18. Willa
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WILLA
Iwoke up with my face pressed into Traig’s chest, sprawled across his body while he lay on his back, his arms loosely around me.
I’d thrown my leg over his thigh and draped my arm across his chest.
While he wore only a loincloth.
I’d noted it last night, the thin garment secured around his waist, scooping between his legs. It hadn’t hidden much.
I’d read about orc anatomy in one of Laina’s medical texts during a lunch break. The clinical language hadn’t prepared me for the reality of sleeping next to seven feet of warm, barely-clothed orc who was, proportionally speaking, built like every fevered chapter of monster romance I’d ever read.
And now I’d wrapped myself around him in sleep.
His heart beat steadily under my cheek. His chest rose and fell in an even rhythm.
We were tangled together like we’d been sleeping this way for years instead of one night.
I needed to pull away. Create distance before he woke up and realized I’d used him as a body pillow.
Except his fingers flexed on my back. He was already awake.
My pulse shifted into overdrive.
I lifted my head, my curls falling forward to curtain my face.
His midnight eyes were open, watching me. How long had he been lying there? Five minutes? An hour?
“Morning,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.
The sound of it did things to my insides that I couldn’t think about right now.
“Morning.” I should move. Definitely should move. “How long have you been awake?”
“A while.”
“And you just laid there?”
His thumb traced a small circle against my spine. “I didn’t want to disturb you. You looked comfortable.”
Comfortable. That was one word for it.
Every place we touched sent heat racing through my body.
“The scribe,” I said, my voice coming out scratchy.
“Is in the living room.”
“We should get up.”
“I suppose we should.”
His hand stayed on my back. My fingers still lay on his chest. We were breathing the same air, close enough that I could count the darker flecks of green in his skin.
A door opened down the hall. Water ran in the kitchen.
Reality crashed in.
I eased away and sat up, immediately missing his warmth.
Traig rose as well, his hair falling loose around his shoulders. He’d lost the tie sometime in the night. The strands caught the morning light filtering through the window, softening his brawny appearance.
“Bathroom?” I asked.
“You first.”
I slipped out of bed, grabbed clothes from the drawer we’d filled yesterday, and went to the bathroom. The door clicked shut behind me. I leaned against it, my heart leaping around in my chest.
I’d woken up wrapped around Traig like a vine. And he’d been awake. Watching me. Not moving because I looked comfortable.
The water in the kitchen shut off.
I pushed away from the door and turned on the shower, letting the steam fill the space.
By the time I’d finished and dried off, I could hear Traig moving around the cottage. His footsteps in the kitchen. The clink of mugs. The kettle starting to heat.
I dressed quickly, twisting my hair up and pinning it in place.
When I opened the bathroom door, Traig stood in the hallway, waiting.
We did an awkward shuffle-step, him moving one way while I moved the other, both of us trying to get past each other in the narrow space.
Left. Right. Left again. His chest bumped my shoulder. My hip grazed his thigh. We were doing a weird dance that would’ve been funny if my entire body wasn’t on fire from where we’d been tangled together.
His hand caught my hip to steady me.
I looked up.
He looked down.
We were close enough that I could see the exact place where his jaw met his neck.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Not a problem.” He released me and slipped past, the bathroom door closing behind him a moment later.
I made it to the kitchen before my knees remembered how to work properly.
The scribe sat at the table, his ledger open, his pen ready. He was watching me like I was a species he couldn’t quite describe.
“Good morning,” I said, aiming for bright.
“Yes, it is,” he said, making a note.
The shower turned on down the hall.
I moved to the coffeemaker and started measuring grounds.
The scribe’s pen scratched across paper.
Traig emerged twenty minutes later, his hair tied back, the ends still damp. He’d dressed in clean clothes, but his shirt wasn’t buttoned right. The third button had gone through the fourth hole, throwing everything off.
He moved to the stove.
I reached out to him.
“Hold still,” I said.
