I press my lips to the claiming mark and hold them there until the heat seeps from her skin into my mouth.
The feral thing in my chest lifts its head, watches through my eyes, and lies back down. Ours, protected, safe.
Our mother died well before we left the mountains. Years later, Father tried to force Knox into an arranged marriage, and Knox told him to go to hell. The old man cast him out. Knox walked down the mountain alone, and I followed, because a throne without my brother held nothing I wanted.
Knox built the club. Built the compound, the garage, the family Sarah fits into like she grew there.
I tagged along. Stood behind him, beside him, two steps back and one to the left like a good VP, a good brother, a good second. Let the grin do the work. Made the brothers laugh, kept the bar stocked, handled the jobs Knox needed handled without asking questions, without asking for credit, without asking for anything because asking meant admitting I wasn't enough on my own.
Jess shifts in her sleep and something rolls through the connection—not a dream this time. A feeling, half-conscious and unguarded, aimed at me the way a compass needle aims north. Want. Not just desire, though that's there too, banked low andwarm. The want beneath the want to be near me, specifically me, the ache of reaching and finding me here.
Nobody has ever reached for me like that. Not as the brother who came with the package. Me.
I run my thumb along the scar on Jess's neck, my scar, my mark, my mate.
She kissed me first.
In the garden behind the clubhouse, fairy lights in the trees, Knox and Sarah's wedding reception thumping bass through the walls. She grabbed my cut and pulled me down and kissed me with her whole body, her fists in the leather, her mouth fierce and certain, and I tasted champagne, gunpowder and lost track of everything else.
She chose me. Not Knox, not the position, not the club's VP or the president's brother. The man with the broken tusk and the jokes that run too long and the ache he's carried since he followed his brother out of the mountains because he didn't know who he'd be if he stopped following.
She saw through all of it. Every joke, every grin, every deflection. Looked past the charm and found the wound underneath and loves me anyway.
The bond hums between us. Her pulse layered under mine, steady now, the dream easing back.
Not second. Not to her. Not anymore.
The radio crackles at 5 a.m.
I reach for it without lifting my head, my fingers finding the handset on the floor beside the cot. Jess doesn't stir, her breathing deep and even against my throat.
"You two okay?" Knox's voice, rough with static and exhaustion.
I keep my voice low enough not to wake her. "We're good. Real good, you know."
"You claimed her."
Knox can hear it, the change in my voice, the settled quality that the claiming bite writes into your vocal cords when your mate's pulse runs beneath your own. He sounded the same way the morning after Sarah.
"Yeah."
When he speaks again, his voice scrapes raw. "Good. That's good, brother. Mom would've loved her."
My throat closes. The painting on the wall, the way she smelled like woodsmoke and the mountain wildflowers that grew outside our door.
"Yeah." The word comes out rough. "She would've."
"There's something we need to talk about when the storm clears." His tone shifts, guarded now. "The packages from Father."
My teeth clench. "I know."
"It can wait. Hold your woman. Be happy tonight."
"Planning on it."
The radio clicks off. I set the handset on the floor and press my face into Jess's hair. Breathe her in.Her scent hits different now—the familiar base notes layered with the copper undertone of the bond in her veins,the claiming mark rewriting her scent to include mine, to mark her as taken in a language every orc on this coast can read.
The packages from Father. The clan reaching across years of silence with gifts nobody asked for, pulling at threads Knox wants to burn. We'll deal with it. After the storm, after the cleanup, after I put a ring on this woman's finger and figure out how to build a future that doesn't depend on the mountain I came from.
