5. Layla
LAYLA
I wake up warm.
Not the almost-warm of the dorm cots, where the heating vents hiss and rattle and the bedding is never quite enough to keep out the chill that permeates the Bastion. This is a warmth that has weight to it, a coziness. It’s like being snuggled by an oversized electric blanket from the before times.
The furs are heavy on top of me, thick and animal-smelling, but the real heat isn’t coming from the pelts. It’s coming from him.
Krog is curled around me and we’re both naked. His arm drapes across my waist, heavy as an iron beam, his hand splayed flat against my abdomen. His chest is a furnace pressed against my spine, his face buried in my hair. His slow, even exhales are warm tides that roll over me.
Lower, pressed firmly against my ass, his cock is hard and thick. It’s a reminder of what he denied himself last night—and what I let him do to me in the bath.
I should move. Should be alarmed by the possessive weight of him, by the way his arm tightens fractionally when I shift, as if even in sleep he is monitoring my movements and refusing to let me create distance between us.
But I don’t move, and I’m not alarmed. Because the shameful, devastating truth is that I slept peacefully last night. No nightmares. No jolting awake at phantom sounds with my fists clenched and my body ready to run. No memories of Eloise screaming in the ash.
For the first time since I crawled through the Bastion gates half-dead and hollow, my body and mind were able to relax. I stopped scanning for threats. Stopped bracing for the next fight, the next loss, the sleepless vigilance that had become so routine I’d forgotten what real rest feels like.
It’s because of Krog. Because some broken, animal part of my brain has decided that the most dangerous monster in the Bastion is also the one who’ll keep me safe.
I shift again, just slightly, testing. A sound rumbles through Krog’s chest. Not a growl exactly.
A low vibration that’s more like a cat’s purr, amplified by a ribcage the size of a barrel.
His arm tenses, pulling me tighter against him, and his face drops into the curve of my neck, his tusk grazing my shoulder and sending a tingle down my spine.
My chest aches, and I realize it’s from feelings. For Krog.
Before I can process what that really means, there’s pounding on the door.
Krog is instantly awake, as if sleep were a jacket he shrugged off between one heartbeat and the next.
The arm around my waist pulls the heavy top fur up and over me until I am buried, hidden, swallowed by pelts and shadow.
He rolls off the bed in a single fluid motion, landing on his feet without a sound which should be impossible for someone his size.
He crosses the chamber undressed and unbothered by that. Gone is the orc with the comforting warmth who held me all night. In his place is the High Commander. Spine straight, shoulders back, muscles prepared to fight.
When the front door opens, cold air floods the chamber, carrying voices with it. I reposition the heavy fur to try and hear what’s being said.
“High Commander Krog.” The voice sounds official rather than casual. “The Council has convened an emergency session regarding your invocation of Commander’s Right. A vote has been cast.”
Silence from Krog. The kind that has weight.
“Due to the seriousness of the human female’s crime, your claim on her is denied. You are ordered to surrender her to Council custody immediately for Recycling.”
I swallow a gasp.
“No.” Krog’s one word response is low and absolute, the same tone he used to claim me on the Lottery floor. No negotiation.
A pause. Then the voice speaks again. “Then hear the Council’s judgment, Commander.
You are hereby stripped of rank, title, and all protections afforded by the Bastion’s military covenant.
Both you and the female will be escorted to the eastern shield gate at dawn for Recycling into the Wastes. This judgment is final.”
The silence that follows is so complete I can hear my own blood roaring in my ears. Stripped of rank. The High Commander of the Bastion, the most powerful military position here, is being cast into the Wastes. Because he chose me.
I wait for him to reconsider. Or argue his position. To do what any rational creature would do when faced with a choice between a woman he barely knows and everything he has built.
“Then we leave at dawn.”
The door slams shut with a force that shakes the entire chamber. The lock engages. And I can’t move, can’t breathe.
Frozen beneath the furs, my mind is stuck in a loop that keeps replaying those four words.
Then we leave at dawn.
Krog chose me over his title, his command, his safety, his life inside the Bastion. He threw it all away to face certain death in the Gray.
Why?
