Dee doesn’t waste time or words upon their return. A ring of the muster bell summons her pack, arriving piecemeal across the half-packed camp.

“Let you get back to it in a second.” Her arm is clamped around Anise’s waist, her cords of muscle, her silky skin. “Just a quick announcement. Anise is a Voraag now. She’s staying.”

A spreading gasp from the assembled pack. Then a piercing whistle of approval from Rarek—Rarek—and the rest of the orcs join in with welcoming praise and glad handing. Anise gets slapped on the back so many times she’s concerned she might bruise. “Good shit, Ani.” Parag smushes her into a tight embrace. “Welcome, girl. About time we had someone who could do math in this outfit.”

“Well done indeed.” Dalma is perched on Parag’s shoulder like a weird parrot, which is where she spends a lot of her time these days. “Your yellow will be quite the visual pop among the pack lineup. I’m thinking of painting myself red, for similar reasons.”

Her cheeks ache from smiling. There’s a tingly feeling in her throat. These are going to be her people.

“Not the shortest in the pack anymore, Dee.” Graila coils Anise into a tight embrace and says this over her head. “Must feel good.”

“I’m not the goddamn shortest, kral’gvak sev’ka. Tamor’s the shortest.”

“Not worth arguing.” Graila musses Anise’s hair. “This one’s the shortest now.” She appraises the elf, then nods. “Tei mok Torak, Voraag.”

“Um. Victory and strength.” Anise tries to get some of that gravel in her syllables and only makes the outrider laugh. “I need to learn packtongue now, huh?”

“We got that big pink himbo to learn.” Graila jerks a thumb at Nick as she strolls off. “You’ll do it no problem.”

“Glot kai, Graila.” Nick’s eyes sparkle. He looks like he did the first day she saw him as Dee’s mate. “That means shut up, Ani. You’re gonna use that a lot with these people.”

Dee’s fingers are tight against Anise’s hip. “Come to the yurt, Voraag,” she whispers into the elf’s ear. “I want you.”

Anise just about melts into Dee’s arms then and there, but has the presence of mind to say, “Legendary. I have to tell Legendary.”

“Don’t take too long.” Nick rubs that weak spot right by her ear. Her stomach tightens. They’re eager, her lovers. So is she.

She barely keeps herself from skipping as she approaches the trailer. She’s staying. This is the rest of her life. She hasn’t felt this kind of unrestricted horizon of possibility since she was a college freshman.

There’s no do not disturb sock on the handle. The lowered voices she hears muffling through the paneling give her pause. But she knocks. “Guys? It’s me.”

The conversation lapses. Evan speaks up. “Come on in, Ani.”

Anise enters the trailer to find Legendary Classic Edition huddling together on the sand-colored couches. Evan’s got his bass out, unplugged and below his fingers, as he does when he needs something anchoring him. Thekla sits in Kell’s lap, fiddling with her glasses. Sion has a mordsteel in his hand, of course, at noon.

Anise surveys the tightrope tension and readies herself for the crossing. “What’s going on, guys?”

“You have an invitation for this evening,” Sion says. “Conna would like to host you for dinner.”

“Oh.” Anise clears her throat. “Okay. Well. That’s very kind.”

“She has much she’d like to discuss,” Sion says.

“Jeez, Sion.” Kell shifts. “You think you could be a little more foreboding?

“We’re going, Ani,” Thekla says. “You ought to come, too, but either way we’re going.”

“I’m not gonna let my best—” she’s about to say clients, but no. “—My best friends walk alone into the literal dragon’s den.” Anise shakes her head. “You can tell Conna we’re there.”

“No need to,” Sion says. “She knew you’d say yes.”

“Okay. It’s settled, then.” Thekla purses her lips as she places her glasses back on, her big gold peepers magnifying even bigger. “Dining with the dragon tonight. Sorry to spring that on you, Ani. Not what you were coming in here trying to hear, I’m sure.”

“I need to bring Nick and Dee,” Anise remembers. “I promised them I would.”

Sion frowns. “You told them?”

Anise’s stomach drops. “Yes. Sorry. Don’t be mad. I’ll make Dee behave. But we had a whole moment of truth thing.”

“Sounds highly dramatic,” Sion says. “Oh, well. We’ll make do.”

“It’s okay, Ani.” Thekla squirms in Kell’s lap. “I’m not gonna turn down an escort from a big orc with a gun. And we need to get used to them being part of the circle. While we’re in the O Dub, anyway.”

Anise’s face warms. “Um. That’s why I’m here, me and Nick and Dee. I didn’t mean to interrupt your thing but I had a thing.”

Evan, who’s been rubbing his wife’s tensed-up shoulder, turns those big icy blues her way. “What’s up, Ani?”

“I’m, um.” Anise’s exhale comes out as a nervous little giggle. “I’m staying.”

“What?” Kell’s gray gaze widens. “Like you’re not going back to Earth?”

