KHURZOG
The hallway narrowed as we moved deeper. The scents shifted. Still the Bloodclaw house, but quieter. Like the bones of the place had grown patient over time. I could feel it under my boots: magic worn smooth by years of soft tread and hard living.
Shuraka’s door wasn’t marked, but it knew her. The sigils burned faintly as she brushed her palm across the frame. Orc script carved into the wood’s grain sparked once, then went still.
She didn’t look back at me.
The door opened.
And I stopped.
The smell hit first — bone-oil, scorched herbs, metal shavings, sweat, wax, stew. The holy rot of lived-in space.
Then the shape of it settled around me.
The flat felt… wrong. But not in the bad way. Just off-kilter, like a house that kept waking up in new skin. The walls didn’t match — plaster here, raw stone there. The floors sloped different directions, one room stepped down half a foot for no reason at all. Half-walls ended midair, arches led to places that shouldn’t exist — a closet turned shrine, a nook turned cradle, a stairway that spiraled up into what looked like a sleeping loft made of driftwood and iron.
Like someone kept changing the map mid-journey.
It wasn’t built.
It grew, sprouting room by room with every new body that needed space to breathe.
A hearth that had walked across the room more than once.
I closed the door behind me. The wood hummed once against my palm.
I didn’t even get a breath before the chaos exploded.
The door I’d just closed slammed back open with a shriek of tiny, sticky hands and pounding boots.
Five — no, six — kids barreled through like a prison break, shouting over one another in three dialects and half a war chant. No shirts, no shoes, just bare feet and wild hair and too many sharp teeth showing at once. A toddler with a runny nose clung to a doll missing half its head. One kid wore an upside-down colander like a helmet and smacked another in the arm with a soup ladle.
The smallest one made a beeline for my legs.
Big green eyes.
A gasp.
“TAAAAIL!”
Before I could move, he was behind me, yanking at the coat like he was trying to unveil a holy relic. “Is it real? Does it SWISH? Ma says hers is heirloom, ‘cause it’s from the Old Blood!”
Shuraka didn’t even blink.
“Karg,” she barked, not loud — just with that terrifying mother-tone that could level a small city.
The kid froze mid-tail grab.
“If you pull that tail, your soup will boil dry tonight and all your teeth will turn into peas.”
A beat of horrified silence. Then the kid bolted.
The others followed, half-snarling, half-giggling — a herd of chaos crashing through the space, skidding around rugs and knocking over a tower of bowls someone had probably just finished washing.
A chair fell.
No one cared.
One slightly older girl — tusks just peeking through her bottom lip — paused near the doorway, eyes wide. “You brush it?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Your tail. Ma brushes hers every morning. Does it tangle?”
Shuraka groaned. “Amra.”
The girl grinned, all mischief. “Just saying. I bet his gets all matted. Granda’s did.”
I couldn’t help it — I huffed a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, but close. It felt strange in my chest. Unfamiliar. Like an old coat I didn’t remember owning.
We moved deeper into the flat. The hallway doglegged left, then opened again — not a dining room, not a workshop, something in-between. Clay pots lined the shelves. Herbs hung from cords strung across the ceiling, half-dried and dripping scent into the air. The table took up most of the room, carved and battered and stained by time.
And around that table —
Three orc men.
All different builds, all half-done with bowls of stew and twice as deep into an argument about some cursed pipe under the bath that wouldn’t stay soldered.
One — wiry, inked from throat to knuckles. His voice was the sharpest, gesturing with a spoon like it doubled as a threat.
The second — heavier through the shoulders, arms corded like a smith’s. Old scars laced across his collarbone, teeth missing on one side. He chewed slow, unbothered by the yelling.
The last — smooth as obsidian. Slender. Silver-banded tusks, long fingers, posture too elegant for the room. His eyes flicked to me first, curious but not hostile.
Shuraka waved a hand, barely pausing her stride.
“My husbands,” she said. “Ignore them.”
She said it like someone might say my boots. Don’t mind the smell.
None of the three even turned around. They just kept arguing. About piping gauges. About water pressure. About how it wasn’t their fault the last one snapped when the twins tried to use it as a swing.
I watched the way the elegant one refilled the others’ bowls without thinking. The way the scarred one elbowed the tattooed one to stop splashing his stew.
