Inheritance

Month 2- Week 1

Kron – Horde Territory – The Magic Forest

After Dara left, Kron found himself trembling with impatience. He waited. Every fiber of his being vibrating with anticipation for her to be far enough away that she wouldn’t hear him leave his hiding spot. But it was hard. So very hard.

Seconds ticked by with the ponderous slowness of a glacier. When he finally decided that it was safe to reveal himself, it was still probably too soon. Yet Kron had pushed his self-control to its limits for the day.

The orc exploded from his cover. Branches and bits of moss flinging outward from the epicenter of the flailing Orc. He rushed across the meadow, tripping as the knee-high growth near the tree line tangled around his calves.

“Blast it.” He cursed the spirit that lived here for slowing him and tore at the flowers and grass. “She’s gone already. I’m not going after her.” It took a few moments before the foliage responded, but it unwrapped itself from around his limbs and allowed him to continue.

When he reached the beach at the water’s edge, the orc scrambled over the rocks to his cloak. At last, Kron would get to see what his human had left for him. It was a note.

He clutched the pinned scrap of paper, fabric, and all to his chest. This was a gift. From his pet human. That alone made it precious to Kron.

It didn’t matter that it was only a little note and that Dara didn’t know that she had been writing it to an Orc. What mattered was that it was for him, from her. It was the first interaction he’d had in a while where Kron was not viewed as a dangerous berserker. He was just a person.

Then the scent her warm body had imparted on his cloak wafted up to his nose. The orc’s eye widened with a cock-hardening shock. Knees shaking weakly, Kron nearly fainted from the sweet feminine bouquet that emanated from the fur in his hands.

Was this what she’d been smelling? Wondering even as he rubbed the fabric on his face, diving into the residual warmth there. He bundled the material in his arms and hugged it for a short while grumbling to himself.

“You miss the closeness of a female. That’s all.”

Even as he tried to rationalize it in his head, Kron relished the closeness of Dara’s aroma. Unpinning the note, he wrapped his cloak around himself. As much as he might deny it, Kron knew that something terrible had happened to his head.

This wasn’t normal. Five months ago, he would have been barbaric. Maybe he would have taken her back to the hive. Maybe he would have tried to have Dara, which his kind was always believed to do. Though it would have been unlikely considering how smitten he’d been with his Kerim.

But that was before. That was before he knew that Dara was as alone and unwanted as he was. Kron had even tried not to watch her out of chivalry. What kind of Orc was he now?

He didn’t want any female of the Horde now. Not even Kerim, who had been like a Goddess come to life to him. Was it so odd that Kron no longer had any interest in the females who had shunned him?

Sitting in the soft sunlight of late winter-early spring, the orc contemplated this change. A chill breeze blew against him and he knew it was warmer than it should be. Warmed by the magic spirit of this land.

Orc females were cold and hard, like the mountains they lived in. Their leathery skin might feel warm to the touch, but they were cold in their hearts. There was no genuine softness anywhere in their bodies. Muscle through and through. Even Orc teats were fairly tough to protect against the sharp milk teeth of hatchlings.

It was always a struggle in the Hive. Orc against Orc competing for resources, for position, for honor, for glory, for females. Minds like that were not really capable of empathy because of the culture they were raised in. And their voices. Orcs were generally loud. They took up space and sound as if they owned all around them.

Was it so wrong that Kron just wanted to listen to the gentle voice of this human whose scent saturated his senses now? The tantalizing essence wafting from his cloak and washing over the orc male in peaceful lulling waves. Dara’s laughter still echoed in his memories. It danced liltingly, twirling through his mind and burrowing its way into recesses even he had never dared look.