Chapter 109: Oops

The laugh still lingered in Orion’s throat when he dropped his hand from his mouth. He leaned back against the bark of the ancient tree, the sound shaking faintly in his chest. Sad. The very word seemed absurd rolling from his lips, yet Sophia had said it with such stubborn conviction that he almost forgot to be annoyed.

He let out another short exhale, not quite a laugh this time but close. "Sad? You think I’m sad?" His voice held a thread of disbelief, wrapped in the gravel of his usual tone.

Sophia didn’t hesitate. "Yes, I do."

That made his brow furrow. "Why?" He asked intrigued to hear her answer.

"You sound sad." She replied to him "That’s why I think you’re sad."

There was a pause as Orion absorbed her words. She thought he was sad because he sounded sad. It was funny but it was a very Sophia like answer.

Orion’s mouth opened, a retort already forming, but the sound that came next silenced it.

It wasn’t words he heard but sound instead. Someone breathing heavily. And this wasn’t from below either.

Not the soft rhythm he’d grown used to drifting up from the ground where she lingered stubbornly near the trunk. No, this was closer, too close. A breath that carried warmth and edged sharp into his awareness. He froze, his wolf instincts snapping awake like a string pulled to the limit.

His nostrils flared. Her scent hit him immediately, wild herbs, faint smoke from the festival fires clinging to her, and beneath it something that was purely Sophia. And it wasn’t below anymore. It wasn’t drifting up from the roots where she should have been standing. It was here, wrapping around him like a rope he hadn’t felt until too late.

He sat up in shock as his eyes shot open. And there she was, halfway up the tree to where he was.

Her small hands gripped bark and roots that jutted from the trunk like stair-steps meant only for someone foolhardy enough to try them. One of the wineskins she carried dangled across her shoulder, swaying slightly with her movements, the other slung on her back.

For a moment, Orion didn’t move. He couldn’t. His mind balked at what his eyes were seeing. She was there. She was really there. Close enough that if she climbed one more stretch she would be within arm’s reach.

He blinked once, certain exhaustion and perhaps the acclaimed sadness, was finally playing tricks on him.

But he wasn’t. She turned to him with a smile across her face.

That cheeky, utterly unrepentant grin that always set his teeth on edge and his chest... unsettled.

"Oops," Sophia whispered unapologetically like him seeing her like this was not a mistake but planned by her.

And immediately she said it, she slipped.

Her foot skidded against the bark, her balance tipping sideways in a terrifying instant. Her eyes widened, panic flashing bright in them.

Orion moved without thinking. One second he was frozen in disbelief, the next his arm lashed out with the precision of instinct honed through years of battle and reflex. His hand closed firmly around her wrist, the other bracing against the trunk.

The wineskins bumped against the bark, one nearly swinging free, but he ignored it. In a sharp tug he pulled her up, her small frame colliding against his chest before he maneuvered her carefully onto the broad branch beside him.

Sophia landed in a heap, with missed hair, her chest rising and falling rapidly as though she hadn’t realized until now just how far she could have fallen.

Orion wasn’t lying down anymore. He sat straight, his body tense, his grip still half around her arm as though not trusting her not to tumble again.

He stared at her.

No, stared wasn’t enough. He looked at her as though she’d sprouted horns, as though she had just clawed her way out of the bark itself. Shock colored every sharp line of his face, freezing him for several heartbeats while she blinked up at him with wide eyes.

The silence broke when his voice finally found itself, rough and clipped. "How in the name of the goddess did you get up here without me knowing?"

Sophia offered a sheepish smile, shifting the wineskin straps back into place. "You weren’t paying attention."

"You were on the ground." His tone grew sharper, incredulous. "I heard your footsteps. I heard you circling the trunk."

"Exactly." She brushed some snow from her sleeve, as though the explanation were obvious. "While you were too busy groaning and laughing at me, I was climbing."

"You were climbing," Orion repeated flatly, trying to wrap his mind around it.

"Yes."

His eyes narrowed. "Why?"

Sophia smiled wider, her eyes gleaming with something almost childlike. "Because I’ve always wanted to climb a tree."

Truth.

That answer rooted him still again. "Really?"

"Yes." She nodded with all the enthusiasm of someone confessing a secret desire.

"Since when?" 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"I don’t know... I...just have this... feeling. Like I’ve been curious about it for a while. And like I always wanted to know what it would feel like. Seeing you in the tree so relaxed brought the thoughts out. And even if it wasn’t smooth, I now know what it feels like to climb a tree." She leaned back slightly, glancing around the canopy as though the world itself proved her point. "It’s higher than I imagined. The view must be amazing from the top."

Orion pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering something under his breath. "You almost injured yourself. You could’ve broken your neck."

"But I didn’t." She shrugged, completely unbothered by the thought.

"That doesn’t make it less reckless."

"I know that. And can we please not have a lecture again? Especially because I still remember your lecture about the trihydra incident." She told him.

Orion narrowed his eyes at her. He was about to say something when she slipped one of the wineskins from her shoulder and handed it to him before taking the other one and opening it.

He took it automatically, confusion furrowing his brow as he watched her tilt her own wineskin back for a generous sip.

The moment the scent reached him, Orion knew.

A sharp sweetness tinged with fermented bite. Rich and heady, stronger than it let on. His lips parted, a quiet huff leaving him.

He wasn’t even able to tell her that she was drinking something with the highest alcohol content to grace the stalls.

She wiped a drop from her mouth with the back of her hand, turning to him with matter-of-fact resolve. "Do you want to know why I put myself in danger?"

"No," he started, because his patience was already stretched thin...

"It’s because I needed to see you directly." Her words cut through his interruption, steady and calm in a way that made him pause. "Because you sounded sad, and I wanted to know why."

For the second time that night, Orion froze.

He looked at her...really looked at her...for the first time that evening. The moonlight touched her hair, glinted against the curve of her cheek where her grin had softened into something quieter, more earnest.

His throat tightened, and without thinking, his hand twisted at the wineskin’s stopper and took a drink even while knowing how much alcohol this drink had.