Page 59 of Protective Pucking Orc

“That she’s yours,” he said it plainly, no drama, no bit, just the flat truth of it laid on the concrete between us. “That she’s your Mate. Does she know?”

The question landed between us like a dropped puck.

“No,” I finally said. “She knows I love her. I told her. But the—the rest of it—what it means, what she is to me?” I looked away. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was sold, Torrk!” It came out louder than I meant, and it echoed off the lockers, and I lowered my voice and dragged my hand through my hair. “She was sixteen and her stepfather handed her to a monster who told her she belonged to him. That she was owned. And now I’m supposed to sit her down and say—what? Congratulations, the universe has decided you’re mine, forever, no take-backs, it’s biology, you don’t get a vote?” I shook my head hard. “I won’t put another set of bars around her. I won’t. If she stays, it’ll be because she chose it. Not because I told her the gods already decided.”

I expected him to make a joke. To lighten it. That was the Torrk I knew, the Torrk I expected.

He didn’t.

He sat there and looked at me with those dark goalie eyes that missed nothing, and when he spoke, it was the most serious I’d ever heard him.

“That’s real pretty, D’kap,” he said, using the ancient honorific for a wise elder. “It is. And it’s also horseshit.”

I blinked.

“You think you’re protecting her by not telling her.” He leaned forward. “But you’re not. You’re protecting you. Because if you tell her, then she gets to say no, and that’s the thing you can’t stand.” He held up a hand before I could argue. “You’re letting her choose whether to stay in the house. Whether to make your coffee. Whether to let the kitling call you Dak. You’re letting her choose all the little forevers. But you’re keeping the big one to yourself, the one that actually matters, because you’re scared. And that’s not you giving her freedom, man. That’s you deciding for her that she can’t handle the truth. That’s the same thing he did. You just dressed it up nicer.”

Gods below.

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

“She’s been making decisions with half the picture,” Torrk said, gentler now. “She doesn’t know what she’s choosing. And you can’t start your forever with her until she knows there’s a forever there to work toward. Give her the whole picture. Then let her choose.” He shrugged, and just like that, ninety percent of the manic light flickered back into his face. “That’s the Torrk Method. Emotional edition. That one, people will read.”

I stared at him. This ridiculous, brilliant, foam-roller-abusing lunatic of a goalie, who invented workouts that didn’t exist and slept standing up and had just cut straight to the center of the thing I’d been failing to see for weeks.

“When,” I said slowly, “did you get wise?”

“I’ve always been wise. I lead with the farts because wisdom is off-putting in large doses.” He stood, cracked his neck, and retrieved his lacrosse ball with a flourish. “Also I stop a lot of pucks with my face. It rearranges the brain. Very clarifying.”

I stood too, and gripped his shoulder—hard, gratefully.

“Thank you, T’mak.” I used the word for little brother, because I knew it would piss him off. “For your insight…and your discretion.”

Torrk’s whole face went briefly, genuinely soft at the address… Then he ruined it by making a fart noise with his mouth and shouldering past me toward the door.

“Go home, Dak,” he called over his shoulder. “Give your female the full picture. And ice those ribs, you magnificent purple disaster—I meant it about the mirror.”

I was still almost smiling when I stepped out into the corridor, toward the parking lot, toward them, my resolve settling into place with the quiet finality of a puck hitting the back of the net.

Tonight. I would tell her tonight.

Chapter Twelve

Sofia

I tried to tell Rosa that Dakvaar wouldn’t want to skate with her after spending all day at practice. And I thought she was listening; when he walked through the door, she threw herself into his arms and didn’t immediately demand he take her out back.

Instead she blurted, “Mama says you’re too tired to skate with me, so we can just draw pictures of me skating instead, and you tell me how you put your pads on, and we can pretend to skate inside, okay?”

He so rarely showed emotion, but now his lips curled just slightly, and he brushed his nose against her hair, a habit I didn’t think he was even aware he did. “Far be it for me to contradict your mother, but I’ll always have the energy to skate with my favorite kitling.”

“Yay! Put me down, I gotta go get my sparkle pants! Mama did laundry today, I think she washed your underwear too!”

As always, my heart gave a little squeeze at the sight of them together, the way he so effortlessly showed her that he cared for her.