ALIEN ORC’S PRIZE

STARLIGHT BRIDES

URSA DAX

NOTICES

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This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and incidents in this novel are fictitious and not to be construed as reality or fact.

Alien Orc’s Prize © 2024 Peace Weaver Press Inc. President Veronica Doran

Cover: Ozark Witch Designs

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CONTENTS

Content Notes

1.  Galbrath

2.  Galbrath

3.  Luna

4.  Luna

5.  Galbrath

6.  Luna

7.  Luna

8.  Galbrath

9.  Luna

10.  Galbrath

11.  Luna

12.  Galbrath

13.  Luna

14.  Galbrath

15.  Luna

16.  Luna

17.  Galbrath

18.  Luna

19.  Galbrath

20.  Luna

Epilogue

CONTENT NOTES

For content notes and warnings, as well as my newsletter sign-up form, please visit my website.

CHAPTER 1

GALBRATH

“They’ve brought you another one.”

I was so grimly focused on the black-spotted and wilted wheat in the field before me that I barely registered the words of my advisor.

“They’ve brought me another what?” I asked Padreth absentmindedly. I fingered one of the unhealthy stalks as the field’s tenant, Old Farion, looked on, his face haggard with stress. It looked like the stout old male’s heart was about to give out.

Failing crops tended to do that to a farmer.

They tended to do it to princes, too, if they failed in wide enough swaths.

Which they were coming perilously close to doing.

“Another prospect,” Padreth replied. A hint of irritation entered his voice when I did not immediately respond, my mind running over thoughts of fungus and minerals and what in the great span of the sea is happening to the wheat this year? “A woman.”

Old Farion just about jumped out of his hide when I straightened and spun, my expression no-doubt thunderous. Padreth, who had known me since we were both too small and stupid-fingered to lace our own boots, inhaled sharply but did not flinch.

“A woman? Another one? Now?”

Now, when I was busy trying to figure out how I was going to feed our court, our villages, our people into the winter?

“I’m busy. Send her away. A woman!” I growled, baring my tusks at the dying wheat, as if the crops were solely responsible for my mother and younger sisters’ endless attempts to foist the daughters of wealthy merchants and noblemen off on me. It had started up not long after my father’s death. First, in little spurts and sprinkles, like water forcing its way through a very fine chink in the wall.

But lately, that chink had inexplicably widened, letting through a veritable deluge of rich, fertile, simpering females.

It was enough to drown a man. Especially when he was only just getting himself settled on the stormy sea of responsibility his father king’s death had left behind.

“They are only worried. They want to see you king,” Padreth explained. As if I needed explaining to. “And that will not happen until-”

“Until I produce an heir. Do you think I am unaware of the laws of succession and heirship in this nation, Padreth?” My voice was low, dangerous with warning, but Padreth merely stared innocently back at me and gave a soft grunt that seemed to say, “Maybe?”

If he were any other man, any other man, he’d be dead on his feet for that. Old Farion briefly closed his eyes, as if expecting any moment for Padreth’s life’s blood to spray out all over his already beleaguered wheat.

Padreth, not quite oblivious to my mood but also not quite caring, ploughed on.

“I think it gives them a sense of control. With the wheat doing poorly, getting you settled with a wife and a babe in her belly is something they have at least some influence over.”

Influence my arse. If anything, their meddling was only making me run even faster from the idea of marriage than I otherwise would.

“I do not need an heir or to be named king to rule. I’m already doing it,” I reminded my advisor and oldest friend pointedly.

“Of course,” Padreth said. I felt satisfied for a moment, thinking he’d finally agreed to close his tusks against each other in silence. But this was Padreth. And so it really was only a moment of reprieve.

“But,” he went on, undeterred by the bludgeoning rage I could feel smashing itself into my expression, “if something were to happen to you, your line is not secured. Without your own heir-”

“Then my cousin Althrop will assume power not half a heartbeat after he’s done dancing a gleeful little jig before my death pyre. I know all this.”

“I know you know.”

Oceans help me. This is what I’m dealing with.

“Padreth,” I said, after sucking in a swift breath and turning my voice into something stony. Cool and remote. “Make a note.”

Padreth diligently pulled out his tablet in order to mark down his prince’s words.

“I have, thus far, been far too patient and generous a monarch. Today that will change.”

Padreth stopped writing to frown at me. Old Farion moved his mouth in a silent prayer.

“I will no longer tolerate meddling, matchmaking, or being told things I already know. There will be dungeons involved if these rules are not adhered to. Also flogging. Lots of flogging. Not for you,” I added on a hasty growl to Farion, who looked like he was about to keel over with fear. “We’ll get you sorted out. You are relieved from taxation this season. And there will be no interest.”

Farion let out a wheezy, shuddering breath. Then he lifted his thumbs and pricked their pads on the ends of his tusks, turning his hands and showing me the blood. It was a gesture that demonstrated the very deepest sort of deference and gratitude. I acknowledged this with a grunt before turning to stride away, Padreth close on my heels.

“No taxes? No interest?” he said, sounding slightly amused. “What was that you just said about no longer being such a generous monarch, Prince Gal?”

“Did you not hear the bit about the flogging?” I muttered, an ache building behind my eyes. The sun wasn’t even halfway through its trek across the sky and I already felt like this day had lasted one hundred’s worth. And I still had three more tenants to visit before the evening meal.

“At least you have decent females ready and willing and available to you,” Padreth mused, almost more to himself than to me as we walked, late summer sun pouring its heat over our green hide. “I’ve heard tell of an Alpha on the world of Wulfric who couldn’t even find a mate among his own people. He had to appeal to some new intergalactic bridal program and got himself saddled with a human.”

The word stopped me short.

“A human?” I asked. There was no way I’d heard Padreth correctly. I hadn’t met any of the Wulfric people, but I knew enough about them. Strong, virile, hardy warriors. Not so unlike the orcs of my world, Orhalla. And one of them, one of their Alphas, had been mated to a human?

A tiny, weak, brittle-boned little human?

I could not fathom what sort of catastrophe must have led to a union like that. Though I’d never seen a human, they were widely regarded to be one of the most pathetic and distasteful races to have ever achieved star travel.

And a Wulfric Alpha had taken one as his wife. His mate.

What must his family have thought?

The question made a vengeful sort of thrill light up my belly.

What would my family think?

If I bent to their will to marry, and marry soon, but instead of choosing one of the perfectly primped orc females they kept shoving down my throat, I showed up with a human?

It would be petty. Probably foolish. But apparently, I was a petty fool, at least where my own matrimonial status was concerned. I used all my fairness, all my fortitude, in dealing with the kingdom’s citizens. I would never dream of turning one of their lives into a meaningless joke.

But my own?

And what a joke it would be. To flash my tusks in an indulgent smile and to tell my mother and sisters that no more potential brides were required. Because I had already found one.

They’d be appalled.

They wouldn’t be able to say a word.

I’d finally be free of their incessant nonsense as I turned my focus to what really mattered in this kingdom. Keeping our people alive for the next season. And the season after that. I’d put up my human bride in some nice tower or another, keep her busy with whatever inane task was just interesting enough to occupy her tiny human brain, get her pregnant with my heir as soon as the time allowed for it.

And then I’d get on with my bloody life.

CHAPTER 2

GALBRATH

“Lady Tarley waited for you nigh-on half the day!” my mother exclaimed when Padreth and I finally returned to the palace.

“I have more important things to attend to than impatient orc noblewomen,” I growled at my mother. “If she could not handle waiting half a day for me while I attended to my people then she would not last one season as my queen.”

My mother Ohelia, who still remained queen after the death of my father until I produced an heir, snorted. Her tusks, painted red in mourning, flashed under the lamplight of the palace as the three of us moved towards the great dining hall for the evening meal.

“She made not one complaint, I’ll have you know!” my mother cried. “Truly, there is nothing wrong with her. I defy even you to find a fault in her!”

“She sat around waiting for me all that time and didn’t once complain? Then she is too meek.”

“Bah!” My mother’s tusks flashed again. So did her dark brown, nearly black, eyes. That rare, deep colour I’d inherited from her.

Grief for my father had not diminished my mother. If anything, it had only given fire to her purpose. Which was, lately, finding me a wife.

“If she complains, she is too impatient. If she does not, she is too tongueless. You are looking for a woman who does not exist!”

“I am not looking for a woman at all,” I said as I pushed my way through the great wooden doors of the dining hall, “because I’ve already found one.”

My mother, to her credit, did not falter in her powerful stride. But she did snap her head to regard me from the side, and my two younger sisters – twins – jumped up from their places at the long table when they heard my words.

“Who is it?” gasped Neena and Noona in unison. I quirked a brow at Neena, who appeared to have attempted to add some extra gloss to the mourning coat on her tusks. She did not acknowledge my look or apologize, but she did purse her lips and she ducked her head, just a little, away from the incriminating light.

“Yes,” Padreth whispered uneasily from beside me. “Who is it?”

“Not to worry! Padreth will take care of everything!” I boomed with vicious joviality, smacking him so hard on the back that the large man, nearly as tall as me, barely saved himself from falling forwards. “There is a new bridal program that I have decided to partake in. They will send me an appropriate wife.”

“An appropriate wife?” my mother echoed, each word as hard and perfectly-cut as Orhalla crystal, her eyes narrowing keenly. “An appropriate bride we have never even met?”

“I don’t see why you should have met her,” I said casually, “considering she is human.”

There was a moment. A single, blessed moment. The sort of moment a man like me with sisters and a mother like mine does not often get to experience.

Pure, miraculous silence.

Until the shock wore off, that is.

“Human?!” Neena and Noona cried, staring at each other.

“What?” Padreth exclaimed.

“When did this happen?” my mother demanded.

“Details, details!” I replied, sweeping my hand through the air as if to clear away their questions. “All you need to know is that I am finally to be married. Padreth,” I said, turning to my harried-looking advisor, “let’s move quickly on this.”

His lips thinned into a grim line around his tusks. But he pulled out his tablet and began making preparations anyway.

My sisters were still squawking with questions. My mother had gone quiet, watching me with slicing, knowing intensity as I seated myself at the table. I knew that look well enough. She wore it often, particularly when she suspected Neena or Noona were trying to fool her into something.

But I was not trying to fool her into anything. I did indeed plan to go ahead with this marriage. It might be ridiculous, but it would not be a total sham. They’d get their heir.

My mother took her place to the left of where I sat alone at the head of the table. As servants filled our cups with mead, she drummed the tips of her claws against her tusks, her gaze never leaving me.

I took a swig of my drink – needing it after the stress of the day I’d had, learning that yet three more fields were failing – when my mother finally spoke.

“You may find me overly proud,” she said, lowering her hand and grasping her cup. She did not yet drink. “You may even find me silly.”

“Silly,” I scoffed, putting my cup down just a little too hard, making the knife beside my plate jump. “Silly? Spending all this time and energy on finding me a wife while I’m trying to make sure our people don’t starve through the next three seasons?”

She inhaled, long and slow, then fixed me with a hard-eyed look.

“You believe those are two separate issues. Your marriage and the health of our people. I believe they are one and the same. Tell me, my son,” she said, anger edging into her voice now, “do you truly, in your heart, believe that Althrop would care about this issue the way you are doing now? Do you think, if Althrop were given power over this kingdom in the absence of you or your heir, that he would be out there day and night speaking to the people, to the farmers, touching the land with his own claws the way you do now?”

I shifted in my seat and took another swig of my drink.

“Of course he would not,” my mother said bitterly, saying the answer aloud that we both already knew. “That entitled oaf would happily let half our people starve so long as his own plate stayed full. You think I am merely matchmaking? Playing a foolish female’s game out of – what? Boredom?” Her voice rose higher. Neena and Noona fell silent. “Have you ever known me to be an empty-headed fool?”

“No.”

“No!” She hissed a breath between her tusks. “Every bride I present to you is not for you but for our kingdom. It means that you, and a subsequent heir raised with your values, your insight, your care for our people, will remain in power. Did you never think of this? What a difference a ruler like Althrop would make, compared to you?”

I hadn’t, because I’d never seen the need. Althrop wasn’t heir.

Except… he was. Right now, he was heir.

Until I produced my own.

For the first time, I began to understand my mother’s concern over my lack of marriage. I had not considered it from quite this angle before — that ensuring my heir would be paramount to ensuring the continued health of my people. Because I would raise my heir to care the way I did, and to care the way Althrop did not.

My mother sighed.

“If you wish to continue down this absurd path of selecting a human bride, then I will not stop you. Whatever you think of me and my motivations, I am a practical woman. As long as she is strong enough to survive an orc pregnancy, and strong enough to withstand you, then I will be at peace with your decision.”

Her words humbled me. I was on the verge of calling Padreth and cancelling the whole thing when he burst back into the room.

“They’ve already replied to me, my prince,” he panted, holding up his tablet and waving it in the air. “Your human bride has been chosen.”

CHAPTER 3

LUNA

The first thing my alien orc husband-to-be said to me was, “Oh, no! I am not the groom.”

I’d been encouraged by his warm smile when he’d come to collect me from the Starlight Brides hub. He was so freaking huge, a monolith of green hide and tusks and muscle. But the genuine friendliness in his expression had put me at ease enough to unlock my anxious throat and say, “Hello, Prince Gal. It’s an honour to meet and marry you.”

But then his thick, dark brows had shot up and he’d sputtered, “Oh, no!” Like I’d made some terrible mistake.

And then the damning, “I am not the groom!”

He was an orc from Orhalla. That much was obvious. The massive stature, jutting fang-like bottom teeth, and moss-green hide all contributed to that conclusion. A conclusion only solidified when my gaze snagged on the finely-crafted and deadly-sharp Orhalla blades at his belt.

“You’re not… You’re not the groom,” I repeated brainlessly. I didn’t see any other green-skinned males with shoulder-spans to rival the diameter of entire planets around here to marry.

“I am Padreth. Prince Gal’s advisor. I have come to wed you as his proxy and bring you back.”

Wed me… by proxy…

“This is most unusual,” Ranna, my Starlight Brides liaison officer, said on a slight huff, her antennae bobbling. “We typically require the groom to come here to meet the bride, so we can make sure both parties are satisfied and that everything is going to plan.”

Padreth turned a blankly pleasant, conciliatory look on Ranna. It looked alarmingly well-practised.

“Apologies. But Prince Gal has been very busy taking over all the ruling duties in the wake of his father’s death. He simply could not make the time to be here. But rest assured, I have every permission to act in his stead. I have a letter to that effect.”

From somewhere in the vicinity of his tight leather trousers he pulled out an honest-to-goodness hard copy of a note that looked to be hand-written.

“It’s in standard galactic,” he added helpfully as Ranna’s four eyes scanned the document.

“So it is,” she said, returning the letter to Padreth. “While this is unusual, I suppose we could make some concessions for royalty like Prince Gal. But only if you are alright with it, Luna.”

I blinked, startled by the sudden turn of attention to me. It was as if, now that I knew my own groom didn’t even have the time to come here and get me, that no one else would have the time for me or my opinions either. But both Ranna and Padreth watched me with expectant eyes.

Don’t do it. Don’t be stupid. You can’t run off and marry someone you don’t even know!

My sister Lyric’s words echoed in my skull.

Easy for her to say. She’d recently gotten a paid post as a nanny to some rich alien couple.

Meanwhile I’d just lost my one and only job in the cafeteria of a now decommissioned ship.

And I hadn’t been able to find another.

Lyric’s pay wasn’t good enough that she could send much money back from her job to support me, and I didn’t want that, anyway. Since our parents’ deaths, she’d always been the one looking out for me. Looking after me. My beautiful, ferocious older sister who shone so brightly it was all I could do to trail gratefully along in her shadow.

It was time for that to change.

And it’s not like I was marrying just anyone. I’d be marrying literal royalty. Mind-boggling as that was.

I once again wondered, a sick little worry at the back of my head, what exactly might be wrong with this prince that he couldn’t find a willing wife on his homeworld. This concern was only exacerbated by the fact that he hadn’t even shown up today.

Maybe he wasn’t too busy to come.

Maybe he was hiding.

As long as he isn’t cruel.

I was pretty sure I could put up with anything but that. Weird food, weird weather, weird customs. Weird dicks.

My face went hot.

“Luna?” Padreth nudged, and not unkindly. My eyes fell shamefully to his crotch, as if the bulge in his leather pants might give me some clue as to what I’d be dealing with. I yanked them back up lickety-split and squawked, “I’ll do it!”

And so it came to be that I was married in a wedding ceremony that lasted less than two minutes, to a man who wasn’t even my groom.

Go fucking figure.

CHAPTER 4

LUNA

Before I was medically knocked out to go through the wormhole that would get us to Orhalla, Padreth gave me hope about my future husband. I guess not really my future husband, actually, since we were now officially married despite never having met. But my wedding-buddy-cum-chaperone was friendly despite the intimidating nature of his size and hard-boned face. He was conscientious and kind and generally seemed to want to make sure I was happy and comfortable.

It made me a little easier in my mind, thinking that Prince Gal might be similar. I figured, if Padreth was his advisor, they probably at least got along a little bit. I couldn’t see the advisor to a tyrant being as smiley and happy as someone like Padreth was. He was just too nice.

So nice that he actually looked like he felt a bit bad for my sake when he had to tell me that Prince Gal, aka my new husband, wasn’t there to greet me when I woke up upon landing on Orhalla.

“He’s… He’s not here?” I asked, voice cracking. I coughed a little and sat up slowly as Padreth watched me with what appeared to be a mixture of anxiety, pity, and maybe even some irritation.

“No. I am sorry. He was detained by im… other matters.”

It was like he’d barely stopped himself from saying “important matters,” because he must have realized how that would have sounded. What could be more important than greeting your new wife and welcoming her to your world? A world she’d never even stepped foot on before now!

OK. So he’s a busy guy. Well, that’s alright, I told myself as I attempted to shake off the effects of the trip here. Maybe we won’t actually see each other all that much. Maybe I’ll just be like some interesting, novel decoration he wants around the background of the place. Unobtrusive and vaguely pleasant. Like a nice little fern. Or potpourri.

I was honestly too tired and dazed from travel to feel stung about the fact Prince Gal hadn’t come to collect me or meet me upon landing.

And then, when the shuttle doors opened, I was too overwhelmed by what I saw to feel anything besides total and obliterating awe.

Orhalla was beautiful. Literally breath-taking. I realized after a few frantic heartbeats I’d forgotten to exhale.

The landing pad was a huge, natural stretch of pale stone perched atop a dizzying array of white cliffs curving around exquisitely clear, bright water. The sun was so warm and bright I found myself squinting against it, dragging a heavy arm upwards to shade my eyes as it glanced merrily off the white stone and turned the rolling sea below into an undulating blue carpet inlaid with gems. The air smelled – tasted – of salt, and a cawing sound, combined with the swooping and spearing of wings in the air, told me seabirds thrived here.

I’d never seen a seabird before.

I’d never seen a sea, either.

Most of my life had been spent breathing in the sharp metal tang of decrepit old ships. This – the sun and the sea and the salt and the sounds – was a revelation. In that moment, I decided I didn’t care one bit what my husband was like. I didn’t care if he didn’t have time for me. Didn’t care if he didn’t even want me.

If I got to live in a place this beautiful, it would all be worth it.

Padreth hovered anxiously near my side, his arm subtly angled towards me for me to grab onto if I needed it. But I was able to make it out of the shuttle on my own. An exhausted, delighted laugh burbled up and out of my throat when the warmth of the sun touched my face and my feet hit the stone.

I would probably have stood there for ages, completely stunned and shuttle-scrambled, if it hadn’t been for the sudden cry of, “There she is! Hello!” catching my attention and making me turn.

Two orcs – females, I was fairly certain, though they were nearly as massive as Padreth – stared down at me with bright, curious eyes. I instantly felt like an asshole, because they looked absolutely identical to me. I sternly and silently promised that I would not be some dopey human who thought all orcs looked alike. I was so focused on staring intently at them and trying to find differentiating features between their faces that I realized too late that I hadn’t made any effort to greet either one of them, or even smile.

“Maybe her translator doesn’t work,” the one on the left said, cocking her dark-haired head. The one on the right’s head followed suit, but in the other direction, creating an eerily perfect mirror image.

“No! Sorry,” I said, clearing my throat and plastering on a smile. “I understand you just fine.”

“She is recovering from the journey. Lesser species require medication to make the trip,” Padreth cut in from beside us.

