The werewolf sucked in a horrified breath. “Willa, you need to run, girl. Run. I don’t care if the dude has a magic dick, this is gonna mess with your head. It’s toxic shit. You’ll think it’s just sex, but your heart is going to get involved, and even if his does as well, he’s never going to go against a lifetime of indoctrination. Go out with the nice date again, and forget about the sexy asshole.”
I stared down at my treadmill controls, miserable at the thought. She was right. This thing with Eng wasn’t going to go anywhere but straight to heartbreak hell. For once in my life I needed to have some sense of self-preservation and make a good choice.
The sex was good, but it needed to stop. And I needed to text Dean to thank him for a nice time last night.
Then I needed to confirm a second date. With Dean. The nice guy with a future, instead of the asshole without one.
I left the gym and texted Dean from my car. Then, because the thought of a future with Dean left me a little depressed, I jumped on Tinder and looked at my matches.
Swipe left. Left. Left. Oh, definitely left. Sweet Baby Jesus,left.
Then I paused, frozen in place and staring at a very familiar guy with green skin, tusks, and an arrogant scowl. Eng. Eng was on Tinder.
Did the idiot seriously think he was going to find his princess on Tinder of all places? Then again, I was here looking for my Mr. Right, so I could hardly be throwing stones from my very own glass house. I read his profile and rolled my eyes. Jerk. It was all about his title and wealth, and absolutely zero about himpersonally. And he had the stupidity to include his laundry list of meek-submissive-fertile traits he wanted in a woman.
I had no idea what came over me, but I found myself creating a second profile, grabbing some random pictures off the internet before writing a fanciful story about being a princess from the Kingdom of Canton-onia. I was looking for a titled individual to marry, and I added in as much cringe-worthy trad-wife stuff as I could think of. Then I pulled up Eng’s profile and swiped right, messaging him that as the eighth child in line for the throne, it was my duty to find a suitable match, marry, and have children. I added that my parents would be happy for an alliance between our two kingdoms and that I looked forward to an indication that he intended to present his interest in a potential match.
All those Regency Romance books I’d read as a teen were useful. I poured it on thick, then hit send before driving home. It was a horrible thing to do, catfishing Eng like this and by the time I parked in front of my apartment building, I felt a little guilty. I should delete the profile. I should forget I’d ever met the sexy orc and never see him again. I should stick to dating guys like Dean.
In the end I didn’t delete the princess profile. But I did promise myself that this thing with Eng was over.
8
ENG
Ishould have been relieved to wake up alone in bed, but I wasn’t.
When I’d brought the shrew to my hovel I’d not given a thought to how awkward the morning might be or how I’d evict her once she was inside. No, I’d been thinking with my hand-axe, and all night the only logistics I concerned myself with were what part of her naked body I would taste and touch next. I didn’t want her to stay. I just wanted to satiate this crazy desire we had for each other, then go our separate ways.
When I awoke to the empty spot beside me, I realized I wasnotsatiated, and that the hollow lonely feeling her warm body had chased away last night was back.
I showered, put on clean clothes, went to a place a block away for hot food, half expecting the shrew to slide onto the stool beside me. She didn’t. And my chest ached as the seat beside me remained empty.
After breakfast, I walked over to the arena to see what the other orcs were up to. Ugwyll and Ozar were on the ice. Bwat was nowhere to be found. The locker room was empty, but I did find a couple of the orcs in the weight room throwing metal disksback and forth. Boredom was becoming my default, and I didn’t like it one bit. There were plenty of times back home when I’d been bored, but I’d always managed to sneak out of the castle to find something interesting to occupy my time. It shouldn’t be any different here.
Abandoning the arena, I walked through the city, finding myself once more at the port where the impressively huge ships eased their way through a channel so the giant crane could remove the truck-sized boxes. A wizened human male with a purple knit hat and a tan coat sat on a nearby bench watching the ships, so I joined him. We sat in silence for a while, then he nodded at one of the container ships.
“I used to work at the port here.” His voice was full of gravel and he spoke with a thick accent. “Back in the old country when I was young, I worked at Gdansk. So did my father and my father’s father. I helped unload these same kind of containers from ships that came on the Baltic Sea. You do what you know, what your family has always done. So when my wife and I came here, I got a job at this port. Same job, different place.”
You do what you know, what your family has always done.
“We have a port like this in our kingdom, in our capital city,” I told the man. “Our ships are not so large, and we do not use these containers, but we are a major commerce area for goods. Merchants wait for the arrival of their product, then haul it in wagons across the continent to shops and stores.”
The old man nodded. “Do you help load and unload the ships? You look strong enough to do the work of three longshoremen, my friend.”
I shook my head. “No. I used to dream of such a job, or that I might travel with the merchants or sail with the ships as they took our goods to other lands. But I was born to a family that governs. And that will be my job when my father is ready to pass it along.”
He chuckled. “I had dreams of being a man in a suit with a briefcase full of important papers, walking with confidence into the Chancellery to argue in favor of laws that made our country a better place. But in the end I did what the men in my family always have done. Children seem to want what they cannot have.”
I rubbed my chest, feeling as if the old man had just shot me with an arrow. “Grown males and females want what they cannot have as well.”
The man nodded. “It can be frightening to break generations of tradition. I’d grown up learning about this job. It was baked in my very bones from my first breath. Sometimes it’s safer, easier to do what you know.”
“What you are expected to do,” I agreed. “Step outside our destiny and we face inevitable failure. Some of us are born to sail the seas. Others are born to govern. There is no sense in fighting fate.”
The old man smiled at me. “Butisit fate? And is failuretrulyinevitable if we choose differently?”
“In my experience, yes.” My reply was sharp, bitter with the remembrance of youthful dreams shattered.
