I send another message before I can overthink it.This is going to sound silly, but if anything happens to me or Keric, there’s a cat carrier in the bedroom closet. Dinah will be inside. Please make sure someone checks on her.
Not silly at all,Drew replies. I’ll tell Whelan. That kitten is family now.
Garlen already asked about her. He said Keric sends him pictures. Apparently, your orc is officially a cat dad.
I send back three different pictures of Dinah sleeping on Keric’s green, muscular chest.
They reply with laughing and heart emojis.
By early afternoonI’m going stir crazy.
I set up at the kitchen table with the fancy new laptop that Keric bought me, sleek and fast and way nicer than anything I’d ever bought for myself. I’d protested, that it was much more than I needed. “Yours was old,” he’d shrugged, like that explained everything.
The new phone he gave me is also the best of the best, already programmed with emergency contacts for the whole commune. I run my thumb along the phone’s edge, thinking about what Ellie told me during one of our calls. She’d said that orcs don’t really understand money the way humans do. Long ago, they lived in caves for centuries, mining gold, accumulating wealth theynever needed to spend. After the great earthquake they moved to the communes and brought their riches with them. She said they all have trunks of gold and jewels, just sitting there.
I shake my head.Amazing.
“Money is no object to them,” Ellie had said, laughing. “Garlen bought me a wedding ring that probably cost more than my car, and he didn’t even blink. They just... have it. And they’re generous with it, especially with their brides.”
I think about scraping by on a teacher’s salary. I’d made more money when I got the job at the university, but being on the run these last few years greatly depleted my savings account to the point where I was living paycheck to paycheck, worried about paying rent and utilities. And now I’m sitting in a cabin with top-of-the-line electronics, a fully stocked kitchen, security systems that probably cost more than my annual salary, and an orc who looks at me like I’m the one doinghima favor by being here.
Life is so strange sometimes.
I open my lesson plans and try to focus on work to take my mind away from the problems at hand. College-level Victorian literature curriculum for my long-term sub back at Black Oak. This is a good mind game to get lost in. Elizabeth Gaskell’sNorth and South, the industrial revolution, class dynamics and forbidden attraction. I’ve taught this unit a dozen times. I could do it in my sleep.
But I keep looking out the window at the increased patrols. Orcs I recognize pass by at regular intervals, their expressions serious, their movements purposeful. Urdan walks past and catches my eye through the glass. He nods once, a silent acknowledgment, then continues on.
I think about Jonas Webb.
He was going to testify. He had evidence too—different from mine, but damning in its own way. And now he’s dead becauseof it. Because someone decided his life was worth less than their secrets.
What if someone here gets hurt?
What if Keric?—
I can’t finish the thought because it’s too terrible to fully…
Dinah chooses this moment to jump onto the keyboard, typing a line of gibberish into my lesson plan:jjjjjjjjjjkkkkkkkk;;;;;;;
I laugh, startled out of my spiral. “Really? That’s your contribution to Victorian literature?”
She meows and butts her head against my chin.
I scoop my baby kitty up and bury my face in her soft fur, letting the rumble of her purr calm my racing heart. Dinah’s grown some in the last week. Her paws are bigger and so is her white belly. This is how she was able to jump onto a chair and then on the table.
“Thank you,” I whisper against her fur. “Thank you for being here with me and keeping me sane.”
She purrs in response.
Just after fiveo’clock Keric opens the front door and fills the frame with two black horns and a powerful physique.
He looks exhausted. Dark circles under his eyes, tension carved into the set of his shoulders, his jaw tight. But the moment he sees me, something in his expression softens. “You’re still here.” Not surprised, just... relieved, like part of him expects to come home to an empty cabin every time.
“Still here,” I confirm. I hand him a cup of coffee—black, no sugar, the way he likes it.
He takes it, his fingers brushing mine. “Thank you.”
I point at the fridge. “I can heat something up for us to eat. Your mom brought dinner. Enough for six people.”