Lesser… Lesser species?

Before I could parse that lovely little sentence, the two women had launched into rapid conversation, cutting each other off and finishing each other’s sentences in voices so similar I could barely keep track of who was speaking.

“I’m Neena!”

“I’m Noona!”

“We’re the prince’s-”

“-sisters!”

Sisters. Alright. Maybe they really do just look alike because of that. I felt a little better about my trouble telling them apart. Interestingly, their tusks, unlike Padreth’s bone-coloured ones, were red. Maybe all orc women had red tusks. I hoped my own white teeth wouldn’t be too off-putting.

“I’m Luna. I’m so happy to meet you.” Though I was on slightly uneven footing here, it didn’t feel like a lie. Neena and Noona really did seem friendly enough and excited to meet me, despite the whole “lesser species” thing I’d just caught wind of, whatever the hell that meant.

“Luna! It rhymes with Noona!” chirped Noona, the one on the right.

“A good omen!” Neena said with satisfaction, giving a broad smile that showed me only her large bottom tusks were red. The rest of her teeth were similar in colour to Padreth’s and my own.

A good omen? I thought as each sister took me by the hand and started leading me away from the shuttle. Dear God, I hope so.

CHAPTER 5

GALBRATH

“Your bride is here.”

I gave a grunting sort of sigh, only now remembering that today was the day of my human wife’s arrival. I looked up from the desk in my Science Chief’s office, where he’d been grimly showing me the innards of a dissected stalk of blighted wheat. Padreth watched me with clear green eyes.

“Keep working on this. Report back anything you find,” I commanded Barrett as I rounded the desk to join Padreth. Barrett bumped his thumbs to his tusks, not hard enough to prick but enough to show the required deference and acknowledgement a situation like this commanded. He bent back over his desk, his back and shoulders still strong but his hair long-gone white.

“How… Er… How is she settling in?” I asked, grappling about for some question that would seem appropriate for a husband who’d completely forgotten his wife was even due to arrive today.

“I think the journey left her a little dazed, but she rallied admirably. She’s not nearly so brittle nor sickly as I’d expected.”

Well, that boded well. She’d have to be up to the task of bearing my heir, after all.

And she’d have to be able to withstand the task of actually creating that heir.

I had to admit, I was not looking forward to the act. It felt like one more burden on my shoulders, one more task to complete. But my mother was right. I needed to prioritize fathering an heir in order to maintain stability for our people.

So I, unfortunately, would have to start mating with my new wife sooner rather than later.

Hopefully we’d only need to do it once.

“What’s she like?” I sounded irritated, nerves frayed, even to my own ears.

“Pleasant and amiable. She took her disappointment in stride when you were not the one who showed up to the wedding.”

We’d been walking down a long, stone corridor when I suddenly stopped to stare at Padreth.

“Disappointment?” I echoed in disbelief. She was unhappy I hadn’t come to collect her myself, a task any mere servant could have done? She should have been honoured that I’d sent my closest advisor in my stead!

A sickly claw of concern sliced its way through my guts, telling me that I’d very likely made a terrible mistake.

Could my wife have actually been expecting… some kind of love match?

“It seems that some of the other grooms participating in the program came to pick their brides up personally.”

“I could not have been expected to have done such a thing!” I gawked at him in outrage, outrage that I would be expected to waste my own time in such a matter. “I am a prince!”

“Apparently one of them was a minotaur king and he still showed up,” Padreth said with infuriating blandness. “And the Wulfric Alpha met his bride immediately upon her arrival for the wedding.”

“He gave his human an actual wedding on his world?” I asked with no small amount of shock. It had not even occurred to me to provide such a thing for a human woman. If I’d married an orc noblewoman as my family had wanted, there would have been feasting and dancing and rutting for days, but I’d never considered putting on such a show for my new bride. Padreth had wed her as my proxy. She was officially my wife. Surely, that was enough?

“From what I hear, the other males are quite happy with their brides,” Padreth said as we resumed walking. I felt his eyes on me from the side as our boots hit the stone. “You really should go meet her. At least get a look at her.”

“I’ll see her at dinner,” I snapped, trying and failing to restrain the anger in my reply. I’d chosen a human bride from this program because I thought it’d mean less… everything. Less expectation, less grievance, less frustration.

I seemed to have made myself an ill bargain. I’d trapped myself with a human and somehow managed to also trap myself with all the, well, trappings that seemed to go along with an orc bride.

“Not until dinner?” Padreth wheedled. “Really, my prince, I think you ought to-”

“You ought to stop speaking. Now,” I warned. Padreth, wiser in that moment than he often acted, actually fell silent. I gritted my tusks against my upper teeth, noticing how short-tempered I was but not quite sure what to do about it. Barrett’s report had not been good. Neither he nor anyone else had any ideas on how to halt or even slow the spread of whatever was plaguing the wheat.

And spreading, it was. Like fatal illness through an unwary bloodstream. There seemed to be no way to stop it.

“I’ll see her at dinner,” I muttered once again to Padreth as I turned a corner in the hall. My feet moved away from my advisor the same way my thoughts moved away from my already inconvenient wife.

CHAPTER 6

LUNA

I’d landed in the morning Orhalla-time, and by late afternoon I still hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of my new husband.

But at least I hadn’t been left entirely alone in the jaw-droppingly gorgeous structure atop the seaside cliffs that was Prince Gal’s family palace. Neena and Noona, along with three other orc women I was pretty sure were some kind of royal lady’s maids, didn’t leave my side. It was nearly impossible to escape them even for a few minutes to go pee on my own in the cavernous, sunlit bathroom. They certainly didn’t give my prudish human modesty any thought when it came time to bathe, because they stripped down and splashed right into the gigantic heated pool with me. I blushed, but didn’t argue, not wanting to offend my new sisters-in-law and also shyly glad for their enthusiastic company.

The three lady’s maids – Ari, Doree, and Manti – were efficient in their work, scrubbing, polishing, and primping every inch of the two princesses and me. After the bath, the three of us were dressed in heavy, silken robes as the lady’s maids got to work on our hair. I sat awkwardly through it, not used to having people touch me this way. The last person who’d brushed or styled my hair for me had probably been Lyric, and that would have likely been more than ten years ago.

“I didn’t realize how light your hair was!” Neena said on a gasp as Doree worked some sort of fragrant oil into my now-dry hair.

“Well, it’s probably a lot cleaner now,” I said with an uncomfortable laugh. I hoped they didn’t think I was some gross, dirty human. But the journey had been long, and my hair in its ratty little bun at the back of my head had definitely been a bit grimy.

“It’s like the colour of honey from the south!” Noona said almost dreamily. “It makes me want to eat a honey cake!”

“Oh. Thank you. I’ve never tried a honey cake,” I said politely. I wasn’t sure what honey looked like, having never seen or eaten it myself. But it seemed to be a compliment. My hair colour, a murky shade between blonde and brown, had never been exciting to me, especially in contrast with the slippery, exceptionally glossy black locks that all five of the orc women in the room had on display. But Neena and Noona genuinely seemed to be interested in the colour as Doree put my hair up into an elaborate coil on the top of my head.

“You both have beautiful eye colours,” I blurted, trying and probably failing to find a graceful way to return their kind words. Where my own eye colour was as wishy-washy and undecided as my hair – yellowish in some areas, brown in others – the two princesses had eyes of achingly lovely, clear, teal-tinged blue. Just like the sea I’d glimpsed outside.

They both looked pleased – though surprised – by my statement.

“Thank you. Though, this eye colour is nothing unusual,” Neena said. “Most orcs have eyes some shade of green or blue.”

“Gal has very beautiful eyes,” Noona said, not without a healthy dose of indignation.

“He got the colour from our mother,” Neena explained. “Very dark brown. Like ink spilled into strong tea. Not that he deserves them!” she added with a fiercely upturned chin.

“Why… Why doesn’t he deserve them?” I asked cautiously, heart climbing into my throat as Doree secured the last bit of my hair.

“He frowns too much!”

“He grunts too much!”

“He’s too impatient-”

“-and arrogant-”

“-and self-important!”

“Imagine having a face like that-”

“-and eyes like those-”

“-and using them to just glare at everyone all day!”

“And that’s when he isn’t ignoring you!”

Neena and Noona stopped for breath, their faces wearing identical expressions of annoyance. Stunned, I tried to take in everything they’d just said in their rapid-fire, back-and-forth manner. Nothing sounded too overtly terrible, though my new husband didn’t sound particularly nice, either. I reminded myself that their thoughts about Prince Gal were filtered through their role as his younger sisters and I tried to keep an open mind. But the princesses had paused for long enough, it seemed, and launched into yet another attack on Prince Gal.

“He turned his nose up at every woman we brought for him!”

“Turned his nose up at the whole prospect of marriage!”

“And now that his wife, the one he actually picked, is here-”

“-he hasn’t even bothered to come!”

“He hasn’t even ensconced you in his own quarters!”

“Is that unusual?” I asked, finding a tiny opening in the conversation and latching onto it like a lifeline. It had been fairly obvious to me that the chambers I’d been given, the ones attached to this glorious bathroom, were not inhabited by the prince. There was nothing belonging to a man in there. Nothing belonging to anyone at all. A beautiful-but-empty guest suite.

I wasn’t familiar with orc customs, so it hadn’t struck me as odd.

Until now.

“It is unusual!” Neena said, sounding shocked and offended on my behalf.

“Highly unusual!” Noona agreed stoutly. “A newly married husband should be sleeping beside his wife! Or at least somewhere in the general vicinity!”

“Not to mention the fact that he so badly needs an heir and now he’s got his wife in a bed halfway across the palace!”

“Not that begetting an heir has to happen in the marital bed, but-”

“-it certainly seems the most likely place!”

Neena and Noona swanned out of the bathroom into the main bed chamber beyond, practically vibrating with righteous anger on my behalf, followed by their maids. Luckily, it was only Doree who probably saw how my human cheeks got hot and pink at the casual mention of begetting an heir.

Once out of the bathroom I was dressed like a doll for dinner amid many exclamations of “What in Orhalla will even fit?!” and “You’re so tiny!”

Tiny was something I’d never been called or strived to achieve in my life. But to the orc women, all of them nearing seven feet tall, I supposed I was small, curves aside.

I ended up dressed in a gold-coloured gown with deep green trim. Doree had to pin the beautiful but too-big garment in several places to make sure I wouldn’t trip on the skirts or have the waist or neckline sagging open. Even with the rushed, pinned fit, I’d never worn something so fine. I caught a look in an oblong mirror near the massive bed and didn’t recognize myself for a dizzyingly disconcerting moment.

Once we were all dressed – Neena and Noona in matching gowns of red and blue and me with a pair of soft indoor slippers meant for a child – I was told it was time to go down for dinner.

“Let’s see,” Neena said, taking my arm and steering me towards the door as Noona followed, “if your new husband bothers to show up.”

CHAPTER 7

LUNA

Spoiler alert: Prince Gal did indeed show up for dinner.

But one look at him had me almost wishing he hadn’t.

I’d only seen two orc males up close so far. One was intimidatingly-big-but-smiley Padreth. The other was a slightly-less-big, old and quiet orc who poured what looked and smelled to be some kind of fizzy alcohol into the goblet before me at my seat between the two princesses.

Neither of those men could possibly have prepared me for him.

He was bigger than the old orc serving the drinks. Bigger than Padreth.

Bigger than any other male I’d ever seen.

Prince Gal shoved open the hall’s door with a hammer-like fist, practically punching it, as if the heavy wood had offended him just by being in his way. The movement made muscles jump and bunch along his bare arm, taut beneath his deep green hide. The heavy, corded line of his arm led up into a shoulder more akin to a big slab of stone than a workable joint. His torso was covered with a garment that was a cross between a tight, sleeveless tunic and a vest. Dark leather was stretched to its absolute limits over a barrel-like chest, as was the leather hugging itself desperately against the truly massive girth of the man’s trunk-like thighs. I contemplated saying a little prayer for those beleaguered pants because they truly looked like they weren’t long for this world.

The prince moved into the space like a predator. Not the sort of predator who stalks and prowls in the shadows, quietly sneaking up on prey. But like the kind of predator who’s so big, so powerful, he doesn’t care who hears him. Doesn’t care who scents or sees him. Because it doesn’t fucking matter. Two ornate blades swung at his belt, and his hard boots thundered over the stone as he entered the hall.

Real top-of-the-food-chain energy. It would have been impressive in a stay-far-away-from-me-and-we’ll-get-along-just-fine sort of way.

If I weren’t now married to him.

But married, we were. And I was in this to win this. I wasn’t turning back. There was nothing to turn back to. Unless I wanted to admit to Lyric that I was wrong and that her helpless baby sister needed looking after once again.

No way.

So instead of shrinking down into my seat and trying to avoid eye contact with the royal behemoth who’d just entered the hall, I swallowed my nerves, took a shaky breath, and lurched up to my feet.

The terrible drumbeat of those boots instantly halted. Silence snapped through the air like a whip.

I wrenched my gaze up to my new husband’s face.

My breath caught.

Much like his body, his face was a brutal marvel. Imposing and broad and severe. His jaw was square and hard, his tusks knee-weakeningly sharp and red, his cheekbones high and cutting. Rugged black slashes settled heavily over his eyes. Eyes that were much darker than his sisters.

Eyes that landed on me and didn’t move away. Didn’t even blink.

Heat rushed up my neck. My palms went damp.

My vocal cords, which had been decently dependable up until that moment, decided they had better things to do and hightailed it the hell out of there. Maybe for good.

All I could do was stand there and stare at him, cheeks reddening, hands sweating, breathing way too hard to be remotely considered attractive, and thinking, Well… Now what?

CHAPTER 8

GALBRATH

SHE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE BEAUTIFUL.

That was my first thought when my eyes settled, and then became entirely stuck, upon my human wife. I was stunned by the sight of her. And as I was never stunned, I found the notion entirely unwelcome and very nearly offensive.

How dare she come into my hall and freeze me to the spot this way?

It was not to be borne.

But none of that stopped her from being beautiful.

She was much shorter than an orc female, certainly, but not quite as pathetically tiny as I’d been led to believe a human would be. She had luscious curves. Her skirt sat neatly against rounded hips, nipping into a waist I suddenly had the very strong desire to wrap my fingers around. And above that?

There was no other way to describe it. My bride possessed a magnificent bosom.

But even the song-worthy glory of her breasts could not hold my attention long.

Not with a face like that.

Her cheeks were prettily curved and a deep pink colour. The rest of her face was lighter. Not white, nor cream, nor brown, but something in between. The first comparison that came to my mind was that her complexion reminded me of my favourite light, whisky-infused cheese. But even I, who’d never had a knack for anything romantic nor resembling poetry, knew that comparing this pretty human’s face to cheese, even cheese I very dearly loved, would be an abhorrent affront.

So I gave up on that and moved to her hair. The strands were the colour of sunlight streaming through good ale, shiny and long and fixed in orc fashion. Her eyes were large in her small face, irises warm as burnished coins. They were as fixed on me as my own dark ones were on her.

It was only then that I realized where she stood. Where her chair was. Where her plate and drink were.

“Why,” I asked, resuming my measured strides towards my seat at the head of the table, “is my wife not seated in her proper place?”

I sat down just as Neena and Noona jumped up. They towered over my wife.

My wife whose name, I realized with an internal groan, I did not even know. If Padreth had told it to me, I could not remember it now.

I had not bothered to remember it, just as I had not bothered to remember today was the day of her arrival.

But I could at least make blasted well sure she was seated at my side, as was tradition.

“You expected us to know to put her beside you?” Neena demanded.

“When you haven’t even got her in your own chambers?” Noona added. They both moved closer to my wife, as if to guard the pretty human.

My jaw ticked as I regarded the three of them. Ulfreth, perhaps sensing my mood, immediately hurried over to fill my glass.

“An oversight,” I finally grunted, even though it had not been an oversight at all. I’d specifically instructed Padreth to put the human woman somewhere out of my way, in a different set of chambers.

I was coming to regret that decision. Among a great many other things.

“I will escort her to my chambers after dinner,” I added. “Have her things moved there.”

“I have no things, Prince Gal.”

I stiffened as my wife’s voice hit my ears for the first time. It was much, much higher than an orc’s typical pitch, but nothing about the tone was jarring or shrill. It was oddly musical, in fact, each syllable she spoke leaping with exquisitely melodic precision towards the next. Like the notes of an Orhalla flute.

They were the first words she’d spoken to me. Belatedly, I noticed I had not yet said a single thing to her directly. That was probably rude, even for me. I wondered if this was why her chin seemed suddenly and stubbornly higher, and a new fierceness had entered her eyes.

“Well, you’ve got one thing, at least,” I said, grasping my cup of mead and lifting it towards her with a wry raise of my brows. “A husband.” I took a swig of my drink and put it down. “Now come sit. The high princess’ place is beside her prince.”

She blinked.

“High… High princess?”

“Those two are the princesses,” I said, jutting my chin towards my sisters. “You are the high princess. Once we have an heir, you will become queen, and my mother, the current queen, will become the dowager monarch.”

She swallowed, a distinctly visible contraction of her slender throat that drew my eyes and made my heart beat in a disconcertingly rapid fashion.

“I… I see.”

“Oh, go and sit beside him, then,” Neena said, plopping herself back down into her seat.

Noona, similarly pouting, agreed. “He’ll just keep scowling at us all evening, otherwise.”

My wife nodded and gathered her skirts. I knew at a glance the gold and green garment was orc-made, and yet it seemed to fit her well. It must have been altered.

I watched her walk, feeling amusement creep in. She didn’t have the graceful, long-legged stride of an orc female. In fact, there was something distinctly inelegant about the short, hurried steps she took to my end of the table. It was oddly charming.

She came to a stop at the chair closest to mine on the right. When she moved to sit in it, I gave a quiet hiss of reproach that made her snap to attention so quickly her breasts nearly bounced right out of her dress.

“Not that seat,” I told her. “That is the current queen’s place. She’s gone south to attend the funeral of a childhood friend. Otherwise, she would have been here to meet you.”

“Oh.” Her mouth quirked downwards. “I’m sorry to hear that. Sorry about her loss.”

“Sorry?” I asked, twisting to watch her as she walked behind my chair to the one across the table from my mother’s. It was as if someone had tethered my eyes to her. Her movements were dragging them all over the blasted place.

“Is that not what you say here? When someone dies?” she asked, halting beside the chair to my left.

“No.” She could prick her thumbs against her tusks to honour the death, but she didn’t have any tusks to begin with. The absence made her mouth look oddly empty and flat, but surprisingly, it wasn’t an unpleasant effect.

“Not that chair, either,” I said when she tried to pull it out from the table. “That’s where the next highest ranking male sits. Usually Padreth, when he can attend dinner and no royal relatives are visiting.”

She blew out a breath and planted her hands on her hips.

“Where, then?”

She was pointing out a rather obvious dilemma. Typically, her chair would have been right beside mine, both of them sharing the head of the table. But, much like everything else, I’d told my staff that such a thing was unnecessary. Before this moment, I never could have anticipated seeing myself dragging my new wife out from between my sisters. Before, I would have been grateful for Neena and Noona’s corralling of her so that I didn’t have to be near her any more than was necessary.

But, blast it all, I actually found myself wanting to be near her.

That still didn’t solve the problem that her chair was not here.

I could have gone and grabbed it myself. But I didn’t. Instead, I leaned back in my own seat, spread my leather-clad thighs, pointed down at my own lap, and, my eyes locked with hers so that I could see them widen, said, “Sit.”

CHAPTER 9

LUNA

The big, hulking, brooding lug who was my husband wanted me to sit. On his lap.

The same man who hadn’t even greeted me when he’d walked in the damn hall now wanted me to saunter over there and just plop my ass down on his knee? No, It’s a pleasure to meet you, my glowing bride! No, How was your journey? Not even a freaking hello! Just a monosyllabic sit.

Like you’d give a dog.

But I couldn’t afford to get pissed about this. I couldn’t afford to have pride. And, maybe this was a good sign. He at least wanted me to sit with him. And he was moving me into his bedchambers which was…

Good. Right? It had to be good. It meant he was acknowledging me in some way after not even attending our own wedding. Acknowledging that I was actually his wife. That this hadn’t all been some big, embarrassing mistake that meant I was going to get shipped off-planet any moment.

