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For the moon’s sake. Am I always this dense? Why can I not grasp her meaning?
Time to get to the heart of the matter.
“You can tell me more details later, but I must know, what is the exact purpose of this ceremony?” I grunted.
Her slim eyebrows drew together, her face mirroring the confusion I felt.
“It’s… It’s to mark our…”
She paused. Impatience gnawing at me, I sought to fill in the blank she’d left. But she decided to finish her sentence at the exact moment I tried to cut in, sending our two words clattering against each other in the air.
“Employment?”
“Marriage!”
Chapter 4
Sigwulf
Surely, I am not so attracted to my new employee that it is causing me to hallucinate…
That would be very bad news indeed. My mind was the one thing I could always count on. With a memory like a vault and a keen eye for detail from my father’s Dragon Caste side, and a constantly-churning energy combined with near-endless stamina from my mother’s vigorous Orcborne ancestry, my mind had always served me well.
Until now, apparently.
“Forgive me,” I grunted, squeezing my eyes shut and pinching the bridge of my nose with my forefinger and thumb. “But I thought you just said…”
“Marriage.”
My eyes flew open. There was no mistaking the word this time.
Wynthea squeezed the crumpled ball of her cloak tightly.
“And did you just say, ‘employment’?”
“I did,” I answered gravely.
I will have the head of whichever Matcher made this mistake.
“Here,” I said, reaching into the back pocket of my britches. I pulled out a piece of parchment, neatly folded. It was the original contract I’d signed with the Matchers Guild. I’d wanted to have it on hand in case Wynthea had had any questions upon her arrival.
I unfolded the paper carefully, not wanting to damage any part of it. Especially now that the terms of the contract seemed so woefully called into question.
Wynthea hurried forward on little feet, a soft tap-tap-tap against the stone of the hall. She came to a stop beside me, peering down at the parchment in my hands. I inhaled sharply, then tensed. Beneath the grime of her travels was an intoxicatingly sweet scent that wound through my body with astonishing force. My heart rammed.
My cock twitched.
I will just breathe through my mouth around her.
“Here, look,” I said roughly, being careful not to breathe in any more of her luscious scent. “Right there.”
I jabbed a finger at the only place on the document where I’d had to write anything, besides signing my own name at the end. In Orcborne script, I’d requested an assistant from the Matchers Guild.
“But that says, ‘bride,’” came Wynthea’s soft reply.
“What? No. It says briðo. It’s the Orcborne word for assistant.”
I glared down at the document for a long, tensely silent moment. Irritation mounted inside me when I realized that she was absolutely right. I hadn’t etched out the letters clearly enough, and there was a smudgy line below the “o” that made it look more like an “e”.
