Nelly wasn’t sure how long she walked, calling for her friend until her voice was hoarse, before she finally got to what appeared to be the final curve before her private road met the main one. There was a slight rise and then sharp dip in the road, which had turned into something of a ditch during the last major rain storm.
She’d filed to have it and several other things on the property fixed, but the Orclind’s government, the Iron Chain, was notoriously slow to fix things that weren’t immediately detrimental to the land or people’s safety. A pot hole didn’t rank very highly on the list of her boss’s concerns when they had thousands of farm and ranch lands to monitor, after all.
Except maybe it should have.
When Nelly finally came upon the rise, her lungs burning with cold air and exertion, she noticed two things immediately: first, that the ditch had iced over, and second, that a truck old enough to be an antique had apparently hit it at just the right angle to send it careening into a sturdy pine.
That’s not Suhana’s truck.
Nelly’s stomach dropped so fast, she thought it must have landed somewhere near her feet.
Clark!
She didn’t waste time wondering about why the neighbor who hated her would stop by to drop off a gift in such terrible weather, nor why he wouldn’t bother with old fashioned chains on his equally old fashioned vehicle. Nelly ran as fast as she could to where the front of his truck had plowed into a snowbank, inwardly chanting,no no no no nononono.
Her sister’s voice, soft and a little raspy even in its mental form, rang through her mind,Nell, what’s going on? Are you okay?
No! My neighbor crashed his car!
Clementine, always the calm, responsible one of the pair, replied,Have you called emergency services?
Emergency services? What services?A bubble of hysterical laughter exploded behind her scarf. In all likelihood, her sister’s remote island could get faster emergency services than Nelly’s home could. Not only was the weather bad enough to make all forms of travel except m-gate impossible, but this was the backcountry of the Orclind, where self-sufficiency was everything. They didn’t have a sprawling network of emergency service units like the other territories because orcs just… took care of themselves.
I don’t even know if he’s alive,she replied, suddenly gripped with a new horror.What do I do if he’s dead?
He’s probably not dead. Have you checked?
I’m— trying.Nelly grunted with effort as she pushed her way through the snowbank that had fallen around the driver’s side door.
Nelly, you should—
I’m busy!With that, she slammed the mental door they’d built so long ago shut once more. Most of the time it was great having her sister in her head, but in times of stress, it could be more than a little annoying to have her infinitely capable older sister telling her what to do in real time.
While she could sense her sister was knocking on the door, she was too busy shoveling snow away from the truck to pay attention. Clementine could wait.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she wheezed, working as fast as she could to clear the snow from around the window and handle. Not even her good, insulated gloves could keep out the chill once the snow began to melt in the fibers. “What— were— you even—doing,Clark?”
At last the dark shape of the window appeared. Nelly huffed and puffed as she swept her forearm over it, clearing away as much as she could to peer inside. The heat from within had fogged the glass, though, affording her only the terrifying sight of a slumped figure in the driver’s seat.
Beating her fist against the glass, she hollered, “Don’t you be dead, asshole!”
No movement.
Fuck.Even more frantic, she clawed at the snow around the handle. It unlatched easily enough, but there was too much snow around it to open the door more than half an inch.
Nelly didn’t think. She dropped onto her knees and began to tear at the remains of the snowbank. Her fingers went numb almost immediately, and the thin material of her pajama pants first became saturated in snow melted by her body heat, then frozen again as that water met the increasingly cold wind.
By the time she had cleared enough to open the door, she was so cold she’d stopped feeling it — a bad sign by any measure.
Her fingers could barely curl around the handle, but she somehow managed to force the door open.
For just a moment, the world stopped its motion as she stared down at the slumped over figure of her orcish neighbor. It appeared that when he hit the tree, his old, piece of shit truck hadn’t deployed any airbags. The nasty cut on his forehead and already blooming black eye told a quick, painful story of what happens when a face meets a steering wheel.
Clark’s hulking green body, clad in a coat and worn blue jeans, lay sprawled on the truck’s bench. Even then, when he could be dead, Nelly was struck by how unfairly pretty he was.
Long, curly lashes, a dimpled chin, short hair that flipped up in a cowlick at the forehead, skin of a deep olive green decorated with a mesmerizing latticework of black orcish clan tattoos — just unfairly, stupidly pretty. She’d watched him ride his horse shirtless enough times to know that Clark Wilson was devastatingly handsome even when he was sweaty and covered in dust.
She also knew that, for reasons she couldn’t understand, Clark really didn’t like her.
