Chapter 2

Becca

Y anking me to my feet, the orc chief unwrapped a leather belt from around one of his thick biceps and tied my wrists with it.

“If you use your legs for running or kicking again, I’ll tie them up too,” he threatened. “Then I’ll drag you all the way to my keep by your hair. Understood?”

Nothing good waited for me in the orcs’ keep. But being dragged there would be even worse. Deeper in the woods, the soft moss-covered ground gave place to swamp mud and patches of standing water filled with leeches.

“I’ll walk,” I promised somberly.

“Good girl.” The uncharacteristic warmth in his rumble resonated with an unexpected wave of hot tingles through my body. That was before I realized that his last words weren’t meant for me but for his dog.

He rested his large hand on the animal’s narrow head. Her ears flattened completely against her skull, the way I’d seen river hounds’ ears did when they dove under water for frogs, turtles, or fish. River hounds would hunt a much bigger prey too. One of this size would easily kill and devour a human if given a chance. With a reproachful glance from the beast’s yellow eyes, I shifted away from her, cautiously hiding behind her owner’s broad back.

Clearly not trusting my promise not to run, the orc chief clipped the end of my restraint to his belt. As we trudged through the forest, he didn’t look back. With my hands tied in front of me, I had to jog to keep up. If I tripped and fell, I feared he’d just keep going, dragging me through the cold mud.

The orcs’ keep proved to be a long distance away. We hiked for hours, stopping only twice. Once to take a drink of water. The other time, to let me pee behind a bush with the chief’s dog as my guard. As I crouched to do my business, she sat nearby and stared at me unblinkingly, then led me back to her master, nipping at my ankles to hurry me up.

The sun had set, and the terrifying night took reign over the bog orcs’ forest. Patches of mist rose from the ground, turning every shadow into a creature of nightmare. Despite feeling exhausted, I ran faster, keeping close to the wide back of my captor. He might be brutal, but at least he was alive, unlike the sinister apparitions that seemed to fill the air all around us.

Shortly after nightfall, the two other orcs joined us, and I wondered if they had caught up with Ilya and the women. Since they returned empty-handed, I hoped the women got away. I also hoped that Gleb had escaped the orcs, too, and reunited safe and sound with his wife Faeena and their two little daughters.

Then I noticed the crusty scuffs on the orcs’ knuckles and the rusty smears on their knives tucked under their belts. The chief gave them a questioning glance, and the two nodded, as if confirming a job had been finished.

My heart sank with sorrow.

Gleb and Faeena had been my best friends for as long as I could remember. When we were in our early twenties, Gleb and I tried to date. He was my longest relationship, though physically we’d never gone past a few kisses. He used to kiss me tenderly, ever so gently, but deep inside, I often wished he’d just push me against a wall and kiss me until I forgot how to breathe.

When I finally got enough courage to tell him what I wanted, Gleb looked terrified. His fear of hurting me proved too great, no matter how hard I tried to convince him I wasn’t that easily hurt. He broke up with me only a few weeks into our dating, gently explaining to me that he could never be the man I needed. A month later, he asked for my permission to date Faeena. And they had been inseparable ever since.

The three of us remained great friends. I trusted Gleb with my life and would lay my own life on the line for him, his wife, and his daughters.

I vowed to do everything to survive now, if only to live long enough to find out what happened to them and avenge them if needed.

When I thought I couldn’t possibly make another step forward, the tall wall of the orcs’ keep rose in our path. The wall was so high, I couldn’t see where it ended up above us in the darkness.

The chief knocked on the gate, and the barred window opened. Light of bonfires twinkled inside.

“Chief?” A face blocked the light in the window. “You’re back?”

“Open up,” my captor barked.

Heavy rattling of metal chains and clinking locks came from the inside. What were the orcs afraid of, living under locks like that?

Worry wormed into my chest when I thought about the old, flimsy wagons and caravans where my people lived now and the simple post-and-rail fence we’d managed to put up around our settlement.

As the orcs led me through the gates, I studied the wall in the flickering light of the bonfires. Constructed from thick, polished logs inserted into the ground, the wall was high and solid, impossible to climb from the outside. As we entered the keep, however, I noticed several ladders and scaffoldings on the inside of the wall for orcs to climb to the top if needed.

The orcs’ dwellings also looked sturdy and solid, built on top of tree stumps to keep them dry and off the ground. The settlement seemed enormous. The dwellings formed streets and alleys with bonfires burning cheerfully in small plazas all around.

An orc met us a short distance from the gate. He slapped my captor on the shoulder as an old friend.

“Hey chief, good to have you back. Where is Urug?” He ran his eyes over our small group. “And what do you have here?” He smirked at the sight of me. “Can I have her after you? If there’s anything left of her, of course.” He guffawed.