I’d always been an optimist. Much more so than my older sister Lyric. It was why I’d taken this opportunity in the first place while she’d gone on and on about how terrible an idea it was. Not that I’d had much of another choice, but still. I’d gone into the Starlight Brides program with an open mind and a hell of a lot of hope.

I was here. So was my husband. He wanted me to sit with him and I was going to make the most of it.

“Of course,” I said, giving him a bright smile and gathering up my heavy golden skirts. I rounded the corner of the table and approached his chair. It was huge. Bigger than any other. Almost like a throne at the table. Shiny red-stained wood, intricately carved with symbols I couldn’t read, as well as images of weapons that were like smaller, less deadly versions of the ones Prince Gal wore at his belt.

He’d leaned back, but hadn’t actually pushed his chair away from the table. Which meant there was very little space to squeeze in and spin myself around in front of him. I felt the keen press of his dark eyes on the back of my bare neck as I attempted to get myself into position to perch on his knee.

Only, I wasn’t used to manoeuvring with skirts like this. In the tight space, I got twisted and tangled, and before I could do anything to stop it, I was tilting. My legs were clamped together in the tightly-wound burrito of my skirt. My arms windmilled wildly, one of them knocking over Prince Gal’s cup and sending his drink spewing so far across the table that Noona jumped up out of her seat to avoid getting splattered.

I was going down. Hard.

A rough, calloused hand – surprisingly warm and very strong – clamped around my upper arm and jerked me back. My legs were still too tangled up to properly right myself, which meant I couldn’t regain my balance and was still falling, just in a new direction.

It was only Prince Gal’s lap that kept me from tumbling heels over tits and smashing my skull open on the stone floor. I landed awkwardly on my front, lying across his legs with my ass up in the air like I was waiting for him to smack it.

“Steady, lass,” came the smoke-deep voice of Prince Gal from above me. “I said, ‘sit.’ Not ‘fling yourself at me like you’re trying to break your own ribs.’”

Ooh. The bastard. Obviously, I hadn’t thrown myself down on him like that on purpose. If anything, it was his fault for grabbing me and yanking me back onto him! Maybe he didn’t know his own strength in comparison to my much smaller human body. Even in that brief pressure of his hand on my arm, I could feel how incredibly strong he was. He probably could have popped my arm out of its socket as easily as pulling a little twig off of a tree.

“I didn’t… I wasn’t trying to… It’s these skirts!” I cried, slightly wheezy from the collision my lung-and-sternum area had just been subjected to against the orc’s rock-hard thighs. I was no longer convinced that landing on Prince Gal’s lap was any more comfortable than the floor would have been. At least the floor wouldn’t scold me about it.

I bucked and kicked, trying to slither off his lap so I could stand up and attempt this all again, preferably without looking like an idiot this time, but it was no use. The beautiful fucking dress was wrapped around me like a shiny, vengeful serpent. The kind that squeezed their prey to death. I gave one last wriggle then went slack, sagging with sudden, obliterating exhaustion. I hadn’t really had a chance to recover from the journey and whatever they’d used to knock me out on the shuttle. All at once, it became too much to move.

Something else moved, though. Something in the vicinity of Prince Gal’s crotch. It stiffened and twitched against my side. Heat exploded in my cheeks and, unexpectedly, between my legs. Prince Gal’s huge hand came to rest briefly on my lower back. Not quite a caress. Just the tiny exertion of pressure, as if he wanted to keep me there but then thought better of it. His hand moved away, only to grip one side of my waist, his other hand doing the same on my other side. As easily as he’d be able to manhandle a doll, he lifted me in the air, gave me a merciless little shake to let my skirts unwrap, then set me down upon his left knee.

He kept his left hand on my waist as he released me with his right. During the commotion, his drink had apparently already been replaced and the spill mopped up.

“Sorry,” I said, red-cheeked, lobbing the apology out into the air. I wasn’t exactly sure who it was aimed at. Partly Noona, for almost dousing her with her brother’s drink. And partly the orc servant or butler or whatever he was who’d probably been the one to clean it up.

“You don’t need to apologize to my sisters or to Ulreth,” Prince Gal admonished. He leaned forward, sealing his front briefly to my back as he retrieved his fresh drink. “You’re the high princess now.”

“High princess or not, I always think it’s best to apologize when I’ve made a mistake or done something wrong,” I told him. “Don’t you?”

I turned my head to look back at him. His black brows were low over his eyes, eyes that now searched my face for meaning as if I’d said something in a completely different language. Which, to be fair, I had. But we all had translators. So he must have understood me at least in a literal sense.

This is a man who isn’t used to saying sorry. To anyone.

He was a prince, I supposed. He was used to everyone jumping to obey his orders. And some of it may have been related to orc culture, too. He’d also seemed surprised when I’d said sorry about the death of his mother’s friend.

He hadn’t yet answered my question, and he was still looking at me like he was trying to use his eyes as drills to bore right through my face and into my brain, so I cleared my throat and faced forward just in time to see Ulreth placing my plate down beside Prince Gal’s. He then served me what looked like some sort of roast meat with honest-to-goodness vegetables. I mean, I assumed they were vegetables, anyway. They were colourful and plant-like and made my mouth water just to look at them. Ulreth filled Prince Gal and his sisters’ plates, too, then sliced into a big, fragrant ball of…

“Is that bread?” I gasped, leaning forward on Prince Gal’s knee to get a better look at what Ulreth was doing.

“Of course. It’s a staple. Humans don’t have bread?” He asked it like such a thing was inconceivable.

“Some humans do. The rich ones,” I said, my eyes glued to Ulreth’s slicing motion. “Most of us on ships just eat processed nutri-packs.”

“So you’ve never eaten bread before?”

I shook my head.

“Never.”

Prince Gal leaned forward again. I tensed, feeling the broad, hot wall of his front connect with my back once more. His hand was still on my waist, huge, encompassing, and searing with heat through my dress.

With his free hand, Prince Gal plucked a slice of bread from Ulreth’s tray. I gaped at the exquisite fluffiness of the soft inside bit. It would be like biting into a warm, golden cloud.

Prince Gal held the slice up in front of my face.

“Try it.”

He didn’t let go or give me the bread. Just left it dangling there in front of me while my stomach contracted with hunger.

Fuck me. I really wanted to try the bread.

Oh, well. I’d already decided I didn’t have any room for pride here. I tilted forward and caught part of the bread between my teeth.

I couldn’t help the moan that escaped me. My eyes fluttered closed as I started to chew the crunchy-fluffy-doughy-salty-sweet miracle that was Orhalla bread.

When it came time to swallow, I almost didn’t want to. I didn’t want this moment to end, despite the fact that I knew there were more slices waiting for me if I asked for them.

But, eventually, it got to the point where I was just masticating bread-sludge. So I swallowed and opened my eyes.

Prince Gal was staring at me once again, this time his expression so contorted with tension I almost leaped right off of his lap in shock. He looked… Not angry, exactly. But thunderous. Potent. Dangerous.

His ferocious eyes were locked on my mouth, as if my lips had done him some grave injustice that he wanted to punish them for. The fingers of his left hand dug into my side. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. His right hand remained aloft, holding the rest of the slice of bread, floating and forgotten.

I took a deep breath.

Then raised my hand and flicked him on the forehead. Right between the eyes.

He recoiled, his gaze finally snapping upwards from my mouth to my eyes.

“What was that?” he demanded, his brows coming together indignantly as if to gingerly hug the spot I’d so rudely accosted.

I almost apologized. I’d flicked him without thinking, doing something I’d done countless times before, although never to a glowering orc prince. But then I remembered what he’d just told me.

That I never needed to apologize.

I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant even as my heart slammed up into my throat at my own boldness.

“It’s something I used to do to my sister all the time,” I explained. “She’s kind of a worry wart. Whenever she got too bogged down and anxious about the future, I’d flick her like that. It would always distract her and make her laugh, at least a little.”

Prince Gal was silent for a moment. When he spoke next, he didn’t meaningfully respond to a single thing I’d said besides to inquire, “Your sister has warts?” Then he cast an offensively suspicious glance down at my dress, as if I, too, had thousands of secret warts that would be revealed the moment the fabric was peeled away.

“That’s not what I said. Don’t make me flick you again,” I said primly, facing forwards on his knee. I grabbed the bread out of his big, green hand and ate the rest of it all up.

CHAPTER 10

GALBRATH

Iswung wildly back and forth between feeling offended and pathetically, helplessly aroused by my human wife’s surprising audacity.

She’d taken up her tiny human fingers like they were weapons and flicked me with them. As if I were a sea gnat that she’d decided to violently disperse.

I could not remember the last time anyone had touched me in such a disrespectful manner. Whenever the last time had been, it had probably been Althrop who’d done it.

But idiotic Althrop didn’t make my cock hard.

Luna did.

I’d learned my wife’s name, at least. That was something I could console myself with as my cock throbbed, neglected, in the constriction of my pants. Neena and Noona had both said her name at various times during the lively conversation the three of them kept up together. My sisters seemed to be quite taken with my wife, engaging with her throughout the meal, their eyes keen and bright as Luna’s cheeks bunched with her strangely pretty, tuskless smiles.

Jealousy flared that such smiles were directed anywhere other than me.

No. I got flicked.

Not that I’d done anything to deserve a smile from her. I sat behind and beneath her. Mostly immobile, silent, chair-like.

If a chair was capable of nearly ejaculating into its leathers every time its wife shifted her little rump, that is.

All in all, the meal was rather agonizing. I distracted myself from how good the curve of Luna’s waist felt beneath my hand by shoving bite after bite of food into my mouth, followed by several large flagons of mead and then several more tumblers of whisky, something I hadn’t partaken in since my father’s funeral.

I could handle my drinks just fine. But the smooth buzzing in my limbs was undeniable as the meal ended and I lifted Luna down to her feet before immediately standing up behind her.

“We are departing for bed,” I announced, my voice sounding oddly husky in my own ears. Neena and Noona jumped up and screeched their disappointed goodbyes at my wife, completely ignoring me, their elder brother and their prince, soon-to-be king. Their eyes lingered on Luna, and then on the doorway we exited through, long after I’d pulled her away.

It was only when Luna began gently trying to tug her hand from mine that I even realized I was still holding hers. My fingers wrapped all the way around it so easily. The pad of my thumb was nestled against the inside of her wrist, feeling out the pulse that flapped there like a manic, trapped bird.

Humans must have very fast heartbeats.

Never would I have imagined touching my new wife’s hand in such a way. Never would I have seen myself letting my thumb not just rest, but roam up and down the silken skin, as if I could not stand not to touch her. Never would I have anticipated the amount of irritation I now felt when she tried to pull her hand away.

“Stop that,” I grunted.

“Stop what?” Luna asked, sounding startled. She turned her head to look at me, her eyes lush and luminous in the low lantern light of the long, stone hall we now traversed.

“Stop trying to stop holding my hand.”

Ah. An eloquent and elegant sentence. Songs would be written of the great poet King Gal, who’d once ordered his new wife to stop trying to stop holding his hand. Right after he’d compared her face to cheese.

“Oh! I… I just… My hand is kind of sweaty. I guess I didn’t want you to notice.”

I hadn’t noticed one bit.

“I notice everything,” I declared sternly. “Do not attempt to hide anything from me.”

“Oh. Alright.” She sounded a little quieter now. I groaned internally, realizing I was speaking to her the way I’d speak to some conniving farmer trying to evade taxation.

Since the death of my father, that’s all I’d been. The authority figure. The leader. The one responsible for keeping this kingdom running. I’d already been a hard man and my father’s death had made me harder. Not that I didn’t care for my people – I did. More than my own life. But I did not let things slip. My orders were firm and final.

And now I was giving them to my wife.

I realized, with no small amount of grim concern, that I had no idea how to actually treat a wife. Especially one, it turned out, I actually wanted. My father had doted on my mother. But they had been best friends. They’d known each other since childhood. By the time I was alive to observe the goodness, respect, and affection they shared, they’d had the foundations of most of a lifetime to smooth the way between them. Not to mention they came from the same world, the same culture.

I glanced down at Luna, so alien and so new, and wondered if she’d ever want to be best friends with me.

Likely not.

It was a surprisingly wistful thought. A stab through the ribs with a very dull knife. Only something like loneliness could both slice you and yet be as oppressively dull and heavy as a rock.

By the seas. I was pathetically morose tonight.

This is why I don’t drink whisky often.

I sighed, inhaled, then froze. Luna, who’d continued walking on without me, came to a confused and abrupt halt when her arm, with its hand trapped in my fist as it was, would not let her go any further.

“What is it?” she asked, her light brown eyebrows pushing together.

“I don’t know. I smelled…” I stopped to huff a great, deep breath in through my nose. My eyes instantly narrowed. “It’s you.”

I’d caught her scent at dinner, on my lap as she’d been. But this was a new scent. Deeper and laced with a tang that made me want to punch someone.

Or kill someone.

Luna’s cheeks went as bright as seaberries and she gasped. When that happened, the scent changed, taking on a new, maddening tone. What in the blasted seas was this? It reminded me of those colour-changing sea rocks Orhalla children would wear as pendants against their chests. The stones would change colour based on body temperature, but we’d all pretend the varying shades meant something about how your future would unfold.

“Are you too cold?” I asked, lifting her hand high in the air and casting an investigative eye down her form. “Or hot?”

“No! I’m perfectly… perfect, thank you!”

“You can’t be,” I growled. “You are emitting smells.”

She smacked her free arm across her chest, as if she were naked and wanted to shield herself from my eyes.

“What sort of smells?!” she demanded, trying to back away from me even as I drew her inexorably closer. When her front was flush to mine, I placed my free hand on her waist and bent my face to her neck, taking in a lungful of her.

My tusks brushed the side of her throat. She made a squeaky sound and flinched. I could feel the tension vibrating through her tiny frame as I dragged my nose up and down.

The scent changed again. Blooming, luscious, and sweet.

“Oh,” she said, a reedy, whispery moan that made my balls go hot and tight beneath my throbbing shaft. Then, much louder, she said, “Ouch!”

Her scent went sharp and metallic. Something inside me reacted instantly, though I did not even know what I was reacting to. All I knew was that something was wrong and I needed to fix it for her. Now.

“What is it?” I hissed, drawing back and cupping her small face in my hands. “What’s hurting?”

“Oh. It’s nothing serious. It’s just – ow!”

Her face contorted with pain, her eyes scrunching shut.

Even the failing wheat had not left me feeling quite so helpless. I wanted to dance back and forth from boot to boot with the devastating panic of it.

“What is it?” I snarled the words and her eyes whipped open.

“It’s the dress! That’s it! It’s way too big, so it got pinned in place. But now the pins have come loose and they’re poking me.”

I breathed out, panic ebbing, replaced by the hollow-boned feeling of relief.

“Where is the dress pinned?”

“Where isn’t it pinned?” she said with a small laugh that made me feel, bizarrely, like someone had just built a great and crackling fire and then tossed me right on top of it.

“Stay still,” I muttered. I dropped my hands from the pretty lines of her jaw and returned them to her waist. This time, I did not blindly, possessively grip her. I got down onto my knees. Then, I skimmed my fingertips up and down the generous curves of her waist and hips, feeling carefully along for the tiny metal studs that would indicate the heads of pins.

When I found them, I began to pull them out.

“You don’t have to do that!” Luna cried, staring down at me. She flapped her hands around, seeming to indicate that I should rise. When I did not, she gave up. But then it appeared she did not know what to do with her hands. She could not plant them on her hips as I’d seen her do before, because my own hands were there. She attempted to clasp them behind her back, but immediately winced when some unseen pin poked her.

“Just put your hands on my head,” I grumbled. “All that jostling about is just making everything worse.”

I was looking at the dress, my eyes seeking out every glint of the pins that dared to poke and prod the high princess, my wife. So I did not see her hesitation. I felt it, though, in the three or four – or probably twenty, in her rapid case – heartbeats that passed between my words and her response.

But, hesitation or not, she did comply. Like the exquisite touch of warm spring rain, her fingers fell upon me. Without even realizing I’d done it, I let my eyes close, just for a moment, to savour the sensation.

“Your hair is very soft.”

My eyes opened.

“I should have braided it.” I left the rest of the sentence unsaid. I should have braided it for you. That would have been the proper thing, the appropriate, formal way to greet someone as important as my own bride. Instead, I’d worn it long and loose, not caring for what she’d thought of it. Not caring about any of it at all.

Until I’d met her, that is.

But she seemed not to mind the rudely casual nature of my hair, as her fingers were slowly burying themselves between the unbound strands. I suppressed a rasping groan at the pleasure of her touch against my scalp.

Her scent softened, the harsh spike that had sent me into a flurry of panic dissolving away. It soothed something primal and deep inside me. To know that I was likely the cause for the change in her scent. That I was taking care of her. As if I were supposed to be taking care of her. Like I’d been meant to, all my life.

Which didn’t make a blasted lick of sense, all things considered. Like the fact she was human and that I hadn’t even wanted her until I’d gotten a glimpse of her and decided she wasn’t exactly torturous to look at.

And yet, even knowing that, even knowing how foolish this all was…

I still felt it. That satisfaction. That soft stroke against the possessive thing inside me, like Luna’s hands stroking my hair, that told me I was doing something right.

I was running out of room for all the pins in my left hand. I would have tossed them carelessly down to the stone, but Luna only had little slippers on, and I didn’t want her stepping on one.

“How many of these bloody things are there?” I bit out, beginning to shove pins into the leather of my vest just so I could have a place to store them all. “Which one of my sisters is responsible for this abomination of a job?”

“It was one of the maids. And it’s not an abomination!” Luna admonished, her fingers stilling on my head. “I think she did a really good job, all things considered! The dress is just way too big for me, that’s all.”

“A good job? You could have died from blood loss.”

“Blood loss? From pinpricks?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, pulling out what I hoped was the last pin at her waist and watching the garment sag. “How much blood does a human have in their body?”

Luna gave a chime-like cry of high laughter. And someone threw me on an inconvenient fire. Again.

“Enough blood that getting poked by a pin won’t cause me any harm.”

“One pin, no,” I agreed, rising to my feet. “But there had to be a thousand of them holding up your dinner dress.”

“A thousand!” She gaped at me. “Either that’s a translation error, or you are being extremely dramatic right now.”

“Dramatic?” I gestured at the front of my vest, glinting all over with the pins I’d stuck there. “Look at me. I look like some miniature archer has been using me for target practice.”

Her eyes glinted and then went to my forehead.

“Well, then their aim isn’t very good. They should have aimed right here.”

To my credit, at least I did not flinch when she flicked me this time.

I scowled at her, trying to suss out why I’d earned another forehead flick after I’d taken such pains to make sure she didn’t die from the cuts of ten thousand ill-placed pins. My wife seemed rather ungrateful for my efforts. But perhaps she did not know that the idea of Prince Gal down on his knees, pulling pins out of a human’s dress, was heretofore unfathomable.

I would have laughed at the thought myself.

Before today.

At least she was smiling at me. Her cheeks were pinkish now. Her scent was enticing, heady, and wafting more strongly towards me as her unpinned dress began to slide and collapse down. She caught it and held it fast against her breasts before I could see much of anything. I found myself rather sulky about the speed of her reaction time.

“Just,” I waved my hand vaguely at her and then the floor, “let it fall.”

Luna looked at me as if I’d just suggested she eat the dress and then shit it out onto a plate for my breakfast.

Blast. I’d never been much good at using words to seduce a woman. I’d had my fair share of sexual encounters, but it was usually because the female involved had been interested in me first and had pursued the rutting. I was a prince. This had always just been… easy.

I found myself completely at a loss at how I might encourage Luna to get naked. I stared at the dress as if the weight of my eyes alone could make it fall and save us both the awkwardness.

“No one comes this way unless I call for them,” I added gruffly. “We’ve nearly arrived at my chambers.”

I jerked my chin towards the door not a dozen steps from us.

She followed my gaze, gave a nervous-sounding laugh, and instead of responding to what I’d said, she rather nonsensically replied, “I don’t even know what I’ll wear to sleep.”

“I don’t wear anything to sleep. Why should you?”

Her head snapped to me so quickly it was a bit of a wonder it did not fly right off her shoulders. Human necks were stronger than I would have previously given them credit for.

“Of course you don’t.” She shook her head slightly. “Well, whatever state I sleep in, I’m not undressing out here in the hall.”

With that, she turned and headed for my chamber door. To my grave disappointment, she held up her dress the entire way.

