KHURZOG
The stairwell was colder than the restroom, way much colder.
It was colder inside me.
I had one hand on the railing, fingers clenched so tight the bones ached. Like if I let go, I’d come apart with it. The taste of her was still in my mouth. Her breath. Her fear. Her fire. Her damn scent threading through my skin like a hook I couldn’t pull free.
I’d almost taken her.
Right there. In that bathroom.
Saints, I’d backed her into a corner and kissed her like I already owned her. Like the bond gave me a right I never earned.
I didn’t ask.
Didn’t give her the space to breathe.
Didn’t wait to see if she wanted it, or if she was just stunned and frozen and trying to figure out how to make me stop without starting a war.
I just acted.
All hunger.
All ache.
All those long damn months chasing her shadow like it might warm me.
I didn’t see her. I saw the hole she left behind and thought if I filled it with her body, maybe I’d feel whole again.
But that’s not karnazh. That’s not even bond.
That’s weakness pretending to be strength.
And I swore I wouldn’t cross that line.
The guilt hit deep. Not like a punch — more like a crack in something old. Something I thought was solid.
I wanted her so bad, it scared me. Still did.
Not just the wanting.
The needing.
Because gods help me, I needed her like lungs need breath. And if I didn’t learn to hold back, I’d suffocate her with it.
And she knew it.
She slapped me.
Didn’t hurt. But it landed.
Not on my jaw.
In my chest.
Because she meant it. Because she had to. Because I deserved it.
And because it proved something I hadn’t expected — that the soft little witch I remembered had fire underneath.
Back in Chicago, she was all warmth. Smiling quiet when I sat in that speakeasy under my flat. Pouring drinks for lowlifes and mobsters who didn’t tip. Moving like she didn’t know she was being watched.
And that night… when we finally touched — when she lick my wound me and the bond snapped into place — she’d melted for me. Sweet. Shaking. Breathless.
I thought that was her.
But I was wrong.
Because today? Today, she stopped me.
Drew a line in the sand with eyes full of fire and a voice sharp enough to cut bone.
And gods help me, I wanted her more for it.
It grated on me — the part of me that wants to chase, wants to win. The part that sees a line and wants to break through it just to prove I can.
But under that… under the ache and the fury and the burn of the bond humming like thunder under my skin — I felt something else.
Pride.
She’s not prey. Not a prize.
She’s not some scared little human trying to survive in a city too big for her bones.
She’s a goddamn force of nature.
And she’s mine.
Not because I bit her. Not because her magic sings under my skin.
Because she’s the only person in the world who ever made me want to be worthy.
And if that means holding back — if that means waiting —
I’ll wait.
I’ll hold the line.
Because she’s not just some woman I touched once and never forgot.
She’s my karnazh.
Only family I ever had.
If she were orcish — that kiss wouldn’t’ve been a problem.
Might’ve even been welcome.
But Layla wasn’t orc.
She was human.
Witch, too — and that was rarer than gold in gutterwater.
They said it happened once in a thousand births. Maybe less.
So how the fuck was I supposed to know how to treat her right?
But that wasn’t an excuse.
That was a challenge.
One I wanted to rise to.
I wanted to learn her.
Not just the way her body hummed when I kissed her, or the taste of her magic curling behind her teeth — no.
I wanted to learn what soothed her. What scared her. What she needed from a man like me, if there could be such a thing.
At least now I knew who she was.
She wasn’t some speakeasy waitress with a fake name and no future.
She wasn’t tucked under my flat pouring drinks in the dark for men who didn’t look her in the eye.
She wasn’t just the woman who let me fuck her because it was hot and fast and no one’d ever find out.
We could’ve gotten away with it in Chicago.
She was nobody.
I was muscle.
No one would’ve cared if a nobody girl let a back-alley orc take her apart in the dark. Wouldn’t’ve mattered if a taboo bond sparked under moonlight. Everyone would’ve looked the other way — easier than facing the mess.
But here?
Here, in New York — she was Detective Layla Peterson.
Human.
Witch.
Precinct royalty, even if they all probably treated her like a bastard with a fake crown.
And me?
I was just the spit-boy from the Old World. The muscle with a tail. Not even enough to look at her, if the Chief’s tone was anything to go by.
Her being seen with me — with an orc male, marked and bonded — it’d burn her career to the fuckin’ ground.
Ash and smoke before she could blink.
She didn’t just need distance.
She deserved respect.
And if I really claimed her — if she was mine in any way that mattered — then I had to protect her.
Not just her body.
Her future. Her name. Her choice.
She doesn’t stop being my woman when she says no.
She becomes even more so.
And she deserves better than a man who lets his instincts speak louder than her voice.
And that means — I’ll stand the line.
Shield her from the fallout.
But there’s a problem.
A big one.
Magic doesn’t lie.
Every magical on the 4th floor — every elf, dwarf, orc, and even just scent-sensitive human— they’d smell her on me.
The bond etched between our skin. I wore her name in blood.
They’d know.