I shot him a glare, which only made him laugh harder.

The chief gave him a non-committal grunt, tugging me along by the belt tied around my wrists.

When we reached a large plaza, more orcs joined us. They came up to greet their chief and the men who’d come with him. And to ogle me, it seemed. Some did it with undisguised hostility or greed, others with mere curiosity.

“You brought some loot?” another male orc said. “Are you sharing her?”

“She’s so skinny!” An elderly female orc with a knot of minty-white hair in the middle of her otherwise bald head pinched my arm so hard I yelped. “Look at this arm. It’s the size of a frog leg.”

No one had called me skinny before. I’d lost most of my curves and even some of my muscle bulk during the years of hardship. But even the starvation that we all had endured wouldn’t make me look willowy or delicate. I’d never been “skinny” if compared to a human. Of course, orcs dwarfed me.

The old crone pinched my cheek with her gnarly fingers and smacked her lips. One of her tusks was missing. The remaining one poked out from her lower jaw like a middle finger to fate and time.

“What do you humans eat for your bones to poke out like that? Nothing but air?” She clicked her tongue. “We’ll need to get some meat on those bones, girl, feed you some real food.”

I doubted I’d live long enough here to even have a single meal in this place.

“So, what happened to Urug and his cronies?” someone asked.

The chief tipped his chin at me. “The human killed Urug.”

Everyone turned to me at once. I drew my shoulders in, faced with their attention.

“This one?” an orc gasped, as if there were more humans standing around.

“Mhm.” The chief slid a glance along my body with a peculiar smirk, as if proudly presenting a precious acquisition. “She did, I was told. Stux and Reslo got two of Urug’s men. The rest are still at large.”

They killed their own kind?

It made no sense.

But I noticed the orcs were looking at me with more admiration than hatred. I would’ve expected to be spat on or even to be torn to shreds for murdering one of their own.

Then, the full meaning of what he’d said dawned on me. If the orcs with blood on their hands and knives killed Urug’s men, did it mean they didn’t go after our women?

And if so, were Gleb and Faeena still alive then?

Hope made it easier to breathe now.

“I need to talk to Grat. Where is he?” the chief asked.

The orc, who’d expressed eagerness to rape me after the chief, replied, “In his house with his girl or girls , as it may be.”

“I need to talk to him. Come with me.” The chief gestured to the orc to follow, then shoved me toward the old lady with one tusk. “Granny Magra, take her to my place, please. Make sure to lock her up because she will run if given a chance.”

“Chief Agor,” a cheerful female voice thrilled over the crowd that had gathered around us by now. An orc woman rushed down the alley, adjusting a colorful shawl around her wide shoulders. “You’re back.”

Agor was the chief’s name, then? It kind of suited him.

The woman leaned into him.

“I missed you, big guy.”

Reaching around him, she grabbed a handful of his ass.

He grinned, looking pleased to see her, then shoved a hand under her shawl. By her breathless moan and the way her hips jerked toward him, I’d bet the sword I’d lost that he pinched her nipple.

I bit my lip, holding back a moan, too, at the thought of having those thick fingers of his anywhere near my naked breasts. My inner muscles clenched, sending an unwelcome shot of heat through my body.

“Should I come by tonight, Agor?” the woman murmured in a deep, sultry voice. “After you’re done with that one?” She tipped her head my way without actually looking at me.

“Sure.” He kneaded her breast under her shawl. “Bring Violette with you too.”

How many women did this guy need for one night?

I opened my mouth to tell him he should just have the woman in the shawl and her friend Violette because I sure-like-hell wouldn’t treat him as nicely as they did if he came near me with his grabby hands, but someone tugged at my breast plate.

“Can I have it?” The girl was about my height and not much wider than me, which must mean she wasn’t a fully grown orc yet. “I want her leather vest, Granny Magra. It’ll fit me just right.”

“Take it then, Nacy.” The old crone flipped the buckles on my sides, opening the belts that held the front and the back of my armor together.

“No.” I fought off their hands. “She can’t have it. It was my mother’s.”

Agor had moved away already. He glanced over his shoulder at the commotion but didn’t intervene, continuing on his way instead.

“Oh, come on now. Take it off.” Granny Magra pulled the breast plate off me with the help of the bratty girl. “Let Nacy have it. You’ll have no use for it in the chief’s bed.”

“I want it back!” I stabbed with a finger in Nacy’s direction.

The girl stuck her tongue out at me, already putting on my armor.

Ignoring my protests, Granny Magra dragged me by my arm toward the main alley through the grounds. “Come on, frog arms. The chief is too busy to fuck you right now. But he wants you nice and ready for when he comes home.”

