Page 21 of Orc's Veil

“You’ve killed hundreds of people for them.” I stop an arm’s length away, close enough that the stillness between us has weight—the kind that exists just before something breaks.

His hands clench at his sides. I see the muscles in his forearms flex, the restraint it takes not to reach for his blade. He steps back. A single stride that puts distance between us, jaw locked, gaze gone hard and inward.

“The law is wrong.” I step into his space. Too close. Dangerously close. “You know it’s wrong. You’ve known since you watched me heal the Veil instead of tear it. Since you felt our blood mix and the boundary settle for the first time in years.”

“You don’t know what I’ve felt.”

“Don’t I?” I tilt my head back, holding his gaze, refusing to be intimidated by the sheer size of him. He towers over me—more than a foot of height difference, shoulders twice the width of mine—but I’ve spent years facing down the darkness. One orc executioner doesn’t scare me.

What he makes me feel is far more dangerous than fear.

“I felt it too.” The words come out low, intimate. A confession I didn’t mean to make. “When our blood touched. The heat. The settling. The Veil recognizing us as… as a balance.”

His breath catches. I see his chest stop moving, see the careful stillness that speaks of iron control stretched to its breaking point. “That was the boundary. The magic. Nothing more.”

“You’re lying.” I reach out—reckless, stupid, unable to stop myself—and press my palm flat against his chest. Through the leather and steel of his armor, I can feel his heart pounding. Fast. Unsteady. Matching my own. “You’re lying to yourself, and you know it.”

The heat beneath my palm flares.

It happens without warning.

One moment I’m standing there, hand pressed to Varkhul’s chest, anger and exhaustion and desire tangled into a knot I can’t unravel. The next, light blazes between us—bright enough to make me cry out, hot enough to sear through armor and flesh.

His mark. I can see it now, glowing through the leather of his armor, pulsing with a light that hurts to look at. The runes—because they are runes, I realize, ancient symbols I don’t recognize—are writhing, shifting, burning themselves deeper into his skin.

He gasps. Staggers. His hand comes up to grab my wrist—not to push me away, but to anchor himself, his grip iron-tight and trembling.

And my wristburns.

I scream. Can’t help it—the pain is blinding, consuming, fire and ice and electricity all at once. I try to pull away, but Varkhul’s grip holds me in place, and the burning intensifies, spreading up my arm, down into my palm, searing itself into my flesh with deliberate, agonizing precision.

When it finally stops—seconds later? hours?—I’m on my knees in the black soil, gasping, tears streaming down my face. My wrist throbs with residual heat. And on the inside of my forearm, where no mark has ever been, a new brand glows faintly in the darkness.

Runes. The same runes that burn on his chest, now seared into my skin.

“No.” Varkhul’s voice is hoarse. He’s still holding my wrist, staring at the mark with an expression I can’t read. Horror? Awe? Both? “That’s not—it can’t?—”

“What is this?” I twist my arm, trying to see the mark clearly. The runes pulse with a soft glow, fading slowly, settling into my flesh like they’ve been there forever. “What did you do to me?”

“I didn’t—” He releases my wrist like it’s burned him. Steps back. His hand goes to his chest, pressing against the armor over his own mark. “The mark. It’s… it’s claimed you.”

“Claimed me?” I push myself to my feet, swaying with exhaustion and shock. “What does that mean? What is a mark?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. His jaw works, muscles tensing and releasing, and I can see him fighting for words. Fighting for control. Fighting against whatever this mark means, whatever it’s done to both of us.

“Among orcs,” he finally says, “the mark forms between mates. Fated pairs. It can’t be forced or faked—it appears when two souls recognize each other. When the claiming chooses.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

“Mates.” My voice comes out strangled. “You’re saying I’m your—that we’re?—”

“I’m saying the mark has chosen.” His heated stare meets mine, and I see my own shock reflected there. My own fear. My own desperate, unwanted spark of heat. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want?—”

He stops. Swallows. His hand is still pressed to his chest, and I realize with a start that I can feel it—the echo of pressure, as if his palm is against my own heart.

Oh gods.

I look down at my wrist. At the runes still glowing faintly, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. In time with his heartbeat, I realize—because I can feel that too now, a second rhythm layered beneath my own, steady and strong and utterly foreign.