Chapter 8
KRUK
Icalculate the trajectory required to throw Derek into the sun.
The physics are unfavorable. Too much atmospheric resistance, insufficient initial velocity. I would need a catapult. I scan the perimeter for materials. The decorative wishing well shows promise.
"Kruk." Colletta's voice cuts through my tactical assessment. "Don't kill the Best Man. Please."
I pause three feet from Derek, who has gone very still, his pupils dilated in the universal mammalian fear response. Good. He should be afraid.
"He mocked you," I state. Simple fact. Undeniable.
"I know." She hops closer, still trapped in that ridiculous burlap sack, her face flushed and her hair coming loose from whatever pins attempted to restrain it this morning.
"I know he did. But Monica will literally never forgive me if you murder him before the ceremony, and honestly, the guilt would probably ruin the sex we're definitely not having later. "
The last part comes out in a rush, quiet enough that only I hear it with my superior Orcish hearing. My attention sharpens on her face. Her cheeks go redder.
Derek makes a small sound. I glance back at him. He looks like he wants to disappear into the ground.
"Please," Colletta adds, softer now, her hand reaching out to touch my arm. The contact burns through the thin fabric of this torture device they call a suit. "For me?"
I consider this.
The mission parameters are clear: protect Colletta, intimidate the ex-partner, maintain cover as her romantic attachment. Killing Derek would satisfy two of those objectives but complicate the third. Additionally, Colletta has explicitly requested his survival.
I adjust my strategy accordingly, recalculating the optimal path forward given this new constraint.
"Fine," I say, though the word tastes bitter on my tongue, like ash and disappointment mixed together. The predator in me wants to finish what we started, to see this through to its natural conclusion. But Colletta has issued a direct order, and I am hers to command. "He lives."
Derek's exhale is audible even from here, a shaky, trembling sound of relief that makes him seem even smaller than he already is. His shoulders sag as the tension drains from his body.
I turn back to Colletta, dismissing him entirely. "But we won the rest of the games."
Her mouth quirks at the corner. "All of them?"
"All of them," I confirm. "Overwhelming victory. Total domination. No one will remember his insult because they will only remember our supremacy."
She blinks up at me, and something shifts in her expression, becomes soft and startled. "That's... actually sweet? In a terrifying, hyper-competitive way?"
I do not understand why she seems surprised. Of course I will crush her enemies beneath my heel. This is basic partnership protocol.
"We start now," I announce, then scoop her up, sack and all, and carry her back to the starting line.
She yelps, grabbing onto my shoulders. "Kruk! I can walk!"
"No. You cannot. You fall." I place her next to our abandoned sacks. "I will carry you."
"That's not how the sack race works!"
"It is now."
Monica appears, looking frazzled, her coordinator headset askew. "Okay, everyone! Let's just... let's just move on to the next activity!" Her voice has a slightly manic edge. She avoids looking directly at me. "Lunch is served on the terrace, and then we have the trivia contest!"
Colletta groans quietly. "Oh god, the trivia."
The trivia contest is a mistake for everyone involved except me.
We sit at small tables scattered across the terrace, the afternoon sun beating down on expensive white linens and sweating water glasses. Each couple receives a whiteboard and marker. The questions are projected onto a screen: How well do you know your partner?
I know nothing factual about Colletta. I have known her for approximately thirty-six hours. This should be a catastrophic failure.
Except I have been watching her. I watch everything. It is what kept me alive in the fighting pits, what kept my squad intact during border raids. Observation. Pattern recognition. Threat assessment.
And Colletta is not a threat, but she is the mission, which means I have catalogued every detail.
"Question one," the coordinator announces cheerfully, a young human woman with clipboard and desperation in her smile. "What is your partner's favorite food?"
Colletta chews her lip, marker hovering. She glances at me, panicked.
I write without hesitation: Coffee ice cream. She ate it last night when she thought I was asleep.
She stares at my board, her mouth falling open. "How did you..."
"You hid the container under the bathroom sink," I say quietly. "Poor tactical choice. The condensation left marks on the cabinet floor."
"You're insane," she whispers, but she's smiling, and she writes the same answer on her own board.