CHAPTER 11

LUNA

Prince Gal’s chambers were large and luxurious, with their own impressive bathing room, much like the guest suite I’d first been shown into. Unlike that other room, though, this one sported the most extraordinary set of carved crystal doors and windows I ever could have imagined, leading out onto a gargantuan balcony that overlooked the sea. The palace was perched on a high cliff above a sandy cove, and looking out the windows and doors gave me the impression that we were floating above the black waves. The rising and crashing water looked like the flap and fall of wings, tips painted silver by a big, low-hanging moon.

I inhaled shakily, a few tears pricking at my eyes. I’d seen more beautiful things today than I’d probably seen in my entire life.

“Are these yours?”

I spun at the sound of Prince Gal’s charred and rumbly voice. He was holding the clothing I’d worn here in his hands. Fervently, I hoped they’d been washed by whoever had brought them here. He’d already complained about me emitting smells, whatever the hell that lovely little comment meant. I did not need him getting a whiff of my worn-out grey travel suit and sweaty undies and sports bra.

“Yes. I suppose I exaggerated a bit when I said I had no things.” But only a bit. The clothes were all I’d come with. I didn’t even have a comms tablet anymore. Selling it to buy food had been the final nail in the coffin for my sad, single-girl life. It had been the day after selling it that I’d girded my loins, slapped an optimistic smile on my face, and joined the Starlight Brides program.

“They are not well-made.” Prince Gal said it like my cheap clothing was a personal affront to him.

“At least they fit me!” I said with a slight chuckle, tugging up on the front of my gaping dress until the fabric rustled meaningfully.

“You’ll have new things made to fit you immediately.”

It was nearly an off-hand comment, he said it so easily. As if procuring new, beautiful, made-to-fit clothing was nothing at all. And maybe it was nothing at all to him. He was literal royalty, after all.

But it was something to me. A great big something. And it meant a hell of a whole lot.

“Thank you,” I whispered, my throat feeling thick.

He looked startled by my gratitude. Then he suddenly frowned, leaning forward. After a long inhale through his nose, he closed his eyes and roughly jerked his head a few times, as if trying to dislodge water from his ear. His eyes opened. Their heated darkness went right to my face.

“You smell good right now.”

“What do you mean, right now?” I gasped. I couldn’t tell whether I should be offended by his continuing comments on my various human odours, or if I should be glad that he currently approved.

Ridiculously, I was leaning towards the latter. An undeniable spiral of pure pleasure wound through my belly at his blunt, spare praise.

“Your scent keeps changing,” he said, almost sounding a little exasperated that he had to explain. “And it keeps making me want to do things.”

“What sorts of things?”

“When you were in pain from the pins in the hall, and your scent hit me, I wanted to kill somebody. Not you,” he clarified with grunting quickness when my horror no doubt registered on my face. “It was very… nice when your scent returned to something sweeter. Calmer.” His dark eyes regarded me steadily. “If you could attempt to keep your smells on a somewhat more even keel going forward, that would be better.”

“I don’t know how to do that!” I stammered. “I didn’t even know my scent changed with my mood!” I gathered the gold dress around myself as if it were some sort of shield. “If you’re the one so bothered by it, maybe you should wear nose plugs or something!”

“You’re doing it again,” he said. He put my clothing down and came closer. He stared down at me in a way I would have found quite menacing if he hadn’t just spent fifteen minutes on his knees pulling pins from my dress out of an absurd concern about blood loss.

“I can’t help it!” I cried.

“It’s making me rather antsy.”

“Go stand further away from me, then!”

“I don’t want to.”

Oh. My. God.

Had I married the most idiotically stubborn man alive?

Is this because he’s an orc? Or a prince? Or a male?

Or all three?

Whatever it was, he was glaring down at me like he expected me to solve a problem I hadn’t known, until this moment, even existed. It was like he was asking me to never blink again simply because watching the eyelashes flutter was a bother to him.

“Well, like I just said, I truly can’t help it. I wasn’t even aware of this issue until you brought it up!”

He looked at me as if I were stupid. Or maybe that I thought he was stupid, and that I was lying to him.

“You were not aware,” he said slowly, clearly, “that every minute shift in your temperament creates an olfactory display as inescapably obvious as waving a colourful flag above your head?”

“Of course not!”

He stared blankly at me for a beat before muttering, “Let us hope, then, that our children do not inherit your terrible sense of smell.”

Hurt and embarrassment seized my chest. Maybe if we’d been married a while, and we knew how to joke around with each other, he could have gotten away with a comment like that.

But we weren’t there yet. And his words stung more than I wanted to admit.

“Blast. What is it now?” His dark eyes flashed, and he gripped my chin between his fingers and his thumb. “It’s changed again. It’s making me feel… very agitated… with the need to fix whatever is causing it.”

“You’re causing it!” I cried before I could stop and think better of it.

He stilled.

“Me?”

“I’m just reacting to everything you’re doing and saying! I feel things deeply, and maybe I’m too sensitive, but that’s just who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. If you’re not pleased with me, well… I’ll do my best to make this marriage work. But I can only do so much, and I can’t change myself.”

Prince Gal was silent for a long moment. So long that I was sure my scent was now doing something humiliatingly obvious to let him know just how awkward and uncomfortable I felt right now.

Maybe he’s just going to send me back, I thought miserably. Maybe Lyric was right and I was an idiot for thinking this would work. Maybe-

“You please me.”

“Wh-What?” I asked, not sure I’d actually heard or just imagined the words.

Prince Gal’s face was very close to mine. His breathing hitched and his voice went raspy.

“You please me.”

My stomach tightened.

But then, as if he needed to temper the effect of the compliment, he added, “Is your hearing as bad as your sense of smell?”

“I heard you the first time! I was just… surprised.”

So quietly I almost did miss it that time, he replied, “Not as surprised as I am.” Before I could ask what that meant, he gave a ragged-sounding sigh and said, “It worked.” His nose dipped to my throat. I felt the heavy heat of his exhale on my skin and goosebumps rose. “You smell good again.”

“Well, just keep saying nice things to me, I guess, and we’ll be just fine.” There wasn’t any tartness to my reply. I was too busy melting away while replaying the echo of Prince Gal’s raw and fervent declaration inside my head. You please me.

A girl could get addicted to a guy that grumpy telling her she pleased him. The effect was nearly drugging, as was the whispering caress of his lips and tusks against the side of my throat. I shivered and angled my head to the side, just a little, almost without realizing I’d done it. My nipples hardened.

“Blasted seas, you smell even better now,” Prince Gal muttered hoarsely against my skin. “What is that?”

I knew what it was. Oh, yes. That, right there, would have to be the fabulous fragrance of pathetically horny human. Eau d’arousal, if you will. Because there was no hiding from the effect Prince Gal was having on me. His simple statement, that I pleased him, had alighted on some primal nerve inside me. That, coupled with the way his breathing was getting heavier, harsher at my throat, and the way his hands had wandered up to cover my own where they still clutched at the front of the dress, was making needy heat bloom between my legs.

“You said… the different scents make you want to do things,” I whispered. “What does this scent make you want to do?”

“Careful, Luna lass,” he choked out. “You told me you want me to say nice things to you. And the things I want to do to you now aren’t very nice.”

The squeaky moan that emerged from my throat in response to that was absolutely unhinged. I would have paid good money to have successfully blamed somebody else for the sound. But seeing as I was the only creature in the room capable of reaching that highly embarrassing pitch, there was no way to deny it. Instead, I cleared my throat and said, as efficiently and business-like as I could, “Your sisters mentioned your need for an heir. Just so you know, I’m, er, on board. We can start tonight. If you want.”

“Tonight?” There was a strained note of something not quite identifiable in his reply. Hope? Need? Whatever it was, it made my pussy clench.

“Tonight. As in, right now.”

His breathing stopped. I knew it did because my neck felt cold at the lack until he suddenly spoke again in a throbbing, heated rush.

“Take off the dress. Then get onto my bed and spread your legs.”

CHAPTER 12

GALBRATH

Thank the seas she did not flick me again. I half-expected her to do it, but she didn’t. Miraculously, she finally let go of the dress, letting it crumple and pile around her little feet. Before I could get a proper look at her, she turned and hurried towards the bed, shedding her slippers as she went. She clambered up onto the bed – a bit of a difficult feat for someone of her stature, it turned out – and immediately shunted herself under the thick covers. I grimaced, noting that she’d essentially traded one form of fabric armour for another – the dress for the blankets – but at least she was in my bed now. And she’d said she was ready to try to make an heir.

I’d actually forgotten all about the possibility or purpose of creating an heir with her. I wasn’t looking at bedding her as a means to an end now. I wanted her. It was as simple and unexpected as that.

And if a baby came to help solidify my family line as a result, then all the better.

But for now, my focus was Luna and Luna alone.

Creating some distance between us and hiding her body beneath the heavy coverings as she’d just done slightly dampened the agonizingly sweet, blood-boiling scent that was currently turning my brains into a deliriously fevered soup. It gave me enough of a reprieve to have a moment of clear thinking before I pounced on her like a slobbering feral pig. I wrenched off my vest, sending a cascade of pins clattering to the stone floor. Luna watched me with big eyes and pink cheeks, the deep green blanket pulled all the way up to her chin.

Her gaze snagged on my chest, appearing to linger around the area of my right nipple, where I’d recently been pierced. A metal bar gleamed there and held her attention fast.

But not for long. Because once I kicked off my boots and shed my trousers, her gaze fell to my hard cock.

And stayed there.

She hadn’t even touched me yet, and already I was so stiff that I was dripping. Grunting, I fisted my shaft and gave it a tweak, feeling the taut flesh pulse, my ridged knot hot and engorged.

Despite the blanket, her scent thickened, perfuming the air with something that made every nerve in my body cry out with near-painful desire. Three spastic jets of seed shot forth in instantaneous response, and Luna gasped.

“Don’t worry,” I gritted out between clenched tusks. “There’s plenty more.”

A virile orc male in his prime could spill over and over again. That little emission had done nothing to soften my flesh nor assuage my cock’s urgency. I was dizzy with it. Drunk and dazed on a hunger I’d never felt before in my life. It was her blasted scent that was doing it. Sending me out of my mind with need. That, and her face. And her body. And her voice. And her smiles. And-

Curse it all, it was everything. All of her. Each facet of her person seemed specifically designed to reduce me to a slovenly puddle at her dainty feet.

My throat worked, my cock pulsed. My gait was just a little unsteady as I made my way towards the bed. I paused at the bedside table, lighting a match for the candle there.

Luna jumped as if I’d touched the lit match directly to her skin.

“Is that a flame? A real, actual flame? Is that… Is that a good idea?”

The candle now lit, I extinguished the match with my forefinger and thumb before letting it drop.

“You don’t have fire where you come from?”

“Of course we do! But I don’t think humans have used something as ancient as a candle to light the interior of a space in hundreds of years!” She scowled at the candle in suspicion. It was so damnably adorable that it almost made me feel violent.

I wanted to squish something. Like her cheeks. This was a new and altogether alarming desire. What the blazes sort of man wanted to smoosh his wife’s soft, dimpled cheeks between his hands?

Curse it all into the depths of the sea. I was.

“You have powered lighting in the rest of the palace! All those lanterns… Those weren’t lit by fire! And you obviously have tech and shuttles and all that…”

“So?”

“So, why are you using an open flame as a light in your room?”

“In our room, you mean?”

Thank goodness that candle was lit, because I got to see the delicious darkening of her cheeks in response to that. A half a heartbeat later, her scent thickened. My head spun.

“In Orhalla,” I said thickly, “we like to adhere to traditions wherever we can. And I personally prefer candles to most other forms of lighting at night.”

“Why do you need any lighting at all right now?!”

“Isn’t that obvious?” I asked, grasping hold of the blanket and tugging it away from her body in one firm, demanding motion. “I want to see you.”

I wasn’t sure if it was my words that did it, or the sudden removal of the blanket, but her scent nearly drowned me then. It was all I could do not to entirely sink under the weight of it – sink into her. My cock felt like it might just give up and fall off if I didn’t slide it inside her soon. My head felt like someone had smacked it with the flat side of a blade. And hard.

“Spread your legs,” I groaned, getting up onto the bed and positioning myself on my knees before her. “You’re small. I need to get you ready for me.”

Luna hesitated, then gave a shaky nod. Her arms were crossed over the front of her body, but she let her trembling legs give way, her luscious thighs parting slightly and then falling all the way open.

There it was. The source of the most intoxicating, brain-bludgeoning thread of her complex and hypnotic scent. It came from her cunt.

Petal-soft and a delicate brownish-pink, the skin there gleamed with moisture that made my throat contract.

“Pretty,” I choked out. There was no other word for it. Her sex reminded me of beautiful things. Flowers. Fine silk. Other very nice items I was not capable of remembering right now because all the blood from my head had been redirected to my groin.

“Your arms, too,” I commanded. I wanted to see all of her. Needed it more than I’d needed anything.

She gave a hitching breath, but then lifted her chin and set her shoulders, letting her arms drop away from her breasts. Once she’d bared those heartrendingly beautiful, heavy globes of flesh with their delectably taut nipples, much like out in the hall before, she didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands.

“Surely you remember where you’re supposed to put those,” I murmured gruffly, already descending between her legs, my head yielding to some unstoppable, insurmountable force that pulled it down towards the apex of her thighs.

Clearly, she did remember, because her fingers fell to my hair and then tightened, tugging sharply, when I opened my mouth and gave her a long, greedy lick.

It was good that she was pulling my hair so. That tingling pain at my scalp helped keep me anchored while the salted-syrup taste of her, and her maddening scent, threatened to bear me up and out of the palace entirely. I was barely in possession of all my faculties, let alone my raging body. I gorged on her as if I’d been starving all my life.

And maybe I had been. Why hadn’t anyone told me a human could taste this cursedly good?

I sucked up her slickness, grunting and groaning, my cock dripping freely, endlessly. Luna gave me a gratifying, mewling sort of moan, her hips spasming fiercely when I laved greedy attention on a specific swollen bit of flesh above her opening.

“What’s this called?” I demanded, my words slurring against her soaked skin. “When I lick it, it makes you go all wriggly.”

I licked it again for good measure, swirling my tongue over it like I was polishing a delectable little pearl.

“That’s…” she panted desperately, “That’s my… ooh!”

Curse me, she went absolutely crazy when I licked her ooh. Well, I could keep doing that for as long as she needed. I wanted to lick her ooh. When something tasted that blasted good, it was almost impossible to stop.

Luna shook and whimpered. Her face was flushed, her bosom and abdomen jiggling with her fast breaths. I dug my fingers into the plushness of her thighs.

“Cross your ankles over my back,” I commanded. Or begged. I couldn’t quite tell. “Wrap your thighs around my head. Yes, lass. Like that. Now ride my face.”

Luna, who up until now I suspected had been holding back some of her body’s responses, entirely gave up. She no longer pulled my hair but clutched at me as if trying to drive her fingers right through my skull, holding me in place as she rocked her needy hips up and down. She soaked me from chin to nose, and I gave a grateful and gratified moan, letting my tongue dart down to dip inside her quivering entrance. Her hips shuddered violently, and the molten silk of her channel convulsed on my tongue.

Her scent was like southern velvet, so thick it pressed in all around me, covering me, coating me, saturating me until I wasn’t sure that I’d ever smell entirely just like myself again.

I took a filthy sort of pleasure in the fact that I’d now eternally smell like the exquisite peak of my wife’s climax. This moment, this woman, had forever altered me.

Luna undulated, grinding through the convulsive reverberations of her ecstacy. She mewled and then gasped my name in a shattered voice – “Prince Gal!” – and I belatedly regretted that I’d not told her to call me Galbrath.

No one called me Galbrath. No. One. Not even my own mother. It was considered the absolute height of intimacy for a prince such as myself to be called by my full name instead of the typical shortened version. Even among married royal couples, the male’s full name was not often used.

And yet here I was, on the very first night with my new human wife, and I was already pathetically desperate to hear her call me Galbrath while she jiggled and gyrated and came apart all over my face.

I was fairly certain that I’d turned into an idiot.

I was entirely certain that I did not care.

She twitched and wiggled and moaned again, then suddenly sagged, her legs falling away and splaying open so wide for me I lost a healthy helping of seed just at the sight of her.

“I’m going to use my fingers now,” I barely was able to pant, my lungs contracting like bellows. “Make you come again. Get you good and ready and-”

Luna interrupted me with… I wasn’t quite sure. It wasn’t a word. Nor was it an effusive, erotic cry in praise for my tongue. It was something between a snuffle and a snarl.

“What?” I asked dazedly as I straightened up on my knees between her thighs. I took my cock in my fist, squeezing the pulsating knot in anticipation of working it inside her.

Luna made the sound again. I wrenched my fevered gaze up from her gorgeous wet cunt. The candlelight kissed her face, illuminating very pink cheeks, mussed hair, golden eyelashes….

Eyelashes that rested in the delicate half-moon hollows beneath her eyes.

Because her eyes were closed, and not in ecstatic bliss for her husband’s dutiful ministrations.

But because she was asleep.

“Is this a joke?” I actually said it aloud, I was so jarred. The audacity, to fall asleep right in the midst of our first coupling! The extraordinary gall! To take what she needed and abandon me like this, her husband, her prince!

Who would dare to do it?

Probably the same woman who’d dare to flick me on the forehead.

By the seas, she was a lovely thing to behold when she slept.

It made her rather obnoxiously impossible to be angry with.

I sighed bitterly, giving my neglected cock a grimly empathetic squeeze as I clambered off of the bed. I scowled down at Luna, so innocently dozing away, making those little snorts over and over again. Snoring. So humans snored, did they? Must be related to the bad sense of smell.

Somehow she even made the snoring cute. It was absolutely intolerable.

Not the snoring. The cuteness.

“You’re going to be stuck sleeping in that wet spot all night if you don’t wake up,” I growled at her, glancing at the already impressive load I’d left on the sheet beneath her. Curse the cute little creature, she didn’t even do a thing to acknowledge me.

Heavy sleeper.

Or else utterly exhausted. It occurred to me now that I’d never bothered to ask how the journey to Orhalla had been for her. If she’d slept well. If she’d eaten enough. That made me feel… odd.

Bad.

I didn’t like it.

“Roll over,” I muttered, trying very hard not to stare at all the beautiful bits of herself she’d left on guileless display so as to spare my cock any more agony. When she didn’t respond, I sighed and bodily moved her to the other side of the bed so she wasn’t stuck snoozing in the rapidly cooling mess I’d left behind. Not that a small, rejected part of me didn’t want to punish her a little bit by leaving her there. Let her get her legs all cold and wet. See if I cared. I’d be too busy sulking and stroking my cock like an idiot.

But I looked at her pink cheeks and her tiny little toes as she tucked her feet up towards her backside and I just couldn’t do it.

And so, instead, I began doing something I’d literally never done in all my royal days.

I began stripping my own bed.

It wasn’t that it was difficult or complicated. I’d just never needed to do it before. But I wasn’t about to parade some servant in here to see my wife in all her surprising human glory. Even the mere thought had a burning scythe of jealousy the likes of which I’d never experienced tearing up my guts.

Once the sheet was peeled back on that side, I put the green coverlet down and rolled Luna onto it, folding it over her body until she was encased like the filling of a pastry, her head a little berry poking out the top.

Once she was safely off the wet sheet, I wrenched it fully off the bed and much more vigorously than was probably necessary. It tore at the exact moment Luna let out a particularly loud snore. I tossed the ruined fabric into a heap on the floor and stalked into the bathing room. Once there, I splashed cold water all over myself and then made myself come with startling quickness. Her scent was still all over, her taste in my mouth, the memory of her supple skin gliding beneath my tongue all hot and shuddering until I was spilling the rest of my seed into a wash basin, as well as all over myself.

Another rinse with even colder water and then I returned to the bedchamber.

Luna had burrowed further down, like an animal seeking warmth. The kind of animal you’d always heard in tales was rather smelly and ugly and maybe had a stumpy leg or two but in reality was something else entirely.

Something that you rather wanted to take care of.

Something cute.

I was using that word far too often tonight. It made me almost feel a little itchy.

I tossed my body down on the bed beside my sleeping bride. Folding my hands behind my head, I stared up at the ceiling for a while before turning to peer at Luna’s curled-up form. The little of it I could see, at least. Which currently was nothing but the shiny, pinned plaits on the top of her head.

