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“Well, Cataline? Ye’re obviously feeding this lad too much. He weighs as much as I do.” I punctuated this by giving him a little bounce, which caused him to giggle and slap my back. “Are ye prepared to feed us both?”

“Put me down!” Ewan demanded, trying to kick my chest.

So I pretended to drop him down my back, hearing his laugh turn to a squeal as I grabbed his ankles and hoisted until he was dangling from them.

“Put ye down, lad? Are ye sure?”

Since he couldn’t kick me, and since he was laughing too hard now, I raised a brow at Cataline. Who smiled softly at me, her expression now harder to read.

“‘Tis merely vegetable pottage. I worry ‘twill not be enough for your belly.”

“Then I will eat, and Ewan will help me unload the horse and care for him, and I will hunt meat for dinner.”

“Meat, Mama!” the boy cried in excitement from where he dangled, his face beginning to turn red. “We haven’t had meat in⁠—”

“Aye,” she breathed as she turned to the bubbling pot, but I couldn’t tell if she was weary or overwhelmed or worried.

“That would be…lovely.”

I swung her son upright once more, sitting him on my hip the way my father used to do to me, and hunched beneath the low ceiling as I stomped to the table.

“Ye’ll share with me, lad? I want yer mother to have her own bowl.”

Ewan pasted a mock glare on his face.

“And you’re to eat every last morsel, young lady,” he said severely, as if repeating what he’d heard her say.

Cataline chuckled as I settled with Ewan on my knee, and scooped the pottage into the two bowls. When she placed one in front of me, I nudged it toward the lad, watching him and his mother eat.

And for the first time since last night, I felt the band around my chest loosen just a bit.

They weren’t safe. They weren’t warm or particularly well-fed. The first snow would be here by tonight, and human men could be evil, and she was dangerously pregnant, as my sister would say. Nay, they weren’t safe.

But they were here, and I was here, and I would do everything in my power to make them comfortable in the time I had with them.

My Kteer—and my heart—would allow nothing less.

CHAPTER FOUR

Cataline

That afternoon seemed almost…surreal?

For one thing, the noonday meal was fun. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d chuckled that much. Oh, Ewan brought me joy every day, but rarely the type that made me outright laugh. But hearing his laughter as Maardok teased him or taught him something new? It made my heart lighter, made the future seem a little less scary for a short time.

Nine months ago, I’d learned that Maardok might look terrifying—any orc would, but his scars made him even more intimidating—but he had a zest for life I’d never seen matched. I hadn’t even realized orcs could laugh as much as he did, but then, he’d taught me much during that fortnight.

Mostly about how everything I’d known about his kind was wrong.

Orcs weren’t completely unknown in our part of the country. They often raided along the coast, and my mother had used them as a threat to get me to do her bidding as a child.

Go to sleep or the Battleborn will steal you and eat you!

But Maardok hadn’t been like that, and seeing him now made me grateful he hadn’t changed.

I was just grateful to see him, I think. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him until he’d reached for me and swung me around with that unabashed joyful way of his.

The male looked like a huge green monster from a cautionary tale, but smiled and touched me like he was the gentlest being in two worlds. How could I help but give into his rough charm?