CHAPTER SEVEN（Untitled）Naomi

CHAPTER SEVEN

Naomi

“Bride?” The word bursts from my lips in a startled laugh as disbelief fills me. “Is that a joke? I’m supposed to marry a complete stranger?”

“No.” Wranth frowns down at me.

“Oh, good.” Relief rushes through me, and I let out a big breath. As bizarre as this day’s already been, that would be one big bucket of weird too far.

“You do not need to marry me. The goddess already did that. She bound us the moment she summoned me and gathered you from your world. We’re already married.”

My mouth falls open, but nothing comes out. Here I am, the English major, the one-book-a-day reader, the bookshop owner who lives and breathes words every second of every day. I’ve read hundreds of romance books with arranged marriages exploring all the ways the couples find love. None of it’s helping.

I got nothing.

Another shriek from above makes me flinch. Those weird-ass evil birds are still after us. The wounds on the underside of my forearms throb with remembered pain.

Wranth’s huge hands wrap around my waist, and he lifts me up onto the saddle as if I’m weightless.

Oh! My heart trips and tingles zip through me. I’ve never been picked up and moved around by a guy like this before—it’s freaking amazing.

Then he’s up in the saddle behind me, his massive body wrapping around me, thighs on the outside of mine, arms reaching forward. He touches me everywhere, making every single one of my “only one horse” fantasies come true.

Zephyr leaps forward, still one moment, running the next, with no buildup in between.

With a gasp, I sway back into Wranth, and one of his hands loosens its hold on the unicorn’s mane to splay across my stomach. He steadies me effortlessly, everything he does exuding quiet, solid strength.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m not much of a rider.” I took a basic riding course as a teen, having fallen in love with the idea through books. Turned out, my riding fantasies were better left between the pages.

“You’re doing fine,” he says, his voice so deep I feel it vibrate in his chest where my back presses to it. “You’re already finding the gait.”

Startled, I realize he’s right. My feet might not be in the stirrups—I couldn’t reach them even if he weren’t using them—but my legs aren’t hanging limply. My knees grip Zephyr’s sides just enough to have some control over my body. But the real reason I’m holding my seat so well is the way Wranth supports me.

Or I should say, the way my husband supports me.

Oh, hell no. That’s some messed up shit right there. A goddess married me to him before we even met? It doesn’t matter how sexy I find it in books, this is real life. My life. I didn’t make the decision to finally start living only to be tied down in a new way.

I grab my crystal, squeeze my eyes shut, and chant under my breath, home, home, home.

Pain flames through my body, burning along my nerves. I can’t control the mew of discomfort that escapes me.

“What is it?” Wranth’s hand tightens on my stomach. “What’s wrong?”

“I tried to go home,” I say. “But it hurts.”

“You’ve overused your magic.” His voice is an upset growl.

Upset because I’m in pain or upset because I admitted I tried to leave?

How should I know? He’s a stranger . I don’t know anything about him but his name and that he’s an orc. Whatever that is. Guess I should have read more regular fantasy.

We circle a wide rhododendron with frilly pink flowers set among the waxy, dark-green leaves. The pines around us gleam with vibrant health, their color a bit more real than the trees of Ferndale Forest. It’s the same for the ferns, which spread wide fronds of the richest green, topped by curlicues of fiddleheads. Even if my hometown is famous for the ferns that surround it, they don’t look as good as this—they don’t feel like magic.

The unicorn picks up speed, the big cat loping at our side—or as at our side as he can get in heavy forest. Shadow’s shape flickers through the trees, there one second and gone the next. I could swear he actually disappears, but that’s impossible, right? When he catches me staring, he offers me a bright-white grin full of teeth that seems to linger in the air as the rest of him slides into transparency.

“Did he just disappear?” I point to a clump of ferns, the fiddleheads still bobbing from Shadow’s passage, but decidedly empty of cat.

“Humph!” Zephyr snorts. “Cat sith tricks are the only thing that lets him keep up with me.”

“Now, now, unicorn,” Shadow purrs, voice filled with amusement, “it’s not as if it’s that hard. I’m barely using the shadow roads.” His smile reappears, hanging in midair right by our side.

I gasp and point again. “Okay, I did not imagine that!”

The rest of him comes into view, a swirl of smoke-gray hair flowing and moving and making it hard to tell exactly when he’s all “there.”

“It’s his magic,” Wranth says. “The cat sith walk the shadow roads that cut through all of Alarria, letting them travel from place to place faster.”

“Letting them cheat, you mean,” the unicorn grumps.

“Hah! Don’t lie, unicorn. You’d do it if you could,” Shadow says. “And it’s not just Alarria. If the doors of Faerie were open, I could walk all the realms.” He grins over at me, his green eyes sparkling. “Which is why you, my dear, are so very, very fascinating.”

“Tell me about these doors,” I say. “I need to understand what happened, what I did.”

“The doors of Faerie used to connect all its various realms and even your world,” Wranth says.

“Stories say we used to go and toy with the mundane humans.” Shadow grins. “It was great sport.”

“Unicorns never wasted our time with such pranks!” Zephyr tosses her head, making the spiraling grooves of her horn sparkle silver in a ray of sunlight.

“Because you’re too boring.”

“Because we had better things to do!”

“Focus! None of this is helping Naomi.” Wranth snaps, his fingers curling into my stomach, making me aware of him all over again.

Zephyr leaps over a fallen log, and I could swear she puts a bit more kick in the jump than necessary.

Wranth pulls me close, so strong he’s able to lift me from the saddle with only one arm so that I don’t slam down when the unicorn’s hooves hit the ground.

My thighs clench. Having him move me around like I weigh nothing is doing things to me. I love my big body. I know my curves are beautiful. But I’ve never been with a man strong enough to make me feel like this .

“The doors did more than allow travel back and forth,” he growls, his voice so deep it sets my nerves singing. “They also let magic flow freely between the realms. It’s why we could understand each other in your world—the translation magic worked again.”

“It’s why I could shift to elfin form,” Shadow says. “Though I didn’t get a chance to try for my dual form.”

“Dual?” I ask.

“It’s halfway between feline and elf and has the best of both. My glorious fur and hands.”

“Humph,” Zephyr grunts. “You can keep all your other forms. I’m perfect exactly as I am.”

The pines fall away as we enter a stand of birch trees, but these aren’t like the birch trees of home. They might have the silvery bark that peels like curls of ribbon, but the leaves! Oh, the leaves are the most glorious blue of a summer sky. I no longer question their existence, accepting them as another piece of the magic of Faerie. I laugh and fling up a hand to let them tickle over my fingers.

I wanted to leave home, to have an adventure. Even if all of this is a bit more out of my control than I’d like, I can’t help but be fascinated by this place.

Wranth’s large body shifts behind me, letting me move as I like while keeping me secure.

Yeah, there’s one other thing that’s pretty damn fascinating about this place—the orc who holds me close, as if I’m already the most precious thing in his world.