“I don’t care what he wants,” I bit out, folding my arms over my chest. My breast plate had been molded to the shape of my body, not only protecting me against weapons and animals but also supporting my breasts like a corset. Without it, my fairly large, heavy breasts remained unsupported under my tunic, leaving me feeling weirdly exposed and uncomfortable. “I don’t want him to fuck me.”

“Why not?” she shrugged her shoulders that were square and wide like a wardrobe. “I’ve heard the chief is pretty good between the sheets.”

For some reason, I didn’t doubt that.

With their bulky bodies, hulking shoulders, and faces that looked as if hacked from a rock by an axe, bog orcs were ugly creatures. No one from my village, including myself, would call Chief Agor handsome. Yet something attracted me to him on the most basic, physical level.

I believed that in a different world, under other circumstances, I could probably find some fun with him between the sheets, but not the way he seemed to intend it. To enjoy him, I had to do it on my terms. As it was, I didn’t feel safe with him, which killed any idea of joy for me.

But since he left only an old woman in charge of me, maybe it was my chance to escape?

The hag’s grip on my arm remained strong, however, and she didn’t look like she was going to let go of me anytime soon.

As we rounded a building, heavy panting rose over the distant noise of the crowd. With his pants down to his knees, an orc male was rutting into a female he’d pinned to the wall of the nearest house. She groaned and growled, raking her tusks over the side of his neck. With her eyes rolling into her head from pleasure, she didn’t seem to notice us.

“Ah, good old times.” Granny Magra slapped the male’s naked ass as we passed by.

He granted something but didn’t slow down his punishing thrusts.

“My husband, may he never run out of ale in the afterlife, was good at it too,” Granny Magra reminisced with a dreamy smile on her face while expertly maneuvering me down the alley past yet another couple having energetic sex that left them both gasping for air. “The old dear could last all night, every night, if I was up to it. And of course, I often was.” She giggled like a little girl.

“What happened to your husband?” I asked, to keep the conversation going in hopes to fish out some useful information from the old crone. But curiosity also stirred in me.

Outside of the wetlands, little was known about the bog orcs. Like the rest of my people, I used to think of them as savages barely a step above animals who lived, bred, and hunted like predators but lacked intelligence, emotions, or civilization.

I hadn’t expected to find such an orderly settlement with streets and well-constructed houses, an organized society with intelligent government, and well-planned defenses like the wall around their keep. The only thing that remained as expected here was the breeding. The sweaty orcs rutted like animals with grunts and growls around almost every corner we turned.

“My dear husband died like an orc of honor. In a fight,” the old crone replied.

We passed more orcs fucking. This time, it was a group of at least four—maybe five—I didn’t stare long enough to count all the limbs in the pile.

“Is it always like this here?” I couldn’t help asking. “Everyone just screws each other whenever they want?”

“Oh, to be young again.” Granny Magra sighed wistfully. “That’s just young folks having fun. Why not? We have a celebration here today.”

“What are you celebrating?”

“Folks from another keep came over with a visit. It’s not every day we get to see them. They came all the way from the other side of the wetlands, the one that borders the marsh and the ocean.”

“Did Urug come with them, by chance?” I figured the lack of grief at the news of his death must be because Urug and his men were outsiders.

“No. Those were Farod’s traitors.” The old woman spat on the ground in disdain. “They had been lurking on our lands for some time now. Probably spying. Two days ago, they killed one from our keep and had to be hunted down.”

“It looks like I did you a favor then by killing him.”

“It looks like you did.” She glanced at me.

The only gratitude I’d received for that favor so far was that I hadn’t been killed outright. Whether that was a blessing or a curse, remained to be seen, however.

Granny Magra rounded another building, then stopped in front of a big house, bigger than I’d seen in a while. Two orcs played cards on the wide front porch in the light of a copper lantern placed on the floor between them.

“Hey, boys,” Granny Magra greeted them. “The chief told me to lock his new plaything inside.”

The two gave me a measuring stare.

“A human,” one of them commented, making a face. “She won’t last long.”

The other one tsked, looking doubtful too. “I’d better tell Violette not to go to bed tonight. The chief will need her soon enough.”

I hugged myself, shaking in my damp clothes. “If he has so many willing women, what does he need me for?”

The first orc shrugged. “There is always room for something new and different.”

Granny Magra gave me a shove toward the door. “Come, frog legs, get inside, warm up a bit. When the chief comes home, he’ll make you sweat. But it may take him a while. He has some things to discuss with Grat first, after his absence.”

“Who’s Grat?” I asked, entering the chief’s house.

The familiar scent of mint filled the warm air inside, along with something that smelled incredibly delicious.

