Page 80 of Protective Pucking Orc

Christmas. Gods help me, Christmas. Dakvaar had already started a list—an actual written list, with columns, laminated, I wish I were joking—of everything Rosa had pointed at since October. I’d caught him researching which sled brands held up best “to orc-assisted speeds.” I’d told him he was not allowed to buy her a pony. He’d said nothing, which in husband means we’ll see, and last week I found a browser tab open to a hobby farm outside Granby, so the pony situation remains fluid.

“Dad!” Rosa drummed her mittens on top of his head. “Dad, Torrk says the solstice bonfire is gonna be even bigger than this one, can we⁠—”

“We’ll ask your mother.”

“Mama, can⁠—”

“Ask me tomorrow, baby.”

“That’s not a no, Dad!” she crowed to the entire yard, arms flung up in victory, and everybody laughed, and not one of them—not a single soul around that fire—so much as blinked at the word she’d used.

Dad. Three months now since Dak had become Dad. I thought it had to do with starting kindergarten, but it was impossible to deny the legalities probably helped.

The adoption decree had arrived in a flat government envelope, and my enormous, unshakeable husband opened it at the kitchen counter and then had to sit down—actually sit, knees folding him onto a chair, one hand pressed over his sternum where his Kteer lives.

At the courthouse, Rosa had signed her own name on the line the judge showed her, tongue between her teeth, and then informed the entire courtroom she was keeping “Rosa” and her daddy was taking her last name.

The judge lost it. The bailiff lost it. The court reporter had to stop typing.

She started saying Dad about a week later. No announcement, no ceremony. Just—mid-sentence, one ordinary breakfast, I want more milk, Dad, and Dakvaar poured that milk with hands I watched shake, and neither of us said anything. But that night I held him and stroked his back as he cried silently against my chest.

The fire burned down slow. Neighbors drifted off in twos and threes with foil-wrapped plates and promises about the solstice. The team stayed the latest, because these males were like brothers. Rosa fell asleep mid-argument against Bardon’s arm and got passed hand to hand down a line of enormous males who all considered her their mascot, until she reached her father.

I stood on my back porch in the smoke-smell and the cold and watched my husband carry our daughter toward the house—her cheek smashed against his shoulder, one hand still clutching a cinnamon roll she hadn’t been able to finish but had somehow rubbed all over her hair, under a sky crammed with stars and, presumably, satisfied gods.

Let them look. Let them see exactly what this clan protected this year.

A year. One single year, from that window booth to this. From a woman who flinched at loud noises to a woman who had this—goodnights called across a dark yard, Lila’s laugh, Torrk’s mysterious solstice deadline, a pond lying quiet and harmless in the dark, keeping the only secret that no longer kept me.

Dakvaar paused at the door and looked back at me over Rosa’s sleeping head. One eyebrow went up. Coming?

“I love you,” I said. Out loud, easily, into the November air—me, the woman who once needed weeks to admit I knew his coffee order.

His whole face went soft above the tusks.

“I love you too, dkaar,” he rumbled. “Come inside. Our future’s in here.”

So I went in.

And it was.

Sofia

Our bedroom faced the back of the house, and through the window I could watch the last of the fire dying down in the yard—embers now, a heap of orange jewels in the dark, one abandoned hay bale, Mrs. Legare’s ambrosia salad sitting on the picnic table untouched and immortal.

Cleanup could wait until morning. Everything, lately, could wait until morning. I’d been asleep by nine-thirty four nights out of the last seven, which was one of several clues I’d been collecting like a smug little detective for about two weeks now.

I felt him before I saw him. Anyone could hear Dakvaar stomping down the hall from Rosa’s room, but he was my Mate, and thanks to our Bond, I knew where he was at any point. He eased our door open, saw me propped against the pillows, and blinked.

“You’re awake.”

“Barely. I’m horizontal, though. Compromise.”

“Rosa is down.” He shut the door with that absurd gentleness of his, a male who could put an opposing winger through plexiglass folding a door closed like it was made of meringue. “She woke while I carried her up. Made me do the whole routine while she brushed her tusks. Two songs and the dragon voice.”

“You love the dragon voice.”

“I love the dragon voice,” he agreed, and started getting undressed, and I lay there and shamelessly watched, because I’m married now and I’m allowed.