The wind carried a familiar scent.

  Remoran stiffened, his fingers tightening around the blade at his waist. The orc camp had grown comfortable over the last few weeks—too comfortable. The rhythm of training, hunting, and surviving among them had nearly erased the ghost of who he once was.

  But the past had a way of finding you.

  And tonight, it had come looking.

  Grima noticed first.

  They were sparring near the outer edge of camp when she suddenly stopped mid-movement, her nostrils flaring.

  Remoran lowered his guard. “What?”

  She knelt, pressing her fingers into the muddy earth beneath them.

  Then she scowled.

  “Your kind is close,” she muttered.

  Remoran frowned, stepping closer. At first, he didn’t see what she was talking about. But then—

  Boot prints.

  Deep impressions in the damp soil. Too even, too precise to be orcish.

  His stomach twisted. Humans.

  The word felt strange now—like something distant, something that no longer fit him.

  The tracks weren’t days old.

  They were fresh.

  That night, the camp was quiet. The other orcs laughed and drank by the fire, boasting about the hunt, sharpening weapons, or preparing for the next day’s raids.

  Remoran sat in the shadows, watching the treeline.

  Grima sat beside him.

  “You’ve been staring for too long,” she said, tearing into a roasted haunch of meat. “Thinking.”

  Remoran exhaled. “It’s what I do.”

  “Maybe that’s your problem.”

  He looked at her, but she wasn’t smiling this time. Her golden eyes flickered with something sharper—something more serious.

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  “You knew they would come eventually,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “What will you do when they find you?”

  Remoran clenched his jaw. He hadn’t thought that far.

  The night was thick with mist when he saw them.

  He had left camp under the pretense of collecting firewood, but the moment he passed the outer ridge, he started following the tracks.

  And then—he heard them.

  Voices. Familiar voices.

  Remoran slowed, moving through the brush with careful steps, his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

  Through the trees, he saw them.

  A group of human scouts, lightly armored, weapons drawn.

  And at their center—

  Demoris.

  The breath left Remoran’s lungs.

  Demoris had come for him.

  He hadn’t realized until this moment how much that fact mattered.

  For weeks, he had assumed the people of Sharil had moved on. That Demoris had let him go.

  But no.

  Here he was, standing among his men, his brow furrowed, his eyes scanning the darkness.

  “We follow the tracks until we find him,” Demoris said.

  One of the scouts shifted. “Captain, what if he’s—”

  Demoris cut him off. “He’s still one of us.” A pause. “We bring him home.”

  Home.

  The word felt foreign now.

  Was Sharil still his home? Did he even belong there anymore?

  His fingers brushed the hilt of Orkinder.

  “You have no home with them.”

  The whisper slid into his mind like a knife.

  "You belong here, with me."

  Remoran’s breath hitched.

  He had expected Orkinder to push him toward violence.

  But this was worse.

  It was right.

  Because the truth was, he didn’t belong with them.

  Not anymore.

  A part of him ached to step forward.

  To see Demoris’s face up close. To hear his voice without the distance of the trees between them.

  Would Demoris embrace him?

  Would he look at him the way he once had?

  Or would he see what the orcs already saw?

  Something else.

  Something not human.

  Remoran took a slow step backward.

  Then another.

  And another.

  And when he turned, vanishing into the shadows of the trees, he did not look back.

  Back at camp, Grima was waiting.

  She didn’t ask where he had been.

  She didn’t need to.

  But she did say, “Your kind is out there.”

  Remoran sat beside her, watching the flames dance.

  “They are not my kind,” he said quietly.

  Grima’s smirk was knowing.

  And there in the darkness, Orkinder pulsed in approval.