Epilogue
Three months later…
Khorrek’s boots echoed against the polished stone as he climbed the north tower stairs. Three months had passed since Lasseran’s death, and he still half expected to encounter the High King’s sneering face around every corner.
Instead, he passed a young human maid carrying fresh linens, who smiled and bobbed a quick curtsy before continuing on her way. A far cry from the terrified, head-down scurry that had been standard under Lasseran’s rule.
Things had changed—and were still changing.
He reached the tower’s third level and paused outside a heavy oak door. Light spilled from the gap beneath it, and he could hear the familiar scratch of pen on parchment.
Of course she’s still working.
The sun had set over an hour ago. Most of the Keep’s residents had retreated to their quarters or the great hall for the evening meal, but his mate—his queen—would be hunched over her desk, utterly absorbed in whatever document or historical text had captured her attention.
He pushed the door open without knocking.
The room beyond was exactly what he’d expected when Thea had claimed it as her office.
Small by noble standards, tucked into the corner of the tower with windows on two walls.
But the proximity to the library—literally the next room over, connected by an internal door—had made it irresistible to her.
Shelves lined every available wall space, already overflowing with books and scrolls.
A massive desk dominated the center of the room, its surface buried under neat stacks of parchment, ledgers, and what looked like correspondence.
The fireplace crackled with a cheerful blaze, and several oil lamps provided additional light.
Thea was bent over a particularly dense-looking document, her auburn hair escaping its practical braid to curl around her face.
She didn’t look up at his entrance, scratching notes in the margin of whatever she was reading while her other hand pushed her glasses up her nose in the absent gesture he found so endearing.
“If you’re here to tell me it’s late and I should eat, Mira already tried that an hour ago,” she said without lifting her gaze. “I promised I’d stop after I finished reviewing the grain distribution reports.”
He closed the door and leaned against it, studying her.
Three months.
Three months of watching her transform from a terrified scholar thrust into an impossible situation to… this. A woman who commanded respect not through fear or intimidation, but through genuine competence and care.
The transition hadn’t gone smoothly.
Lasseran’s favored nobles—the ones who’d grown rich and powerful through corruption and cruelty—had been furious at their loss of influence.
Lord Cassian had tried to organize opposition in the first week, arguing loudly at the city council meetings that a foreign woman with no noble blood had no right to rule Velmora.
He’d fallen silent when Vorlag had calmly presented documented evidence of his embezzlement from the city’s coffers—evidence that Thea had discovered buried in the archives during one of her marathon research sessions.
Most of the others had learned quickly. Thea might be new to rulership, but she was brilliant, thorough, and had an entire library of historical records at her disposal. She knew what they’d done and what they were capable of.
And she had Vorlag, the Veilborn, and a cadre of fiercely loyal orc warriors to support her.
Still, some had been slower learners than others.
“Are you going to stand there watching me work, or did you actually need something?” she asked, a smile tugging at her lips despite her focused expression.
“Can’t I simply enjoy the view?”
That made her look up, grey eyes bright with amusement behind her glasses.
“The view of me buried in bureaucratic paperwork? Your tastes have gotten very strange, my love.”
He crossed the room in three long strides, circling behind her desk. The grain reports—she hadn’t been lying about what she was working on—were covered in her precise handwriting. Notes about distribution patterns, population density, storage capacity.
She’d started with food.
The first reform she’d implemented as queen was ensuring that no one in Kel’Vara went hungry. Not the street children in the lower city or the elderly who could no longer work. Not the refugees who’d fled Lasseran’s purges in the countryside.
The nobles had protested, claiming such generosity would empty the treasury.
Thea had calmly demonstrated that Lasseran’s vanity projects—the elaborate palace renovations, the excessive military parades, the obscenely expensive magical experiments—had cost triple what feeding the city’s poor would require.
She’d redirected those funds without hesitation and the people loved her for it. Genuinely, fiercely loved her in a way they’d never loved Lasseran—which had made certain powerful individuals very nervous.
“You’ll ruin your eyes reading by lamplight,” he said, reaching down to pluck the pen from her fingers.