“You should take your hair pins out to sleep,” I grumbled at her. I knew little about pinned-up female coiffures, but I frowned, imagining that there could be as many pins bundled up against her scalp as had been stabbing through her dress.

Of course, she did not answer. Did not even stir.

“I don’t know why I keep talking to you.”

And yet, I was. Even knowing that she would not answer. Or take out the pins I’d so helpfully advised her on.

With a sigh, I rolled towards her, curling my body around hers. Then, with a diligence I had always known myself capable of and a tenderness I hadn’t, I began to pull the pins out one by one.

CHAPTER 13

LUNA

Iwoke feeling so cozy it took me a while to even figure out I was awake. This definitely wasn’t the thin shuttle HeatPro blanket I was used to. This one was heavy, luxurious, and soft. I’d somehow managed to get myself all wrapped up in a Luna blankie burrito, and I didn’t have any desire to try to extricate myself just yet.

With my eyes closed, I soaked up the sensations. Warm sunlight hitting my face. The tangly tickle of my hair against my cheeks and neck.

Hold on…

Hair?

When did I take my hair down?

With a strangled gasp, I sat up, the events of last night coming back to me in a dreamy, scene-by-scene rush. Oh, God. There was my dress abandoned in a heap just where I’d left it last night.

Right before…

Right before my gigantic, glowering, prickly prince of a husband gave me the orgasm of my life. The place between my legs gave an achy throb at the memory. Pretty, he’d called me.

And then he’d told me to lock my legs around his head and ride his face.

He’d seemed to enjoy it, too. The man had eaten me out like my pussy was saving his goddamn life.

And then, after, he’d…

He’d what?

My face puckered in confusion, which only deepened when I looked to the side and saw all the hair pins that had been holding up my hairdo tossed willy nilly all over a shiny, carved wooden bedside table. The pins were beautiful, ornate engraved metal. They were probably the most expensive thing that had ever touched my body. No matter how tired or blissed-out I was from Prince Gal’s tongue, I would have placed them down with more care than that.

Prince Gal took them out?

I had absolutely no recollection of that. I couldn’t remember anything beyond the spine-shattering explosion of coming against his vigorous, greedy mouth, and then collapsing boneless back against the bed, and…

Did I fucking fall asleep?!

Every shred of evidence so far seemed to point that way. I groaned, drawing up my blanket-encased knees, putting my elbows atop them, then burying my face in my hands.

Great job, Luna. Primo wife you are. Getting off and then immediately falling asleep before your new partner gets to finish.

It was completely unlike me. I’d been nervous last night and kind of happy for Prince Gal to take the lead, but I’d always prided myself on being a conscientious and generous partner when I did have sex. If anything, I would have bet on Prince Gal as being the selfish one in bed.

Seemed like the total opposite was true.

I raised my face for a moment just to make entirely sure that Prince Gal wasn’t still somewhere in the room. I couldn’t blame him for not being here. His new wife had gotten her jollies off and then promptly checked out of the situation, leaving him hard and hanging. Plus, he was a prince. He probably had royal duties that he had to attend to. It seemed that way to me, at least. He didn’t give me the impression of a playboy prince who swanned around doing nothing all day.

I’d learn more about him soon. I found myself excited at the prospect. I’d come into this situation not knowing what to expect but promising myself I’d make it work, even if things weren’t exactly ideal. But after last night, after experiencing the pure, almost blood-thirsty way Prince Gal seemed to want me already, I felt a ticklish elation rise from my belly to my chest. It was a familiar feeling, though it hadn’t visited in a while. It was the giddy high of having a brand-new crush on somebody.

The feeling in my belly tightened when I acknowledged that the crush might be going both ways. It really didn’t seem like last night had been a chore for Prince Gal to create his heir. The amount of time he spent on me, the way he grunted and groaned in pleasure while he did it, added to that conclusion. He hadn’t even woken me up and insisted I finish out my wifely, high princess duties of the night. No, apparently he’d instead pulled out all my hairpins and wrapped me up in a blanket.

I tried to picture it – his brutal face carved with irritation even as he carefully pulled out every pin. As he took care of me.

Was he hard when he did it? Or did he take care of himself first?

God, I could have kicked myself for falling asleep partway through. Hard. In the shin. Both shins.

I’d find him and apologize and see if we could resume things again today.

I really, really wanted to see what Prince Gal looked like, sounded like, shuddered like when he came. Inside me.

The thought was so stunningly arousing that I would have let my hand slip down between my legs while fleshing it out in my mind if not for a knock at the chamber door. It was Doree.

“Prince Gal has commanded you be fitted for new clothing immediately,” she said as she came into the room. She paused near the side of the bed and raised her thumbs up to touch her tusks. It seemed to be some sort of orc greeting. I raised my own thumbs, but as I had no tusks, I settled on giving her what was probably a slightly manic-looking thumbs-up with my hands on either side of my grinning mouth. She looked startled, but then shyly pleased by the gesture, so I figured I’d done alright.

“I’m kind of, er, in the nude over here,” I said, holding tightly to the edge of the blanket.

Doree didn’t seem bothered. Modesty was apparently more of a human virtue than an orc one.

“That will simply make the measurements more accurate.”

“Well. Okie dokie, then. Guess I can’t argue with that…”

I extricated myself and stood awkwardly before her as she went to work. Luckily it didn’t take long. She had a small, handheld tool that cast a blue light, almost like a scan, across my body. It took a bunch of measurements at once.

“I’m surprised you’re not using something like a tape measure,” I told her as I pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped myself up in it once more. “Prince Gal seems to favour candles more than powered lights.”

“We all appreciate tradition. But not at the total expense of efficiency,” she said.

“No, actually, I kind of get it,” I replied. “I used to work in the cafeteria of a ship. Most of the job was just heating industrial-sized portions of, like, protein cubes or whatever. But every once in a while, I got to make something by-hand with natural ingredients. Usually when somebody important was on the ship. That was always the most fun.”

Much like the thumbs-up, Doree once again looked startled but pleased by me. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to her that the new high princess had worked, and not just worked but really, seriously busted her human tush before coming here.

Doree offered to re-pin a new dress onto my body while I waited for the new clothing, but I winced at the memory of the poky pins and told her I’d just wear my old clothes for today. Thankfully, it did appear (and smell) like they’d been laundered before being brought to this room. I quickly washed and dressed and put my wet hair into a simple braid.

Urged on by a grumbling stomach and the hope for something good for breakfast, I wandered out of the chambers, heading back the way Prince Gal and I had come last night. As I went, I admired the palace. It had been too dark last night for me to fully appreciate the carved crystal of the windows set into the stone walls of these halls. Even the stone had a quality of light to it, gleefully reflecting back the morning sunshine. It wasn’t blocky or heavy or dark, but pale sandy-white and finely smoothed. Every few paces, there was gleaming, colourful tilework decorating the walls, floor, or edging around the windows, depicting glittering blue waves, impressive arrays of weapons, or ancient water ships complete with oars and sails.

Before I could make it to the hall where we’d eaten last night, I was nearly bowled over by Noona and Neena careening around the corner ahead.

“Luna!” they cried in ecstatic unison.

“Good morning,” I said, giving them a genuine smile. It was nice to have some friends around the place besides my grumpy, horny, and currently nowhere-to-be-found husband. I was also quite pleased to say I was able to tell who was who. Neena’s eyebrows tended to lift a little higher on the right side, and her large red tusks were a bit shinier than Noona’s.

“We were just coming in search of you!” she cried. She hoisted a basket as Noona added, “We’re taking a morning picnic to the beach!”

“That sounds amazing!” I said earnestly. I really wanted to see the beach and I was starving. Win, win.

“Let’s go!” the twins said, turning with identical grace and leading me through more sunlit halls until we were out the big main doors I’d come in through yesterday. Before we could turn ourselves towards the beach, the sound of whirring and a male voice calling out made all three of us pause.

On the wide, natural stone path between lush gardens ahead, a vehicle was approaching. It looked to be some sort of individual hovercraft, with a set of handlebars for steering and a seat in the middle of its narrow, compact body. It landed, sending up a small puff of dust, and a tall orc male leaped down, striding towards us with large, swaggering steps.

“Cousin Althrop!” the twins exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“I have heard that my dear cousin Prince Gal has taken a bride. And not just any bride, but a human.”

There was a distinct drip of what sounded a hell of a lot like disdain all over the words “dear” and “human.” I decided immediately I didn’t like this cousin guy one bit. But I plastered a polite smile on my face anyway, because this was obviously an important member of my husband’s family and, damnit, I was going to make a good impression.

“Hello. My name is Luna. I’m Prince Gal’s wife. The high princess,” I said brightly.

His eyes snapped to me, as if he hadn’t even noticed me with the twins before. I watched with a combination of satisfaction and foreboding as his brows climbed higher and higher at the sight of me. His gaze did a none-too-quick survey of my body, too, dragging up and down my form in a way that set my teeth on edge.

“It is my deepest pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lana.”

“Luna,” I corrected through clenched teeth.

“Luna. Quite. Well, am I ever glad I came to see you for myself! I would have arrived last night, but it grew late, and I had to stop and stay at a nearby inn. Alas, I was not invited to attend the royal wedding.”

“None of us were,” Noona lamented.

“Our brother didn’t even attend himself!” Neena added with a scowl. “He sent Padreth to marry Luna as his proxy.”

Althrop looked surprised, and by the venom with which Neena mentioned the proxy thing, I wondered if it was unusual. I hadn’t worried too much about it at the time, and Prince Gal’s obvious enjoyment of having me in his bed had assuaged a lot of doubts, but…

Was that a bad sign after all? That he hadn’t come to collect me himself, and that we hadn’t had a proper wedding with his family here, on his world?

It was too late to worry about it now, I supposed. We were already married and would have to keep working on everything now that we were together.

I tried to put it out of my mind, and did so just in time to hear the twins inviting their cousin on the picnic with us.

“Breakfast with my fair cousins and the luminous new high princess? How could a male refuse such an offer?” he said silkily. He eyed me and smoothed a manicured green hand over his already perfect braid. I resigned myself to spending the morning with this guy, knowing I’d be on my best behaviour even if I hated every moment of it.

CHAPTER 14

GALBRATH

“If you don’t mind my saying so, Prince Gal, being married suits you.”

“What?” I replied irritably to Padreth as we left yet another farmer’s dying field, this one on the road that led to our palace. The wheat plague was spreading, and no one could figure out how or why. It didn’t seem to go from field to field in any discernable pattern, but was popping up randomly, sometimes in very isolated areas. It made no sense.

“The married life, my prince. You’re glowing!”

I gave him a look so black he was forced to amend his absurd statement.

“Well, perhaps that is not the right word. But you seem… different. In a good way.”

“Shut up, Padreth.”

Padreth, being Padreth, did not shut up.

“It is true! I have seen you several times stopping to moon about over mundane things that never would have caught your eye before. I saw you looking at the flowers along the edge of the neighbouring inn’s property for so long that I thought you might be selecting one to pick for your new bride!”

Padreth was both right and wrong. I had been looking at the lush flowers and thinking of Luna. I reminiscing about about how pink and petal-soft she’d been beneath my tongue. The flowers had reminded me of her.

When I’d woken this morning, I’d found myself wrapped as snugly around her as the blanket. My cock was hard and pressed against the curve of her rump, and I’d seriously considered waking her up just so that I could lick her again before getting to actually slide inside her this time. But I’d slept later than I’d meant to as it was, and I knew we had work to do this morning. So with a great, depressing amount of stoic resignation, I’d ignored my cock and my pretty, sleepy-warm wife and had left the bed, and her, behind.

To meet up with Padreth. So that he could annoy me into violence.

“Let’s head back,” I said, ignoring his comments and rather magnanimously, I thought, not punching him in the face. Another failing field meant my patience was running very, very short.

Strangely, though it was not at all productive to the issue at hand, it made me want to go find Luna. To gather her up in my arms and give her a good, long sniff. Only if she smelled good, though. If I encountered her stressed or frightened scent right now, I was fairly certain I could not be held responsible for murdering someone. I’d have to say nice things to her first. Lick her slender neck and then her cunt again. Let all that soothing, sated sweetness waft off of her so that I could inhale it like a drug.

Being with her last night had been the first time since my father had died that I had been truly in the moment with another person. That I’d been distracted from everything going wrong all around me, that I’d been severed from my duties as a prince so I could take up the surprisingly comfortable mantel of the duties of a husband.

Turned out I actually liked being a husband.

No. That wasn’t quite right. I knew with sharp certainty right down to the toes of my boots that I didn’t like being a husband and wouldn’t like being a husband to anyone else.

I liked being Luna’s husband.

Oceans help me. How in the great span of the seas had that happened?

Padreth and I rode back to the palace hard and fast, leaning low over the necks of the air steeds, our hands gripping the bars. Grass and farms flew by on our right, the sea crashing against the beaches below the cliffs on our left. We’d have a quick lunch, then we’d be right back to it, visiting more farmers and sending missives to scientists in other regions. So far, this wheat blight had only shown up in my kingdom, but the monarchs of other nations had begun to write to me with their concerns about possible spread.

I was so focused on the road ahead that the scent snuck up on me. A subtle shift that made my lips draw back in a silent snarl, the nerves tightening along my spine.

But the scent grew thicker the closer we got to the palace and the beaches below. Until I was sweating and gnashing my fangs together. Luna was somewhere nearby.

And she was unhappy.

My body responded before my battered brain even had a hope of catching up. It was as if someone had thrust me into a raging battle. Hormones surged. Muscles bunched. My breath came ragged and quick. Following nothing but instinct, I wrenched my air steed off the road towards the edge of the cliffs. I ignored Padreth’s worried call from behind me and plunged right over the side.

An air steed was not meant for flying. If I’d simply run it off the edge of the cliffs I would have crashed below. But there was a steep and treacherous path down here that no one dared take by foot. It provided enough of a solid surface for me to snake down the cliff face towards the beach. Distantly, I heard Padreth swear, then abandon his air steed to run for the safer lift that was the usual method of reaching the beach from the road and palace grounds above.

I jumped off the air steed and started running, following Luna’s scent right into the water. The waves soaked my boots and trousers, the leather growing heavy against my skin. I didn’t care. Luna’s scent was all around me and I couldn’t find her and my head was about to explode.

I did find someone, though. My cousin, Althrop. What he was doing here was anyone’s blasted guess. I ploughed through the water towards him, knowing he had to have something to do with this. His back was to me, but a slight change in the way he angled himself revealed Luna’s pale arm.

I caught him by the braid and yanked.

He gave an undignified yelp a moment before he crashed backwards into the water. I left him there to flounder, my eyes and hands instantly going to Luna’s face.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Luna seemed startled by my sudden appearance. The black centres of her eyes had retracted to pinpricks, revealing shifting, effervescent rings of gold and brown that made me almost entirely forget where I was or what I was doing.

Althrop piping up in exasperation from behind me was an unwelcome reminder.

“Nothing’s wrong!” he spat, dragging his drenched body up and out of the water. His naked body. “I was merely offering to teach Luna how to swim.”

“Offering to teach my wife how to swim, you mean?” I hissed. Rage curled like smoke at the edges of my vision.

“An offer I actually refused,” Luna said hurriedly. She drew closer to my side, her scent growing sweeter in my presence. “Multiple times.”

“Good lass,” I said gruffly. Her scent throbbed with a new, thick perfume at my words.

Althrop swiped water from his eyes and raised his chin defiantly. “She indicated she wanted to go into the water but also told us she could not swim. It did not seem like a good idea to leave the high princess out here in the water alone knowing that!”

“Can you truly not swim?” I asked her in astonishment.

“No! I never needed that skill working on shuttles all my life. And I was only wading around in the shallow areas. I’m not dumb enough to let myself drown my first day here!”

My mouth went ash dry at the thought, the mere words.

“If anyone teaches you how to swim, it’s going to be me,” I vowed. I had no idea when I’d work swimming lessons for my wife into my schedule, but I’d do it if it meant I never had to see her cornered by my cousin in the water again, unhappiness rolling off of her in sour waves.

“And you,” I snarled at Althrop, “put some blasted clothes on!”

He gawked at me like I’d gone mad. Which, in fairness, I rather felt I had.

“What do you mean? Since when does an orc wear clothes to swim?”

He was right, curse him. No one, adult or child, wore any sort of coverings to swim here. Even my sisters, who were hurrying over from a shady spot on the beach at the commotion, only had light robes on now and nothing underneath for the water.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Althrop pouted, his handsome face begging for me to give it a scar or two. Or twenty.

“You were bothering her!” I bellowed. “I could smell it all the way up the blasted coast!”

Now all three of my relatives were staring at me in confusion. As was Padreth, who’d finally made it down to the beach.

“You smelled what?” Neena asked, tilting her head.

“Do you smell anything?” Padreth whispered to Noona. My sister shook her head.

“You’re telling me that none of you smelled that?” I gaped.

They all glanced at each other, then back at me again.

So. I was the only one being endlessly tortured by my wife’s maddening smells.

How lovely for me.

“It’s OK. Everything’s alright, Prince Gal.” Luna lightly touched my arm.

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped, whirling on her. She recoiled, and her scent went all wrong. I wanted to rip out my own tongue.

“Call me Galbrath,” I said more quietly, softer. Softer than I’d likely ever spoken to anyone in my life. “Please.”

A ripple of gasps went through Padreth and my family members. They knew how rare such a request was, especially with “please” tacked on the end. They knew what it meant. The intimacy of such a thing.

Luna didn’t, of course. But her scent settled once more, and she looked pleased all the same. The black parts of her eyes bloomed a fraction wider.

“Alright. Galbrath.”

Blast. I needed to be alone with her. Now.

“I’m going to teach you how to swim,” I told her gruffly. “Lessons start right now.”

CHAPTER 15

LUNA

Prince Gal – or Galbrath, as he apparently wanted to be called – led me over to his hover vehicle. It was similar to the one Althrop rode in on, though a little bigger. I probably shouldn’t have felt that way, but seeing that Galbrath’s vehicle was bigger than Althrop’s gave me a distinct thrill.

“Get on,” Galbrath said. Rather a redundant command, considering he was already lifting me onto the seat. I scraped damp tendrils of hair back from my face as Galbrath manoeuvred his colossal bulk in front of me on the vehicle’s seat.

“Hold onto me,” he grunted as he did something that turned on the engine. I yelped and wrapped my arms around his torso as the vehicle immediately lurched up into the air. Without another word, Galbrath turned the vehicle and sped forwards. Right towards the water.

I half-expected a wall of water to hit me dead in the face, but of course, it didn’t. The hover capabilities of the craft clearly worked as well on water as on land, and we skimmed easily over the shimmering blue surface. I squeezed Galbrath, a smile unfurling on my face as cool, salty spray tickled my cheeks. My braid whipped out behind me as sea air buffeted us. Every time a wave rose before us, the vehicle rose, too, then careened back down in an exhilarating undulation.

It was intoxicating. The speed. The wind. The water, so clear and beautiful both ahead and below.

Galbrath’s body between my thighs.

The ride didn’t last too long. Soon, we were rounding a large outcropping of white stone and slowing as we entered a much smaller beach than the one we’d come from. It was a glorious, tiny, private little inlet where the water lapped lazily, clear as liquified teal glass, against white rock and smooth sand.

Galbrath parked his vehicle in a shaded place beneath the cliffs, dismounted, then helped me down.

“You couldn’t teach me to swim at the other beach?” I asked, quirking a brow at him. He was already wrestling out of his leather vest.

“Get undressed,” he said, before adding, “I don’t want Althrop or Padreth or anyone else seeing you without clothing. It’s private here.”

“Why is that, though?” I asked. “It seems like it’s normal to swim naked.”

“Yes,” he confirmed as he tossed down his vest and kicked off his boots. “But you’re not normal.”

“Excuse me?!”

He looked up from where he’d been undoing his belt, frowning fiercely. “What is it? Your scent’s gone all wrong again. It makes me want to put my head through a wall.”

“Well, sorry. But you just said I’m not normal!”

How, how could he not see how rude that was?

“You’re not,” he said easily. Infuriatingly. But then, just before the spark of my anger could really turn into a fire that burned everything down, he said, simply and seriously and without fanfare, “Special isn’t normal.”

Special.

Oh.

He sighed. “That’s better. Your scent,” he clarified.

“Well, I did tell you that saying nice things to me would keep the scent thing under control,” I teased, feeling suddenly just a little shy. Special. He thought I was special.

