CHAPTER 21 — END GAME #5
Roarg whirls and grabs me, fear lighting his eyes as he cups my face gently between his calloused palms. “A man, if he loved his woman, would tell her to forget the promise she made to him if she must. So I ask you now: do you believe you will truly be happy if you return to your realm? Because, kwa?ara, as much as it pains me to think of losing you, I would have you happy.” He strokes a green finger down my face.
I stare at him, seriously affected by the look of despair in his eyes.
Then I drop my gaze to Opkug, resting over his heart. And then I turn my gaze to Ulda, Namak?ga with Snabazkur, and Joktepitha with Crushosh.
These women have become my friends. They’ve taken the spots of best friends—closer, somehow, because you don’t share the man you love with your friends.
This is... Sisterwives.
I reach up and cover Roarg’s hand, still cupping my cheek. “You make me happy. All of you make me happy. Right here. And… I’m not going to leave.”
Roarg slumps in relief and hauls me against him for a rib-squeezing, bone-crushing hug.
“Plus, I mean, some guy made me make him a promise once that he took very seriously. I woke up super married,” I joke into his shoulder, and he squeezes me tighter.
“We have a Vegas game with that premise,” the gamemaster shares from behind me.
Roarg’s entire frame tenses at the reminder that she’s still here. Like the poor girl is a threat.
I try to cut the tension, petting his back. “You know, back home, everybody would be screaming at me that I’ve been brainwashed. Because I’m saying I want to stay with all of you.”
Ulda snorts unsteadily off to the side of us. “As if it were that easy. If you scrub a woman’s brain you turn her head to mush.”
Wide-eyed, I pull back from Roarg to blink at her. “How extremely unsettling that you know that.”
Joktepitha smiles at me. “I may have taught her.”
“Okaaaay,” I say, and scratch at my nose. “You’re joking, right?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the gamemaster is holding up a wary hand. “So you’re all pleased with this arrangement?”
“YES,” Roarg bites out, shooting her a killing look.
Namak?ga pats Snabazkur on his diapered little butt, then arranges his blanket around him, lips pursed around her tusks as she stares at the gamemaster with a weird look. Joktepitha nudges her arm and starts whispering in her pointy green ear.
The gamemaster is breathing a sigh of relief.
“Oh, thank God!” she exclaims. “Last week, your friend Esther was given the choice to end her game and go home, but her Dragonkind husband started burning down the stand—with the game employee still inside—before she could answer. The former gamemaster got out unharmed, but we don’t get paid enough to deal with this kind of crap, and they quit right then and there,” she finishes on an exhale.
“Your friend was forced to marry a Dragonkind?” Namak?ga exclaims in horror. Joktepitha, still beside her, is grimacing.
“No, no—Esther was mated to a Dire Wolf,” I contend, gaze bouncing worriedly to Roarg’s. “We met him!” I look back to the Zuldana employee. “Was Esther able to escape the dragon guy?”
“Well, the rules of the game are that if you make it to the end and you say you want to go home, you get to go home...” she says warily, but Roarg is growling so loud as he tugs me close, she’s almost drowned out.
She talks over him anyway, finishing, “She never said she wanted to go home, but technically, she wasn’t allowed to say it. ”
“What mean you by that?” Ulda asks sternly, clearly worried. She motions for Roarg to give her Opkug, and he does.
“Yeah!” I chime in. “What happened?”
At the agitation in my voice, Roarg hauls me up, holding me in his arms, clutching me to him. And my kitten leaves my shoulder, claws digging into his tunic as she scales him to stand on the considerable width of his beautiful shoulder.
“Her Elf prince started kissing the hell out of her,” the Zuldana worker answers.
I frown. “Her Elf prince? I thought you said she was fending off a Dragonkind.”
“Oh yeah. She’s queen to the Dragonkind king. But she’s also with the Dire Wolf you mentioned… and the Elf prince.” The woman smiles. “She looked happy.”
Something in me relaxes.
Roarg exclaims, “The hellfire she was! With a Dragonkind?” He sweeps his stare over all of us, then locks eyes with Joktepitha. “Burn this place.”
“Roarg!” I start—
But he swoops down and covers my mouth with his, kissing the hell out of me.
“Wave to me if you want to get out of here!” the gamemaster calls frantically.
Roarg catches my wrists, trapping me even if I wanted to wave and escape him.
But I really don’t. And my heart fills to bursting as he keeps his lips glued to mine so I can’t say a word, not to go, and not even to stay. He’s not giving me a choice—because he wants to keep me.
I’d throw my arms around his neck, but he’s so not letting my wrists go for me to do that.
“Okay, I’m out of here! Good luck with your new life!” the gamemaster calls, the note of panic in her voice rising as the ominous sound of Orcs planning to fuck shit up is heard.
Namak?ga warns her, “Get out or get burned up with this place.” And beyond Roarg’s tusk, blurry from its proximity, I see that Joktepitha is near one of the treasure chests where she’s apparently lucked into finding matches.
She holds them up like a prize and smiles.
Arms extended away from her son strapped to her front, she rasps a stick against the strip on the box. With a woosh, the match lights on fire.
Egads, Orcs don’t mess around!
I’d tell them they don’t have to resort to arson and property damage, but I’m unable to speak as my husband carries me out, my sisterwives at our backs, and I’m carried home and thoroughly fucked into the sheets of Roarg’s bed, where we eventually fall asleep, most of a litter of kittens curled around us.