I ate standing at the counter like some kind of feral graduate student, chewing mechanically and washing it down with water. The cabin wrapped around me in comfortable silence—just the refrigerator's steady hum and the occasional creak of wood settling into itself for the night. Through the window, darkness pressed against the glass, punctuated only by the vague silhouettes of mountains standing guard in the distance.
Back in bed, I burrowed under the covers and closed my eyes, coaxing my body back toward that dark, dreamless oblivion. I was still tired, still paying interest on the debt of too many shifts strung together. Morning would arrive soon enough, dragging whatever the next day had in store along with it.
Sunlight ambushed me through the bedroom window, and for one blissful moment, I had no idea where I was. Not the hospital. Not on call. Home.
Then the dreams caught up with me—sticky and vivid, clinging like spiderwebs I couldn't quite brush away.
Ruka had been the star of several particularly memorable scenes. Dreams that now had heat crawling up my neck despite being completely alone in my rumpled sheets. Those massive hands of his, surprisingly gentle when they'd touched Ardin. The way he'd looked at me in the hospital, all that intensity focused like a laser. My traitorous subconscious had taken those perfectly innocent details and spun them into scenarios that would make a romance novelist blush.
I groaned into my palms.Get it together, Jordan. Professional boundaries exist for a reason.
But the other dreams? Those had carved themselves deeper.
Ardin, impossibly small in that hospital bed, his breathing growing thinner and thinner like tissue paper. Me, tearing through empty medication cabinets, sprinting downhospital corridors that twisted into labyrinths leading nowhere. Nadine's face looming over me, cold and disappointed, her voice echoing:Let him die.And Ardin's fever climbing, climbing, his small body convulsing while I stood paralyzed, my hands refusing to move.
I shoved the covers off, sitting up too fast. My heart hammered against my ribs. The morning air kissed my overheated skin, grounding me back in reality. Just dreams. Just my exhausted brain trying to process stress and sleep deprivation and—fine, yes—an extremely inconvenient attraction to a seven-foot-tall Orc who'd carried a dying child into my ER like he was cradling the entire world.
But the worry gnawing at my chest about Ardin? That was real. That had teeth.
Nadine had kicked them out before I could administer the second round of antibiotics. Before I could hand over a prescription. The first dose would buy Ardin some time, sure, but it wasn't enough—not for a gunshot wound, not with infection lurking like a predator. And from what little I knew about Orc settlements, they weren't exactly equipped with pharmacies on every corner.
I padded into the kitchen, bare feet whispering against cold hardwood. The familiar ritual of making a latte became a meditation—grinding beans, steaming milk, the rich aroma of espresso curling through my small cabin like an invitation to breathe. I cradled the warm mug between my palms and drifted out onto the deck, tugging my sweater closer against the mountain chill.
Dawn was breaking over the Nantahala, painting the world in watercolor strokes of pink and gold. The forest stretched endlessly before me, ancient and unknowable, ridge after ridge of blue-green mountains disappearing into morningmist. This view had been the deciding factor when I'd moved to Franklin—well, this and rent I could actually afford.
God, it was breathtaking. Each mountain range layered behind the next like a secret, valleys pooled with fog that would burn off by noon. And somewhere out there, hidden in all that wilderness, was an Orc settlement. Somewhere out there was a little boy who might be burning with fever right now, his small body waging war against infection without the weapons he needed to win.
The latte turned bitter on my tongue.
I grabbed my laptop from the kitchen counter and curled into the papasan chair on the deck, balancing the computer on my knees. The sun was climbing higher, warming the morning, but I couldn't shake the cold knot in my gut. I needed answers.
I started simple: "Orc physiology medical studies."
The results surprised me—pages of them. In the five years since Orcs had emerged from the depths of the Earth, the medical community had been scrambling to understand our new neighbors. I clicked through to a peer-reviewed article in the New England Journal of Medicine, skimming past the dense jargon to the meat of it.
Adult Orcs were basically superhuman. Post-puberty, their immune systems were powerhouses, their healing rates nearly triple that of humans. But then I hit a caveat, highlighted in bold like a warning."Pre-pubescent and elderly Orc populations show immune response and healing rates comparable to human equivalents."
My chest tightened.
Another study, this one focused on pediatric Orc medicine, spelled it out even more clearly. Young Orcs—before puberty hit around twelve or thirteen—were just as fragile as human children. Maybe more so, considering most Orc settlements existed in medical deserts, cut off from modernhealthcare, their immune systems naive to diseases humans had been vaccinated against for generations.
Ruka had said Ardin was six summers old. Six. His body wouldn't have any of those miraculous Orc advantages yet. He was just a little boy who'd been shot, sent home without antibiotics, without pain management, without any of the follow-up care that could mean the difference between recovery and sepsis.
The laptop screen blurred. I blinked hard and closed it.
The mountains stared back at me, their peaks sharp against the morning sky. Somewhere out there, hidden in all that wilderness, was a six-year-old boy fighting an infection with nothing but his father's desperate hope to protect him. A father who'd swallowed every ounce of pride to bring his son to people who'd treated him like something scraped off their shoes.
The decision didn't feel like a decision at all. It felt inevitable, like gravity.
I had to find them.
The shower ran hot enough to turn my skin pink, steam filling the bathroom until I could barely see my reflection in the mirror. Good. I didn't want to see the doubt there, the voice asking what the hell I thought I was doing. I dressed quickly—jeans worn soft at the knees, a faded sweatshirt that had seen better days, hiking boots. Real clothes. Not the scrubs that now carried the stain of Nadine's cruelty like a bloodstain that wouldn't wash out. My light brown hair hung in damp waves down my back until I twisted it into a ponytail, still dripping at the ends. A swipe of mascara, a touch of lip gloss. That was all the armor I needed today.
In the kitchen, I went through the motions of making oatmeal, the routine comforting even if my appetite wasn't. Each spoonful felt like swallowing paste, but I forced it down anyway. Whatever came next, I'd need the fuel.
I was almost out the door when the gold caught my eye.
It sat on the hall table like a small, guilty sun, that misshapen nugget gleaming with obscene brightness next to my purse. In daylight, it looked even more valuable—raw and pure, the kind of gold that made people do stupid things. Fifty thousand, easy. Maybe more.