Page 13 of Protective Pucking Orc

Dakvaar never smiled.

Why had I thought about him then?

“You know better than to anger me, wife,” Anthony said calmly, reaching into his jacket for his cigarettes. “You know what you make me do.”

It had taken years to learn that his blows weren’t my fault, no matter what he’d told teenage me. I needed to hold onto that knowledge…preferably without pissing him off more.

“I’m—” I bit down on the words, unwilling to apologize. Instead, my fingers curled in the gravel, trying to find the strength to stand. “What do you want, Anthony?”

“I told you—I want my daughter.” Calmly, he lit the cigarette, all his focus on the task. “I have plans for her.”

“Plans?” I croaked, terror suddenly making my blood cold and giving me strength. I pushed myself up to my knees. “You can’t have her.”

“Sofia, you know better than that.”

Then, with his attention still on his cigarette, Anthony shifted his weight and lashed out with a kick. Surprised, I had only enough time to drag my arm and bag in front of the blow, and when the tip of his fancy shoe connected with my wrist, I felt something bend inside, and fell back with a hoarse cry of pain.

There was blood on my tongue, my cheek felt swollen and raw, and my arm was aching. Still, I squeezed my eyes shut for only a moment, trying to swallow down the pain, before scrambling away from him.

He stalked after me.

“I don’t want her for me, dear wife. Degas wants her. He’s made it clear that once he marries her, we’ll be true partners and our empire will be linked.”

Dios!

The breakfast I’d eaten only a half-hour ago turned in my stomach as I staggered to my feet and whirled toward him. “She’s a child,” I blurted incredulously.

Anthony merely shrugged, taking a long drag. “He’s not a hasty man. If I train her, he’s willing to wait ten years before he takes her.”

Oh, Dios!

In ten years, Rosa wouldn’t even be sixteen! I turned to the side and heaved, throwing up my breakfast as I backed away from him as desperately as I could. The world tilted, my vision swimming as bile burned the back of my throat. My wrist throbbed in time with my pulse, the pain sharp enough to cut through the fog of terror—but not enough.

Not nearly enough to make me stop.

Rosa.

Her name was a prayer in my skull, a mantra, a scream I couldn’t let out. If I screamed, he’d know. If I ran, he’d follow. If I fought, he’d hurt me worse—and then he’d find her.

And he would find her. Anthony always found what he wanted.

Right now, he didn’t know where she was, and I had that advantage.

His boot scuffed against the gravel, the sound too loud, too close. I flinched and stumbled back again. My breath came in shallow gasps, each inhale burning like shards of glass in my lungs. The metallic tang of blood filled my mouth, my split lip swelling against my teeth.

I wasn’t fast enough.

He hit me again, on the same side, this time catching my temple and eye, snapping my head back. I didn’t fall, but used the blow to stumble backward further. Away from him.

Anthony exhaled smoke, slow and deliberate, watching it curling between us like a living thing. “You always were dramatic,” he murmured, his voice a velvet blade. “But you know how this ends.”

I knew.

I knew.

And that was why I couldn’t let it.

My head swam with a sticky confusion, blood pounding in my temple and mouth and making everything mushy…but I ignored it. Pain was nothing. Rosa was everything.