We reveal our answers together, turning the boards simultaneously.
Match.
Across the table, Derek and his girlfriend flip their boards with considerably less coordination.
They do not match. She has guessed sushi, the word written in careful, hopeful letters.
He has scrawled pizza in thick black marker, not even looking at her as he does it.
The girlfriend's smile falters, just slightly, a crack in the porcelain.
Question two arrives like incoming fire: "What is your partner's biggest fear?"
Colletta freezes completely. The marker goes still in her hand, hovering above the whiteboard like a bird that forgot how to land. Her breathing changes—shorter, shallower. I recognize the pattern. Stress response. Fight or flight triggering, though there is no physical threat present.
But I already know the answer.
I write without hesitation, the marker squeaking slightly against the laminated surface: Being laughed at.
It is obvious. Every time Derek mocked her, every stumble, every moment of public awkwardness, her shoulders became rigid, her breathing changed. She fears humiliation more than physical harm. It is why she hired me. Not for protection from violence, but from shame.
She stares at my response for a long moment. Her own board stays blank. Then, slowly, she writes: Being alone.
We reveal.
Do not match, but something passes between us, heavy and uncomfortable and true. Her eyes glisten. I want to eliminate whatever made her feel that way. I want to find it and break it into pieces.
"Close enough!" the coordinator says, too bright, and marks us down for a point anyway.
We won the trivia contest by a landslide. Derek stops trying halfway through. His girlfriend looks miserable.
Colletta leans into my side, her shoulder pressing against my ribs, warm and solid and real. "You're weirdly good at this," she murmurs.
"I am good at everything," I reply, which is not arrogance, merely fact.
She laughs, the sound bubbling helpless and genuine.
The final event is a final round of freaking egg toss.
We line up across from each other on the lawn, couples facing each other in two rows that stretch across the immaculate grass.
Monica stands to the side with a basket of eggs, her expression hovering somewhere between hopeful and resigned.
The rules are simple: throw the egg to your partner, take a step back, repeat until only one couple remains unbroken.
I do not understand the purpose of this exercise. It seems designed to create mess and failure. But Colletta is smiling, so I participate.
They hand me an egg.
It is small. Fragile. The shell feels like paper under my fingers, threatening to collapse under the slightest pressure. I have crushed larger bones without thinking.
"Gently!" Colletta calls from across the distance between us, about six feet at the start. "Kruk, you have to throw it gently!"
I adjust my grip, calculating force and trajectory and the structural integrity of the target. Then I toss it in a smooth arc.
Colletta catches it, cradling it against her palms. She grins, triumphant.
We step back.
She throws it to me. Her form is terrible, all wrist and no follow-through, and the egg wobbles through the air like a drunken bird. I move slightly left and catch it one-handed.
"Show-off," she calls, but she's still grinning.
Another step back.
Around us, eggs begin to break. Couples shriek and laugh as yolk splatters across expensive resort-casual attire. Derek's girlfriend throws too hard. The egg explodes against his chest. He curses.
Colletta giggles, that nervous laugh that makes her sound slightly unhinged. I like it.
We step back again. The distance grows. Ten feet. Twelve. Fifteen.
"Okay," Colletta yells, her voice carrying across the lawn. "This time, throw it a little harder! I can't catch it if it doesn't reach me!"
I throw it a little harder.
The egg leaves my hand and cuts through the air with a faint whistle, moving fast enough that I realize immediately I have miscalculated. Too much force. The trajectory is perfect, but the velocity—
It breaks the sound barrier with a sharp crack.
Colletta's eyes go wide. She lunges forward, arms outstretched, diving for the catch like her life depends on it.
She snags it out of the air six inches from the ground, rolling with the momentum, cradling the egg against her stomach as she tumbles across the grass.
The entire terrace goes silent.
She sits up slowly, grass in her hair, her dress stained green at the hip. Opens her hands.
The egg is intact.
"YEAH!" she screams, holding it up like a trophy, her face split in a wild, beautiful grin. "DID YOU SEE THAT? I CAUGHT IT!"