“It’s just the truth,” he said, seeming mystified by my reaction. “And I barely want you around Althrop even with clothes on. That scent… I thought you were in danger. Or in pain.”

Dealing with annoying men who don’t know how to take no for an answer is painful, I wanted to tell him. But judging by his mood and earlier reaction to his cousin’s presence, that kind of comment was not going to help the situation. Althrop was annoying and pushy, but he hadn’t actually touched me or crossed a real line. I was uncomfortable with his nakedness as he kept bugging me, and him being naked wasn’t even considered weird or bad for Orhalla culture.

Well. Except when it came to Galbrath apparently. Put some clothes on! he’d snarled.

I hadn’t been able to watch my husband’s approach, because Althrop’s body had blocked my view. But I saw the vicious way Althrop got yanked backwards into the water. And when he was gone from my view, there was Galbrath standing in his place, huge and angry and startlingly beautiful, the brutal focus in his dark eyes bearing down on me like I was…

Special.

“What’s going on with your scent now?” Galbrath grumbled as he tugged his trousers off and tossed them aside. A hoarse edge crept into his voice, fraying the edges of his words. “It’s very distracting.”

“Distracting?” I echoed in disbelief. If he thought my scent was distracting, then the man had never seen his own dick. My eyes fell there and stayed, fused to the thick organ with the dark green, bulbous head and the bulbous… other thing. Seriously. What was that? It looked like someone had shoved an apple halfway down his cock and left it there. Beneath the shaft hung heavy balls, so dark green they were nearly black.

“Luna,” Galbrath growled. Before my eyes, his shaft jerked. “We’re not going to get to your swimming lesson if you keep staring at me and smelling like that.”

“Smelling like what?” I murmured. Oh, God. His cock jerked again. Thickening and lengthening as if I’d been touching it.

“Smelling like you want me to make a meal of that tasty cunt again.”

“What?!” That got me finally looking up at his face. “That’s certainly a crude way to put it!”

“I think you liked it. Your scent gave a great big throb,” Galbrath replied, taking a step towards me. Jesus Christ, was he smirking?! “I’m not poetic, Luna. My words aren’t fanciful or flowery. But I mean every single one of them.” He bent to speak against my ear, but instead a harsh groan escaped him, sounding like he hadn’t meant to let it out.

I inhaled unsteadily, rubbing my hands across the meaty bulges of his pectorals, completely at a loss as to when I’d even started touching him in the first place. I skimmed my fingertips across his nipples, toying with the piercing on the one side and enjoying the hiss he gave in response.

“Does this mean anything?” I asked, touching the cool bar and shivering at the contrast with the vibrant, virile heat of his skin.

“Yes,” he groaned. “We pierce one side when our father dies. We pierce the other when our first child is born.”

I paused to gaze up at his face.

“When did your father die?”

“Seventy-two very long days ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You said that before. About my mother’s friend.”

“I know. Human thing. Sorry.”

His mouth quirked in a grimace, but his eyes were warm.

“Stop saying sorry.”

“OK. Wait! I do have one more thing to say sorry for.”

Galbrath gave me an exasperated look, but I plunged on.

“I’m sorry I fell asleep last night! I swear I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t an, er, comment on how much I was enjoying things. Because I was.”

Galbrath lowered his head further and chuckled against my throat. An unexpected sound, dark as chocolate and heated like smoke. It made my pussy squeeze and my knees go embarrassingly weak.

“I know you were enjoying it. I could-”

“Smell it? Oh, God, stop reminding me.”

“I’m sorry too.”

I stilled. He pulled his face up until it was just above mine.

“I realized after you were asleep I hadn’t asked you how your journey was. Or if you were tired. And I’m sorry for snapping at you before when I asked you to call me Galbrath.” He sighed, and his face was suddenly etched all over with lines of exhaustion and worry. “There have been… a great many things on my mind as of late.”

“Like what?”

He eyed me as if he wasn’t sure if he was going to tell me or not. He found an escaped strand of my damp hair and caught it between his finger and thumb, rubbing slowly, as if luxuriating in the feel of it.

“Crops are failing,” he suddenly said. “Wheat. Slow at first, but steadier now. All over the kingdom. My scientists can’t figure out why. We can’t even figure out how it’s spreading. I was just out at a field, down by a nearby inn. Nothing around it is affected, but out of nowhere the wheat there is suddenly dying away.”

Frustration tore at his words. I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be so big, so powerful, responsible for so much and so many, and not be able to fix something like this.

“Oh, no. I’m…” I almost said, “I’m sorry,” again. I swallowed back the reflex. “How big of a problem is that?”

“Huge. Nothing else grows as abundantly or easily to feed as many people as is required. Trade isn’t an easy answer, as the other regions are already growing concerned about spread, as am I, and they’re now wary even of shipping or travelling here. I could try negotiating to import food from other worlds, but the cost would be astronomical. I’d sell and trade and finance everything in the kingdom if I had to, put us into inescapable debt if it would keep everyone fed, but I’m not even sure that would be enough.”

“Jesus. What about meat? Or fishing? Could that tide everyone over until this gets fixed?”

He shook his head. “It may not look like it based on the current weather, but our winters are very harsh. Even with technological advancements, fishing enterprises would be a very risky undertaking during half the year. And we don’t have the space or structures in place to house that many meat-giving animals over winter.”

“Not an easy way out, is there?”

No wonder the man was so freaking crabby. I couldn’t imagine the stress he must be under right now.

“I’ll fix it,” he growled. “Stop letting your scent get all out of sorts over it. You won’t go hungry.”

“I wasn’t worried about myself. I was worried about, well, everyone! And you. That’s a lot of stress!” I leaned my face against his chest, turning my cheek to rest against the smooth solidity of him. “Humans have gone through so many famines I can’t even keep track of them all. My ancestors came from a place on Earth called Ireland. They had a terrible potato famine.”

I paused, the loose and rippling edges of a thought slowly coming together. Something about Ireland, and… and…

“Do you eat seaweed?”

Galbrath frowned down at me and tucked the loose strand of hair behind my ear.

“No. Who in their right mind would eat that?”

“Well, humans, for one thing,” I said tartly. I was tempted to flick him again, but restrained myself. “There’s an old Irish saying: look after the potatoes, then the children, then the seaweed. It was a pretty important sea vegetable. I saw how much of it was growing here when I was wading around at the beach. Is it edible?”

“Yes,” he conceded, giving me an odd look. “But we mostly feed it to pigs.”

I shrugged. “Maybe start feeding it to people, too.”

Galbrath looked like he wanted to argue, but couldn’t think of a rational reason to reject my idea. “It all grows relatively close to shore, so we could harvest it more easily than deep-sea fishing during the dangerous weather,” he said slowly. “And some species are invasive, growing non-stop, even in the winter…”

“Well, there you go, then!” I grinned up at him. “Problem solved!”

“The idea has merit,” he said at length. “But I still need to find out what’s happening with the wheat, too.”

I nodded.

“I understand. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Distract me.”

My pulse leaped.

“Should be easy enough,” I said, my voice lower than I’d intended, “considering how distracting my scent apparently is.”

“By the seas, you have no idea.”

A wicked idea popped into my head. If he wanted distraction, he was about to get it. And it would be a bit of an apology for falling asleep on him last night. I let my fingers follow the hard grooves of his abdomen. When I reached his groin, I took the hot, heavy shaft of him into my hands.

Then I got down on my knees.

Galbrath watched me the way he’d watch a small, cute, but ultimately wild creature that had made its way uninvited into his house. With fascination, appreciation, and also a little suspicion. Like I was going to fuck up the upholstery if he left me alone too long without supervision.

“I’m not going to bite you or anything,” I chuckled, stroking him and feeling him grow instantly stiffer.

“With those little teeth? And no tusks? A bite isn’t even a threat coming from you.”

“Oh, really?” I took the head of him into my mouth, ringed my teeth around it, and ever so slightly applied pressure. Galbrath’s cock jumped and started leaking salty fluid against my tongue. His hands went to the back of my head, and he swore softly. I sucked him, once, long and hard, then released him, flashing my “little teeth” in a mischievous grin. I noted with satisfaction the way his chest heaved and his eyes grew half-lidded with desire.

“Again,” he rasped. This time, I licked my way along the bottom side, down to that strange, firm bulge in the middle.

“Mwhat’s dis mcalled?” I asked, the words damp and muffled against that swollen place.

“What?” Galbrath wheezed. He tensed, hips lurching as I found a pulsing vein and tongued it.

“What’s this called?” I repeated more clearly.

“It’s my knot. Your human men don’t have knots?”

He said it with such disdain I found myself grinning, my lips pressed to the hot, surprisingly satiny skin of his knot. I planted a wet kiss there, then nipped the underside. A jet of come shot past my ear.

“Sensitive?” I asked, wrapping both hands around the swollen centre and squeezing. More come erupted, and Galbrath sucked back a shout.

“Oceans, yes,” he hissed. “Sensitive.”

“Does this part… is it supposed to fit inside me?”

“Of course,” he panted. He massaged my scalp, sending prickly heat down the back of my neck.

“I don’t think it will,” I said dubiously, stroking the massive swell of it. His shaft alone was astoundingly thick. The knot was even thicker.

“It will,” Galbrath replied with ferocious certainty. Arrogance, most people would probably say. But I kind of liked it. It made me feel like anything could be possible with him. Simply because he’d make it so by sheer force of will.

Although I wasn’t exactly sure how sheer force of will would apply to the physics of my vagina.

I took him back into my mouth, as deep as he could go. Like he could hear my mental doubts, he resumed massaging my scalp and he groaned, slowly shunting his hips as if to punctuate each word, “We’ll work you up to it. Tongue. Fingers. The first part of my cock. And then, when you’re good and wet and ready for it, you’ll take my – ah!”

I fought the instinct to jerk back and escape the onslaught of Galbrath’s ejaculation. But as much as I tried to stay in place, I couldn’t last long. Orc males came like a hot, salty tsunami. At least, Galbrath did. I reared back with a gurgle, swallowing some, but letting most of it drip past my swollen lips and down my chin. Galbrath stared down at me, his eyes dark slits.

“By the seas, lass,” he huffed, dragging his thumb across my slick lower lip, “you look good like this.”

“How do I smell?” I joked, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth.

“Delicious.” He pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes and hissed a sharp sigh. “Don’t ask me. If I think about it too much, I’m going to get hard again. And as much as it literally pains me to leave you right now, I have three more farmers to visit and about a hundred scientists to write to this afternoon.”

“I understand,” I said, rising shakily to my feet, even as a stab of disappointment went through me. And it wasn’t even disappointment that I was now so depressingly horny and wouldn’t get to do anything about it. It was because I felt like I was going to just… miss him. It had been nice simply talking to him. Letting him share about his problems and sharing my own ideas in return.

Galbrath blew out a long breath, lowered his hands and met my gaze fiercely. He cupped my face and bent to press his forehead to mine.

“Later,” he whispered.

“Later? You must be talking about that swimming lesson I was promised,” I teased.

Galbrath leaned back to look at me, frowned, and then gently pinched my cheek.

“You know what’s happening later. But,” his voice and his gaze softened. My heart and my pussy spasmed in tandem. “But know that I do intend to teach you. I want to.”

“OK.” It came out as a whisper. “I’ll wait for later, then.”

CHAPTER 16

LUNA

Since I didn’t know exactly when “later” would be, I decided to keep myself busy. I kept coming back to my seaweed suggestion with something that felt like a little trill of hope. But I could tell that, though Galbrath was giving it due thought, he wasn’t excited about it like I was. More like resigned. I wanted to come up with some options that, if not exactly wow him, might at least make him smile.

So, I returned to the beach later that day, gathered up three giant baskets full of seaweed, and got to work.

Neena and Noona couldn’t seem to figure out why I wanted to spend so much time with the slippery ink-green and rust-red stalks, but they dutifully trundled my baskets and me into a spacious but unused kitchen. Apparently, the palace had two, but only one was used by the cooking staff on a regular basis. I was shown into the spare one where I wouldn’t be in the staff’s way.

Which turned out to be a very good thing, because trying to come up with a dish enticing enough to impress a prince – and a brutally grumpy one at that – was a messy task. Also time-consuming, but I didn’t really notice that part. Despite the chaos, I was loving every moment of it. It had been ages since I’d gotten to try to cook something from scratch, let alone come up with my own original recipes. It felt so good digging in, being creative, and working with my hands.

I steamed, sauteed, ground, dried, and chopped. I made seaweed soup with bone broth and spices, dehydrated seaweed crisps sprinkled with salt, and had even managed something close to seaweed flour. It wouldn’t make that gorgeous wheat flour bread I’d had at dinner and again at breakfast today, but I did approximate something close to a very dense scone.

None of it was perfect, but it was a pretty freaking great start in my opinion. I planned to refine the recipes, come up with a few more, and then, when I was ready, present them to Galbrath. Maybe if he could see how tasty the seaweed options could be, it might make the failing wheat a bit of an easier pill – or meal, I guessed – to swallow.

Well, that was my plan, anyway. Until my husband decided to waltz into the room mid-mess.

I didn’t hear him come in. No, I was too busy with my head halfway into a hot oven, gently singing made-up songs of encouragement to my newest batch of scones as I checked on their progress. I was pretty sure it was when I got to the, “You’re the scones we want to eat! You are awesome, who needs wheat?!” bit that Galbrath settled himself behind me, stance wide, brawny bare arms crossed over his chest.

I closed the oven, straightened, turned around, and just about jumped out of my skin at the sight of him.

“When did you get here?” I said, slamming my hand against my chest as if I could contain my leaping heart.

“I arrived around the time you were very sweetly commanding whatever is in the oven to rise through the power of song.” His gaze went to my mouth. “You have a nice voice.”

“So not only do I smell nice, but I sound nice too? Anything else?” I asked. Damn. I couldn’t even hide it. I was totally fishing for compliments.

“Look nice,” he grunted. “Especially when you’re bent over in front of me like that and I get to stare at your backside.”

Genuine laughter bubbled up and out of my throat.

Galbrath cocked his head, his eyes roaming my face. “That wasn’t a joke.”

“I know,” I said, still chuckling. “But I can’t help it. You have great delivery. Very dry.”

He made a harrumphing sort of sound in his throat before turning to cast his eye around the disaster of a kitchen.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Don’t look!” I screeched, flapping my hands at him in a vain attempt at distraction. “Nothing’s ready yet! You weren’t supposed to come so soon!”

“Soon?” His head whipped back to me, eyes probing. “It’s full dark out. I was late getting back from the last farm and dinner’s come and gone. You weren’t in the hall and you weren’t in bed. I came to find you.”

“I missed dinner?!” Luckily, I’d spent so much of the afternoon sampling my recipes that I wasn’t hungry now, but I couldn’t believe so much time had passed.

“I can have something fetched for you. Whatever you like.”

“I’m actually not hungry.” Now that I’d stopped moving for a moment, I was more tired than anything.

“You still haven’t answered my question.” His eyes were like coals, black and bright at the same time. “What are you doing down here?”

There was no point in trying to hide it anymore or lying to preserve the surprise. With my luck he’d probably be able to tell I wasn’t being honest just by sniffing me.

I dragged my hand across my forehead, only now becoming aware of how sweaty I was, and how smeared with seaweed sludge my face and hands were.

“I was…” I gestured around the room, feeling suddenly like all the things I’d created, all the things I’d gotten excited about, were useless. Like I was a silly child presenting a pie made of mud to an uncharitably discerning adult. “I was trying to come up with some interesting recipes for the seaweed. I thought it might help.”

God. I sounded lame. Here Galbrath was with potential starvation, chaos, or revolts on his doorstep and I was goofing around in the kitchen, singing songs and playing chef. As if that meant anything at all. Why did I think this was a good idea, again?

Galbrath listened to me finish speaking, then swept his demanding gaze around the room once more. He picked up one of the finished scones then held it aloft with a questioning rise of his brows.

“You can eat it,” I confirmed, my cheeks feeling very hot. I twisted the hem of my shirt between my fingers, anxiety piling into me like a starship at full speed. “But, just know the recipes aren’t perfected yet! I was planning to keep developing that one. And a bunch of others!” I added in a hurry as he sniffed the scone. Then, with nary a nibble to even see if he liked it first, he opened his big mouth wide and shoved the entire thing inside.

I stared, jaw slack, as he chewed. It seemed to take a very, very long time, during which I asked myself a thousand questions about whether the scone was too dense, too dry, and whether he’d try to divorce me now or not.

But I guessed I was worrying for nothing. Because when he finally swallowed, he looked at me as if with new eyes and said, “Good.”

Then he went to the soup. After lifting the pot and drinking a bunch of it, he set it down, swiped his hand across his wet mouth, turned to me and said, “Very good.”

“I should hope so!” I said, shaking my head and glancing into the large pot to see it nearly empty now, “considering how much you’re having!”

He gave a gristly sort of grunt.

“Didn’t eat dinner. Like I said, I was late. And I wanted to find you first.”

My belly warmed at the idea that the first thing he’d wanted to do when he’d returned was find me. Not rest, not have a bath, not eat. Find me

“Well, they do say that hunger is the best seasoning,” I joked, squirming a little bit under the twin black spears of his eyes.

“It’s not just that, though,” he said sternly, sifting his fingers through flour nearly as green as his skin before turning back to me. “It’s good. Good all on its own.”

He stepped closer, backing me up until my spine hit a nearby countertop. His hands went to the counter on either side, his broad torso caging me in.

“Why did you do all this?”

“I’ve always liked cooking,” I stammered, finding it just a little hard to speak now that his nose was pressed up against my jaw, huffing in my scent like it was shuttle fumes to get him high, “and I wanted to… be useful. To help.”

“To help me?”

“Yes!” I squeaked as two big hands suddenly cupped my breasts, kneading the way I’d been kneading dough not long ago. “Help you. And your people. Just… everyone.”

Galbrath didn’t remove his hands, but he did stop the massaging motion. He pulled back, just a little, just enough to look down into my face. The expression there took my breath away. It was one I hadn’t seen from him before. The broad plains of his cheekbones were tight, his eyes penetrating like always but shaped with something between pain and longing. It made me want to blink and turn away, as if I were staring directly into the sun.

Instead, I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him.

He stiffened as my mouth went to the surprisingly soft place between his tusks.

“What are you doing?” he murmured against my lips. I drew back, embarrassment simmering my blood.

“I’m kissing you. Sorry. Is that not a thing here?”

“I don’t…” He exhaled swiftly. “I don’t understand what to do with my tusks when you do that.”

“You seemed to figure it out just fine when you were kissing me somewhere else,” I reminded him.

“That’s because I was mostly using my tongue.”

“Here… just… let me,” I whispered. I approached his mouth slowly this time, as if he might get spooked and bolt. But I should have known that would never happen. I doubted Galbrath was truly scared of anything.

He remained utterly motionless as I gently kissed his lips. His mouth was wide enough that my own could fit easily between his tusks. I buried my fingers in his hair and sighed against his lips, pressing and prodding gently, running my tongue along his skin, until I felt him shudder violently. He seized my waist and lifted me until I was seated on the counter. I gasped as he crowded himself in between my legs, then moaned when he began furiously rubbing the bulge of his hard cock against my pelvis.

“I want to knot you,” he groaned, thrusting against me almost as if he were thrusting into me. “Want it so bad. Want to try tonight.”

“Not in the food prep area!” I squawked as I felt his hands fumbling between us at his belt.

Galbrath froze, then gave a shaky inhale, as if to steady himself against his own impatience. I felt that impatience, too. The place between my legs was swollen and throbbing, just from him rubbing himself against me. But I could not imagine how unsanitary fucking on this countertop would be. I’d seen how much fluid that male produced. Someone (me) would be cleaning it up for days.

But Galbrath was giving me that look again. That raw, achy, unexpectedly tender sort of look that made my throat clench.

“You’re right,” he said gruffly. “You deserve better.” His gaze glinted with sudden wickedness. “At least for the first time. After that, I reserve the right to rut you anywhere.”

“Anywhere?” I breathed.

“Anywhere,” he repeated firmly, nearly majestically, as if giving out some important royal edict. “In bed. On the floor. Outside. Inside. Anywhere.”

Then he picked me up, cradling me easily against his chest as if I weighed nothing at all. And I knew, in that moment, I was already lost to him. I hugged his neck, pressing my cheek to his skin, feeling the thunder of his heart.

