Alien Orc’s Prize (Starlight Brides)

5. Galbrath

CHAPTER 5

GALbrATH

“ Y our 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.