The minty aroma came from the teapot, I assumed. It stood in the middle of a sturdy solid-wood table. Apparently, the chief of fearsome orcs drank mint tea. He also owned a fuzzy knitted teapot cozy that set over the clay teapot, keeping the tea warm for him. Of all the things I’d seen in the orcs’ keep, the orange cozy struck me as one of the most incredible.

The mouth-watering smell of baked goods drifted from a large platter covered with a kitchen towel. My stomach spasmed at the aroma. It’d been years since my people had used the last of our flour. I hadn’t had a single slice of bread since then. If Granny Magra didn’t offer me some of whatever deliciousness was hiding under the towel, I decided I’d help myself after she’d left and before I ran away.

“Grat is Chief Agor’s second in command,” she replied. “Not that you need to know that, unless the chief gifts you to him once he’s had his fun with you. Well, let’s get you situated here, shall we?” The old crone led me to the far-right corner.

Tearing my attention away from the table with food, I quickly took in the rest of the room.

The large open space was divided into two sections by a curtain, with a massive bed visible in the smaller part of the room.

Fire burned high in the massive river-rock fireplace in the larger area. A thick grass-woven rug covered most of the wooden floor here. The rug was painted with a pretty design in cheerful colors—another thing I did not expect to find in a brutal orc’s dwelling.

A few things in the corner where Granny Magra took me, however, seem to fit right in with the image of a brutal orc in my mind. A massive workbench stood in the corner with an anvil on it. A thick chain hung suspended through a ring in the ceiling. The large, rusty hook on its end swayed with a screech at my chest level. The other end of the chain was attached to a hook in the wall.

I dreaded to think what or whom the chief might hang in here. I also tried not to speculate about what the faint stains on the bare floor under the hook might be from.

Before I could react, the old woman slapped a manacle around my ankle and turned the key in its lock.

“The chief said you’re a runner,” she chuckled. “Well, no running for you anymore. And once the chief is through with you, you won’t even be able to walk on those frog legs of yours for a while.” She gave me a crooked one-tusk grin. “As much as I’d love to keep you company until the chief shows up, I love grilled muskrat more, and they were just putting some on the fire when you showed up.” She headed for the door. “Have a fun, sweaty night, frog legs.”

Fear vibrated in me and disappointment settled heavily in my chest as I stared at the chain. So much for my escape plans.

But I couldn’t possibly just sit here and wait until the orc chief arrived and rendered me immobile with his monster-cock.

Crouching down, I inspected my restraints. The manacle around my ankle was attached to a chain from a pile of ropes and other chains on the floor. Pulling on my chain, I realized it was strong. I couldn’t break it, no matter how much I tried. Sadly, it also wasn’t long enough for me to reach the table with food.

Dragging the chain behind me, I shuffled to the window behind a lace-trimmed linen curtain.

The night was dark. The glow of the bonfires barely reached here behind the chief’s house that happened to be not too far to the keep’s wall. If I was careful enough, I could reach the wall undetected. If only I could get rid of this chain.

I looked closely at the manacle around my ankle. Like everything in this place, it was strong and solid, made to last. The old crone took the key with her. She’d probably give it to the chief.

Would he remove the chain from my leg before taking me to bed?

Or would he fuck me right here, bent over the workbench?

With my pants yanked down, my tunic hiked up, my breasts spilling out for him to play with while he rammed into me from behind...

Oof. I fanned myself. As the sudden crazy fantasy assaulted my senses, the air in the house seemed way too hot. The fire in the hearth must’ve been burning for a long while now.

It’d also been a long while since I’d had sex with a man instead of my hand. So long, that I was now fantasizing about being pounded by an orc, the one who’d caught me like an animal and dragged me here against my will.

There was a huge difference between a fantasy and a reality. In my fantasies, I had full control. However, once the orc chief got here, he’d do whatever he wanted to me, and I’d have no say at all.

A shiver of dread ran over me, instantly cooling off the heat of arousal.

I looked around, racking my brain for what to do. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t reach the table or any cupboards to look for a weapon. All I had access to was the workbench, the anvil on it, and a heavy metal wheel next to it that the master of the house might be planning to fix or to work on.

A stomping out on the front porch followed by muffled voices and the dog’s growling spurred me into action. The chief could come in any minute. I had to hurry.

Working as fast as I could with my hands bound in front of me, I unhooked the long, heavy chain from the wall, then wrapped it over the top of the workbench, curled it around the narrowest part of the anvil, then threaded it through the spokes of the wheel. Leaning with my shoulder against the workbench, I barely managed to lift it just enough to shove a coil of a chain under its leg to make it unstable.

As the latch clanked and the front door opened, I stood in front of the end of the chain that dangled from the ceiling, concealing its hook behind my back.

Agor, the orc chief, entered with a frown etched on his face.