Alien Orc's Prize, page 1
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
Created with Vellum
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
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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
“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.”