“Yes. No. I’m not. I’m a Voraag now. I’m gonna live in the Old World.”

Her stomach braces. She’s imagined a lot of responses to this news. Silent stares, tacit okay…s, confused questions about how much sleep she’s gotten lately and whether she feels okay.

Thekla launches off Kell’s lap and into a leaping embrace that nearly takes her off her feet. “Girl! Yes!”

Kell’s arms crash around her and tighten like a vise. “Ani, that’s so fucking sick. Good fucking shit, dude.” She smacks Anise’s back on the same tender spot the Voraags did.

“The right choice.” Evan’s beard rubs past Anise’s ear as he joins the group hug. “You’ve been so happy with them. This is the right choice.”

Sion has not stood up. He raises his beer. “Nice.”

“You guys.” Anise hasn’t cried in front of her clients since their wedding, and she’s battling valiantly to keep the streak alive. “I’m going to miss the hell out of you.”

“Fuck that,” Kell says. “We’re gonna visit all the time. Now I’ve got an excuse to come out here and ride a rhino around. I’m gonna be insufferable about it.”

“Was I not already your excuse?” Sion says.

“We’re dragging your grayscale ass back with us, man.”

Sion doesn’t reply to this. Just raises a brow.

They make her crack a terrible celebratory light beer with them. She has no idea why Legendary are so dedicated to Mordsteels, but it’s rubbed off on her. Whenever she drinks one, she always thinks of them. She escapes to the yurt before they can corrupt her further with a second round.

Nick and Dee are gentler with her than they’ve ever been before. They don’t need to be urgent anymore, to stuff themselves full of the fruit of love before some arbitrary deadline. There’s time, now. Time to be slow and sensuous and cuddly, to tease things out and savor the taste of her.

(Not that they don’t pick up the pace by the final sprint. It wouldn’t be Nick and Dee without a little rough stuff.)

Nick puts on some pants and a jacket and heads out to rustle them up some lunch. Dee stays with Anise, wrapped around her like a clinging vine, her soft heat radiating across the elf’s face.

“When this tour is done,” she says, “I’m taking you and Nick to the actual Voraag River. Your new home.”

“Oh yeah?” Anise traces one of Dee’s scars along her silky thigh. “I thought you guys were always on the move.”

“We are, but that’s the territory,” Dee says. “We follow the auroch migrations, north to south and back. We’ll light out to Packland Cross sometimes to trade furs and food for whatever we can’t get or make. Hearthsand for the generators, nice clothes. We could get you a drum kit there, and some amps. Maybe do some touring for Quillbear when the mood hits us. But more often than not, we’re on the river.”

“That sounds so nice.”

“Uh huh.” Dee turns Anise over and the elf obediently assumes little spoon position. “You’ll see why we picked it as the name. It’s fuckin’ paradise. Good hunting, good fishing. We been there long enough that the sowing’s good, too. Tend the food forests as we go in the spring, come back to all kinds of crops in the fall. Free as air. Swimming in the summer, skating in the winter.”

“I’m not a skating type girl,” Anise says. “You know how I feel about the cold.”

Dee’s hand gently folds Anise’s leg up and drifts along her thigh. “Getting railed in a big pile of furs in the winter, then.”

“Oooh, okay. That’s more the type girl I am.”

Dee giggles. Anise loves when she does that, loves how girly this gunslinging pioneer packmistress is willing to sound. Her voice drops back down to its silky packland burr. “You’re gonna let me take care of you from now on, okay?”

Anise nods and lays back against Dee’s cushioned heart.

“You’ve been a badass for decades. Raising a kid, working your tail off.” Dee’s quiet and sweet, barely above a whisper. “So much, all by yourself. You’re used to a nine-to-five and overtime. It’s gonna feel weird, at first, when most of it goes away. There’s still admin stuff to be done, once the tour is finished. We’ve got us a treasury you’ll be in charge of. Rarek will be glad to have that off his list. But it’ll be a damn sight less than you’re used to, I imagine.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

“I’m serious. Seen it before. People recruited from places where they need to justify their lives and make up things to do. You’re gonna think you ain’t doing enough to earn your keep. Maybe you’ll get frustrated cause we won’t have you doing as much manual labor as an orc would. But that’s not how it works here. You got nothing to prove to me. Just follow my lead, be there when you’re needed, and give us your trust. That’s all. Anything you’re good at, you can contribute. Anything you don’t know, we’ll teach you. Anything you can’t do, someone else will. And it’s no sweat.”

She kisses Anise’s neck.

“That’s the deal for all my packmates. Not just the sexy little elf ones. Okay?”

Anise snuggles further into her generous curves. The warmth coming off this orc makes her feel so drowsy and safe. “Yes, packmistress.”

“Good. And since I’m the boss now, I get to call you Anna Banana.”

Anise’s eyes snap open. “Hold on, now.”