Alien Orc’s Prize (Starlight Brides)

19. Galbrath

CHAPTER 19

GALbrATH

I led 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.”