's practice sword caught him across the ribs.
The impact was just a training blow pulled short, but the fact that it landed at all sent a ripple of surprise through the warriors around him. Kethrak actually stepped back, his eyes widening.
Targesh had not taken a hit in sparring in three years.
"Warchief?" Durgan's voice was carefully neutral. "Your guard dropped."
"I am aware." Targesh reset his stance, rolling his shoulders. "Again."
They came at him together this time, coordinated, and he let the combat consume his attention.
The familiar burn of exertion. The clean simplicity of bodies in motion.
He disarmed Durgan with a twist that sent the practice sword spinning across the yard, drove Kethrak back with a shoulder check, and when he turned to face the next pair of sparring partners—
She was gone.
The overlook was empty.
Targesh stared at the vacant stone, his breath still coming hard from the drill. Then he handed his practice sword to the nearest warrior and walked to the water barrel without a word.
The morning air bit at his overheated skin. He cupped water in his palms and splashed it across his face, his chest, the back of his neck. Cold enough to shock. Not cold enough to matter.
"You're distracted," Ralvar moved to stand beside him, reaching for the water dipper. His voice was pitched low, beneath the hearing of the warriors still drilling in the yard. "She was watching."
"Many people watch the training yard."
"Many people do not make the Warchief of the Mountain Clan drop his guard."
Targesh turned then, meeting his captain's gaze. Ralvar was nearly a foot shorter than him, but he held himself confidently. His expression was carefully neutral.
"It was not—" Targesh stopped. He was not a young warrior to be baited into defending himself. "The drills will continue. I have duties elsewhere."
He moved toward the edge of the yard, toward the stairs that led to his quarters. Behind him, Ralvar's voice carried just far enough to reach his ears.
"Delia has taken her for tea."
Targesh paused. He should not care where Verity Dunmore went or who she spoke with. She was a guest. A scholar. A temporary presence who would complete her work and return to Valdara, taking her relentless questions back across the border where she belonged.
He turned. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I remember what it was like."
"This is not that."
"No?"
"She is human."
"So is Delia."
"She is here for three months. To study documents."
Ralvar set down the water dipper. "The night patrols mentioned seeing candlelight in the archives at the third watch."
Targesh's jaw tightened. Of course his movements were being noted—he was warchief; everything he did was noted—but he had not thought it through to the inevitable conclusions.
"I was checking on her progress," he said. "Ensuring she was not accessing restricted materials."
"In the middle of the night."
"Is there something you wish to say, Captain?"
The formality was deliberate. Ralvar heard it, and his posture shifted slightly.
"Only that she smelled like wanting, Warchief. And you smelled like a man trying very hard not to want back." Ralvar inclined his head, a gesture of respect that did not quite hide the amusement in his eyes, and returned to the training yard.
Targesh stood alone by the stairs, the cold morning wind cutting across his damp skin.
Forty-seven years. Nineteen as Warchief. He had learned, somewhere in those years, to feel nothing that might compromise his judgment.
It was not that he had never taken a woman to his bed.
He had, occasionally, in his younger years.
Brief encounters, physical release, nothing that lingered past the morning.
He had always assumed the pull that bonded mates spoke of simply was not meant for him.
Some orcs went their whole lives without feeling it.
He had accepted this as one more burden of leadership.
A warchief could not afford the vulnerability of a bond.
And now.
She had been watching him.
Not with fear. He knew that scent intimately, had grown used to it from humans over the years.
Not with calculation or political caution.
She had been watching him the way one watches something one wants to understand.
To know. And beneath that curiosity, beneath the scholarly assessment, there had been heat.
The knowledge lodged behind his sternum, dense and immovable, pressing outward against his ribs with every breath.
Targesh walked to his quarters, closing the door behind him with more force than necessary.
The room was cold; he had not bothered with a fire last night.
He stood in the center of the space that had been his for nineteen years and tried to remember the last time it had felt like anything other than a place to wait out the hours between duties.
He could not remember.
The hearth was dark. He knelt and began building a fire with hands that knew the work without requiring thought. Kindling, then logs, then the spark that caught and spread. He sat back on his heels and let his shoulders drop, watching the flames take hold.
She would return to Valdara in three months. She would take whatever knowledge she gathered from the archives and carry it back across the border to her Royal Archive, her ordered life, her purpose that had nothing to do with him.
She was temporary. The response his body had to her scent was nothing more than biology.
It did not have to mean anything.
The fire cracked, sending sparks spiraling upward toward the chimney. Targesh watched them disappear and thought of brown eyes catching candlelight.
Three months.
He could maintain control for three months. He had maintained control for years. One small, rumpled human woman who smelled like ink and wanting was not going to—
A knock at his door.
"Enter," he said, rising.
Sergeant Korah stepped inside. "The trade delegation from the River Clan has arrived early. They're asking for you."
Targesh was already reaching for his formal leathers before Korah finished speaking.
"I will be there shortly," Targesh said.
Korah left.
Targesh stood alone in his warming quarters, the sounds of Northwatch filtering through the stone walls.
Somewhere in this fortress, Verity Dunmore was drinking tea with Delia, probably discussing exactly how embarrassing it was to be caught watching the warchief train.
Her cheeks would be flushed. That warmth would be spreading beneath her skin, the one he had scented from fifty feet away.
He should not be thinking about this.
He dressed for the delegation in formal leathers and clan markers, assembling himself piece by piece.
By the time he left his quarters, his expression was composed.
His stride was measured. He was the Warchief of the Mountain Clan, and he had responsibilities that did not include dwelling on the scent of a human woman.
The walk to the great hall took him past the archive building. He kept his eyes forward. The River Clan delegates were already seated when he arrived, and the negotiations consumed the hours until well past midday, requiring every piece of his attention.
And if his gaze drifted toward the windows more than once, searching for a glimpse of movement near the archive building, no one commented on it.
He had that much control, at least.