Chapter 15 Kielyne
FIFTEEN
KIELYNE
Morning sunlight exposes everything.
I stand in the gray dawn outside the farmstead cellar, splashing cold water on my face from a half-collapsed well, and take inventory of the damage.
Bruises mark my hips where his hands gripped too hard.
My lips are swollen, tender when I press my fingers to them.
My thighs ache in ways that remind me exactly how many times, how many positions, how completely I gave myself to him last night.
His scent clings to my skin. Smoke and leather and something deeper, muskier. I scrubbed at myself with the cold water, but it won’t come off. Part of me doesn’t want it to.
That part terrifies me.
I swore I wouldn’t do this. Fifteen years of keeping everyone at arm’s length, of refusing to let anyone close enough to hurt me. Fifteen years of being the healer who saves lives but never stays, who moves on before attachment can take root.
And now his fingerprints mark my hips. I can still taste him in my mouth. And somewhere in the chaos of last night, between the first kiss and the last, I stopped thinking of him as the orc who chained me.
I started thinking of him as mine.
Gods, I’m an idiot.
“The well still works?”
His voice comes from behind me—low, rough, sliding over my skin in ways that make heat pool in my belly despite everything. I straighten, wipe water from my face, and turn to find him watching me.
He’s armed again, every inch the war captain I first saw on the corpse road. His expression gives nothing away. Grim efficiency, like last night never happened.
But his gaze lingers on my mouth. Drops to the bruises visible above my collar where his teeth marked my shoulder. Darkens with something possessive that makes my pulse jump.
“Barely.” I gesture at the trickle of water still dripping from the cracked stones. “Enough to wash up. Not enough to fill the skins.”
He nods. Crosses to stand beside me, close enough that his arm brushes mine. The contact is casual. Deliberate. A reminder of everything we shared in the darkness.
“We need to move.” He’s scanning the horizon as he speaks, all business. “Waypoint is quite a walk. If Grothak made it there with the others, we should reach them by nightfall.”
“And if he didn’t make it?”
“Then we figure out what’s left.” His hand finds the small of my back—a light touch, guiding, proprietary. “Either way, we’re not staying here.”
I should pull away. Should establish boundaries, remind both of us that last night was a mistake, a moment of weakness that won’t be repeated.
Instead, I lean into his touch. Let his warmth seep into my spine. Feel something loosen in my chest at the simple comfort of contact.
When did I start craving his touch? When did enemy become something so much more complicated?
We walk.
The Bloodscar Plains stretch around us—endless pale grass, scattered bones, the occasional ruin of some long-forgotten structure. The sun climbs higher, burning off the morning chill, and I find myself grateful for the wolf-pelt cloak despite the growing warmth. It smells like him. Like us.
Blorjorn sets a steady pace, his long strides eating up the distance. I match him step for step, refusing to slow down, refusing to be a burden. My legs ache. My whole body aches, actually—muscles used in ways they haven’t been used in years. But it’s a good ache. A reminder.
He keeps finding excuses to touch me.
A hand on my elbow when I stumble over a gopher hole. Fingers brushing my shoulder when he points out a landmark on the horizon. His palm against the small of my back as we navigate a rocky stretch of terrain. Each contact is brief, practical, easily explained.
And each one sends sparks racing across my skin.
“You’re doing it again.” The words escape before I can stop them.
He glances at me, one brow raised. “Doing what?”
“Touching me.” I gesture at his hand, currently resting on my hip as we descend a shallow slope. “You’ve found seven different reasons to put your hands on me since we left the farmstead.”
“Eight.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “You missed one.”
“Blorjorn—”
“Do you want me to stop?”
The question hangs between us. His hand is still on my hip, warm through the leather of my trousers, and I should say yes. Should tell him that last night was an aberration, that I’m human and he’s an orc, that I have no intention of becoming some orc captain’s—
What? His woman? His mate? His weakness?
“No.” The word comes out quieter than I intended. “I don’t want you to stop.”
Something shifts in his expression. The grim mask cracks, just for a moment, and underneath I see satisfaction. Possessiveness. Want that mirrors the heat still simmering in my belly.
“Good.” His hand tightens on my hip, pulls me closer. “Because I wasn’t planning to.”
He kisses me.
Right there in the middle of the Bloodscar Plains, with the sun beating down and danger lurking in every direction, he cups my face in his massive hands and kisses me like he has all the time in the world.