Some wouldn’t say a word.
Some might talk.
One or two would whisper it where it mattered.
She couldn’t afford that.
Not today.
She needed space to breathe.
To think.
To decide if she even wanted to understand what had happened between us.
So I gave it to her.
Just one more day.
One quiet fucking day before the ripple hits the surface and her whole world tips.
I didn’t walk through the bullpen to find my desk right next to hers.
I turned.
Boots heavy on the stone.
Back to the lobby.
Back to the only one in this damn city who already knew what Layla was to me.
Lobby was still quiet. That end-of-shift stillness, where everything was worn thin — the magic in the walls, the smoke in the air, even the brass edging the floor tiles. Lanternlight glowed low and oily, casting the marble in bruised gold. The coffeepot near the front desk hissed once, then died, leaving behind the burnt smell of too many hours left on the flame.
Grashira didn’t look up.
She sat behind the desk as if she owned the whole damn precinct. Wide shoulders squared under her jacket, silver braids tucked back in the same no-nonsense wrap every matron wore from the Old Tribes. No makeup. No ornament. Her tusks weren’t big, but they were sharpened.
Her fingers moved over the pages of a logbook, slow and deliberate. I waited.
She turned the page. Clicked her tongue. Marked something in red ink.
I stepped closer, jaw tight.
“You knew.”
Grashira set her pen down. Lifted her head.
Her eyes were yellow-gold, like mine — but duller, aged to the shade of old coins. She looked through me, not at me.
“Of course I knew,” she said. “You walked in here smelling of her.”
The silence stretched.
And it ate at me.
Because the truth was — I didn’t want to be here. Not like this. Not with my tail low and my need knotted up so tight I could hardly speak.
She wasn’t Ironhide.
The clans didn’t share borders easy, not even in the New World. Old blood, old grudges, old knives left in backs long since turned.
But Grashira…
She felt different. Not softer — no, never that.
But calm. Composed. Strategic, like every word was already weighed for war before she let it loose.
Maybe she could help.
Not for me — I wouldn’t give a shit if it was just me.
But Layla?
She was tangled in this now. She didn’t know how deep.
And if I couldn’t protect her with fists or teeth…
Then maybe I could start with this.
“Can you do something?” I finally asked. My voice was lower than I meant it to be. Rough. “Mask it?”
Her brows rose, slow and unimpressed. One of them bore a small scar — a burn, maybe.
“Mask it?” she repeated.
I nodded once. “I don’t care what you use. Just… make it stop leaking off me.”
Grashira leaned back in her chair, arms crossing. The wood groaned under the shift of her weight.
“You don’t want to smell like her?” she asked. “Or you just don’t want others to know you do?”
She didn’t wait for an answer.
“You’re married, Khurzog.”
The words hit hard. Like a truth I’d been ducking that finally decided to punch me square in the chest.
“We didn’t complete the rite,” I said.
“You didn’t need to.” Her voice softened. “The magic doesn’t care. It felt her claim you, and you claim her. That’s enough.”
I looked down at my hands.
They were still stained with the dust from the stairwell railing. One knuckle was raw — I hadn’t noticed when I’d gripped it too tight.
“Don’t tell her,” I said.
Grashira’s gaze narrowed. “What?”
“She can’t know.” I stepped closer, leaned down against the edge of the desk. My voice came low. Rasped. “She’d think I planned it. That I tricked her. That I claimed her against her will.”
There was a beat of quiet. A breath.
“Didn’t you?”
That landed. Sharp and quiet. Right in the ribs.
I didn’t plan to bite her.
Didn’t mean for the bond to snap into place.
But the moment she touched my blood — the moment her magic flared under my skin — every instinct inside me surged up and screamed, hers.
And I let it happen.
I hadn’t bitten to bind her. I’d bitten because I couldn’t not.
And gods help me, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t do it again.
Grashira watched me with the patience of someone who’d seen every version of this play out. She reached under the desk, pulled something from a drawer, and slid it across the wood toward me.
A card.
Thick parchment. Red ink.
Orcish script burned into the surface — a name and address in the Bronx, tucked behind Harlem.
“Grashira. Bloodclaw.”
I frowned down at it. “This yours?”
She snorted. “Didn’t recognize me?”
She smiled — sharp and bitter. “Took you long enough.”
I leaned back a step. “What the hell are you doing pushing paper at a precinct?”
“Because this city’s worse than any battlefield my husbands bled on,” she said, folding her arms again. “And someone’s gotta keep the young ones from bleeding out before they learn how to hold a blade.”
I looked at the card again.
Bloodclaw territory. Her own roof, her own name protecting it. It wasn’t a request. It was a command with a soft edge.
She was telling me to breathe.
“You don’t need to go back upstairs today,” she said. “Sleep on it. Get your head straight. My daughter, Shuraka, might know how to help you, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
I took the card.
Then I turned away, boots heavy against the marble floor.
Grashira’s voice followed me.
“Don’t wait too long to tell her, Khurzog.”