He was quiet for a moment, studying my face in the dim light. “You make me feel like I’m not alone anymore, and that’s enough. Whatever else there is, we’ll-we’ll figure it out.”
The certainty in his voice made my throat tighten. “You have too much faith in me.”
“You don’t have enough faith in yourself.”
A flash on my inner left wrist caught my eye, and I lifted my arm, frowning in the dim light. “What the…”
A golden mark had appeared there, like a tattoo drawn by an invisible hand. Circular, it was about the size of a quarter, with an intricate pattern in the center that looked Celtic.
I rubbed it with my fingers, but it didn’t smudge or fade. It wasn’t just on my skin but seemed to glow from beneath it, as though it had always been there, waiting to emerge. My heart raced with a mixture of fascination and alarm. I’d never seenanything like it, yet somehow it felt familiar, like a word on the tip of my tongue. Or recognition. Belonging.
Hail stilled. When I looked up, his face had gone pale.
“This wasn’t there before,” I said. “What’s happening to me?”
He swallowed hard, his eyes fixed on the mark. “Allie, I need to tell you something.”
Chapter 10
Hail
The golden mark on Allie’s wrist made my chest clench with emotions I struggled to name. Wonder. Terror. Hope I’d never dared to feel before.
In the orc kingdom, a bonding was cause for celebration, the entire clan gathering to witness two souls being linked by forces beyond our understanding. Here, in this tiny shed with rain hitting the roof, our bonding had no witnesses except Tressa. But that felt right. It was something private and precious between just the two of us.
“Hail?” Her voice carried confusion and a thread of fear. “What’s happening to me?”
I stared at the intricate pattern that had appeared on her skin, identical to the one that had burned into my own wrist days ago. The mate bond. Real and undeniable, marking her as mine as surely as it marked me as hers.
“It’s a mating bond mark,” I said quietly. “An orc mating bond.”
“I’m not an orc.” She held up her wrist, studying the golden circle. “It’s pretty but…I did not get a tattoo.”
“In orc culture, the fates choose mates for us. The bond ap-ap-appears when two people are meant to be to-to-together.” I watched her face for signs of panic or rejection, grateful I didn’t find them there. “It means…it means you’re my mate, Allie. And I’m yours.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Like, permanent mate?”
“If you want to be.” The words came out rushed, nervous energy making my hands shake. “It’s not… You don’t have to accept it. Anyone can reject the b-b-bond if they choose to. But the mark will always be there, a reminder of what c-could have been.”
And what was lost.
She remained quiet, turning her wrist this way and that to catch the dim light on the golden pattern. Tressa had lifted her head to watch us, her eyes alert.
“Does this hurt?” Allie asked.
“The mark? No, it doesn’t hurt. You saw.”
“I mean the rejection thing. If I said no, would it hurt you?”
The question hit me right in the gut. “I… Yes, it would hurt. But I’d understand if?—”
“I’m not saying no.” She looked up at me with those brown eyes that had captured me from the first time I saw her. “I’m just trying to understand what this means.”
Relief poured through me so intensely I had to brace myself against the shelving. “It means the fates think we be-belong together.”
“And what do you think?”
I studied her face, taking in the clay smudge still on her cheek, the way her hair hung in wild waves from the wind and the rain, and the direct way she met my gaze despite the strange circumstances.
