KHURZOG
I didn’t take a tram.
Didn’t hail a cab either — not after the last one tried to make jokes about me walking into a human precinct like I owned the place. His laugh died when he saw where I was headed. I didn’t like that sound.
So I walked.
The city peeled itself open around me, all glass teeth and steam. Lights flickered to life as dusk curled in — a sky full of bruised violet bleeding down the edges of towers that tried too hard to touch the gods.
Chicago slouched. New York posed.
The streets here didn’t sag — they strutted. Everything gleamed just enough to distract from the filth that clung under the shine. Snow turned to mud along the gutters, slush choking storm drains like phlegm in the city’s throat. My boots hit the mess with a steady rhythm — weight and steel, no rush.
Humans were everywhere.
Rushing. Elbowing. Waving down taxis. The air buzzed with too much voice and not enough silence.
The orcs here moved different.
Younger mostly. Broad-shouldered, sleek — New World born. They had the walk. That cocky, thick-skinned strut like they owned the concrete beneath them. Like being born here bought them immunity. Confidence. Belonging.
I didn’t walk like that.
They looked at me — quick glances from under hats, across intersections, behind mirrored windows. Not long. Not loud. But they saw the difference.
I was the only one with a tail.
Even back in the Old World rare enough among our kind to be whispered about, revered sometimes — feared more often. Among elves, horns meant pride. Royal blood, in some cases. Among orcs, tails meant trouble. Cursed bloodlines. Too much fire. Too much magic. Too many broken rules in one body.
I kept mine low and still, the tip brushing just above the sidewalk, hidden under my coat when I could manage it. But I felt it. Every damn step.
Ahead, two elves passed me on the far side of the avenue — tall, polished, wrapped in silks too fine for this hour. One had horns. He tilted his head when he saw me. Not mockery — just recognition. Marked blood sees marked blood.
Didn’t matter.
He walked on. I kept moving.
Dwarves clustered at corners — heads bowed, hands dirty, always working. They didn’t look up. Not at me. Not at anything. Not unless it paid.
This city…
It stank of lightning and ego. Of fire trapped in glass and old money bleeding slow through grates. Chicago was loud in a different way. Earthier. More honest in its hate. You knew where you stood in that city. Here?
Everything pretended to smile while reaching for a knife behind its back.
Didn’t bother me much.
I’d been on the outside long enough to stop feeling the cold.
Still — this place felt sharper. Lonelier, somehow. And I was about to walk into a clan’s den that wasn’t mine. No sigil on my back. No name to drop. Just a scent, a question, and a woman who looked me in the eye like I was a ghost.
The Ironhide Clan in New York wouldn’t have me now. Not after Layla.
Didn’t blame them. It was har enouth for those in Chicago.
I was clan-raised, passed from hand to hand like all orphans. My mother died giving life to me. Her karnazh didn’t want me. And I slipped through the cracks. No one to speak for me. No one to stop what I became.
After Layla, there was no going back.
They couldn’t have me. Wouldn’t.
I didn’t blame them.
I belonged to no clan now.
Only to her.
And she wanted nothing to do with me.
I pulled my collar higher as the wind caught the corner of my coat. The street darkened around me — lamps blinking on like watchful eyes.
***
By the time the city gave way to Harlem proper, dusk had sunk her claws into the skyline. The air shifted — less steel, more smoke. More ash. More memory. The buildings leaned in tighter, older. Brownstone blocks with their backs straight and their teeth still intact. Wide stoops stretched like stages, iron railings polished more by time than care. Streetlamps glowed warm here. Not gold — not this far uptown — but amber.
The scent changed first.
More orcs.
Older blood. Stronger.
It clung to the brick like smoke in wool — deep and layered. Clan-scents stacked like a map: Ironbellies and Blackfangs, a few scattered Thornhides. All old East clans. But this block?
Bloodclaw.
Their scent sang in every stone, every doorway, every windowsill where someone had leaned too long.
I slowed when I saw it.
Three floors and a half-basement. Brick wrapped in iron grates, squat stone columns braced against a sagging porch roof. Orc runes carved into the lintel above the door — not decoration. That was a sigil. Old clan magic, still alive. Someone had kept it clean, sacred. Still sharp enough to hum if you looked too long.
