1
A Bunny’s Secret
Brok
The forest air tasted of pine resin, wet soil, and the distinct, sour metallic tang of a client giving up. It was a scent I knew better than my own. It was unacceptable.
“Lower! Ass to grass, Barnaby! If your hamstrings aren’t screaming, they aren’t listening!”
Barnaby let out a noise like a squeaky toy being strangled. Maybe he’d meant it to be cute. But the Herald of Spring had currently become the single greatest threat to my professional record. And I found nothing cute about that, no matter how fluffy he was.
The Easter Bunny now stood in the center of The Iron Grove, a medium-sized log trembling across his shoulders. His knees were shaking so violently his white tail vibrated into a blur.
“I can’t do it.” His long ears drooped, a pathetic shield against my glare. “My quads… Brok, I think my quads have detached. Is that possible? Can muscle groups just… resign?”
If I’d been anyone else, I might have cried. But orcs didn’t cry. Orcs feasted on the tears of their enemies. Or, in my case, the tears of my clients.
A hot knot of frustration tightened at the base of my skull. “Muscle groups do not resign. They surrender to the will of the mind.” I shot a look at the stopwatch on my wrist. Custom-built for the expanse of my forearm, it had been with me for decades. It might very well break out in sobs too, if Barnaby’s training continued at the same pace.
“You have fifteen seconds left,” I told my protesting client. “Don’t you dare drop that log.”
“It’s heavy.”
“It is twenty pounds of birch, Barnaby. The basket of eggs for the Miller family in Chicago weighs forty. Do you want to disappoint the Miller children? Do you want to be the reason little Timmy cries on Sunday morning?”
Barnaby groaned. “I hate Timmy. Timmy has a Rottweiler.”
“Exactly!” Finally, a motivation I could work with. “Can you outrun a Rottweiler with those calves? No. You are slow. You are soft. You are a chew toy waiting to happen.”
I paced around him, the ground shuddering slightly under the heavy tread of my boots. Most of my kind chose to stay in the clan lands, away from the human world. They wasted their potential fighting petty wars, or rottingin dank corridors to guard chests of gold for wizards who didn’t pay overtime. I had chosen a higher path.
I built temples.
And right now, Barnaby’s temple was a condemned structure held together by marshmallow fluff and bad intentions. But it wasn’t too late.
I adjusted the waistband of my compression shorts. The custom-stitched spandex bit into my skin, barely containing the explosive potential of my lower body. I felt the pump from this morning’s drop sets tightening the quads, a dull, glorious ache that confirmed I was still alive.Thiswas the result of discipline.Thiswas the result of refusing to be mediocre.
Barnaby, by contrast, looked like a throw pillow dragged through a hedge.
“Time!” I slapped the trunk of the nearest oak, the sound cracking through the grove as a definitive end to the set.
Barnaby didn’t rack the weight. He crumpled. The log rolled off his back as he hit the dirt with a wet thump. He lay spread-eagled, his pastel blue workout shorts riding up to reveal fluffy white thighs that had never known the glory of a true burn.
“Up.” I nudged his trembling side with the reinforced toe of my custom training shoe, refusing to acknowledge the theatrics. “Rest periods are sixty seconds. Active recovery. Walk it off.”
“I’m dead.” The muffled reply rose from the dirt. “This is the afterlife. It smells like mulch.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, the sharp tips of my tusks scraping against my knuckles. It took a monumental effort not to shout. “Barnaby. Look at me.”
He rolled over, gasping for air, practically radiating misery. “Why are you like this, Brok? Why can’t we just… do yoga? Or stretches? Why must we lift heavy things only to put them back down?”
I crouched next to him, a position I’d taken too many times since he’d hired me. “Because the job requires it, Barnaby. You came to me because last year you got stuck in a cat door in Poughkeepsie. Do you remember the fire department having to grease you up to pull you out? Do you remember the shame?”
The shame, and the potential endangerment of our world. If not for the powerful glamor of the Easter Bunny, we would be having a very different conversation right now.
Barnaby shuddered, tucking his head between his knees as if he could hide from the memory itself. “Don’t speak of the butter incident.”
“Then do the work. We are four weeks out from Easter. Four weeks. That is barely enough time to build a base level of cardio, let alone the explosive power required for the rooftop jumps.”