It was loud. Tangled. Messy.
And whole.
Layla would freeze in this place.
The three husbands — a Grath’zul bond, the kind humans always translated wrong.
Brothers-husbands, they called it. Like it was quaint. A joke. A thing to snicker at in coffee break gossip.
They didn’t know.
Didn’t understand what it meant to choose one woman as your center, your gravity — and still choose each other beside her.
Didn’t understand the trust it took. The sacrifice. The knots of pride you had to untangle just to keep peace in the hearth.
Layla wouldn’t get it.
She was too human. Too linear. One path, one man, one life. No room for curves, for mess, for shared claims.
I caught myself wondering.
Varash said he felt Zhak’orr toward her?
Could she bind more than once like orc women?
My gut went tight. Hot.
I wasn’t ashamed of what I came from.
But the thought of anyone else touching her —
Hearing the sounds she made that night —
Felt like my tusks might crack.
I wasn’t built for sharing.
Still…
Gods, I wanted to give her this.
Not the clan. Not the chaos.
The children.
She was soft where orcs were hard. Curved where we were carved.
Every inch of her body whispered stories of warmth and welcome.
She smelled like hearth. Like new life.
And every time I looked at her, my blood said — make more of her.
But orcs and humans don’t mix like that.
We can fight. We can fuck.
We can love.
But we don’t breed.
And knowing that somehow made everything feel worse.
Even if she chose me —
Even if the bond stayed and burned and bloomed —
She’d never have what this house had.
Not with me.
Not the barefoot stampede of half-tusked brats yelling about tail brushes and soup hexes.
Not the warm clutter of a life passed hand to hand like a sacred thing.
She’d want childre. I might not know her well, but I knew she would.
Something inside me twisted at the thought.
“Sit,” Shuraka said, not a question.
She pointed at a stool near the wall and swept through a hanging curtain without waiting for an answer.
I sat. Because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Because I needed answers.
And because the part of me that used to believe in hearths — in home — wanted to know what it would’ve been like to come in from the cold and be told you didn’t need to earn your place.
The workshop behind the curtain was stacked with things no modern apothecary would dare list. Bones — real ones. Marked with soot-char and rune burns. Jars lined up like soldiers: teeth, feathers, knots of something halfway between root and tendon. Herbs — scorched, powdered, braided.
A mortar steamed on the far bench.
No light, except for the oil lamp near the center of the room, flame guttering.
“Shirt off,” she said when she showed again. Same tone as before. Flat. Functional. Like a surgeon asking you to bite down before the knife.
I did what she asked.
The coat came off first — soaked at the hem, stiff at the seams. I folded it. Didn’t know why. Just seemed right not to drop it on her floor.
Then the shirt. The air hit me.
Shuraka circled me without a word.
Her steps were soft, precise. Her fingers glowed faintly green.
She didn’t ask permission when she touched me.
Fingertips to heart first — slow press, enough to feel the thud under my ribs. The collarbone. The notch of my spine. My left rib, where the break never set clean. She moved like a butcher deciding where to cut. Or a hunter, tracking a wounded thing by scent.
Then, her hand stopped.
She saw the ribbon.
Gold, thin, tucked half-under my wrist wrap.
Shuraka muttered something low in Orctongue. Probably a curse.
“Magic’s constipated,” she said flatly. “Your lines are swelling in the wrong places.”
I stared at her.
“Excuse me?”
She didn’t blink. “Constipated. No flow. The bond’s lodged. You’re building pressure where there should be release.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or growl. It felt more like she was gutting me with a diagnosis than really helping. I already knew all that.
She tapped two fingers under my sternum, then traced down to my hip. Her fingers hovered just above the skin.
“Tell me how it happened.”
I exhaled hard through my nose.
She didn’t ask gently. But not cruel, either.
“Does it matter?”
Her eyes sharpened. “You came into my hearth with this knot in your chest and no plan. It matters.”
I looked away.
It was too clean in here. Too small. No shadows to hide behind.
“I was bleeding,” I said finally. “She… She sealed the wound with her tongue. I don’t think she realized what it meant. What she was doing.”
“And you?”
My throat locked.