This wasn’t just a tenement.
This was hers.
Grashira Bloodclaw.
The name burned again — not just in my head but in the air. Like the scent of her had buried itself into the mortar. I could feel it. Taste it.
Dominance. Magic. Age.
A matriarch’s mark.
This was more than a house.
I stepped up to the stoop — the boards creaking soft under my boots. My tail gave a twitch behind me, unbidden.
Nerves.
I didn’t belong here. Didn’t belong anywhere anymore, but standing in front of this door I felt that hollow open wide in my chest.
Ironhide barely took me. Passed me hand to hand like something borrowed. Something heavy. And even then — even before Layla — I’d been the kid with the wrong kind of blood. The one with the tail.
What the fuck makes me think I’ve got a place here?
I should’ve turned around. Should’ve found a sewer pipe to sleep under. A precinct storage room. Anywhere else.
Instead, I knocked.
No answer.
The door was thick — real wood, iron core. You could shoulder it, and they wouldn’t budge.
But sound trickled out anyway.
Not voices. Music.
Jazz — fast, sharp — alive like something that didn’t want to be tamed. Piano keys dancing like teeth on a dare. Notes chased each other down a scale that didn’t follow rules — it led them. The melody skipped and spun like a drunk uncle at a naming feast — reckless but graceful.
Then laughter.
Loud. Honest. Kids yelling over one another. Someone cussing in Old Orctongue. A chair scraped. Something heavy fell, no one panicked. A voice shouted about soup. Another told them to shut it or she’d hex the whole pot.
My hand closed on the door’s edge.
I pushed.
It opened slow, hinges protesting lo0udly. Warmth spilled out. Light. Life.
The hallway was wide, dark wood floors scuffed and worn where generations had dragged boots and children and god-knows-what else across them.
The hallway fed straight into a common room — no doors, just arches.
It hit me all at once.
Hearth.
Big fire at the far end — not just heat, but flame that’d been tended for years. Old, used furniture. Rugs patched but thick. The piano crouched in the corner ruling the room.
And the boy at the keys?
Maybe twenty-five in human years. Probably born already in a New World. Skin deep-green, tusks sharp but average in size, they had time to grow bigger still, eyes flashing smiles. Hands flying over the ivory like he wasn’t just playing — he was casting.
He sang, too.
Voice like spun smoke. Flirty as hell. Loud, sure. But not for attention. He was the room. You looked at him the way you looked at lightning — not because it was safe, but because it demanded your eyes.
And damn if he wasn’t handsome.
Even I could tell. Not in a way that threatened — just… you knew women stopped for him. Probably men, too. Mischief lived in his mouth and moved in his hips.
All around him?
Women.
Four women clustered near the piano — and not one of them looked like she gave a damn about the stew still bubbling somewhere behind them.
They weren’t working.
They were his.
Leaning in too close when they talked, laughing at every off-hand line like it was comedy gold. One perched on the edge of the piano bench, legs crossed just high enough to show she knew exactly where his eyes might land. Another played with her braid like it was part of the melody, eyes locked on him like he was a conjuration she didn’t want to end.
They were beautiful — no denying that — but they weren’t helping.
They were circling.
And the way the boy played? He liked it.
Hell, he thrived on it. Every note he wrung from the keys seemed made to draw another smile, another tilt of the head, another reach of a hand that might “accidentally” brush his arm.
Behind them, real work was happening.
Two orc women moved with purpose between the stove and side counters. One rolling dough with arms like she could break bones. The other, younger but just as no-nonsense, stirring a pot with one hand and brandishing a wooden spoon at a kid trying to sneak a bite with the other.
Neither of them looked twice at the piano.
The air was thick with scent — meat, magic, cinnamon, old wood, wine, and something else I couldn’t name but wanted to breathe forever.
“This,” I muttered, not realizing I’d said it aloud, “this is what a real hearth looks like.”
No one noticed me yet.
I stood in the doorway, coat still damp from slush, tail low, shoulders too stiff.
Out of place.
The pianist saw me before the rest of them did.
Fingers stilled mid-run. A chord hung half-formed in the air, then died without fanfare.
The room hushed. Chatter thinned. Heads turned. Even the stew stopped bubbling.
The women closest to him looked toward the door, eyes narrowing, backs straightening just enough to say who the fuck is that?
