Alien Orc’s Prize (Starlight Brides)

1. Galbrath

CHAPTER 1

GALbrATH

“ T hey’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.