I didn’t answer right away. Just let the words sit on my tongue until they curdled.
“…I couldn’t help myself.”
It came out quiet. Raw.
She didn’t speak.
“When she sealed my wound… I felt it down my spine. And I…”
I shook my head.
“I knew what it was. I lost control. I should’ve stop it. But I didn’t.”
I looked up, waiting for judgment.
Didn’t get it.
Only more silence.
She stepped around to face me. Eyes narrowed. Assessing. Not angry — but sharp, like a blade being measured for edge.
“Did she eat?”
I blinked.
“No. She ran. Before I could explain. Before I could —”
I stopped.
But the memory didn’t.
The untouched bread on the table. The tea cooling. The scent of her still in the air. The bond singing through me, unanswered, as the door slammed behind her.
I shook my head.
“No. She didn’t complete it.”
Shuraka exhaled slowly. Rubbed her hands together, flame dancing briefly across her knuckles. Then she said the thing I was dreading.
“What do you want from me?”
I didn’t speak right away. Just pulled the ribbon off my wrist, held it out.
“I need you to mask her scent.”
That got her.
She stared at the ribbon like it was a piece of me I’d just ripped out and handed over for burning.
“You want me to what?”
She didn’t give me chance to repeat.
“You don’t want her?”
The question hit like a hammer.
I stared at the floorboards. My breath came shallow, throat too tight to speak.
“It’s not that.”
I forced the words out, rough as broken glass.
“She doesn’t want me. Or she thinks she can’t have me.”
Shuraka’s brow lifted a fraction.
“She’s human,” I said. “You know what that means.”
Her expression darkened — not in pity, but grim understanding.
“You still want her,” she said quietly.
“Yes.”
The words ripped out of me before I could stop them:
“Gods, yes. She’s mine.”
The silence that followed was heavy, close.
Even the jars seemed to hold their breath.
Shuraka studied me for a long moment.
“Then finish the ritual.”
I almost laughed.
“I can’t.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Not without breaking her.”
Her tail stilled midair. The glow in her palms dimmed. For the first time since I’d walked into the flat, she looked older.
She exhaled, slow and deliberate.
“You came to me for truth, not comfort, so here it is: I can’t mask anything.”
I looked up fast. “What?”
She held up a hand, cutting off the protest before it came.
“Even if I could, it would tear the balance worse. You’re both already leaking magic through your pores.”
Her gaze flicked to my bare chest — the faint shimmer there, the way the air around me seemed to ripple with each heartbeat.
“You’re like a storm being held inside a kettle,” she said. “You’ll explode. And take the block with you.”
She stepped closer, slow.
Pressed her hand flat against my sternum again. Her skin was cold, mine burning. My heart slammed once under her palm like a war drum answering a call.
Shuraka’s tail swayed once behind her — slow, measured, pendulum-steady.
Her voice dropped to a whisper that felt more like a verdict.
“You don’t finish the ritual soon — the backlash might kill you both.”
I froze.
It wasn’t fear that stopped me.
It was the way she said both.
The thought of Layla — pale, shaking, maybe dropping mid-case because of something that burned through me — made my stomach twist.
My fists clenched.
My tusks ached.
“And what do you want me to do, Shuraka?”
The shout came raw, unplanned.
My voice cracked off the shelves, sending the lamp flame quivering. Shuraka’s husbands moved to their feet.
“Shove her into a bed and force-feed her with a fucking funnel?”
Her face didn’t change.
I started pacing, boots striking sparks against the floor. The air around me crackled, tiny arcs of gold running across my knuckles. My magic — hers, ours — too close to the surface.
“She already thinks I’m a monster,” I growled. “How does that end, huh? ‘Hi, I ruined your career. Also, eat this bread so neither of us die.’”
Shuraka let me burn myself out. Then she spoke.
“You need to talk to her.”
“There’s no time to talk.”
“Then make time.”
I turned on her, breath sharp.
“Tomorrow I walk into that precinct, and everyone will smell her on me.”
Shuraka didn’t look away.
“Good,” she said.
That one word stopped me dead.
“Let them smell her,” she went on, quiet now, dangerous. “Maybe then she’ll stop pretending the bond doesn’t exist.”
I stared at her.
Gods help me, she wasn’t wrong.