Something shifted in my chest—a strange, weightless sensation. "A human female?"
"Yes, chieftain. She says..." He shook his head like he couldn't quite trust his own ears. "She says her name is Dr. Jordan Bennett, and she's here about your nephew."
The world narrowed to a single point. I couldn't move. Couldn't draw breath. The warrior kept talking—something about her appearing at the forest's edge, asking for directions, refusing to leave without seeing me—but his voice seemed to drift from somewhere impossibly distant.
Jordan was here.
Not safely tucked away in some human settlement, but here. Now. Standing at the threshold of my village.
"Take me to her," I heard myself say, my voice iron-steady even as lightning crackled through my veins. I told myself it was relief—nothing more. Her presence meant hope for Ardin. That was the only reason my pulse hammered like war drums.
But as I strode toward the access road, I knew I was lying to myself.
Chapter 4
Jordan
The turnoff was easy to miss—I'd already driven past it twice before I spotted the gap in the trees. What passed for a road was little more than a deer trail, two faint ruts carved into the earth and overgrown with weeds that scraped the undercarriage of my truck with a persistentscritch-scritch-scritch.
Thank God I'd bought the 4WD.
The vehicle lurched and bounced over rocks and exposed roots, branches clawing along both sides with an awful screech that made me wince. I gripped the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles bone-white as I navigated around a particularly deep washout that looked like it could swallow my front tire whole. The GPS on my phone had lost signal miles ago, leaving me with nothing but instinct and Sarah's directions.
After twenty minutes of crawling forward at barely ten miles per hour, I was beginning to think I'd taken a wrong turn somewhere. The road—and I was using that term generously—seemed to be getting narrower by the yard, the forest pressing in on all sides like it was trying to reclaim what humans had stolen. Twice I had to stop and haul fallen branches out of the way, bark scraping my palms. My jeans were already covered in dirt and tree sap, and I was pretty sure something had torn a hole in my favorite sweatshirt.
I was just about to admit defeat and try to figure out how the hell to turn around in this impossible space when the road simply... ended. A wall of dense undergrowth and towering pines blocked any further progress, like nature had thrown up a "No Trespassing" sign.
I killed the engine and sat there for a moment, doubt creeping in like cold water. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I should have minded my own business.
But the image of that little boy's face wouldn't leave my mind.
I took a deep breath and climbed out of the truck.
The silence of the forest pressed in around me, broken only by the metallic ticking of my cooling engine and the distant, lonely call of a bird. I stood there, staring at the wall of vegetation, feeling foolish. What had I expected? A welcome sign?Orcs this way, visitors welcome?
"Hello?" I called out, my voice sounding small and uncertain in the vastness. "Is anyone there?"
Nothing. Just the whisper of wind through the pines and the rustle of leaves.
I tried again, louder this time, cupping my hands around my mouth. "Hello! I'm a doctor—I need to speak to Ruka!"
Still nothing. The forest seemed to swallow my words whole, leaving no echo, no response.
This was ridiculous. I was standing in the middle of nowhere, yelling at trees like some kind of lunatic. I should just go back before I became lost or worse. Maybe I could get the local police to help me locate Ardin, though they didn't exactly have the best relationship with the Orcs. Maybe I could convince Sarah to come back with me? I turned toward my truck, already mentally rehearsing the embarrassing story I'd have to tell.
That's when I saw it.
To the left of where I'd stopped, partially hidden by a massive Douglas fir with a trunk wider than my truck, another track branched off. Not a road, exactly—more like two faint ruts cutting through the underbrush, heading upward at a steep angle that made my calves ache just looking at it. I walked over, studying the ground. Fresh tire tracks, wide-set and deep. The kind a large vehicle—maybe a truck even bigger than mine—would make.
My heart picked up its pace. The branches on either side had been broken back recently, and I could see where someone had cleared the larger obstacles, dragging them to the side. This path was being used, and used regularly.
I looked up the slope, trying to gauge how far it went. The track disappeared around a bend about fifty yards up, winding higher into the mountain. No way was I getting my truck up there—the angle was too steep, the path too narrow and treacherous.
But I could walk.
I snagged the bag of prescriptions from the truck, grabbed a water bottle for good measure, and started hiking. The incline hit me immediately—steeper than it had any right to be—and my calves were screaming protests within minutes. The forest closed in like a living thing, dense and watchful, broken only by the occasional bird call and my own increasingly ragged breathing.
"Hello?" I shouted, my voice bouncing off the trees. "I'm looking for Ruka! I'm a doctor—I treated a boy a couple nights ago. Ardin?"