Page 111 of That’s My Orc, Tusk Off

We sat for a long moment, her weight warm in my lap, my arms wrapped around her. I’d keep the rest of the world away for as long as I could.

She smelled like me now, my scent layered over hers in a way that made every possessive instinct I had sit up and take notice.

“I’m afraid the scribe will tell you that you have to return to the kingdom,” she said. “That your parents already decided and we’re just waiting for them to take you away.”

The words landed like stones in my gut.

“Then we have now,” I said. “However long now is.”

“Is that enough?”

“It has to be, because the alternative is not having this at all. Not having you. And I can’t go back to when you were the woman at the desk who reorganized my filing system. I can’t unknow everything about you.”

She pulled back enough to look at my face, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“I can’t either,” she whispered.

My chest split open, making room for her.

I kissed her forehead. Her temple. The corner of her mouth.

“We don’t go back,” I said. “We go forward for however long we have. We’ve chosen each other and nothing the Council says can change that.”

Heat bloomed on my inner left wrist, impossible to ignore. I pulled back from her, my hand coming up. The skin there glowed, silver light tracing lines I couldn’t quite make out yet.

“Traig?” Willa asked, looking up at me.

I lifted her left arm, finding the same silver glow on her inner wrist.

“What is this?” she asked, tentatively touching the mark.

The lines brightened, becoming clearer. Every orc knew what the symbol meant.

She stared down at her wrist. “Is this⁠—?”

“Mating marks,” I rasped. “The kavresh symbol.”

Her eyes snapped to mine. “The one we told the scribe we didn’t have? But we weren’t trying to make it happen.”

“It doesn’t work that way.” I took her hand and kissed her symbol. “It appears during moments when emotions are strong, proving the bond is real.” I had to stop and breathe. “No one can accuse us of pretending any longer.”

She lifted my hand, studying our marks. “What does kavresh mean?”

“The person whose happiness determines your own.” I stroked her mark. “In the old language, it’s not just about love. It’s about choosing someone’s joy as your responsibility. Their wellbeing as your priority. It means I can’t be happy if you’re not.”

Her eyes filled. “That’s what I wrote in my notebook. That you notice when I need things. That you count my happiness.”

“Because your happiness is mine. Your safety is mine. All of it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

WILLA

The mating mark on my wrist glowed.

A kavresh mark.

“It’ll fade,” Traig said, holding his arm up, twisting it back and forth, studying the symbol. “The glow, I mean. It’ll settle into silver and stay that way forever.”