Anywhere.

I’d let him take me anywhere.

Luckily, he took me straight to bed.

CHAPTER 17

GALBRATH

Ideposited Luna on our bed as I wrenched off my vest and got to work freeing my straining cock. She watched me, dazed and beautiful and, maddeningly, still wearing clothes.

“Get naked,” I growled as I shoved off my trousers and shucked out of my boots in one desperate motion. Then I stopped, standing over her, breathing so hard I half-wondered if my lungs might give out as she wiggled out of her human garb and tossed it onto the floor.

“Your hair, too,” I said, sounding strangled. “Take out the braid.”

She hesitated, her eyes going to my face, then my cock. In the silvery blackness like this she was all scent and texture and glistening bits. Eyes. Lips. Hair.

Cunt.

She was wet already. I could see it, smell it as my naked wife undid her braid and shook out her shimmering strands.

“I’m surprised you’re asking me to do this,” she murmured. “Didn’t you take my hair out last night?”

There was a strain of what almost sounded like shy hope in her voice. Like she hoped I’d say yes, and therefore would be confirming something about myself to her. Something good.

“Of course I did. Who else would it have been?”

She smiled softly in the dark. My heart felt like someone was battering it.

Or that maybe it was battering me.

“I don’t know. Oh!” She cried out as I dove at her, hitching her legs up over my shoulders and shoving my head between her legs. She wiggled and tensed. “I’m kind of sweaty,” she lamented.

“Don’t care,” I groaned, my tongue dipping inside her before drawing back out and up to swirl around her most sensitive place. “In fact,” I rasped against her thrumming flesh, “I love it.”

Her scent was viscous as honey, honey like the colour of her hair, and now there was wetness sweet as honey pouring out from between her legs as I feasted on her. She was all luxury, all exquisite ecstasy, all silk and sugar and musk.

Every one of my senses bathed in the glory of her. The taste I’d never get enough of, the slickness of her delicate skin here where my tongue played, the plush hips I gripped, the sound of her voice breaking open over lilting notes of pleasure. The scent that drowned me as if I hadn’t grown up by the sea, drowned me as if I hadn’t learned to swim before I’d walked.

The scent that dragged me down and took me home.

Luna was racing towards her peak, and despite not yet being touched, I was not far behind. She gripped me and locked her thighs around my head, just as I’d taught her to. Just as I wanted. When she came, she went starkly silent, vibrating against me with frantic agony.

“Almost there, Luna lass,” I groaned. I gave her a moment, because I wasn’t entirely merciless, before I eased the first of my thick fingers inside her. My breathing hitched, and my cock spewed hard when I felt the molten suction of her cunt quivering and clamping down on me. Luna arched like I’d burned her or bitten her. Gently but firmly, because I could tell that she could take it, I worked my finger in and out of her like a cock, feeling her trembling channel clench and loosen.

Then I added another.

“Oh. Oh,” she whimpered, the words barely above a breath. “Galbrath!”

My cock jerked and sprayed. I’d dream of her saying my name just that way forever. I’d stroke my cock to it a thousand times.

I’d never forget it. Not for as long as I lived. And even in the afterlife, I’d remember it, and I’d hold onto it until she one day came to join me there.

She was opening for me. I could feel it. The locked muscles giving way, melting and pliant and ready for more.

“I’ll go as slow as I can,” I ground out. I dragged my fingers from her sopping entrance and replaced them with the oozing head of my cock. Luna’s eyes were wide, but I growled with satisfaction to see that she was not frightened. Her scent was still good and sweet, half-sated, half-needy, not even a thread of anxiety or pain to be sniffed out.

She wanted this. Wanted this and wanted me.

I ejaculated even as I pushed inside, my entire body shivering with the effort it took not to shove my entire cock, knot and all, into her. Even after spewing as much as I had, I was still hard and aching, still huge, and still needed patience. I rocked myself slowly, hissing at the miracle of her cunt, the wetness and the tightness and the way she was taking me so well already.

“Galbrath,” she moaned, and I moaned with her. Oceans help me, I’d never tire of hearing her say it, sigh it, scream it. “More.”

Pathetic how I was not able to refuse her anything. Pathetic how quickly she’d worked her tiny human hands between my ribs and seemed to now hold fast to my heart.

Pathetic how much I could not stop myself from coming, over and over, just from the brain-bending sublimity of getting my tip inside her.

I could not bring myself to care.

I gave her what she wanted, what she needed, thrusting experimentally, then harder when she arched eagerly against me. A few swift shunts of my hips and my knot was already fitted snugly against her, the whole thing pulsing with anticipation for the squeeze.

“I’m so full already,” Luna whimpered, clutching at my clenching forearms. My hair fell loose, a dark curtain on each side of her perfect little face.

“I’ll go slow,” I promised her again.

I’d paused thrusting, afraid that if I started up again now I wouldn’t be able to stop until my knot was inside her. But I needed this moment first. This still moment of night-stained quiet, where nothing but our breathing and our heartbeats dared disturb the room. I lowered myself, pressing my forehead to hers briefly before I slid my mouth against her own in an approximation of what she’d done to me in the kitchen. That strange, shockingly intimate meeting of lips that had made my chest expand as much as it had my cock.

“I’m ready,” she murmured against my lips.

“I know you are,” I choked out. I could smell it, feel it, each and every instinct I’d ever had somehow reshaping themselves to be solely focused upon my wife. I knew that she was ready the same way I knew how the wind blew before a storm, how I knew the way the sun shone upon the waters of my childhood. In that moment, I knew Luna as I knew myself.

I twitched my hips, grinding slowly, but then harder and harder, faster and faster, until Luna was sobbing and shaking, her arms tightly ringing my neck, her divine thighs going round my waist, her hips arching perfectly upwards to take me as the grind became a slam and, by the great and cursed seas, I was in her.

The orgasm ripped through me, pulling seed out of me, spraying Luna’s channel, the hot flesh that cradled me. She answered my pleasure with her own, her cunt fluttering and then convulsing upon me, squeezing up and down along my shaft, my knot, milking me until it felt as if my spine itself were melting.

Blast it all, I’d give her my spine if she wanted it. Rip it right out and hand it to her on a platter. This unexpected little human, the bride I’d never wanted, the woman who once had been a joke and now was proving to be my undoing. What had she done to me? What had I done to myself?

Bringing her here had been the best mistake I’d ever made.

These were the sorts of things I thought as my cock spasmed and spilled, my balls tight and hot against Luna’s backside. Thoughts like “I would die for her” and “I would die to knot her again.” I was inside her and already missing being inside her. With her and already bereft of her. Needing her even as she gave me everything I needed.

It was all very sentimental and the Galbrath from before would have found it very, very stupid. But it didn’t seem to matter. I felt and thought that way anyway.

And then there were no thoughts at all, only a shuddering, protective, primal pleasure at the way her scent suddenly grew so perfectly rounded, so whole, like a song that had been beautiful but missing one single, completing note. Until now.

If my scent could change like hers, I imagined it would smell the same.

Thank the seas it didn’t. So no one would know the changes she had wrought. The way she’d crept in, or maybe barrelled in, flicking my forehead the entire way, finding and filling in some painful, empty space I hadn’t known existed inside myself until she’d dug right in and shone the light on it.

She said my name once more, a keening that made me come and come and come again.

And then, collapse.

CHAPTER 18

LUNA

Galbrath and I slept tangled up in each other, neither one of us quite willing to let the other go. Only problem was I forgot to go pee afterwards, and halfway through the night my bladder woke me with a vengeance. I managed to creep out from beneath Galbrath’s heavy arm and scurry to the bathroom.

It was mid-pee that I remembered I’d left the kitchen an absolute disaster. I cringed as I wiped and washed up. Maybe my cafeteria job hadn’t been some fancy chef gig, but I’d always taken pride in the cleanliness of my workspace. I knew that nobody probably expected the high princess to clean up her own messes, least of all Galbrath, but I still expected it of myself.

After my hands (and my sticky thighs) had been cleansed and dried, I tugged on my pants and shirt. I paused in the doorway to look back at Galbrath, admiring the mountainous outline of his body on the bed. The body that had loved me so well tonight.

Loved me.

He hadn’t said it, of course. And maybe he never would. He didn’t strike me as the romantic type, and he certainly wasn’t a chatty guy, especially where feelings were involved. He was probably more likely to tell me that he loved the way my pussy smelled than he was to get all gooey-eyed and say he loved me.

But maybe… Maybe he didn’t need to. The way my body had opened for him, the way he’d so tenderly and possessively worked his knot inside me, every one of his movements as dearly familiar as my own breaths… It had felt special.

Special. Just like what he’d called me earlier.

I knew I had an idiotic smile on my face as I tiptoed out of the bedroom. I practically floated through the halls until I reached the kitchen. By the time I got there, all traces of sleepiness were gone.

I wanted to let Galbrath get some sleep after all the stress he’d been under, and I was pretty sure if I returned to the room now I’d be waking him up by straddling him. So instead, I decided to get back to work. Apparently, sex inspired me, because I jumped right back into my tasks with renewed vigour. The only problem was that I’d now run out of seaweed. I didn’t feel like stopping or going back to sleep yet, so I slipped out of the castle with a basket to go and get some more.

As I approached the lift that would take me down to the moonlit beach, I paused, a sound catching at my ears. It was a low hum. I was sure that if I were any closer to it, if it were any louder, I’d know what it was immediately, because it sounded familiar.

For some reason, I just couldn’t ignore it. I went past the lift down to the beach and walked around the outskirts of the palace, heading for slopes and fields I’d never visited before. As I walked along a path between swaying stalks, opalescent in the light, I wondered if this was the wheat Galbrath was so worried about. As far as I could tell, these stalks looked healthy enough.

The sound got louder, and all at once I realized what it was. It was one of those hovering vehicles that Galbrath and Althrop rode around on. I frowned, trying to figure out why the hell I was hearing such a sound out here, in the middle of a huge stretch of farmland where there were only narrow paths, no roads for riding.

My heart stuttered as I began backing up. The sound was so loud I was suddenly terrified of getting run over. Apparently, my instincts were dead-on, because a second later, in the place I’d been standing a moment before, a vehicle turned and raced up the path. The rider saw me, swore, and barely stopped in time before knocking all my blunt human teeth out. In my haste to back up further, I dropped my basket and fell onto my ass.

“Lana! What are you doing out here?” That was Althrop’s voice.

He sounded more harried than he had this morning and had obviously forgotten my name again. He turned off the engine and jumped off his vehicle’s seat. It was only then that I noticed that turning off the vehicle hadn’t made it any darker. There hadn’t been any lights engaged while it was on, even though he’d been flying in the dead of night.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked, standing up and brushing off the seat of my pants. I picked up my basket and held it up between us, almost like a shield.

“I… I often like to come ride out here at night. The moon. It is beautiful, is it not?” His voice had resumed its silky-smooth tone. I was sure that many women found it panty-droppingly charming.

I was not one of them.

“Yes,” I agreed, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Beautiful,” he said again, his eyes dropping to my mouth, then my tits. “Much like yourself.”

Oh, boy. Here we go.

“I need to get back.”

“What’s the hurry?”

Jesus, when had he gotten so close to me? He smiled down at me, his handsome face contorted into a leering mask.

“I’ve wanted a chance alone with you since this morning,” he added.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” I said icily.

He shrugged. “I’ve never much cared for what’s appropriate. Especially when inappropriate can feel so good…” His voice went husky. “I could make you feel good.”

“That’s high princess to you!” I gasped. “In case you forgot, I’m married to Prince Gal! Your cousin!”

My words didn’t have the cooling effect I’d hoped they would. Althrop merely laughed.

“Please. If you can put up with that selfish prick in bed, then you’ll marvel at what I have to offer. I’d make a far better lover than Gal. Just like I’d make a far better king. Can you imagine,” he asked, suddenly sounding almost vengefully gleeful, “what it would be like if I put my baby in the high princess’ belly the same season that the crops failed?”

“Your baby?! But I’m already… I’m with Galbrath!”

“There’s no need to look at me like that,” he chided. “It’s not like I’d be forcing you. I have very little interest in lying with unwilling women. I’d make sure you enjoyed yourself. Immensely. And even if Gal’s already rutted you, having me knot you now would put doubt into the lineage. At least until the child is born and can be tested for paternity.”

My blood turned to ice in my veins. This no longer seemed like some horny asshole crossing boundaries for shits and giggles. This felt malevolent, far-reaching, meticulously planned.

Althrop wasn’t just trying to make a move on his cousin’s new wife. He was trying to destabilize an entire kingdom.

Fear sloshed inside me, but so did rage. Rage at what Althrop was trying to do to me, but almost even more so, I was furious over what he was trying to do to Galbrath.

“Clearly, you don’t know me very well,” I spat, “because if you think I’m going to stand here and let you use me to betray my husband, you are sorely fucking mistaken.”

Althrop’s smile dropped instantly, his gaze turning vicious.

“Why are you even protecting him?” he demanded, as if he had a right to ask anything of me at this point. “Why are you loyal to him when he doesn’t give a single sea-soaked shit about you? You’re human.” He sneered. “Gal could have had any woman on this planet. Rich, fertile, beautiful. But he turned them all down. He refused to give into his family’s meddling. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain in their head that he only married you as a sick and twisted joke, a way to get back at them.”

His words landed like blows. They took my breath away, left me reeling. As if sensing this, Althrop’s eyes sharpened keenly and he went in for the kill. “Why do you stand by him now,” he asked with satiny darkness, “when he never even wanted you at all?”

My eyes filled with tears of humiliation, and in the blurring veil I thought it was a trick of the light at first. The way it looked like a blade had suddenly appeared at Althrop’s throat.

But there was no mistaking that low, familiar voice, metallic with cold fury, that told Althrop to get down on his knees.

“Put the knife, down, Gal. It’s all just a bit of – ah!”

Althrop cried out as the blade bit down. Thin lines of blood ran from beneath his chin, soaking into the fine linen of his shirt. I’d blinked away the tears, and now I could see Galbrath, a hulking, shirtless, shoeless, demonic presence behind his cousin, one meaty fist around the handle of the blade at Althrop’s throat, the other wrapped around Althrop’s braid, holding his head in place.

“On. Your. Knees.”

Althrop grimaced, then slowly lowered himself to the ground. Galbrath remained standing. In two swift strides he was beside me, then shoving me behind his back as he brandished his long blade at Althrop from the front.

“I haven’t done anything wrong, you know,” Althrop simpered, just as he’d done this afternoon. His eyes cut to me where I peeked out from behind Galbrath’s back. “I was only meeting the high princess out here as she requested. She lured me out here and then tried to seduce me and-”

A sharp twang! filled the air.

Galbrath had smacked him with the flat of his blade. Althrop collapsed to the side, and took a long time to fight his way back up to his knees. As Althrop appeared to oscillate somewhere between puking and passing out, Galbrath crouched down, shoved the point of the blade beneath his cousin’s chin, and whispered, “Put one more lie on my wife’s name and I will slit you throat to belly. You will have no trial and you will have no funeral.” He jabbed the blade forwards, creating a new, bleeding nick under Althrop’s chin.

Then, in a dizzyingly quick movement, especially for someone so big, he shot back up to his feet. With his free hand, he reached behind himself and grasped my shirt, tugging until I was nestled against his back.

“I, Prince Gal of the Orhalla Northlands, charge you, Lord Althrop, with treason.” He shoved his blade back into its place at his belt, took out a small tablet from a pocket in his trousers. “Padreth,” he snarled, “get out here. To the east fields. Ping my tablet’s location. Bring castle guards with you.”

As Galbrath snapped instructions at Padreth and stared at Althrop like he could burn him alive with his eyeballs, my mind was working about a thousand lightyears a second, spinning over questions and words and thoughts. I felt like I was about to figure something out, and something important. Treason. Althrop. The vehicle. The wheat.

I had to stop and stay at a nearby inn, Althrop had said.

I was just out at a field, down by a nearby inn, Galbrath had said. Nothing around it is affected, but out of nowhere the wheat there is suddenly dying away.

“It was him!”

Galbrath shoved his tablet back into his pocket and finally turned back to look at me. His expression was so carved with fury that I couldn’t read any other emotion there right now.

“I think it was Althrop,” I said, my words coming so fast it felt like they were sliding into one another, like people careening down a slope and landing in a pile. “The wheat. You said you don’t know how it’s spreading, right? And that this plague or whatever randomly just popped up at a field by an inn? The exact same inn Althrop just stayed at?”

Something in Galbrath’s dark gaze flickered.

“Check his bike. His… craft. Whatever you call those things,” I said, pointing to the parked vehicle. I knew I was right even before Althrop started scrambling towards the thing, as if he meant to leap up onto it and flee.

I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of watching Galbrath grab Althrop by the braid and slam him down to the ground.

“Stay there or I will pin you to the soil with my blade like the worm you are.” Galbrath’s gaze went back to me. “Luna. It matters very much to me what you think.” For a moment, it felt like it was only us two in the field, only us two in the world. “I am listening.”

“I think… I think he’s using his vehicle to spread something. Some kind of toxin or fungus or… I don’t know. But he was just riding around out here in the middle of a wheat field, alone at night, without his vehicle’s lights on. Like he didn’t want to be discovered. And he was staying at the inn beside the field you told me just started to fail out of nowhere.”

Galbrath kept his blade aimed at Althrop as he kicked the vehicle over onto its side.

“There’s nothing there…. That’s not…” Althrop whined from the ground. Galbrath ignored him, running his free hand all over the underside of the vehicle.

Then, he froze.

A soft click, and he withdrew his hand.

It wasn’t empty. It held a cannister.

At that moment, the sound of many boots tramping down the path towards us crashed through the air.

“Get this to Barrett,” Galbrath said stonily, handing a breathless Padreth the cannister. “And get that,” he stabbed his knife towards Althrop, “to a cell.”

CHAPTER 19

GALBRATH

Iled Luna back to the palace in a blind rage. I was so overcome with my own anger that it took me far too long to realize that Luna’s scent was still in utter turmoil, even once she was safe with me behind the closed door of our bedroom.

“What is it?” I asked, my voice gritty with the need for her to tell me what the problem was. So that I could fix it for her.

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?” I grasped her face between my hands, searching her eyes with mine. “Your scent is setting my blasted tusks on edge. You’re home with me. You’re safe now…” My vision went briefly scarlet. “What did he do to you?”

“Althrop? Nothing. He never got a chance. Though he did make some threats about putting a baby in my belly.”

It was only the way her scent throbbed with pain when I left her side that kept me from running all the way out the door to slit Althrop’s throat.

“He didn’t touch me,” she said woodenly. “And if it helps, he claimed he wouldn’t force me. I guess he wanted to seduce me or something. Not that it would have worked. I’m loyal to you, Galbrath.” Her scent twisted. It nearly sent me to my knees. “Are you… Are you loyal to me?”

“What?” I whirled around to face her. She looked so small. Smaller than usual. Tiny in the big, dark room. “How could you even ask me that?”

“I just… I hated listening to him. But some of the things he said… I’m worried they’re actually true.”

“What things?”

Why, why hadn’t I killed him when I’d had the chance?

I hadn’t heard much of what Althrop had been saying to Luna when I’d found them. I’d only known that he was with her when he shouldn’t have been, and that her scent was sending out spikes of panic all over the blasted property. It had woken me up out of a dead sleep, dragged me out of bed until I was slick with terror I’d never known in all my life, not even when my father died.

“He said… He said that everyone knows you married me as a joke. That you never wanted to have a wife at all, so you ordered a human Starlight Bride as a way to, I don’t know, piss off your family or something.”

Her breath shuddered. I wanted to go to her. And I wanted to punch myself in the face.

Her eyes looked shiny and extra wet when they met mine. “I didn’t want to believe him. I swear I didn’t! But then I thought about how you sent Padreth to marry me in your stead. How we never had a real wedding. How you didn’t even want me in your bedroom at first and… It all made sense.”

Blast it all.

I would not deny it. She deserved better. She deserved the best I had to offer.

It hurt badly to know that my best might not be enough.

“As much of a snivelling swine as he is, Althrop did not lie to you about this,” I admitted, the words coating my tongue like the ash of a funeral pyre. “Humans are… generally not thought well of here, though after having met you I truly am not sure why. Yes, I did not wish to marry. I was losing my mind over the wheat and I grew sick of my mother and sisters trying to find suitable women for me. So I contacted the Starlight Brides program for a human bride. It was a petty, foolish way of adhering to their wishes while also mocking them.”

