Page 25 of Orc's Forbidden Claim
He turns his head, a smile curling his lips and my breath catches in my chest. I can’t tear my eyes away. He is so handsome. The green of his skin, the tusks, some tiny voice in my head wonders if I must not be some kind of perv, but it’s easy to shut that down. He is my one. Suddenly his eyes narrow, his lips turn from a smile to a frown, and he turns past me.
“Sek!” Khiara yells.
I turn too. My heart leaps into my throat. The Urr’ki, the one who was going to kick Wren, is rising and there is something in his hand. Khiara spins me away with one hand then I’m struck from behind. The floor is racing closer. I slam to the ground as the world explodes.
17
KHIARA
My head throbs painfully. I can’t form a coherent thought. Something is on me. The weight makes it hard to breathe.
Saylor. Where is she?
“Dragoste!” I yell or try to but instead of sound coming out, my mouth fills with dust and gravel.
My heart beats faster. I wiggle and shift until my hands are beneath my chest. I can’t feel my legs, but I will them to shift and hear the sounds of movement. I push against the ground, trying to rise. Nothing happens. The weight is too much.
No. No. My dragoste. Nothing will stop me.
I try again. Pushing. Muscles straining to the point of failure. I growl, pushing past the failure by force of will alone. My heart beats so hard it feels as if it too will explode but I do not care. I must get free. Must save Saylor. Nothing else matters.
I reach the limit of what I can do. My body collapses to the ground against my will. In my head I scream but no soundsemerge. I take a moment, as brief as possible, waiting until the muscles stop quivering then I try again.
I hear gravel and dirt sliding. Shifting. The weight eases, lighter… lighter… I break free.
“Saylor!” I roar as I burst from beneath the piles of dirt, gravel, and small boulders.
I take in the situation with one fast look. The Urr’ki detonated a bomb of some kind, and it collapsed the tunnel. Mounds of rock and dirt surround me. To my left one of them shifts. Saylor was on my right. Indecision freezes me in place. The shifting mound is probably Sek’su, but he is secondary to her.
He can help find her.
That clears my decision, and I climb over the rocks and work to unbury him. It takes a few minutes. Precious minutes that I should be spending saving her. Doubts and regrets assault my head, but instead of listening to them, I work faster.
I find his tail first. It twitches letting me know he’s alive. A moment later he bursts up from the rubble, hunched over, growling as he does. Jealousy stabs through my heart as he turns towards me, and I see that he has his female protected in his arms. My hands ball into fists and I have to stop myself from punching him in his stupid lizard face.
He protected her. I didn’t, but he did.,
Recognizing the source of my jealousy doesn’t ease it, it replaces it with regret and self-abnegation. But there is no time for that either. I scramble up and over the mounds of fallen rocks back to where I broke free. She was at my side, close. I tried to push her behind me to protect her. She has to be in this area.
She has to be okay. She is alive. I’d feel it if she wasn’t. I didn’t lose her. Not like this.
Pressure builds behind my eyes and my sinuses burn. It must be the dust filling my nose and mouth. I scan the piles and mounds, scrambling up and over trying to find a clue as to where she is.
“Saylor!” I call. “Say! Dragoste!”
I circle where I broke free. The collapse is uneven. Large chunks of the stone create structures almost like pillars around which the loose dirt and gravel have piled. If she is under one of those pillars… no. No. No. No.
I continue the search, and it feels like time is racing. Minutes pass as if they are only seconds. Every instant is one closer to her not being able to survive. Her dying alone. Without me. And it is all my fault. I should have known. Why didn’t I check that the downed Urr’ki was dead? Lust and desire. I saw her and all I could think of was touching her. Feeling her. Stupid. That bad decision could cost me everything.
There is no light source, which isn’t helping either. I, like all Urr’ki, have excellent dark vision, but that doesn’t mean it is not hard to make out details. Important details that might tell me where she is.
“Khiara?” Sek’su calls.
“Here,” I growl.
Then I see it. Boots, sticking out from under a large pile of gravel. They are not her boots, but an Urr’ki’s. I scramble over, slipping and sliding on the loose debris. Kharta had run forward. Towards us.
Towards her?
