He keeps her alive. She keeps what it costs him.
Delyth Tredwell writes everything down three times, because a thing nobody wrote down never happened. She is the field clerk attached to a retreating column of forty-four, and on the first day west the snow stops a handspan above bare black earth and hangs there, and she is the only person in the valley who puts her hand into it.
Aslak Halvek holds the rear. Every torn seam in the road charges a price to let a column across, and his clan's law says he has to name what he is giving up out loud, to a witness, before he pays it. He has done it nine times in nine years, to men who looked at their boots. He can list nine names and tell you nothing about any of them.
Then a small brown-haired clerk takes out a book, asks him to say it again slower, dates it, and does not thank him.
What is written down has a road home. That is the whole law, and neither of them knows yet what it will cost to prove it. Because the valley is not dying of the war. It is being opened on a calendar, by a kind man with clean hands, and Delyth's own daily returns were commissioned in advance to be the caption under the lie.
Fifteen days to the eastern gate. One clerk nobody ever wrote onto a roll. One orc paying for the road a memory at a time. And a bill at the far end that neither of them is going to be allowed to refuse.
Kept by the Orc is a complete, standalone dual-POV orc romantasy novella with a guaranteed happily-ever-after: medium-high heat, open door, two on-page scenes, size difference and tusk mechanics honored in full. Book 0 of Riftmarked Orcs, free, and the retreat every later book is still arguing about.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Delyth Tredwell writes everything down three times, because a thing nobody wrote down never happened. She is the field clerk attached to a retreating column of forty-four, and on the first day west the snow stops a handspan above bare black earth and hangs there, and she is the only person in the valley who puts her hand into it.
Aslak Halvek holds the rear. Every torn seam in the road charges a price to let a column across, and his clan's law says he has to name what he is giving up out loud, to a witness, before he pays it. He has done it nine times in nine years, to men who looked at their boots. He can list nine names and tell you nothing about any of them.
Then a small brown-haired clerk takes out a book, asks him to say it again slower, dates it, and does not thank him.
What is written down has a road home. That is the whole law, and neither of them knows yet what it will cost to prove it. Because the valley is not dying of the war. It is being opened on a calendar, by a kind man with clean hands, and Delyth's own daily returns were commissioned in advance to be the caption under the lie.
Fifteen days to the eastern gate. One clerk nobody ever wrote onto a roll. One orc paying for the road a memory at a time. And a bill at the far end that neither of them is going to be allowed to refuse.
Kept by the Orc is a complete, standalone dual-POV orc romantasy novella with a guaranteed happily-ever-after: medium-high heat, open door, two on-page scenes, size difference and tusk mechanics honored in full. Book 0 of Riftmarked Orcs, free, and the retreat every later book is still arguing about.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
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