CHAPTER FOUR（Untitled）Branikk

CHAPTER FOUR

Branikk

The Moon Goddess' summons pulls me ever forward over the coming days as I leave Moon Blade Village far behind, riding my unicorn mount, Aurora. We passed off the edge of the known map a couple of days ago, heading south into the true unknown.

Heavy old-growth forest surrounds us, full of evergreens and the brighter blue birch. Aurora splashes across a burbling creek, sending a flutter of golden larks darting ahead, their songs high and sweet.

The tug in my chest grows ever more insistent as we race between the trees.

"We're getting closer," I say.

Aurora snorts and tosses her head, her long spiraled horn flashing in the sunlight. "You keep saying that."

"It keeps being true." Joy rises in me. I'll meet my bride soon. The moon shone down last night, a brief, bright spotlight somewhere ahead where the goddess appeared and left my sky gift. "We are getting closer."

"Thanks to me, you mean." She leaps over a log, and I grip her sides with my knees and rise up out of the saddle to keep from hitting hard when her hooves thump into the ground.

"All thanks to you," I agree. My unicorn friend has ridden hard for me for days on end, which is only possible because of the self-healing magic all unicorns have. "Think of this as practice for our new adventures."

We'd signed up to be one of the orc-unicorn partnerships to act as super rangers—teams sent out on special quests to unknown parts of Alarria. Right after all the doors of Faerie slammed closed three-hundred years ago, the Moon Goddess brought the orcs here, to this forgotten realm. Over the years, she's plucked more and more different types of fae from various realms of Faerie. But there still so much of this world we don't know yet.

And our enemies have banded together, the soul-sucking sluagh and the kelpies joining our long-standing foe, the ogres, to work against us. They especially want our new sky gifts, the moon bound brides the goddess brings for the orcs. These human women are witches full of magical powers we lack in Alarria.

What power will my bride have? It doesn't matter. Whatever it is will be wonderful, just as she'll be wonderful.

I lean forward, my hands tightening on Aurora's silky mane. She reads my eagerness and takes another bounding leap, clearing a large patch of ferns.

Then a noise cuts through the air, the raucous caws of a sluagh in its bird-flock form. No! The soul stealers have gotten to my bride first.

"Aurora!"

"I hear them," she snaps. "I'm not deaf." But for all her grumpy words, she puts on another burst of speed.

Aurora knows as well as I do how horrible the soul suckers are. She fought beside me a few weeks ago, when a huge mass of sluagh attacked Moon Blade Village. Each peck of their beaks steals a piece of your soul until they take it all, and you become yet another bird in the sluagh's flock, doomed to live under the evil fae's command for eternity.

She slides to a quick stop right at the edge of a clearing, and I leap from her back.

I yank a leather bag out of a saddlebag and say, "Can you check for ogres and kelpies?"

"Of course." She snorts, but takes off at a trot, weaving through the trees that ring the clearing.

I run forward onto the open ground around an unknown standing stone. There's something huge and strange and yellow, but I jerk my eyes away from it because my bride stands only a few yards away.

She's tall—the tallest human I've seen—and built strong, like an orc, with wide shoulders and hips, and ample breasts. Her skin's light, and the hair gathered on top of her head flashes yellow, the color of sunlight. Her features are strong, with a wide mouth and bright-blue eyes.

She's stunning .

And she's being attacked by a sluagh.

I don't have one of the special nets the human witches devised to trap the vile things, but I make do. Unfurling the bag as I go, I hold the opening wide and leap into the clearing, scooping one of the black birds out of the air.

Only a couple of months ago, everyone thought the sluagh undefeatable. You could kill numerous birds of the flock without hurting the fae at the core of it. It turns out the solution is to capture a single bird and not kill it.

The rest of the flock falls silent, hovering over me in a cloud as I tie the bag closed and attach it to my sword belt.

Which is perfect, because now I can focus on my moon bound bride.

She asks me a question in her human language, and even though I know she won't understand me yet, I'm too excited not to point to a small yellow structure like nothing I've ever seen. "What is that? What kind of magic do you have?"

Her answer sounds angry.

Walking slowly toward her, I offer her my most winning smile. "My moon bound bride."

She mutters something, and a pillow pops into existence in her hands.

Delight rushes through me. She can conjure! Orcs lack this type of magic. Ours is more nature based, such as mine, which connects with my wooden arrows to help them fly straight and true.

I step closer, and she lobs the pillow at me, the softest of projectiles, easily batted aside. She throws several more. Is this a human mating ritual? I grin and start dropping them on the ground side by side, making a nice mattress for us. My moon bound must be eager for the marriage bed! How like an orc she is.

In two quick strides, I'm on her, as eager as she is to take our mating to the next level. There are plenty of pillows, so I grasp her wrists to keep her from making more. All of the conjuring doesn't seem to have tired her, even though she's been using a lot of magic.

Her body reacts to my touch, jerking against my hold with surprising strength.

I love that she's so strong.

Under the king's orders, every orc who leaves their village must carry a crystal imbued with the power of the speaking stone. Such magic is the only thing that allows the fae brought from different realms to communicate easily.

I stroke it across her skin where the deep vee of her pink human shirt exposes the tops of her lovely breasts. I want to kiss her there, lick her taste into my mouth, mark her with my tusks.

"There," I say. "You should be able to understand me now."

"What? How?" Her sky-blue eyes widen. Such an unusual color! Thin black lines radiate outward from her pupils, invisible from a distance, but fascinating up close.

"Magic, like you used to make the pillows."

She frowns, the corners of her wide mouth pulling down.

I will give her something happy to think of. Smiling, I look at the pillows she made for us. "I like the gesture, but if you wanted me to take you to bed, my bride, you had only to ask."

"Gesture! Gesture? There was no gesture. I was trying to keep you away."

With pillows? I'm no fool, but if she wants to play for longer, then it will make our eventual mating all the sweeter for the wait.

She pulls against my hold on her, and it's difficult to let her go. A possessive feeling such as I've never known fills my chest. As soon as I can make my hand open, she rubs at her wrists.

"I'm sorry." A spike of concern pinches my chest. I didn't mean to hurt her. I never want to hurt her. Even though she's larger than the other witches, I need to remember she's still human. "Orcs are stronger than humans. I'll be more careful touching you in the future."

"Hey now." She moves away from me, hands raised, alarm widening her eyes. "There's not going to be any touching."

"Of course there will be. There'll be a great deal of touching ." I smile, putting all the promise of a good mating into it, my offer to match her gift of pillows. "You're my moon bound bride."

Her mouth falls open, those blue eyes flashing. "I'm not going to marry you!"

"It's too late to worry about that," I say. A niggle of concern squirms through me. This seems like more than a playful protest. What was it the other orcs said about humans and marriages? That they do things differently? No matter. I'll simply explain, and my bride will understand.

I take her hand and press it to my chest, right over my beating heart. "The Moon Goddess already bound us together for life. I'm your husband."