The boy stood.
Didn’t posture. Didn’t puff his chest or bare his tusks like a pit brat. He just moved — smooth, deliberate, the way a spear might when it finally decides to fly.
I straightened without meaning to. Kept my hands at my sides. Let my coat fall open just enough to show the badge clipped inside.
He crossed the room easy, all dark eyes and clean lines.
Built lean, not soft. Muscle coiled in all the right places — made for fast fights and long nights.
The closer he got, the more I smelled him.
Grashira’s magic layered deep into his scent — hearth-drenched, old and clean. He was hers. Blood and bone. Raised under her roof. Still unclaimed.
No wonder the women near the piano circled like hawks. They were hunting.
He stopped three paces from me. Shoulders square. Didn’t say a word.
I knew that stance.
Not aggressive. But ready.
His nostrils flared, his eyes flicked once toward my tail, and I saw the recognition tighten in his jaw.
He didn’t flinch. Credit for that.
I reached into my coat slow, deliberate. No sudden moves in another clan’s home — even if it was one without posted guards.
Pulled the card from my inner pocket.
I held it out between two fingers, no tension in my wrist. Just offering.
He looked at it, then at me again.
“So you’re the one.” He asked incredolous.
I blinked. “What one?”
“The one that’s got Layla Peterson sniffing around for orc company, and dodging it like it’ll burn her dress off.”
I froze. Just a beat.
Then swallowed it down and asked — too rough: “You know her?”
Varash grinned. Not a smirk — not mean. Just that same fast spark that had lit the piano keys.
“Sure. She comes to my club every week. Always sits near the band. Always leaves before the crowd does.”
My gut twisted.
She’d been looking. Circling — hunting something that felt like me. Missed me maybe?
Varash laughed, stepped back like he needed space to process whatever storm he saw in my face.
“I thought I was going crazy,” he said much lower, so the rest of the room didn’t hear. “Zhak’orr? Toward a human? Didn’t even think it was real. But if you’re bonded to her —”
He whistled low. “Gods. It’s real, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer.
My jaw had already locked too tight to speak, and he saw it.
His grin softened — not mocking now. Just… surprised. Like he was watching a myth walk into his mother’s kitchen.
Footsteps.
Two sets. From the back.
Two women came through the arch from the kitchen.
The first one saw me and didn’t even bother to pretend she wasn’t looking.
Tall. Broad through the shoulders. Black braid swept high and pinned with old iron rings. Warrior’s frame, no doubt — the kind of muscle built from real work, not lifting weights to impress a mirror.
She had a tusk ring. Two silver hoops through her right. Orcish script etched into both. I couldn’t read them from here.
Her eyes raked over me once, top to boots, then settled somewhere near my mouth.
And stayed.
Varash coughed.
“Draga,” he said flatly. “You’ve got two husbands glaring at you from the stairwell. Maybe don’t add a third without talking to them first.”
She didn’t even flinch. Just tossed him a smirk and crossed her arms under her breast — slow, deliberate, a challenge carved into the shape of a woman.
“They’ll get over it.”
The second one —
Different.
Smaller. Slighter. Quiet steps.
Her hair was braided too, but wrapped tight against her scalp in an old pattern. Her scent hit me before she spoke — earth, bitter herbs, a trace of smoke and binding oils.
And something else.
Magic.
Her tail curled once around her ankle, slow and tight.
I stepped toward her.
“You’re the one your mother meant.”
She tilted her head. Voice soft but steady. “The healer?”
I nodded. “The one who might help me.”
She didn’t blink. Just sniffed once — subtle, professional — and nodded.
“Come with me.”
She turned. Didn’t wait.
We stepped away from the common room — down a narrower hall that still breathed warmth.
The light was dimmer here. The walls close.
Paintings lined the plaster in fading charcoal and ochre — old scenes, familiar shapes.
Not decor. Memory.
The stories we weren’t supposed to forget.
Shuraka walked ahead without a sound. Her tail didn’t drag. It floated.
She stopped at a door.
Before she opened it, she spoke again. Low.
“We shouldn’t talk about bond-magic in a shared room. Not this bond.”
Her eyes flicked back to mine.
She knew exactly why I was here.
And exactly who I was bound to.