Chapter 107: Shorty and the Oaf

"What are you doing, shorty?" Orion asked her when he heard the shuffling sounds.

Sophia’s head snapped up, her lips parting in indignation at the casual insult drifting down from the branches. Moonlight spilled through the canopy of the trees above, kissing Orion’s figure where he lounged like some smug predator with not a care in the world.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides. "You know, you’re being very disrespectful."

Orion shifted just enough to peek down at her, one brow arched in lazy amusement. "Disrespectful?"

"Yes." She jutted her chin, refusing to be cowed by his tone. "I shouldn’t be referred to as ’shorty.’ It’s rude."

His lips twitched. "But you are short."

It was obvious to him how short she was from the first moment they met where she accused him of kidnapping her. Although, rather than saying the first day they met, it was more like the first day she opened her eyes and saw him after he rescued her. And it was funny to him how much she had an attitude when she was so short.

Sophia let out an affronted huff, as though the words had personally wounded her.

"I am just not up to your height." She told him.

"Are you sure that’s it? From what I can see though, you are like the shortest in the pack right now. You are the same height with children." He told her.

"No, that’s a lie." She told him.

Orion smiled. "I don’t lie. What I told you was the truth. Most people your height are children."

"Well...if that’s it then maybe I’ll grow like them too. Maybe I’ll be taller than you one day." She told him.

Orion chuckled lightly at that. "And adult growing tall?" He paused. "If that happens then that’s a miracle."

"Maybe Lysander will have some remedy or herbs to help me." She told him. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"Yeah and perhaps Madam Tyler will know some rituals to help you too. Maybe she will beg the moon goddess to help." He told her.

"Now you are just mocking me." She told him.

"Yeah..."

There was a pause after his words and Sophia was quiet. Orion heard shuffling again and glanced down in time to see Sophia staring at him with a sweet smile. And maybe if not for the fact that her smile was too sweet, his heart would have skipped a beat like usual but that wasn’t happening. This smile made her look more like a demon, someone who rolled with Skylur and Trihydra on a normal.

"Alpha Orion," she cooed, saccharine dripping from her voice, "would you be so kind as to show this helpless woman how you got up there?"

He groaned, dragging a hand down his face.

She blinked twice as she stared at him.

"That voice." He said with a pained groan.

"Fucking stop it. just...don’t. It doesn’t suit you, and it won’t work on me. Try something better." He let his head fall back against the bark, eyes half-lidded. "Better yet, go back to the festivities. There’s music, food, people tripping over themselves to laugh. You’ll enjoy it more than staring up a tree and trying yo figure out how to get on it."

She cursed him and ignored his words about her going back to the festivities. "Bloody Oaf."

His arm slid off his face just far enough to reveal the faintest glimmer of a smirk. "I’m curious, how many names do you have for me?"

"Very colourful ones." She told him.

"You’ve called me an oaf, an ogre and even dumb. You alternate between all of them." He told her.

"They all suit you." She told him.

"I refuse to believe that they all suit me. But then again..." He tilted his head, considering. "...I only have one name for you."

"Don’t you dare..."

"Shorty."

Sophia stamped a foot into the snow filled dirt. "Okay fine. The first two suit you okay? It was the first thing that came to mind when we first saw each other. But I’m rethinking the last one."

"Dumb?" He supplied.

"Yes." She answered truthfully.

That earned her the smallest of laughs, low and quiet, but it was unmistakably there. He pressed his hand against his mouth to smother it, as though unwilling to let her see how easily she drew amusement from him especially when he was not in the mood to be amused. Not when this day filled his head with the same thoughts he preached his people shouldn’t let haunt them.

"Go back, Sophia," he repeated, his voice softer this time, gentler. "Go back and enjoy the festival."

Silence settled for a moment. He half expected her to give up then, to huff her way back to the gates maybe even curse him as she did so, and leave him in his peace. He even closed his eyes, leaning back into the cradle of bark, listening for her retreating footsteps.

And he heard them.

Soft, deliberate, growing fainter with each step. Relief flickered in him and something like regret, though he pushed that thought aside.

But then another sound intruded.

A shuffle. Not the rhythm of departure, but of movement circling the trunk. He cracked an eye open and frowned. "What are you doing?"

Sophia’s voice floated up, sharp but evasive. "Why are you even here?"

He groaned again, long-suffering. "It’s none of your business what I’m doing."

"Then it’s none of your business what I’m doing," she shot back instantly, turning his own words on him.

Orion actually chuckled at that, though the sound was quiet, almost reluctant. He shifted against the branch, gaze tracking her movements as she busied herself with whatever game she thought she was playing. "Clever," he murmured.

Her triumphant little huff drifted up from the base of the tree.

For a long beat, neither of them said anything. The night stretched around the wind teasing the leaves, crickets humming in the grass, the faint spill of laughter from the distant packgrounds. Orion let his eyes close again, but now the silence was filled not with solitude but with her presence, lingering stubbornly at the roots of his sanctuary.