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you’d… you’d do that. Use someone as a joke that way. I came here excited to get married and meanwhile, you were dreading the whole idea. No wonder you shoved me into that guest room.” She crossed her arms over her chest and turned towards the windows, as if she couldn’t stand to look at me.

I wanted to crawl out of my own hide.

“I was a clueless ass. I admit it freely!” I cried, desperation creeping up my spine, like some unseen army preparing a deadly attack. “It was wrong to think the way I did, and I am so immensely sorry that it is causing you pain now. But, Luna, love, how can I say that I am sorry for doing it? I don’t, I can’t regret bringing you here, whatever the circumstances. If I hadn’t been such a petty prick, I never would have met you! I would be married to some noble orc female by now, and you’d be half a universe away!”

She flinched, as if my words had cut her, and her scent writhed with pain.

“Luna. Please. Tell me how to fix this. I can’t stand to have you hurting.” I ran my hands uselessly up and down her arms, wishing that she’d look at me. “Do you know how I found you and Althrop out there in the field? Your scent, even at that distance, even through the walls, was able to wake me! The smell of you afraid would probably have dragged me from the dead!”

“Could I…” Her voice cracked. “Could I have some time alone, please? I can go back to the guest room.”

“I can’t bear the thought of you sleeping anywhere but my bed. If… If you truly want to be alone, then I will go.”

Her scent did everything it could to get me to stay.

Even as her mouth told me to leave.

Just as I couldn’t stand the thought of Luna sleeping in any other bed in this palace, I also could not stand the thought of going to sleep in some other room without her. So, instead, I sat with my back against the wall outside the bed chamber door, some bitterly foolish part of me hoping that before morning came, she’d open the door and call me back.

She didn’t.

At dawn, I rose, stiff and exhausted. I listened closely at the door and I heard nothing. Her scent had dimmed to a drifting sort of lull. I thought it likely she was asleep, though she didn’t smell as sweet and happy as she should have, and that made me unreasonably angry.

There was no one to be angry with but myself. Well, Althrop too, I supposed, and I was still considering murdering my cousin. But that would not fix things with Luna.

And frankly, that was all I cared about right now.

I used the bathing room attached to an empty guest chamber, then returned like a kicked hound to our bedchamber door only to find it remained closed, with silence still reigning beyond. I probably would have sat myself right back down in the same stupid spot if a message hadn’t come through on my tablet. It was Padreth, alerting me that my mother, the queen, had returned.

“You look terrible,” was the first thing she said to me when I met her at the palace entrance.

“Didn’t sleep much.”

“I heard about Althrop. I hurried back.”

“Oh. That. Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes, so much like my own.

“You act as if Althrop is not the reason for your lack of sleep.”

I heaved a sigh, then grumbled, “Luna’s angry with me.”

“Luna. That’s the human?”

“That’s my wife,” I corrected her vehemently.

My mother blinked at me.

“My, my,” she said slowly, watching me very closely, as if I were some interesting little bug she’d just found that she didn’t quite recognize or know what to do with. “I cannot wait to meet her. I never thought I’d see the day a woman, any woman, could turn you so inside out.”

“Neither did I,” I said with no small amount of bitterness. “I swear, her scent is like a plague upon me. She cannot feel the mildest sort of discomfort but that I am leaping to make it better for her. Unfortunately, I currently find myself floundering, and the effects of that make me feel like I’d rather put both my eyes out than get one more whiff of her unhappiness.”

My mother’s mouth fell open.

“I know,” I grunted. “It sounds insane. The changing scents. It must be a human thing.”

“My son,” she croaked, as if something had stolen half her voice, “that is not a human thing. That is a true mate thing.”

“What are you talking about?” I rubbed my fingers over my gritty eyes. “Ah. I get it. You are making fun of me as I attempted to make fun of you by ordering a human bride. Well, you need not bother. I am being tortured enough.”

“I am not making fun of you. I do not lie, Gal.”

I lowered my hands from my eyes and regarded her. The sunlight came in, clear and bright against her stark expression. There was no trace of amusement or malice there.

“Everyone knows that true mates are just a myth,” I blustered.

“They most certainly are not!” she countered instantly, her voice rising. “I was your father’s true mate.” Her expression went misted with nostalgia, like rain against a window. “I couldn’t hide anything from your father. He’d always smell it on me.”

“You… What are you talking about?” I repeated. I sounded like an utter dunce.

I probably was one.

“Gal,” my mother said, drawing herself up to her full height, which was nearly as impressive as mine, “that human woman is your true mate. It is not a myth, but it is a rare and precious happening indeed. To squander such a thing is a blasphemy I cannot even begin to fathom.” Her eyes crackled, like the night sky before a storm ripped it open with lightning. “You will do whatever it takes to fix this.”

For a moment, I was not a man, but a small, stupid boy hurting in front of his mother.

“How?” I asked, knowing full-well how pathetic I sounded.

“You are your father’s son,” she said, not unkindly no matter how I may have deserved it. She touched my cheek and smiled wistfully. “No matter the wounds between us, he always found a way to heal them. And so will you.”

CHAPTER 20

LUNA

Iwent two full days without seeing Galbrath. And if I had been inclined to soften my stance and talk to him about everything, his glaring absence hardened my resolve right back up. I’d expected him to be practically breaking down the door the morning after the whole Althrop mess. But I’d slept in with nary a noise to disturb me, and when I’d finally poked my head out late in the morning, no one had been there.

Strangely enough, everyone else seemed just as absent as Galbrath. It was as if the whole castle – Neena and Noona and the staff included – were now avoiding me for some reason.

The only person I saw much over those two days was Galbrath’s mother. Queen Ohelia carried herself with the confidence of a monarch, but she wasn’t arrogant. I liked her, same way I’d instantly liked Neena and Noona. She listened more than she spoke, and I often caught her staring at me with a satisfied sort of smirk on her face, almost as if she were enjoying the fact I was ever-so-slightly putting her son through the ringer for being such a butthead.

She didn’t tell me where Galbrath was, and I was too proud to ask.

But on the morning of the third day without him, my pride was splintering into something a lot more like hurt. Was this Galbrath’s way of rejecting me? Or was my mood stinking up the palace so badly he couldn’t stand to be here?

Whatever it was, by that third day, I was done. I got up, got dressed, and wrenched open the bed chamber door, intent on finally finding my husband.

But I found someone else entirely.

Someone with eyes the exact same colour as mine and hair that was two shades lighter.

“Lyric?!”

My sister grinned broadly at me as I stared in amazement.

“In all my glory!” She said it teasingly, but I could see the tears gathering in her eyes.

“Oh my God. What are you doing here?” I choked out.

I tried to throw my arms around her, but she backed up and called out a loud warning. “Ah! Watch the dress!”

I’d been so distracted by her unexpected appearance that I hadn’t even noticed she was holding something. If it was a dress, it was impossible to tell. It was encased in a protective bag.

“Come in. I still can’t believe you’re here. What the hell is happening?” I asked in teary disbelief as I held the door open for her to enter.

“Nice digs!” she said, looking around and nodding in approval. “If I knew you’d end up in such a swanky castle, I never would have complained about you joining this program so much.”

“You just about talked my ear off about what a big mistake I was making!” I reminded her. “And now… Now you’re here? What are you doing here?”

I wondered how many times I’d have to ask that question before she actually answered. Maybe she was getting tired of me repeating it, because she turned around, rustled the bag in her arms, made a celebratory trumpet sound between pursed lips before grandly announcing, “I’m here for your wedding!”

“Um… My what? Lyric,” I said gently, not wanting to hurt or offend her when I was so fucking happy to see her, “I’m already married.”

She shook her head.

“Prince Gal tracked me down and contacted me at my new job. He told me your first wedding wasn’t good enough and he wanted a do over. He said that you’ve mentioned me and he thought you’d want me there. I guess it’s all supposed to be a surprise or something. He negotiated time off with my bosses and everything.” She opened the bag and pulled out what looked like liquid gold. “He had this dress commissioned to your exact measurements. I said I’d bring it up to you and help you get dressed.”

“It’s… It’s a wedding dress?”

It felt like the room was spinning.

“Yeah. I guess an orc wedding dress can be any colour, but he wanted you in gold because he said it would look nice with your hair and eyes. And he also said something about it reminding him of the way you looked the first time he saw you.”

The gold and green dress. The one he pulled the pins out of, grumbling the entire time.

I miss him.

The thought hit me like an arrow between the eyes. I would have fallen over if Lyric hadn’t hustled over with the dress and started bugging me to put it on.

“To see if it fits?” I asked dazedly.

“No, silly! The wedding is today!”

“Today.”

“Yup! Chop chop, buttercup!”

There was never any arguing with Lyric. I stripped out of my clothes and let her help me into the gown. If I’d thought that first gold dress was beautiful, it was nothing compared to this one. Every inch of the bodice was decorated with hand-sewn pearls that spiraled down in elegant swaths at the full skirt. The sleeves were made of the finest lace I’d ever seen, sheer and iridescent as spider’s silk. The neckline gave an ample glimpse of my cleavage, and for the first time in three days, I laughed.

“I can definitely tell Galbrath helped design this to his liking,” I said, pointing at the bare expanse of my chest.

Lyric whistled.

“You look fab. And, yeah, I have to agree. He didn’t make it, but he was definitely in charge of the dress. It sounds like he’s basically single-handedly planning this entire wedding.”

“He’s what?!”

It would have been just as outlandish if she’d told me Galbrath had grown a tail and planned to become a cowboy just so he could use it as a lasso.

“Well, maybe not entirely single-handedly. I met his sisters. They’re the ones who gave me the dress downstairs. But they seemed kind of put out that he was doing so much wedding planning and leaving so little to them.”

Galbrath. My Galbrath. My grumpy, grumbly, horny, arrogant, idiotic husband was planning our wedding.

It made me want to cry. In the best possible way.

He knew I was hurt about what he’d done. He knew I was sad about not having a real wedding.

And he was trying to fix it.

Once the dress was on and fastened – it fit like a dream – Lyric got to work on my hair.

“I can’t believe you’re helping me get ready for a wedding you never even approved of,” I said as she twisted and pinned my hair in a pretty chignon, leaving some strands free at the front.

“That was before I talked to him,” she said through a mouth full of hair pins. The same ones Galbrath had pulled out of my hair after I’d fallen asleep on him that first night. “The man sounds absolutely gone for you, Luna. As he should be! But seriously. He adores you. It’s so fucking obvious.”

I watched my cheeks grow pink in the mirror. It was a good thing Galbrath wasn’t here, or he’d probably be preening over how my scent had changed in response to what Lyric had just said about him. I cleared my throat and changed the subject.

“What about you? How’s the nanny gig going?”

She grimaced, making the pins fan out wildly.

“It’s… It’s not ideal. The kids are crazy and the mom is even worse. And the dad is…. I don’t know. I’m looking for a new opportunity. As soon as the right one comes along, I’ll take it.” She gave a mirthless laugh. “Maybe I should join the Starlight Brides program, too. I’d do it if I could get somebody like your guy.”

Before I got a chance to ask her more about what was bothering her so much at her new job, a knock at the door made us both jump. Lyric placed the last few pins in my hair then hurried over. She opened it a crack. My heart slammed when I heard her tell someone, “It’s bad luck for a groom to see the bride before the wedding.”

“Not for orcs,” came the gravelly reply.

God, even just hearing his voice was affecting me. I was a pathetic, besotted loser.

Luckily, it kind of seemed like he was, too.

Lyric twisted to look at me and mouthed, “Can he come in?”

I swallowed against a hot lump in my throat and nodded. She beamed, then opened the door wider, letting Galbrath in.

I stood to greet him and promptly forgot every word I’d ever learned. He looked so good that I was left astonished and speechless. His hair was oiled and braided, his face solemn and even more gorgeous than I remembered it. It was as if even that short time apart had dulled the memory of him, had softened the stark, virile, brutality of his beauty. And now he was here and it was all battering its way back in, stunning me into silence. He was wearing a leather vest I’d never seen before, inlaid with pearls that matched my gown.

“Well, I better go get dressed for the party! See you two down there!” Lyric distantly called before slipping out the door.

Alone, we stared at each other, close enough to touch. An entire ocean apart.

“Luna.” My name was a guttural sigh. Like seeing me caused him pain and relief at the same time.

“Hi.” That was all I could manage. He was so beautiful, and it felt so good, hurt so bad, to be near him.

Fortunately, he seemed to have prepared something to fill the silence. Though it didn’t start auspiciously.

“I am not a poet.”

“I, er, know? You told me that before.” I cocked my head at him. One of the loose waves of hair Lyric had left at the front shifted, and Galbrath’s eyes tracked it with something like devastated hunger.

“I have agonized,” he said, “these days without you, what I might say to make this better. I am at a loss. I have never been a garrulous man. And there’s something about… you… that seems to stop up my throat. Frankly, Luna, you make me stupid. The first time I saw you, I thought you were beautiful. And I promptly compared your face to cheese.”

That drew an unexpectedly genuine laugh from me.

“To cheese?”

“The colour of your skin. Like whisky mixed into milk. To make cheese. My favourite cheese, just so you know,” he added gruffly.

“I’m glad you told me,” I said, smiling despite myself. “A man’s favourite cheese seems like the sort of thing his wife ought to know.”

“I know it’s a comparison that does not do you justice. I only use it to illustrate… How difficult this is for me. I want to get it right.” He took a deep breath and squared his magnificent shoulders. “The first time you touched me, when you put your hands on my head, I thought your touch was just like water. Cleansing rain. Your voice is music to me. And your scent… That I dare even the greatest poet of any world or timeline to describe.”

My eyes filled with tears. His jaw tightened.

“When I first saw you, I already began to love you. When you dared to flick me on the forehead, it deepened. And then, when I saw how much work you went to in the kitchens, trying so hard to help my people, I knew that I could never be without you. I respect you.” The declaration was like a sword through my chest. Left me breathless. “I admire you more than you could ever know.”

He raised his hands and did something I’d seen others do before. He pressed his thumbs against his tusks. But instead of letting them drop, he pushed harder and harder, until blood beaded.

“Galbrath!” I gasped, closing the distance between us and reaching up to tug at his wrists. He let me pull his hands down. “You’re bleeding!”

“It’s an orc gesture. It signifies the highest form of respect and devotion. Luna, stop looking at my thumbs. I need you to hear this.”

I held his bleeding hands gingerly in my own, and slowly raised my face to look at him. His eyes blazed.

“I love you.” Guttural. “I want to marry you properly, in front of my entire kingdom, because I am proud of you and I am endlessly grateful that you are my bride. I’ve run myself ragged making the preparations all so that it might please you. Everything is planned down to the finest detail. The decorations, the music, the food. There are honey cakes. Noona said you’ve never had one. And all your seaweed recipes, too. I’ve wanted to come to you so badly, but not until everything was ready.”

He bent his head. His mouth was so close to mine I felt his words on my lips, making me shiver.

“Luna, love. Will you marry me?”

Tears streamed down my cheeks. The hurt of the past few days was receding, giving way to excitement and adoration and hope.

“Luna,” Galbrath groaned when I didn’t answer right away. “Don’t make me wait any longer. The past few days were more than enough.”

“Do I even need to say it?” I murmured. “Surely, my scent must be telling you how I feel.”

“I’ve gone so mad dreaming of your scent that I no longer trust myself to analyze it. Say it out loud. Please.”

“I love you,” I whispered. “And no matter how idiotic your intentions were when you brought me here, I forgive you, and I’m even a teensy bit grateful to them. Because you’re right. Otherwise, we never would have met.”

That idea left me so stricken with grief I had to briefly squeeze my eyes shut, as if to protect myself from something that hadn’t even happened.

I squeezed his hands, feeling the slickness of his blood, and kissed him.

“I’ll marry you, Galbrath.”

A sigh shuddered out of him. His forehead bumped mine, and he left it there.

We stood there together for a long, silent moment, me crying, him bleeding.

Finally, I patted his hands, smiled at him, and said, “Come on. Let’s get you bandaged up and go start the rest of our lives.”

Then I flicked him on the forehead.

EPILOGUE

“You have to actually make an effort, you know. You won’t learn anything otherwise.”

“I am making an effort!” Luna retorted. In a way that was not remotely convincing at all.

“It looks to me like you’re floating,” I grumbled. Luna was currently on her back, floating in the cool, calm water of the little inlet. I supposed I wasn’t really helping things, as my hands were the ones supporting her shoulders and helping ferry her around the water as she luxuriated and did not bother trying to swim at all.

On the sand were the remains of our picnic. Bread and seaweed scones. Now that my scientists had had time to analyze the concoction Althrop had been using to poison the wheat, they’d been able to formulate a remedy for the fields that had been affected. But even with the wheat recovering, we at the palace and throughout the kingdom had adopted many of Luna’s recipes into our daily meals.

We were alone at the inlet, and her beautiful body was uncovered, bared to my lustful eyes. Her breasts were shiny and much more full than before, her nipples large and dark. Her belly pressed upwards, round and firm with my heir. She gave a half-hearted kick of her legs to satisfy my rigorous instruction and then resumed her languorous floating. I waded along in the waist-deep water, pulling her gently along.

“God, this feels so good,” she moaned. Her scent was mixed with the spray of salt but even so, I could tell how happy she was. “My back feels amazing right now.”

“I could make some other parts feel amazing.” I spun her slowly in the water, supporting her the entire time, until I was no longer positioned behind her at her head but between her legs. Her eyes were closed, and she was not entirely aware of what I was doing until I let the swollen tip of my cock butt up against her naked cunt.

“Galbrath,” she gasped, eyes flying open. Water glittered in her eyelashes and on her pink cheeks. “You’re supposed to be teaching me right now!”

“You don’t seem particularly enthused about learning,” I said dryly. “So why don’t we move on?”

I could sense her desire to exhibit resistance, but when my cock nudged at her needily, she merely shivered and sighed. Pregnancy had made her extra sensitive and very easily aroused.

I’d have to make sure she was pregnant a lot.

With her being so much smaller than myself, it was easy to support her torso as she floated in the water, making sure she was never at risk of sinking too low and getting water in her face. I widened my stance, digging my feet into the sand, and began to slowly push myself inside her.

“Galbrath, yes,” she sighed. She wriggled and kicked, trying to work her way further onto me.

“Oh, now you’re willing to kick your legs and swim?” I groaned, feeling her hot flesh seal around me, a shocking contrast to the cool sea water. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

“Well, no one told me there’d be a nice cock waiting for me,” she pouted.

“Is that so much more enticing than having the skills to save yourself from drowning?”

“Obviously.”

My knot swelled, coming to rest against her folds each time I thrusted into her. Her moans grew in speed and volume until she was rippling the water with her spasms.

“Oh, please, Galbrath. I’m so close. I want to come on your knot,” she keened.

Who was I to deny my perfect wife anything? Especially doing so much work as she was, carrying my child?

With a barely restrained shout and a snap of my hips, I was in her, deliriously squeezed on all sides as I came. Luna whimpered and clamped down around my knot, the convulsive strength of her climax sucking my breath from my lungs.

“Luna, love,” I moaned, bucking freely into her, sending mini tidal waves sloshing around our joined bodies. “You’re perfect.”

I emptied everything I had into my perfect human wife, thanking the seas that I’d been stupid enough to send for her in the first place. If I had been a better man, a nobler man, we never would have married.

I was glad I’d been who I’d been and I’d done what I’d done.

But it was a new time, now.

I’d be better for her.

And better for our child.

Thank you so much for reading Alien Orc’s Prize! If you enjoyed the humour and romance in this book and want more marriage of convenience, grumpy/sunshine alien romance, then you’ll love my new release, Married to the Alien Cowboy, available in KU now. It features a human woman on the run who becomes a mail-order bride to a lonely alien cowboy to escape her dangerous life, only to get more than she bargains for when she begins to fall in love with her quiet new husband…

Want more Starlight Brides? The next releases in the series are Alien Kraken’s Prize by January Bell and then Alien Naga’s Prize by Hattie Jacks.

STARLIGHT BRIDES

Alien Minotaur’s Prize by Hattie Jacks

Alien Werewolf’s Prize by January Bell

Alien Triton’s Prize by Lynnea Lee

Alien Orc’s Prize by Ursa Dax

Alien Kraken’s Prize by January Bell

Alien Naga’s Prize by Hattie Jacks

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