Power Trio

Gratitude is too gentle a word for what Dee feels toward Pack Voraag. She thought she’d be a nervous wreck letting go of the wheel; this time a year ago, she would have been. But her people are showing her how well-placed her trust is. Rarek, especially, has seamlessly stepped into temporary leadership while she sequesters herself into her yurt with the rose-colored love of her life. This much talking has to be hell on his unpracticed throat.

Nick and Dee conduct an unorthodox reverse-courtship. They’re already in crazy love with each other and mated for life, and she only just found out his favorite food (some kind of incredible-sounding Earth thing called “waffle fries”).

It was ignorant of him, and impulsive and reckless of her, and she cannot bring herself to give a shit. Everything she learns about him makes her love him more. The mate bond doesn’t feel like it’s changed her, not really. It’s more like clarity, a sharpening of the things she’d already felt, an understanding of the importance of her relationship with this man. The random chance that dumped Nick into their laps wasn’t random chance at all. Nick and Dee were written in the stars.

An intellectual might ask themselves how much of that feeling is the biological effect of their imprinting. Dee isn’t an intellectual. Dee’s a big green chick with a gun, and all she really cares about is that Nick is funny and sexy and sweet and a great lay, and fireworks go off in her brain whenever he touches her.

The stars chose them. Dee isn’t any kind of shaman or fanatic, but she wholeheartedly believes this. They wouldn’t have imprinted if they weren’t fated to. That’s how it works.

(How it works between orcs, anyway.)

On the last day of their duty-free break, they pack a yurt and a few essentials onto Hammer and Doink and take a trip away from the convoy, promising to link up at the next campsite.

It’s not legal, exactly, what they’re doing. But as they set up their tent in a secluded glade, Dee wonders at the hubris required to “own” the land beneath their feet.

They hike through the redwoods, marveling at the peregrine heights of the old growth. They find a crystal clear lagoon fed by a crashing waterfall, and swim through clouds of striped scarlet fish. They make love on its shore. Nick’s furnace heart blazes against hers, cooled by the mist of the rushing rapids.

They watch the sunset from the open flap of their yurt, Dee’s head laying in the crook of Nick’s shoulder, Nick’s palm resting between Dee’s legs in casual, unabashed intimacy.

“Pussy,” Dee says.

“Pussy,” Nick repeats.

“Use it in a sentence.”

“I worship at your pussy altar.”

“Watch the subject placement, Nicky. I worship at the altar of your pussy.”

“Right, right. The altar of your pussy.”

“My turn.” She runs a finger along the curve of his pectoral. The muscle below his pink skin twitches as the turbocharged mate-bond sensation stirs him. “What’s your favorite animal?”

Nick hums pensively. “They got giraffes in this dimension?”

“Sure they do. You might see a few in Elfheim. What kinda bummer dimension wouldn’t have giraffes?”

“Then that’s me. How about you?”

Dee clicks her tongue. “Is rhino a cop-out?”

“It’s half a cop-out.” Nick blows along her forehead, rustles her still-damp hair. “That’s like dogs for humans. Your favorite animal that isn’t a rhino.”

“Mmm.” Dee plucks fiber from her carpet and lays the strands across the surface of his thigh. “I like a goat.”

“Goat’s a good one. Lots of utility. Goat cheese? Yum.”

“I’ve never had it.”

Nick exaggerates a scandalized gasp. “Baby, we have got to change that. Little bit of honey, some fig jam.”

“I dunno. Cheese weirds me out.”

“You guys made me eat a cute little bunny. I am gonna make you eat the goat cheese.”

“Hey, point of order.” Dee gives him a little slap on the bicep. “You can’t make

your packmistress do nothin’.”

“I can’t, huh?” The hand between Dee’s legs curls its fingers inward, to the soft, vulnerable place she’s shared with him, his home in her, and a little whine escapes her before she can bottle it. His voice hot in her ear: “How about I show you a thing or two I can make you do?”

* * *

After dark they drag their furs outside, under the velvet dome of heaven, and Dee shows him the constellations: the Fisherman, the Giant’s Palm, the Stag.

“You can pick one of them to go to when you kick the bucket,” she says. “The Bonfires of Heaven. You can visit the others, but you gotta pick one to live in. End of the Stag’s horn up there is where Pack Voraag’s all agreed to meet back up.”

“That’s a good one.” Nick squints. “Bright.”