It’s different from last night. Slower. Sweeter. His lips move against mine with lazy confidence, like he’s memorizing the shape of my mouth, the way I taste in the morning light. My hands find his chest, flatten against the hard muscle beneath his shirt, and I kiss him back without thinking.
When we finally break apart, I’m breathless. Flushed. Aware of every inch of my body in ways that make walking difficult.
“We should keep moving.” His voice is rougher than before. His hands haven’t left my face.
“Probably.”
Neither of us moves.
His thumb traces my cheekbone. His gaze holds mine, dark and intent, and I see the question there—the uncertainty beneath the confidence. He’s waiting for me to pull away. Waiting for me to come to my senses and remember all the reasons this is wrong.
I rise on my toes and kiss the corner of his mouth. “Later. We can figure out what this is later.”
“Later,” he agrees. But his hand finds mine as we start walking again, fingers threading between my own, and he doesn’t let go.
Waypoint is a slaughter.
We smell it before we see it—the copper reek of blood, the char of burned flesh, the particular stench of death left to rot in the sun. Blorjorn’s hand tightens on mine, then releases. His axes find his hands without conscious thought.
“Stay behind me.” His voice has gone flat. Cold.
We crest the ridge and look down into what was supposed to be a sanctuary.
Bodies. Orc bodies, scattered across a narrow valley where a stream once ran clean. The water is red now, choked with corpses. Tents lie collapsed and burning. Weapons litter the ground—axes and swords and spears, dropped when their owners fell.
Hadrin’s scouts found them. Found them before we could.
“No.” The word tears from Blorjorn’s throat. Raw. Broken.
He’s down the ridge before I can stop him, moving through the carnage with desperate speed, checking faces, turning bodies. Looking for survivors. Looking for—
“Grothak!” His voice echoes off the valley walls. “Vekra! Fenrik!”
I follow him down. My healer’s instincts take over despite the horror—checking pulses, looking for breath, searching for any sign of life among the dead. Most of them are gone. Hours gone, at least. The blood has dried. The flies have come.
But not all.
“Blorjorn!” I drop beside a young orc—Fenrik, I realize, his pale-green skin gray with blood loss, his breathing shallow. “Here! He’s alive!”
Blorjorn reaches us in seconds. His hands are gentle as he turns Fenrik’s face toward the light, checking his wounds with the practiced eye of someone who’s seen too many battles.
“Sword wound.” I’m already digging through my pack for bandages. “Deep, but it missed the organs. He needs stitches, pressure, rest—”
“Captain.” Fenrik’s eyes flutter open. His voice is a thread. “They came... before dawn. Too many. We tried—”
“Don’t talk.” Blorjorn’s voice is rough. “Save your strength.”
“Grothak... Vekra...” Fenrik’s hand lifts weakly, pointing toward the far end of the valley. “They made it. Took the survivors west. Told me to wait... to warn you...”
His eyes roll back. His body goes limp. For a terrible moment, I think we’ve lost him—but his chest still rises, his pulse still beats. He’s unconscious, not dead.
“He’ll live.” I press bandages against the worst of the wounds, my hands steady despite the churning in my stomach. “If we can get him somewhere clean, somewhere I can work—”
“Over here!” A voice from across the valley—hoarse, familiar. Grothak, emerging from behind a collapsed tent, his gray-green skin splattered with blood that might be his, might be someone else’s. Behind him, more figures stir. Survivors, hidden among the dead.
Blorjorn’s shoulders sag with relief. For one moment, the mask drops entirely, and I see the fear he’s been hiding—fear of losing everyone again, fear of being the only one left.
Then he straightens. Becomes the captain again.
“Report.” He strides toward Grothak, all business. “How many survived? What’s our situation?”
I stay with Fenrik. Tend to his wounds while the others gather. The war band that emerges from the wreckage is less than half of what it was—maybe twenty orcs, most of them wounded, all of them exhausted. They’ve been fighting, running, dying for days.
And when they look at me, I see something different in their faces.
Orcs can smell everything.
I knew this, in an abstract way. I’ve treated enough orc wounded to know their senses are sharper than human—better hearing, better sight in darkness, better sense of smell. What I didn’t fully understand is what that means when you’ve spent the night wrapped around their captain.
They know. All of them. I see it in the way their nostrils flare when I pass, the way their gazes flick between me and Blorjorn, the way some of them smirk and others frown. His scent is on me. My scent is on him. There’s no hiding what happened.