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A picture appears in my head without warning: a pack of little ogres climbing all over Ivar, like the triplets in Shrek 3.

Him smiling down at me, exactly as he is now.

That vision… the prospect of it coming true should scare me. But it’s warm and startlingly vivid. No, it doesn’t strike fear. It settles in my chest, filling it with light.

My gaze flicks to the door I’d been planning to escape out of just a few hours ago, and reality comes crashing back in.

According to Grak’s math, lifelong would mean five hundred Middle Realm years or more—five hundred years with someone I just met a few hours ago. And I still have my life back in the Lower Realm to think of—plus a test to take that has the power to change the course of it.

But then an old memory surfaces, reminding me whose idea it was to give up on my dreams and chase a civilian version of my old job in the first place.

“You know, instead of nagging me about getting married, maybe you should apply for a job at the DOD.” A memory of Vance suggesting that to me a few months before I lost both my day job and my online store comes back in a flash. “You’re pretty smart for somebody who didn’t go to college. They’d probably take you on if you applied and passed the language proficiency test. Then you’d be stable, and maybe I could give us getting married some real consideration.”

That was the thing about Vance. He was always giving me backhanded compliments and acting like the reason he hadn’t asked me to marry him was because I hadn’t earned it.

And though applying for the DOD job had technically been my idea, it had started out as yet another hoop he wanted me to jump through to be worthy of his ring.

Ivar has known me for only a few hours, and he’s offering me a ring he had made just moments after looking into my eyes—and not ripping my head off as his Hordechief said he would.

I put up with Vance for five years, barely tolerating him toward the end after I separated from the Army. It was like being in a too-long roller coaster line and refusing to step out because of the time you’d already committed.

Less than five hours after meeting Ivar, I can already imagine the future we could build… together.

My real life shines like a beacon in the back of my mind…

…then dissipates when I raise my eyes to the Orc staring down at me.

“I think… I think I’d like that.”

“You do?” he asks.

“Yeah.…” I agree with a shy smile. “I do.”

“Oh, Adora…” He takes my right hand and slides the ring onto my… middle finger. Well, that’s another cultural difference.

But more light fills my chest as I stare down at it. I don’t care that it’s on the wrong finger. It feels exactly right.

“You must say the words out loud to consummate the marriage as well,” Ivar whispers, breaking me out of my ring trance.

“Oh, yeah, um, I, Adora Myers of the Lower Realm, wish to join with you, Ivar the Not-so-Terrible, the Orc Emperor Supreme of all the Swamplands, in mateship—oop!”

The Orc version of “I do” is barely out of my mouth before Ivar hugs me to his chest and takes me again, driving himself deep inside of me on every thrust.

There’s no ceremony this time, just raw emotion as he officially claims me as his wife. “Adora, Adora, Adora…” He says my name against the top of my head like a prayer, reminding me for the first time since my mother died that it’s rooted in the word “adoration.”

Neither of us lasts long. My forehead falls into his pec as yet another powerful orgasm locks up my body, and he unleashes another load.

My entire nervous system continues to tingle, even after I’ve come down, and it feels like I’m talking through a mouth full of cotton when I tell him, “I’ve changed my mind.”

His face drops.

But then I say, “I’m a mess. Can I clean up first, grab another towel, and then get something to eat that’s not your dynasty?”

“Adora, future mother of my ogres, you may have anything you wish.” He cups my face in his hand. “You have made your new husband so incredibly happy.”

For a long moment, he just gazes down at me with the most tender look in his eyes. The mage, the throne of skulls and bones beneath us, the collective stare of a thousand other Orcs… it all falls away as he slowly lowers his head. His tusks rubbing into my cheeks, he kisses me as if we’re the only two people in the hall.

Other than the fact that I’m buck-ass naked and impaled on his monster cock, it actually feels like a real wedding kiss. All sorts of emotions sweep through my chest, including one that is way too early and might start with an “L.”