Mako

"So you're telling me that it actually doesn't take a month to get to the hive?" Raine deadpans as we emerge from the trees and into view of Oakrun. Tuluk and Brunk emerge from the brush beside us, both breathing heavily from running to keep up and Calla trots after them on her absurdly large horse.

Raine turns to look at me as I slide down off of Zork and I shrug sheepishly, "it's a precaution to make sure that nobody follows us home."

"Mako, we spent weeks in a freezing cold wagon," she reminds me. "I almost died."

"We will take the fast way home," I promise her as I help her from my bear and turn back to the glowing town. Not that we really had a home unless this somehow ended without us starting a war, but I don't bring that up.

Even from this distance I can see and smell that the town has fallen into squalor since the last time I'd been here. How one person could do this to their people in just a few short months was beyond me.

Beside me, Tuluk grips his axe tightly, "we should attack before it gets light."

"We can't attack," Raine tells him before I can. "We don't know where she is and Khol has thirty men spread around the town. At least, he did when I left. It could be more now that he's governor."

"We are three orc strong," he scoffs. "We can take them."

"I'm worth more than an orc," Calla grumbles as she slides off her horse. "Elf, remember? I killed a Wilderbeast single handedly."

"Really?" Raine asks her curiously.

Calla nods, "oh yes! It was a glorious battle between me and that beast that lasted many days and nights."

Beside her, Brunk starts laughing, "you should have been a bard. That is not at all what happened."

"Hey!" Calla chides. "It's my story and I can tell it how I want. Besides, you were nearly dead so it could have happened exactly how I said it did."

"Enough!" Tuluk says loudly. "My pregnant mate is in there being held captive by a rapist slave owner and you're out here arguing over a story!"

Calla and Brunk both get an ashamed look on their faces as they mutter apologies. "So what is the plan?" Raine asks.

"I don't know," I admit.

"We charge in and kill them all!" Tuluk says at the same time.

"I've got one of anyone is interested," Calla tells us.

"No," I tell Tuluk before looking at Calla, "yes."

"Khol is expecting a raiding party, right?" She asks. "But what he's not expecting is a visiting elf woman of royal descent with a fuck ton of money who just so happens to get drunk at his bar and then spends an ungodly amount of gold on his whores." She pauses before looking at Raine, "no offense."

My mate shrugs, "none taken."

"And just how do you plan on figuring out where my mate is?" Tuluk asks. "She might not even be at the Breeding Den or even in this town!"

"She's here," Raine tells him calmly. "He wouldn't take her anywhere else."

"How do you know!" He demands.

"Because," she sighs. "He wants me to find her, to come for her so that he can have us both again."

"He will never have you," I promise her.

"He does not need her when he has mine!"

"Look! Give me until tomorrow night and I'll get you the entire layout of the Den, the town, a count on all his men and the layout of his house," Calla tells us confidently as she stands up. "Babe I need my coin purse."

Brunk shakes his head but grins as he digs a very large coin purse out of his sack, "remember this is business and not pleasure."

Calla scoffs dramatically, "baby please, when have I ever mixed those two up?"

He arches an eyebrow and taps the scars on his chest, "Wilderbeast."

Calla purses her lips before saying, "fair point."

"What are you going to do?" Raine asks curiously as Calla mounts her horse. "He'll be on high alert and waiting for us. I mean, you can't exactly walk in his front gate."

Calla gives her cheeky grin, "that's exactly what I'm gonna do."