I am already moving toward her, something fierce and possessive surging hot beneath my ribs. She caught it. She caught my throw. No one has ever—
I reach her and haul her to her feet, egg and all, and she's laughing breathlessly, her hands sticky with grass and dirt and victory.
"We win," I tell her, and my voice comes out rougher than intended.
"We win," she agrees, still laughing. Before I can stop myself, I cup the back of her head and press my forehead to hers, breathing in the scent of her, grass and wine and something sweet I cannot name.
Scattered applause erupts around us. Monica is crying happy tears, or maybe stressed tears. It is difficult to distinguish.
They present us with the trophy: a cheap plastic cup spray-painted gold with Couples Competition Champions written in glitter glue.
I take it with both hands like it is sacred.
"You're ridiculous," Colletta whispers, staring at my face like she is trying to solve an equation.
"It is our trophy," I say. "We earned it through superior teamwork and tactical execution."
"It cost three dollars at a craft store."
"Irrelevant."
She shakes her head, but she's smiling, soft and wondering, and I want to carry her back to the Lover's Loft and show her exactly how we should celebrate this victory.
We retreat to the gazebo at the property, far from the crowd dispersing toward lunch. It overlooks the vineyard, rows of grapevines stretching toward distant hills, the air sweet with late-summer fruit and warm earth.
Colletta sits on the bench, legs stretched out in front of her, the ridiculous trophy balanced on her knees. I stand watch at the entrance, scanning the perimeter out of habit.
"You can sit down, you know," she says quietly, her voice carrying a note of gentle exasperation. "I'm pretty sure there are no snipers hiding in the vineyard. No enemy combatants waiting to ambush us."
I sweep my gaze across the rows of grapevines one more time, checking sightlines and potential concealment positions. "You cannot be certain of that. Complacency leads to mission failure."
"Kruk." She pats the bench beside her, the spray-painted trophy wobbling precariously on her knees. "Sit. Please. That's an order from your client."
I sit, the bench creaking under my weight. She shifts closer, her thigh pressing against mine, and I feel the heat of her through two layers of fabric.
"Thank you," she says after a moment. "For not killing Derek."
"You are welcome. It was difficult."
She laughs, soft and low. Then her fingers trace along my jaw, tentative, her touch light enough that I could pull away if I wanted.
I do not want to pull away. Every instinct trained into me says to maintain distance, to avoid entanglement, to keep mission-critical focus. But her touch is gentle, exploratory, and it grounds me in this moment in a way nothing else has in years.
"Can I ask you something?" Her voice has gone quiet, careful, the way people speak when they're afraid of breaking something fragile.
I meet her gaze, studying the uncertainty in her eyes, the way she's biting the corner of her lower lip. "Yes," I tell her, keeping my voice level and steady despite the sudden tension coiling. "You may ask."
"Your scars." Her fingertip finds the raised line that cuts across my cheekbone, the one that disappears into my hairline. "How did you get them?"
I go still.
No one asks about the scars. People see them, yes. They stare, they flinch, they make assumptions. But they do not ask.
"Which one?" My voice comes out flat, guarded.
"Any of them. All of them." She tilts her head, her eyes searching my face. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I'm just... curious. About you."
I should deflect. Maintain operational security. My exile details are irrelevant to mission parameters.
But her hand is still on my face, soft and warm, and she is looking at me like I am more than a weapon, more than a hired intimidation asset.
"This one," I say slowly, covering her hand with mine, pressing her palm flat against the scar, "I got in the fighting pits. Before I left."
"Left?" she echoes, her brow furrowing slightly, confusion flickering across her features. "You mean... you weren't always in the human territories?"
"No." The word comes out rough, scraping against the back of my throat like gravel. I hadn't meant to say even this much, hadn't planned on opening this particular wound tonight. "I was exiled. Banished from the clans for—"
A scream cuts through the air, slicing through the moment like a blade. High, sharp, panicked. The sound of it sets every instinct I have howling to life.
I am on my feet instantly, every muscle coiled, threat assessment flooding my system. Colletta jumps up beside me, the trophy clattering to the gazebo floor.
The scream comes again, and this time I recognize the voice.
Monica.
We run.