I unbuttoned his shirt from the bottom up, working quickly. His warm skin grazed my knuckles, and his pulse jumped at the hollow of his throat.
We’d touched before. Hands brushing during meetings. His arm around my waist for the scribe’s benefit. Last night for sure. But this felt intimate. Like I was seeing him in a way nobody else did, rumpled and imperfect and trusting me to fix it.
“You missed one,” I said, rebuttoning correctly.
“Thank you.”
I smoothed the fabric across his chest and stepped back. I’d touched his bare skin under the scribe’s watchful eye, and my hands hadn’t shaken then. Now they were trembling.
When I looked up, his eyes were on my face.
The scribe’s pen moved faster.
Cooking breakfast together felt like breathing. I reached for the coffeepot. Traig was already handing me a mug. He started to fill the kettle again. I had his cup out before he turned around.
“Toast?” I asked.
“Please.”
I dropped bread into the toaster while he cracked eggs in the pan.
The butter sat on the counter. I grabbed it, knowing he’d want it before he asked.
When the toast popped up, I buttered the slices generously and set them on his plate.
He stared at them.
“You remembered I love butter,” he said quietly.
“How could I forget anything about you?”
The scribe was writing so fast his pen barely lifted from the page. This was good, right? I was going to believe it was good.
Scratching came from the front door.
I went to answer, but Traig’s hand shot out, catching me around the waist.
“I’ll get it,” he said. “Watch the eggs?”
“Of course.”
He went to the door and opened it.
Fred exploded into the cottage in a flurry of wings, Amanda riding on his back, our tiny crowned warrior. Her crown flared bright orange the second she saw us. Fred grumbled so loud the walls vibrated with it. He flew straight at me.
I caught him, stumbling back a step.
Fred grumbled against my chest, the vibration rattling through my ribs. Amanda’s crown cycled through orange, yellow, pink, and back to pink in rapid bursts.
“Someone’s happy,” I said.
“They know,” Traig said softly.
The scribe watched how we moved together, Traig steadying me without being asked, and how I reached up to straighten Amanda’s crown, and he was already there, supporting Fred’s weight so I didn’t have to hold it all.
“What do the thornsprig’s light patterns mean?” the scribe asked. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. Whenever I’ve seen them in the forest, their crowns are pale green or brown.”
“Pink means happiness,” Traig said.
“Orange means uncertainty,” I added. “Yellow is—”
“Excitement,” we said together.
Fred grumbled louder. Amanda’s pink crown brightened.
We finished preparing breakfast with Fred floating between us and Amanda’s crown providing running commentary on everything we did.
Toast—yellow.
Coffee—more yellow when I added cream.
The way Traig’s hand lingered on my lower back when he reached past me for the eggs—solid pink that didn’t fade.
Fred grumbled through it all.
We sat at the table and ate, savoring the meal.
“What side of the bed does she prefer?” the scribe asked the second I’d laid my fork down to show I was finished.
Traig’s teacup paused halfway to his mouth.
“The right side,” he said.
“Why?”
His jaw shifted. “I’m not sure. That’s just…where she sleeps.”
“You chose the left?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Silence stretched between the question and any possible answer.
“It’s closer to the door,” Traig said. “If something came through, I’d be between her and it.”
I couldn’t focus on anything but Traig. He’d positioned himself between me and danger without thinking about it. Without being asked.
“What’s the first thing she does every morning?” the scribe asked.
“After getting ready? She makes coffee,” Traig said. “She always drinks two cups.”
“I mean before coffee.”
Traig’s expression went carefully blank. “I don’t—”
“You share a bed,” the scribe said. “You wake together. What does she do first?”
“She—” Traig looked at me, and a touch of vulnerability crossed his face. “I don’t know exactly.”
The scribe’s pen moved across the page.
