Chapter 2

PALOMA

With my father’s callous words still ringing in my head, I stare at the approaching riders. Tall, with tusks protruding from behind their lower lips, and weapons strapped across their chests, at their waists, and slung over their backs. They display hard muscles and even harder expressions.

If I manage to escape the orcs, I can return here… conditionally.

Spy for my people.

No one cares that the orcs will use me in the process.

No matter how I look at this, my own people, my own father, are selling me. I still can’t grasp that notion.

When he first told me my colony would be trading me for the orcs’ protection, I cried for a full day. Then I got mad at myself for wasting time when I could have been planning my escape. Except there was no escaping. My father locked me in my room like a prisoner, with bathroom privileges twice a day. No chance to say goodbye to friends, or to beg anyone to help me.

No one even visited me. My sisters returned home this morning.

Ten minutes. That’s all I had with them. Not enough time to say good bye, let alone sift through all the lies they’d been told.

Camila, Marta, and Renata are still inside our house, ordered to remain in their rooms until my father says otherwise. I don’t want you anywhere near the orcs, he’d told them. Don’t watch from the windows either, unless you want to risk the beasts taking you.

He’s concerned about them being taken. Where’s his concern for me?

They had stayed with friends for the past several days. He’d told them I needed time and space to prepare for my new life, the bastard.

The truth is easier to control when you limit access to the only one willing to speak it. Me.

I’d foolishly thought my sisters had come to save me. When we put our heads together, we can figure out anything.

Except how to save me from being sold to monsters, apparently.

Renata told me that Dad said I’d volunteered. I saw the pity in her eyes. My sisters figured out the truth, but not how to save me.

I’ll never see them again.

“Did you hear me, Paloma?” My father’s belligerent voice tears me from my thoughts. I choke back my tears as I look at him. I want to wipe that stoic expression off his face. Even a tear, a trembling of his lip… I’d take any sign, no matter how small, that shows he’s sorry for what he’s doing to me.

The ground shakes beneath the heavy hooves of the orcs’ mounts and cart. They’re almost upon us.

“Do you care at all what will happen to me?” I ask, my voice barely audible.

“The orcs need females. They’ll keep you alive.”

“But at what cost to me? You’re sending me there to be a baby maker… with monsters!”

“Just one orc. The orc who you’ll be given to will be responsible for you. You’ll answer to him, so don’t think throwing a tantrum like you are now will help you. You can’t always get your way. That’s life.”

Tears stream down my face. He doesn’t know for sure what’s going to happen to me. No one does.

“I could be passed around from monster to monster, used and kept in a dark cell for the rest of my life. How could you do this to me?”

“You’re going to an orc who needs a wife. Arranged marriages are part of our history.”

“Human history. These are orcs. And this isn’t a marriage. I’m being forced. Don’t you get that? You’ve sold me!”

“Enough! It’s done.”

The orcs stop thirty feet from us. My father straightens his back and keeps his eyes on the beasts as they dismount. They’re huge, and ugly as sin. How will I survive this?

“Why me?” I whimper, not sure what else I can possibly say to stop this.

“Because you’re strong, like your mother. Thick and sturdy. Not fragile like your sisters.”

Thick and sturdy? WTF. That’s his justification for choosing me? My sisters are skinny whereas I’m large on top, in the hips, and backside. Okay, my thighs are a little thicker too, but my weight never stopped me from doing anything this family or colony needed.

He’s always had issues with me, criticizing me for my size. “Out of all the women in this colony, you picked me because you think I’m fat?”

“I had to prove I can sacrifice for the good of the colony.”

“How are you sacrificing?”

“Watch that tone of yours. I’m a councilman now. I won’t tolerate being disrespected.” He raises his chin in pride as if he’s a king.

“Councilman?” I question.

“They voted three days ago.”

Now I understand. For his sacrifice of giving his daughter to the orcs, my father got a seat on the council. Prestige for a man who never could keep a job longer than two weeks back on Earth.

