“How long have you been on this island, waiting to be matched?”
“Fourteen months.”
Four words, two words, two more. His face says more than his mouth does. The eyebrow rises and settles, the ears pivot, and the corner of his mouth lifts half a degree.
“The dish.” I nod at it. “Did you cook that?”
“Yes.” He pauses, and his voice deepens even more. “You worked through the meal today.”
My lips part, but I can’t breathe. I proofed the morning session in the hearing room during lunch and only ate a granola bar. He somehow knows.
“Orcs court with food first,” I blurt out. “Provision. It’s the first gift.”
His ears come forward. “You read about us.”
“I read all of it.” And it’s true, the binder I read on the ferry has all this information. “The courtship gifts, the scent science, the claiming bite that makes the whole thing permanent. The pamphlet covers it in exactly one sentence and then changes the subject.” I reach for the lid on the dish. “Well. Let’s see what you brought me.”
It’s a dark stew with root vegetables and shredded meat in a gravy that smells heavenly. There’s a flat bread folded in a cloth that’s still warm and a spoon next to it.
No man has ever cooked for me before. My nipples harden, and there’s a buzz between my legs. I’m holding the lid and staring at the stew like it’s porn.
“It’s traditional,” he says, and I glance up at him. His ears pin back slowly. “If it’s too strange, the cafeteria has—”
He stops.
“Has what?”
“Other food,” he finishes, and his ears are flat against his skull now.
He’s nervous about the stew. I somehow know this deep in my soul. He’s concerned it’s not good enough for me.
I pick up the spoon and eat, moaning with the first bite. I don’t know what the seasoning is, and I probably don’t want to know, but it gives me the same protected feeling I used to get from my grandma’s homemade stews. Nothing has ever tasted as good.
I blink hard to clear my vision and look at the ceiling for a second. I’m not going to cry over stew in front of him and the handler who could be peeking in here. I’m not.
When I can look at him again, his ears have cautiously risen to half-mast and his eyes are on my face, waiting on a verdict.
“Okay,” I say, around the second spoonful. “You can stay.”
His eyebrow goes up and his mouth tips, while his shoulders drop, like he can finally relax.
The handler in the hallway turns a page loud enough that it has to be on purpose.
I eat while we exchange information, and I learn things about him slowly, four words at a time. He’s thirty-one. He’s a shieldmate, a sworn warrior bond. His shieldmate, a loud and beloved orc, found a mate through this program and lives with her on Gorrath Venn. Valdrek builds dry-stone walls at home. Every rock has to be placed precisely because they don’t use mortar. He says he reads the rock, and I hold in a joke about him being a rock whisperer.
He applied to the program after his shieldmate found happiness, and he was approved by a female elder who looked at him for four minutes without speaking and said, “You will wait a long time, and it will be worth it.”
“Fourteen months,” I say. “Diane said they paired you but nobody was right.”
“One hundred and six.”
I blink at the large number. “You counted?”
He shrugs.
“You passed on one hundred and six women,” I say, and the warmth in my chest tells me I’m oddly happy about this.
“I looked at the women. Nothing happened. It’s not a choice.” This might be the longest thing I’ve heard him say. His gold eyes meet mine. “Then you.”
