Alien Orc’s Prize (Starlight Brides)

14. Galbrath

CHAPTER 14

GALbrATH

“ I f 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.”