My stomach dropped. We’d been careful. The coffee, the butter, Fred and Amanda. We’d performed being bonded well enough to almost believe it ourselves. But I could feel it in the way the scribe’s expression didn’t change, in how his pen kept moving long after he should’ve stopped writing.
“What does she write in her notebook?” the scribe asked, not looking up.
Traig swallowed, and it seemed to take a long time to go down.
“That’s her personal journal,” he said.
“But surely you’ve read some of it. You’re bonded.”
“He has,” I said.
Traig’s chin lifted. “She writes about good things. Things that happened during the day that matter to her.”
The scribe frowned at me. “Is this true?”
“Yes.”
His attention returned to Traig. “Can you give an example?”
Traig’s jaw tightened.
“Before we were mated, she wrote, Traig brought me coffee before I arrived,” he said.
His hand found mine under the table.
Those were my exact words. Not a guess.
My words but not the ones I’d written while he watched yesterday.
Which meant he’d…
I looked at the notebook still sitting on the table where I’d left it last night.
My pulse kicked up, but not in panic. In something that felt like vulnerability and exposure and—
He’d read the parts I’d shown him, but now it looked like he’d gone farther. How much had he read?
“Last night,” he said, so quietly only I could hear. “After you fell asleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about what you might’ve written. What you saw that I missed.” His thumb brushed across my knuckles. “I shouldn’t have looked. Not without asking.”
The admission settled between us.
I’d pretty much invited him to read it. I’d used it to show how we could build our story for the scribe. But I’d never said, read the whole thing whenever you want.
And he knew that.
“How much did you read?” I whispered.
“Enough to know you’ve been thinking about me too.” He lifted his voice, speaking to the scribe. “Willa makes amazing cookies. I love them. Have you tried them?”
The scribe frowned. “I don’t know what cookies are.”
As much as I wanted to quiz him further, we needed the distraction.
I rose and grabbed the container full of cookies I’d brought over from my apartment yesterday, setting it on the table between us, opening the lid.
“These are ginger cookies,” I said. “Try one.”
The scribe carefully lifted a cookie from the container and turned it every which way, examining it before lifting it to his nose for a sniff.
“Smells sweet.” He took a bite. His eyes widened as he chewed, and he spoke around the food. “This is wonderful.”
“She makes the best cookies,” Traig said with a hint of a grin.
“I…” The scribe seemed to realize that he’d slipped from his stoic demeanor, because he finished the cookie, brushed crumbs off his robe, and lifted his pen, holding it over the ledger. None of the pleasure that had shown on his face remained.
“What else has she written in her notebook?” he asked Traig.
He could make things up, though the scribe might ask to view my notebook himself to verify it.
“She once wrote, Traig listened when I said the bloombacks were bonded,” Traig said. “He changed his mind. He learned to trust me.”
I’d written those entries to reinforce my belief that there was good in every moment. We just had to find it. I’d written them thinking no one would see them unless I chose to share them.
But I had chosen. Hadn’t I? I’d brought the notebook here and set it on his kitchen table. Told him to write in it. Used it as proof of our bond when nothing else would work.
I’d opened the door. He’d just walked through it further than I’d expected.
The scribe made another note. Longer this time.
Part of me wanted to be angry. To tell him that reading someone’s private thoughts without permission crossed a line we couldn’t uncross. But the part of me that had written his name over and over, that had noticed every small kindness and gentle touch, was relieved he knew.
Pretending was exhausting.
And maybe I’d left the notebook on the table, in plain sight, hoping he’d pick it up. Hoping he’d see what I couldn’t say out loud.
Fred grumbled, softer now. Amanda’s crown shifted to pale orange. Even the creatures knew something had cracked open.
Traig had seen past every defense I’d built. He knew how much space he’d taken up in my chest.
Instead of using that knowledge to hurt me or dismiss me or make me feel foolish, Traig had told the scribe. He’d claimed my words as proof.
“One more question,” the scribe said, setting his pen down. “Show me your mating marks.”
My blood turned to ice.