“Yeah.” Dee snuggles closer. “It’s gonna be a hopping spot.”

“Back on Earth, this was all totally different,” Nick says. “We didn’t exactly have the afterlife thing based on them, but there were star signs.”

“What’s star signs?”

“Earth thing where the position of stars when you were born determined stuff about you. I never really got into it, but I think I was a Taurus Sun and a Scorpio Rising. Something like that. It was based on your birthday.”

Dee bolts upright. “Nicky, I don’t even know your birthday!”

“Look at us.” Nick tuts. “Mated for life and this is the shit we don’t know about each other. Are there even the same months?”

“How many does Earth have?”

“Twelve.”

She twists her mouth to one side. “We got eight.”

“You know what? I don’t know my birthday, either, then.”

“Well, old you wasn’t Nick, right?” Dee taps her chin. “Nick’s birthday can be whatever you want it to be.”

“Damn, Dee.” A smile nudges across his face. “That is actually so true.”

“How about today?” She leans over him. “Third of Winter Waning. That’s your birthday.”

“Happy birthday to me.” He rests his hands on her hips. “Do orcs do presents?”

“Haapppyy biiiirthdayyy tooo yoooou,” she sings, snaking into his lap.

“How do you even know this song?”

“Haappppy biiiiirthday toooooo yooooooou.” She nuzzles him back to the ground and brings up the fabric of her sleep t-shirt, gives him a look at the sway of her hips as they swivel in lazy circles across him. He takes it the rest of the way off and she’s naked in his warm embrace.

“Happy biiiirthdaaay, Mister Nick-o-laaaaas.” She traces a long lick across his neck as she undoes his breeches. Her muscles twitch as her mate’s taste floods her brain with dopamine. He catches her lips and draws her into a languid kiss.

She pulls away with a pop of suction. “HappyBirthdayToYou,” she rapidly trills, then slides her face down his torso, licking her palm and wetting her lips, to give her mate his birthday present.

* * *

Dee wakes with the discombobulated jerk of someone used to getting up earlier than this. She takes a moment to relax back against Nick’s snoring chest, then checks her discarded watch and grimaces at how late in the morning they’ve tarried. She thinks about nudging him up and getting them on the road. But then the morning light illuminates the bold line of his oblique, and drizzles a syrupy anticipation into her stomach, and she slides a leg across her mate to awaken him on a slower, hornier timeline.

They have their fun and pack their stuff. “We could graduate you from Doink,” Dee observes, as Nick swings expertly onto his mount. “He was sorta Baby’s First Rhino.”

“Don’t say that about the Doinkster.” Nick scratches the ornery old-timer’s ear. “He’s a fine vintage.”

They ride the forested switchbacks down into the valley that Pack Voraag’s next campsite’s been requisitioned in, and Dee decides it’s time to tell her mate about Niva. They’re going to be together forever; they’re going to dwell around the same star. It needs to happen sometime. It might as well happen now.

So after he offers to swap favorite seasons (his: autumn and hers: also autumn), she takes a fortifying breath and asks, “You ready for a heavy one, Nicky? Now that we’re headed back to real life?”

He knits his brows. “I guess we do have to lay all the cards on the table.”

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” She asks it gently and gives him time. They ride in silence for about a minute.

“I was going to betray you,” he says. “I was going to try to get out of my oath, somehow, by sneaking away or ratting on your incanting to Anise or something.”

Dee chews this over. “What stopped you?”

“I don’t know. You, I guess. I loved you a little already, even if I didn’t know it.”

“Okay.” She rubs her chin. “But did you ever actually do anything about it? Far as I can tell, you were a loyal packmate the whole time.”

“Well.” Nick thinks. “I guess I didn’t.”

Dee tries not to grin. “It kinda doesn’t seem like you were gonna betray me, man.”

He frowns. “I thought about it, like, all the time.”

“Everyone thinks

about shit, Nicky.” She can’t suppress her giggle. “Is the worst thing you did really just thinking about something?”

“Dee,” he protests. “I angsted really hard about telling you this.”

“I’m sorry, hon.” Dee rides up next to him and scratches his head. His sides are getting kind of long; she runs her hand along the short, silky hairs that were once stubble. “I don’t mean to make fun. Thank you for telling me. But y’know. You were doing regular felonies on Earth. And your worst thing is thinking about maybe leaving me.” She gives him a little noogie. “You’re so fuckin’ imprinted, man.”