I emerge from under the furs as Krog crosses back to the bed platform, his massive cock swaying with his steps. His expression is granite, hard and resolved, the face of a man who has made a decision and will not unmake it. He reaches for me, but I scramble out of the way.
The cold air hits my bare skin, and I don’t care. I grab the nearest pelt and wrap it around myself, tucking it under my arms. Then I’m standing in front of him before I’ve fully decided to stand.
“You can’t do this.”
He looks down at me. His gaze steady, expression unreadable.
“You’re the High Commander. You can’t just throw that away. Not for—” My throat closes. I force it open. “Turn me over to them. Tell them you changed your mind. Save yourself.”
“No.”
“Krog, listen to me.” I press my palms against his massive, immovable chest and push, knowing it’s like pushing against the Bastion itself. “One life is not worth two. I’m not worth—”
His hands close over my shoulders. Not rough.
But not gentle either. Firm, absolute. He lowers his face until his eyes are level with mine, until I can see the amber rings and the vertical pupils and the emotion that lives behind them.
Not calculation or strategy or a commander’s pragmatism.
Devotion. Raw and total and terrifying in its completeness.
“You are mine.” His voice is calm, resolute. No growl. No rumble. Just a declaration, stripped bare. “In the Bastion or in the ash. In my quarters or in the Gray. I keep what is mine.”
“You’ll die out there.” My voice splinters. “The Wastes will kill you. Eventually, it kills everything.”
His composure cracks, just for a moment, and I see tenderness, which I never expected to find on the face of an orc built for war. A vast, aching tenderness.
“I have survived the Wastes before, Layla.” He says my name the way he always does, like he’s tasting it, savoring it.
“Before the Bastion was formed. Before the title of High Commander. When the Veil between worlds tore, I was thrust into the ash. The Gray did not kill me then. It will not kill me now.”
His thumb traces the line of my jaw. The claw at the tip of it could open my throat, and instead it follows the curve of my face with the tenderness that makes my chest ache.
“I will tear the Gray apart with my bare hands before I let it hurt you.”
The tears come, and I can’t stop them. They spill hot and fast down my cheeks, and I hate the weakness of them, hate that I’m standing here crying in front of a creature who just sacrificed everything and all I can offer in return is salty tears and shaking hands.
His thumb sweeps across my cheekbone, collecting the moisture with a softness that shouldn’t be possible with hands that size, and his brow creases like the sight of my tears causes him physical pain.
“Do not leak,” he says, his voice strained. “I do not know how to repair leaking.”
A laugh huffs out of me—wet, broken, bordering on hysterical—and I press my forehead against his chest because I can’t look at him anymore without falling apart completely.
His arms come around me. Not possessive this time.
Protective. The circle of him blocks out the cold and the fear and the dawn that’s coming whether we’re ready or not.
We have less than a day. That’s all. Then they’ll open the shield gate and push us into the wasteland that killed my sister and everyone else I’ve ever loved.
Pulling back, I look up at this impossible, terrifying, gentle monster. And a decision crystallizes inside me. One not based on logic or survival instinct. But based on emotions that are fierce and ageless, and maybe a little bit reckless.
I let the pelt drop.
The cold air raises goosebumps across my bare skin as I stand in front of him with nothing between us. His eyes darken, his pupils dilating until the amber is almost gone, and a little thrill surges through me.
“If we’re walking into the Wastes tomorrow, then today I want to belong to you.” My voice doesn’t shake or waver. “Completely. In every way.”
His chest expands. His hands flex at his sides. “Layla.” My name is a warning, a plea. “If I take you, my beast will become unleashed. I will not be gentle.”
The beast is there—I can see it pressing against the surface of him, straining at whatever leash the Commander keeps it on.
“I don’t want gentle.” I press myself against him, my bare breasts skimming his belly. Heat pours off his skin, warming me. “I want everything you’re willing to give me, man or beast.”
That’s when his control snaps.
I see it happen, the moment the orc allows the beast to step forward. His eyes go molten, and a sound tears from his chest that isn’t a growl or a purr but somewhere between the two. A sound that’s primal, reverent, and hungry.
His hands grip my waist and lift me like I weigh nothing. My legs wrap around him instinctively, and his mouth finds mine.
We have until dawn, and I intend to make it count.