2. Krog
KROG
The female’s defiance is tempered by her scent.
Adrenaline hits me first, sharp and sour. The bite sets my tusks on edge and makes my spine stiffen. Next is fear that fills my nostrils. And blood from the split in her lip where Goros’ hand made contact.
But beneath those surface scents is a third layer.
Her. The essential scent of who she is that has nothing to do with fear or injury.
The warm undercurrent that smells of skin and salt and a mix of other things my mind cannot easily describe.
It is the scent that called to me across the Lottery floor, that reached through the smells of a thousand terrified bodies and seized my very soul.
She is mine.
The beast inside me knew this before my mind registered it. And now the beast cares not that she is defiant, but only that something hurt her.
I loom over her and she presses her spine into the wall.
Our size difference is striking. Her head barely reaches my lower chest. Her shoulders are so narrow I could span them with one outstretched hand.
And her bones appear thin and breakable.
Every fiber of my body is a weapon designed to fight while she looks small and soft and fragile.
But on the Lottery floor, she toppled a heavy marble pedestal onto the floor and resisted the guards that surrounded her. Soft things do not fight like that. Or choose resistance when compliance would be safer.
This one has fight in her blood, and that makes her rare.
Reaching out, I extend my claws toward her face. The bruise forming at her cheekbone is already turning purple at the edges. Her flinch registers as pain against my skin, a vibration that travels up my arm, and it irritates me. Not the flinch itself. Prey flinches from predators.
What is irritating is that she fears me more than she feared the one who hit her. Me, the one who will keep her alive.
“Female,” I say. My voice comes out as a growl, layered with emotion that makes the air pressure change. “Why do you fear me more than him?”
She swallows. Her scent spikes with more adrenaline, and underneath it, defiance. The same defiance she displayed during the Lottery. It straightens her spine even as her hands tremble.
“My name is Layla, not female. Use it.” Her words are clipped, a command delivered to an orc who could tear her apart. She stares up at me and does not look away. Does not submit.
Layla.
The name sits in my mouth until the beast swallows it whole and savors it. Keeps it. Claims it.
I withdraw my hand from her face. “Recycling?” I finally address the question she spat at me when we got inside. “Never.”
Her brow creases. She is processing. Weighing. I can smell the shift in her chemistry as fear gives way to confusion—still sharp, but different. Cooler. The calculations of a mind that did not stop working even when her body was dragged through corridors by a creature twice her height.
Good. She thinks. I can work with a creature that thinks.
I point to the bed platform which is covered with furs and my own scent. “Stay. I will return soon.”
She does not move. Paralyzed between terror and the first small thread of relief.
I do not have time for her processing. Something else needs my attention now, before the scent of her blood fades from the one who spilled it.
I exit through door, and the iron gates open as I approach, groaning shut behind me.
The Bastion hums with the steady pulse of the wards, a low vibration that thrums through the air and keeps the Gray at bay. But I track only one frequency: the scent trail of the guard who hurt what is mine.
Goros. I know his scent from the Lottery floor. Carried in his sweat, his self-satisfaction, the salt of his pleasure at handling the disruption. Several subordinates wanted that assignment. Goros volunteered.
The stairwell I take leads lower down in the Bastion. Not to the Undercroft which is Tarvos’ domain, yet low enough that the air thickens and the hum of the wards sounds muted.
I do not run. Running announces intent. Instead, each measured step sends a tremor through the stone that only the sensitive feel.
And the guards stationed along the corridors?
They all feel it. Their postures shift, breath held.
They press themselves against the walls as I pass, and the reek of their submission trails behind me.
The weapons bay is where I find Goros. Three others stand with him, and Goros is telling the story, his voice pitched high with the excitement of a subordinate who believes the Council’s satisfaction will work in his favor.
“I struck the female hard enough to stop her resistance. Hard enough to draw blood,” Goros says, chest puffed. “Until the Commander intervened, the Council was satisfied by the smooth operation.”
Smooth.
The word reaches me, and the beast presses against my ribs like it wants to tear through skin and bone and handle this here, now, without delay.
“Goros,” I say.
The four guards turn. Goros salutes, but his hand is still rising when I cross the space between us.
No acceleration. No wind-up. One moment I am ten paces away.
The next, his neck is in my grip, and his feet are three inches off the stone floor.
His eyes bulge, his mouth opening and closing like a fish pulled from water.
The other guards do not move. They are the smart ones.
“Commander—” he chokes. His voice comes out strangled. “The Council—”
I could take ten minutes to toy with him.
The beast wants that time. It wants to peel him, layer by layer, to separate muscle from bone until there is nothing left that resembles the shape of the male who struck Layla.
It wants Goros to suffer, to understand the weight of his error in the marrow of his own cracking bones.
But she is alone in my quarters. Small and fragile and unmarked except for what this guard did. If there are others who seek to claim her—other hands that think they can touch what belongs to me—they will move before I return.
The beast cannot waste time playing with his prey.
When I set him down, the swipe is efficient.
My claws are long and sharp, kept that way for defensive purposes.
They slice through the thick muscle of Goros’ throat, and the spray of his blood is hot.
It marks my face, my neck, my chest. The scent is rich and metallic, and it pleases me.
The absence of his breath pleases me as well.
Dropping his body, it hits the stone, unmoving. The three remaining guards stand motionless. One of them has soiled himself. The smell is sharp and pathetic.
“What belongs to the Commander is not to be touched.” My voice is quiet now. Cold. “The female called Layla belongs to the High Commander. If her skin sees another hand, that hand comes off without hesitation. Understood?”
They nod. The word of what happened here will quickly spread. By tomorrow, every guard in the Bastion will know the boundary.
I do not clean the blood from my skin. Instead, I let it dry there. Let it mark me the way her bruise and bloodied lip mark her. Proof that someone paid the ultimate price for her injuries.
Turning, I leave the weapons bay and return to my quarters where the female waits. Her name is Layla, and she commanded me to use it.
Even when the beast rises, I will not forget.