“Okay, okay. Sheesh. I’ll try and find something worse. Maybe make you a list of the orphans I ran over.” He adjusts his grip on the reins. “What about you?”

“I shot my sister in the head,” Dee says, and watches Nick’s smile die.

She shakes off the tension from her shoulders and tells him the story of how she killed Niva.

“We got a big break. Hired by a wealthy elf merchant, exclusive contract. Pack Voraag as housecarls, guarding him up and down the coast. Generous as fuck with the pay. It seemed too good to be true, and it was. The dude wasn’t an elf.” She rests a hand on Hammer’s neck, does little whorls in the rhino’s shorn fur. “Her name was Niva. I think you already knew that.”

He nods.

“She was a great packmistress. She taught me everything I know. You think the Voraags like me? They fucking loved Niva. And then the guy—he was calling himself Anders—she spent more and more time with him. He changed her. Bent her to his will. They can do that.”

“What can do that?”

“Dragons. He was a dragon. They use the imprint, the sacred mate bond, and they ruin you with it. He twisted Niva around her finger. Everything he asked, she gave. The money shrank, and the jobs grew, and she got worse and worse. Started running the Voraag pack through pain and abuse and punishment. I was just about the only one who could get through to her, and then one day I couldn’t.” She glances at his stormcloud stare, and she knows better than anyone the compassion beneath those brows, but her skin still feels cold. “That’s what the scars on my back are about. You look around and you’ll see I’m not the only Voraag who bears them.”

“God, Dee. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well. Some of us, we figured out the truth. The rest thought we were crazy. Dragons are rare outside of Elfheim. But I knew who my sister was. And it wasn’t what he made her.”

“There’s dragons in Elfheim?”

“Yup. Legal ones, a whole royal family. There’s a treaty.” She sneers. “Stupid fuckin’ idea, you ask me. Trusting a shapeshifting sociopath.”

“Are they all like that?”

“I have only had the pleasure the one time,” Dee says. “Anyway, there’s a few tells, if you ever need to identify a dragon. One of them is that they don’t have a heartbeat.”

“No shit?”

“That’s right. Apparently they pluck ‘em out and store them somewhere. Dragon magic.”

“Why do they do that?”

“Love of mine.” Dee gives a pained laugh. “You gotta let me get through this.”

He’s properly chastened. “Sorry, Dee.”

“So we confronted Niva, and we confronted Anders, and we tried to tie him down so we could listen for a heartbeat. And things got bloody. Anders took a couple bullets, but we didn’t end him; he went dragon shaped and escaped on the wing, hurting but flying. Haven’t seen him or heard about him since. Niva killed one of us before we could get her subdued. The penalty for that is death, but I was an idiot. I thought we could fix her.” She shakes her head as she remembers her own desperate defiance. “But there’s no fixing what a dragon can do.”

Nick listens in silence.

“One day she gets out. Kills the packmate guarding her, kills two more trying to escape. One of them was a guy named Iovek. He was about to be Graila’s mate. She’d offered him the tether and everything. It was a week until the bonfire rite. She’s only recently forgiven me for that.”

Dee remembers Graila’s face, how she changed. The old Graila would have mated up with Warrin by now; everyone knows the two of them have the hots.

She shakes the vision off. “Niva wasn’t done killing, was coming for me next, so I put a bullet between her eyes. And that was that. Rest of the pack knows, now you do too.”

“I’m so sorry, Dee,” Nick says softly. “The strength that took. The toll. I can’t even imagine.”

“You’ll never have to. I’ll make sure.” They emerge from a copse of trees into a sweeping view of the valley. “The pack will not suffer in that way again. That includes you, Nicky.” She looks over her shoulder, gives him a soft smile. “I’m gonna protect you for the rest of your life. You will never be without my strength again.”

“In this life or the next,” he finishes.

“That’s right. Not sure if I’m gonna be able to keep you safe from Niva in the next, though. She pranked the shit outta every boy I ever tried to date.”

The ice around his eyes melts as he chuckles. “I’ll try to make a good first impression. My dates’ siblings all loved me.”

Dee snorts. “I bet they fuckin’ hated you.”

He tilts his head in surrender. “Okay. You got me.”

“So how many was it?”

“Dates?”

“Orphans you ran over.”

“Ahhh.” He purses his lips. “Let’s put it in the low teens.”