The simple words came easily enough. But then he moved on to the sounds that made the Orcish language what it was. The deep, guttural clicks and rolling, back-of-the-throat growls that seemed to originate from the very core of their being. I couldn't do it. Every time I tried, the sound came out as a weak, pathetic cough or a strangled croak.
“No,” he said, his patience wearing thin after my tenth failed attempt to pronounce the word for ‘stronghold’—Ghor-Kahl. “The sound does not come from your throat. It comes from here.” He thumped a fist against his own broad chest, just below the ribs. “From your center. It must have power.”
“My center isn't built for that,” I snapped in frustration, rubbing my raw throat. "I can't make that sound."
He let out a sigh, a gust of wind that ruffled my hair. He got up and walked around the hearth. I trackedhim, my hand moving to the dagger hilt. He was a predator, and you never let a predator get behind you.
He stopped directly behind my stool. I could feel the heat radiating from his body, a palpable, living furnace at my back. He was so close I could smell the leather of his tunic and that unique, clean scent of stone after a storm. I felt small, utterly enveloped by his presence.
“Hold still,” he commanded, his voice a low vibration just above my head.
Before I could react, his hand landed on my back.
It wasn't a violent touch. It wasn't even a possessive one. His palm, warm and impossibly broad, settled on my back, a little to the side, right over my diaphragm. The heat of it soaked through the tunic, a shocking, intimate brand against my skin.
My entire body flinched. A full-body, electric jolt, as if lightning had struck the spot his hand occupied. I gasped and jumped forward on the stool, my muscles coiling tight as bowstrings.
He froze instantly.
His hand, which had been resting on me, went rigid, the fingers splayed and tense. I could feel the muscles in his arm lock up. The air, which had beencharged, became utterly volatile. I could hear him stop breathing. He was a statue of stone and leather behind me, a predator who had accidentally triggered a snare.
In the brittle silence, I finally understood. Touch, for them, was not casual. A man did not just lay hands on a woman he had claimed. It was a signal. A step in the dance of mating. An act of possession that went far beyond his public decree. And he had just done it, likely without thinking.
He leaned in, his head dropping next to mine, so close I could feel the warmth of his skin without it touching mine. His breath, when he finally spoke, was a hot puff of air against the shell of my ear, sending a shiver chasing its way down my spine.
“Breathe,”he whispered, the single word a guttural Orcish command.“From here.”His fingers flexed, a bare, ghost of a pressure against my back.“Push the air up. Ghor. Kahl.”
His breath brushed my neck. His hand was on my back. The world narrowed to these two points of contact, this bubble of impossible, terrifying intimacy. We were predator and prey, teacher and student, man and woman, all at once, and the lines were blurring so fast I felt dizzy.
I think I made some kind of sound. I don't know what it was.
It didn't matter. We both pulled away at the same time, a frantic, awkward retreat. I scooted forward on my stool; he took two large steps back, putting the fire between us again. The air was thick with the unspoken, with the charge of a near-miss. He stared at me, his eyes dark and wide, his jaw tight. I stared back, my heart beating a frantic, wild rhythm against my ribs.
We just looked at each other for a long, charged minute. It was him who broke the silence, his voice rougher than before. I saw a strange look cross his face, an expression of dawning, profound absurdity.
“You,” he said, the word in the common tongue feeling heavy. “Zil. That is what I have been calling you.” He shook his head, looking almost embarrassed. “I claimed you. I brought you into my home. You wear my tunic and sleep in my bed.” He finally met my eyes, and I saw a flicker of something like shame. “And I do not know your name.”
The question hung in the air between us. It was such a simple thing, yet it felt like a monumental concession. He wasn't asking for the name of his captive. He was asking formyname.
My name was my shield. It was the last piece of the armor I had built for myself. It was my brother's name, a ghost I had carried for five years. To give it to him felt like a surrender of a different kind.
“Kael,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
He tasted the name, his lips forming the sound silently before speaking it aloud. “Kael.” It sounded different in his deep voice. Solid. Real. Not a lie, but a fact. The way he said it, it was my name, not my brother’s. He nodded slowly, as if committing it to memory. “Kael.”
The moment passed, and the tension rushed back in, now sharpened by this new, fragile intimacy. He seemed to shake himself, desperate to get back to the structured safety of the lesson.
“We will try something simpler,” he said, avoiding my eyes. He taught me the phrase for understanding.“Aza’khor.”It meant, roughly, ‘I take it in.’
“There is another word,” he explained, his gaze fixed on the fire.“Aza’khorvul.”He pronounced it slowly, carefully. “The‘vul’suffix changes the meaning. It brings it from the mind to the body. It means… bed. Or furs.Aza’khoris ‘I understand.’Aza’khorvulis… an invitation.” He finally risked a glance at me. “Do you see the difference?”
I nodded, my throat dry. A one-letter difference between comprehension and consummation. It seemed like a dangerous language to be a novice in.
He seemed to decide the best way to move past the tension was to drill me. “Now. I am Korvak of the Blood-Axe Clan.Aza’khor?”
I took a deep breath, focusing, desperate to get it right. My name was Kael, and I was not a complete idiot. I tried to make the sound come from my center, the way he’d tried to show me. The memory of his hand on my back was a phantom warmth.
“Aza'khorvul,” I said, the word coming out with more confidence than I felt.
