CHAPTER 11 — Veikr #3
His big hand moves up to warmly cup my shoulder. His gaze is intent and serious. “Don’t worry more on it, Stephanie. You didn’t know, and now you do. It’s as simple as that.”
I wince, worried. “Will you have to pay a trespass?”
His gaze flicks to a super silent Namak?ga and Joktepitha, who are both frozen off to the side of us like field mice who’ve just had a hawk’s shadow pass in front of them.
“Don’t fret about any trespass owed,” he says finally.
“When a woman quails at finances, it casts doubt on her husband’s ability to provide for her.
This I will not tolerate. I take care of all my wives’ needs, no matter what they may be.
Take that as my final word on the matter.
” He squeezes my shoulder and aims me back to my seat. “Finish dinner preparations, kwa?ara.”
My unspeakable wealth. After learning that I’m going to cost him a fine, it relieves something in me to hear him call me this. Without my permission, my insides try to liquify.
It has a lot to do with the eye contact he’s giving me as he steers me to my chair. It might hold its own sort of magic, because I feel a million times better than I did before he got here.
Ulda enters the kitchen. She doesn’t look mad anymore, but that’s not the improvement you’d think. She’s looking... wan. Her skin has turned almost lime yellow.
She crosses the kitchen, collects Opkug for nursing, and starts fussing with pots and pans.
Roarg is right behind her and orders quietly, “Bromnia of my heart, why don’t you sit?”
Bromnia, I learned from Namak?ga at lunch, is the term for a man’s first wife.
It means blessed wish. Because every man’s heart wishes for a good wife, she’d said.
And Roarg’s question only sounds like a request if maybe you weren’t in this kitchen, seeing the firm look in his eye and the stern set of his jaw.
She doesn’t fight him. With a grimace, Ulda puts a hand to her lower back, drifts to the table, and takes her usual spot next to Roarg’s chair, resettling Opkug at her breast.
Roarg drops a kiss on Namak?ga’s hair and hugs Joktepitha as he passes her, then he joins Ulda, dropping into his seat and taking her hand.
With his other hand, he reaches all the way to me and brushes his thumb over the apple of my cheek.
Having him touch my face so intimately makes something catch in my throat.
Something must show in my expression, because Roarg shakes his head.
“No more of that. It was what we call here an ‘honest mistake.’ We haven’t done well explaining how our world works to you.
I’ll finish my talk with Grimslaughter. He’s an understanding Orc.
There’s nothing to worry over.” He reaches for me again to sweep tendrils of escaped hair behind my ear, very softly—but I bump his touch away, instinctively cupping my hand over my ear to protect it, still feeling soreness.
With the bristling deadliness of a razorback, Roarg turns to Ulda. “You will cease hitting Stephanie.”
My eyes go wide, and so do Ulda’s.
Arms supporting their nursing daughter, belly full of their next brat, Ulda looks from me, the new sidepiece, to him. “But she—”
Roarg gives her a look so dark and searing, I want to shrink down in my chair.
I watch Ulda clench her teeth. She draws her lips back from her tusks, revealing her tongue pinched between her incisors. When she glances at me without warning, and sees me watching her, she sends me a scathing glare.
“Don’t,” Roarg warns.
Ulda’s eyes shoot to him, startled. “You mean to tell me I can’t even send the brat-wife a glare?”
An explosive BANG silences the whole house. Roarg has planted his fist on the table—so hard, the meat of his hand has left an impression in the wood.
His surname checks out.
He stares Ulda down. “I will NOT have fighting under this roof. Never again will I tolerate it,” he warns, gaze locking on each one of us in turn. He hasn’t shouted the words, but his vehement growl carries exactly as much impact.
No one moves. No one breathes. Even the babies have been startled silent.
Opkug is done eating, so Ulda resets the front of her dress and puts all of her focus into the task of burping their baby girl, her face stony.
Gee, dinner tonight is going to be the most uncomfortable suppertime ever.
Without a word, Roarg stands and gives Opkug to me.
Ulda doesn’t protest, just gives me a look I can’t interpret as she hands over the burping rag.
It isn’t an angry look, and I’m relieved because I’ve never burped a baby, not even a human one, and I need help.
Both she and Roarg give me a stiffly delivered but thorough crash course, and then Roarg hauls Ulda off to her bedroom.
It seems to be his pattern to fool around with his wives when he comes home. And Ulda did mention way earlier today that she might be interested in some alone time with him. But she looked so tired just now. Will Roarg really—
I shut that line of thought down. I’m having sex with a man I have to share, and so far I’m dealing with that really well. If I have to think about the sex he has with his other women though, that might cross a line I’m simply not prepared to leap over.
Opkug makes a gurgle noise that has me lowering her from my shoulder, my eyes moving to her cute little pistachio-colored face.
“What was that, kiddo?” I ask. “And man, you look like your dad. Did you know that?”
She smiles at me, happy to have my attention.
Namak?ga lowers herself to a seat beside me.
“Want me to learn the art of mutton carving?” I ask her.
“Not today. Joktepitha and I will finish. But if you’d like to be a dear, you could collect the eggs for me. I didn’t get to that chore this morning.”
I stand. “No problem. Be right back.”
Famous. Last. Words.