Chapter 15 #2
The sound carried, and I heard the crowd react to it—a warmth moving through all those people like they’d just understood something, even though it was impossible for them to see the thrill in Lila’s blue eyes.
She went into a spin. I did my version—the two-foot pivot, graceless by her standards, but controlled—and she came out of her spin still grinning.
Then she dropped into a hockey stance, low and ready, that aggressive crouch I’d spent twenty years not thinking about because it was just how you skated, and I felt myself grin back because she’d noticed that too.
I matched her.
We were both in the hockey stance, circling each other slowly, and I heard laughter from the crowd—warm, surprised laughter, the kind that meant they hadn’t expected to feel this—and then without either of us deciding it, we switched.
She rose into her figure skating posture, arms lifting, back lengthening, every inch the champion. I drove into my hockey stride, low and fast around the perimeter, and we were doing what the choreography had always been asking us to do: being exactly ourselves, at the same time, on the same ice.
And the audience had gone quiet again, as if four hundred people were holding their breaths.
Well, we’d give them their money’s worth.
Together.
I came out of the circuit and slowed to meet her again at center ice.
She held out her hand.
And really? What could I do except take it?
There we were, center ice, being watched by hundreds of people who couldn’t know that I loved this female…and at the same time, I was helpless to keep from touching her. Helpless to keep my smile from my face, my pride—in her, in us—from my eyes.
So yeah, I enveloped her hand in mine, and the warmth of it hit me the same way it had on that afternoon of our first practice—like a live wire, like something clicking into place—except now I knew what it meant.
We fell into the side-by-side position without discussing it.
Inside hands joined, outside arms free. The position I’d held so many times in practice that my body knew exactly how far to stand from her, exactly how to match her stride.
My edges to her edges, my push to her glide, and we moved down the ice together with the ease of two people who had learned each other.
The crowd made a sound I hadn’t heard from them yet. Not surprise, not laughter. Something quieter.
I thought they might understand now. Understand this world we were trying to build together, because they wouldn’t completely accept me in her world or her in mine.
We came around the far end, and I felt her hand shift—a small signal, the one she’d taught me—and I moved behind her, hands finding her waist, and we transitioned without breaking stride.
Her back against my chest for just a moment, both of us still moving, and I bent my head to say quietly into her hair, “You came.”
“Of course I came,” she murmured back, and stepped away from me into open ice, turning to face me with her hands raised.
The press lift.
I skated toward her, caught her at the waist as she placed her hands on my shoulders, and lifted her in one smooth motion.
No hesitation, no adjustment. She rose above me, feet pointed, back straight, arms lifting to extend like wings, and I held her there as I continued to move—completely steady, completely certain—and thought about the first time I’d done this in her living room, and she’d said you didn’t even flex.
I didn’t have to flex.
She wasn’t something to strain against. She was something to hold.
The crowd erupted. I heard my teammates hollering up in the stands—Torrk producing a sound I was fairly certain made a few of those hoity-toity matrons shriek—and I lowered her slowly, letting her feet find the ice.
We were already moving again before the applause settled.
The platter lift was the one that had taken the longest to trust—hers, not mine. She had to fall forward into my hands, face-down, her weight fully committed before I caught her. There was no halfway with the platter. You either trusted or you didn’t.
She trusted.
Her weight settled across my palms, and I raised her, horizontal, and turned slowly in the spot the way I’d done that first evening in her apartment when I said I wanted to see what it looked like.
She’d told me to hold still then. Now she laughed—breathless, airborne—and stretched her arms out wide, and I turned another slow revolution because I still wanted to see what it looked like, and it looked like her.
I set her down, and we moved into another rotation.
She was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, the way she always was after the lifts, her honey-blonde curls flying behind her because she’d come straight from the gala instead of taking the time to change into her costume or put her hair up.
But…I liked it. I mean, I always liked her hair down, but now? With me in my jersey and her in her cocktail dress, we look like we’d both stepped out of our worlds into this one.
I don’t know what had changed, and why my Mate’s eyes sparked with exultation, but my heart swelled in answer. I had to believe my prayers would be answered, and we’d find a way to be together.
We skated two more laps, side by side, hands joined, matched stride for matched stride. No performance now. No choreography. Just the truth of two people who had spent weeks learning to occupy the same ice, and had discovered they didn’t want to leave it.
At the far end of the rink, she slowed.
She turned to face me.
In her eyes I saw the question—not doubt, just asking—and I gave her the only answer I had.
“Do you trust me, Princess?”
The corner of her mouth curved.
She skated backward, away from me, putting the full length of the ice between us. The crowd went so quiet I could hear the refrigeration hum beneath the ice. Joshua had stopped moving entirely. My teammates had gone still in their seats.
She was at the far end now.
She turned.
And I saw it in her eyes, the complete and absolute trust.
The love.
How had I doubted? How had I hesitated in telling her that she was mine, and I was hers?
I saw Lila take a deep breath and realized I was matching it. Then she dug in her skate and threw herself forward.
Full commit, just like that axe.
I’d promised her I would be there for her, but I couldn’t wait for her to come to me. I shot forward too, moving before I realized it, and when I hit center ice, I stopped so suddenly, shaved ice flew up between us.
I shifted my weight, turned, and reached for her.
Just as my princess threw herself into my arms, a smile on her face showing the entire fucking world how much she trusted me.
I couldn’t contain my Kteer’s response; with a wordless roar, I lifted her over my head, my hands cupping her waist, distributing her weight as I skated backwards, one foot crossing over the other, displaying my Mate proudly.
The audience seemed to understand. Vaguely I realized they were on their feet, applauding and cheering, and my chest swelled.
For this moment, at least, they’d accepted us.
Together.
As the music reached its familiar crescendo, I made my way back to center ice and slowed, shifting my hold on Lila and allowing her to slide down my body.
This was the point where she would step away from me, do one last spin—one of those twirls that seemed to go on for an impossibly long time—while I watched, and then we’d both bow.
But instead, on the way down, she wrapped her arms around my neck, halting my movement. I froze, my hands still holding her by her waist, and remembered this was the position we’d been in that night she’d kissed me for the first time.
“Dkaar,” I whispered.
Lila’s eyes were shining, and not with suppressed tears, like yesterday. “I love you, Kardok. So much. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.
And it was like the last piece of a puzzle slid into place with a comfortable click in my chest.
I exhaled, blocking out the sounds of the crowd to focus on the breath of the female in my arms.
“Lila, you’re my Mate. I’m yours.” Her eyes had widened, and I was beyond happy to know she understood. “You remember what I told you about orcs finding their Mates?”
“Forever,” she breathed, and I knew she did.
“I guessed it a while ago,” I confessed in a murmur, then winced. “Well, a few of the guys helped me to see it. I wasn’t sure how you felt, so I guess…”
Her fingers curled in the hair at the back of my head. “Mate.”
My Kteer howled in glee to hear the word on her lips. “Mate,” I agreed.
Then Lila Fairbanks, darling of high society, tugged my lips down to hers. There, in center ice, wearing a cocktail dress, she kissed me for everyone to see.
Marking me. Claiming me.
I didn’t know how we were going to make this work, but I smiled against her lips, my heart finally at peace.