Since he never planned on leaving Montague like his brothers — another thing he was beginning to realize hemightbe sore about — he’d begun making his own traditional orcish home down the way from his parents’ when he was sixteen. The rooms themselves were their own separate units half-buried in the earth, with stone walls and a thick turf roof. Building somewhat below ground helped keep things regulated during the winter and summer, but it also just feltbetter.Homey. Safe.
He’d spent well over a decade making the perfect home for himself, with a large, fully enclosed nest and attached workshop, but now he couldn’t get out fast enough.
Clark tore through the hallway, took the steps up to the living room two at a time, and burst through the doorway. His heart hammered as he charged towards the coat hook and shoe rack by the steps that led to the front door.
“I’ll be there soon, sugar,” he rasped, shoving his feet into his boots. He laced them tight, then shot up to grab his jacket and hat off of their hooks. He crammed his hat down onto his head as he rushed up the stairs.
Tank, Montague’s surly mechanic, would be by Nelly’s place to tow his truck to his shop the following morning, but that didn’t mean Clark was out of options. The ranch had plenty of vehicles, some in worse shape than others, but just about any of them would make the short trip to Nelly’s house without an issue.
So long as I mind the damn ice this time.
After pulling the door shut behind him, Clark flipped the collar of his jacket up to protect his neck from any flurries, pulled his hat down low over his eyes, and set off on the familiar, if annoyingly un-shoveled, path toward the vehicle shed by his parents’ house.
His home was technicallynearhis parents’, but in the country sense of the word. In reality, it was a nearly half a mile walk in deep snow, which made for slow-going even with his long, orcish legs.
He pushed through it, though. It didn’t matter that he was chilly, nor that snow still managed to land and melt on the back of his neck. He didn’t care that the frigid air bit at the exposed skin of his face and hands because he forgot his damn gloves. He was utterly single-minded in his focus to get to his mate.
Which was probably why it took him a while to hear the knocking.
Instinct bristled with awareness as the sound finally reached him.Knock. Knock knock. Pause. Knock knock.
That same fizzy, giddy,magic-yfeeling he got whenever he came close to his witch began to fill his head as he quickened his pace around the old barn that sat across from the house.
That doesn’t make any sense.
None of it did. Nelly certainly wasn’t close, and no one in their right mind would knock on the door of a clearly empty house when they had to stand in knee-deep snow to do it.
That meant it had to be an emergency.
Clark swore and picked up his pace. Snow crunched violently under his boots as he stomped through it, forging a path around the barn to see clear across the yard to his parents’ homestead.
A small figure stood under the turf stoop, shoulders hunched against the cold beneath a bright pink puffy jacket. The proximity lights had come on, putting her unmistakable shape into a glowing spotlight on the stone step.
And then, in a voice that trembled, the figure called out, “Clark? Are you home?”
What the fuck?
He stood there for what felt like a long time, staring at Nelly’s back and trying to process what he was seeing.
Nelly’s here.
Clark blinked. His heartbeat slowed.
Nelly’s here!
It was as if he came alive again. He gasped, sucking in a lungful of icy air, and felt the joy of her presence rush through every cell in his body. He no longer noticed the cold, nor the melting snow on his neck. He only saw and felt and heardher.
He’d barely taken a step before Nelly’s shoulders tightened just a bit more. He watched as she turned slowly on her heel to walk away from the door, her head down and her arms wrapped tight around her waist.
The fact that she thought he was gone, maybe out spending the holiday with someone else, was written in every line of her body.
That wouldn’t stand.
Rearing his head back, Clark bellowed, “Nelly!”
Her head snapped up. The look on her face was so heartbreakingly hopeful it nearly tore him in two. “C-Clark?”
Her eyes roved, searching the shadows across the yard, but couldn’t seem to fix on him there by the barn. Too late he realized that her eyes weren’t nearly as good as his in the dark.