“Hey—”
He set the pen aside and swiveled her chair away from the desk, then bent and lifted her smoothly into his arms.
“Khorrek!” She laughed, the sound warming something deep in his chest. “I was working!”
“You’re always working.” He settled into her chair—which creaked ominously under his weight but held—and arranged her comfortably on his lap. “Rest.”
She made a token protest, but he felt her relax against him almost immediately, her head finding the curve of his shoulder with practiced ease.
Mine, his Beast purred with satisfaction. Safe. Here.
The mate bond thrummed between them, content and settled in a way that still sometimes surprised him. Three months, and he’d never once regretted his choice to walk away from everything he’d known.
Not when she smiled at him over breakfast or when she fell asleep against him while reading in bed. Especially not when she stood before the city council and calmly dismantled some noble’s self-serving argument with historical precedent and pure logic.
“How was the patrol?” she asked, her fingers absently tracing patterns on his chest.
“Quiet. Grask spotted some suspicious activity near the eastern warehouses, but it turned out to be smugglers. The normal kind, not political insurgents.”
She hummed an acknowledgement. She knew about the threats they’d been monitoring, like some of the senior officers in Lasseran’s army who’d been less than pleased about the new regime. The ones who remembered the old ways fondly and whispered about returning to “proper order.”
He and his orc warriors had eliminated a few of those threats—quick, efficient removals before they could organize anything dangerous.
He hadn’t told her the specifics, preferring not to burden her with the bloody details of how those particular problems were being solved, but he suspected she knew anyway.
She was too intelligent not to notice patterns, too thorough not to question why certain troublesome individuals had suddenly…
relocated to distant posts or vanished entirely.
She’d never asked directly—just looked at him with those clear grey eyes and quietly thanked him for keeping the city safe. She would rule with wisdom and compassion, but he would handle the shadows.
“There’s news from the Old Kingdom,” she said, shifting slightly to look up at him. “A diplomatic mission is coming. They should arrive within the week.”
The Old Kingdom. The smallest and oldest of the Five Kingdoms, it had been firmly in Lasseran’s control for years. The previous king had been little more than a puppet dancing on the High King’s strings.
“King Aldric died a month ago,” she added. “Apparently the old king was in Lasseran’s clutches, but his son Torven has taken the throne. He’s young, reportedly ambitious, and very interested in establishing friendly relations with Velmora’s new leadership.”
“Friendly relations,” he repeated flatly. “Or reconnaissance to assess our vulnerabilities?”
She smiled, but it wasn’t a naive expression.
“Probably both, which is why I’m telling you now. Security for the visit will be your domain.”
He relaxed fractionally. She wasn’t being careless, or assuming good intentions just because someone used diplomatic language.
Good.
“I’ll assign teams to cover all approaches to the Keep,” he said, already mentally cataloging which of his orcs were best suited for close protection versus perimeter security. “Declar can handle the advance security assessment, and I’ll want Grask coordinating with the city guard—”
“Khorrek.”
He stopped mid-planning, looking down at her.
“I trust you,” she said simply. “Handle it however you think best. I just wanted you to know it was happening.”
The casual confidence in her voice—the absolute faith that he would protect her, protect the city, and protect everything they’d built together—made his chest tight.
He pulled her closer, burying his face in her hair and breathing in her sweetness.
“What else?” he asked, because he could feel tension in her shoulders. She was working up to something.
“There’s other news. Good news, actually.” She twisted in his lap to face him more fully, and he saw genuine happiness in her expression. “Jessamin wrote. She’s pregnant.”
Joy surged through him, fierce and immediate.
“Ulric—”
“Is apparently unbearable,” she said with a laugh. “According to Jessamin, he’s treating her like she’s made of glass and driving her completely insane. But she sounded happy. Really happy.”
A child. The orc king will have an heir.
It should have been impossible. The curse had stolen the orcs’ fertility for generations, leaving them slowly dying out, but she had restored the balance and broken the curse that Lasseran’s ancestors had corrupted.