While my father enjoys his new position, I’ll be bred by horrible beasts. Excuse me… one beast, according to some damn treaty I never agreed to with a people we don’t trust.

“If you escape, don’t return empty-handed or I’ll take you back to the orcs myself. Do you hear me, Paloma?” he whispers so the orcs won’t hear.

When I don’t answer, he grips me harshly by my chin. “Answer me!”

“I heard you.”

“Good.” He releases me, then nods with pride. Not of me. Of his new status.

My fists clench just thinking about how he’s selling me, throwing me away like I’m a piece of garbage.

“Maybe I’ll just tell the orcs that you want me to spy on them. That will break this damn treaty wide open.” The best way to escape the orcs is to not be turned over to them in the first place.

“Go ahead, chica, tell them you’re spying. You’ll be the first one they kill. And you’ll endanger everyone here, including your sisters.”

I shut up. He pulled the sister card. I won’t endanger them, and he knows it.

“Bastard!”

He slaps me across the face. Hard.

Okay, it turns out I do have something to lose. The feeling in my cheek.

I cup the stinging flesh, hoping to soothe the fire while I glare at him. At this point, I’m not thinking strategically. I’ll do and say anything to hurt him back. I refuse to leave here letting him or anyone else think that what they’re doing to me is okay.

“I hope my first human-orc kid is a boy, so I can name him Javier after you. A monster should be named after a monster, after all.”

My father raises his hand to strike me again. My entire body tightens, waiting for the blow, but nothing happens. A green hand shoots out and locks against my father’s forearm. My father is shaking, struggling to break free of the orc’s iron grip.

A sense of invincibility moves through me at that moment, because I know my father can’t touch me. This green wall of muscle won’t let him.

My eyes move up that mud-covered arm to the orc who’s protecting me from my father.

The massive beast towers over me. I’m only five-six and this monster has to be at least six-eight. He isn’t the tallest orc I’ve seen or even the tallest of the group standing behind him, but every muscle bulges with power.

Three sets of dark green eyes train on my father and the orc holding his arm. The orcs rest their hands on the knives in the sheaths they wear across their chests, as they stand ready to attack if my father even twitches.

I inhale, finally remembering to breathe. And instantly regret it as the wind carries the putrid stench of the muck-covered orcs to me. I try not to wretch, as that will make a horrible first impression. Not that I want to impress them, but I don’t want to appear weak.

My knees wobble, my stomach churns from more than the smell, and I’m dizzy. This isn’t how I want to leave. I want to hold my head high so my fellow humans see I’m not a coward, even if I feel like one at the moment. I’m deathly afraid of these beasts.

Their mouths sport feral sharp teeth, and two tusks protrude from inside their lower lips. Eyebrows thicker than a human’s rest on a prominent ridge, the first in a series that covers their foreheads. An orc’s nose is larger than any human’s, flatter and wider too, but still just a nose. Those tusks… I can’t stop staring at them. Only animals have tusks.

Only animals move as silently as the orcs do. I didn’t hear them approach, though in all fairness, I was focused on trying to hurt my father the only way I could. With the threat of a half-orc grandchild.

A threat I don’t plan on carrying out.

This male, this orc with two scars on his cheek and large muscles that bulge under the leather straps across his chest, stands there with his hand locked on my father’s wrist. He doesn’t need any of the five knives strapped to his harness or the large sword resting against his back. The power this male exudes tells me he can easily crush my father.

I don’t know if that pleases or scares me. Both, I suppose.

“You will damage my female,” the orc says.

“She’s my daughter.”

“Now she belongs to me.” The orc’s voice fills the area with a dark, menacing tone, like the beast himself.

There is nothing soft, gentle, or even forgiving about this beast. Not his appearance, not his voice, and not the way he’s squeezing my father’s wrist. He’s the epitome of power and ferocity.

And he’s the one who bought me.

I stare at the massive brute and swallow hard, trying to block thoughts of how he’ll treat me, how he”ll force me to be his, to give him kids. Without thinking, I hiss at him.

His eyes lock on mine, the ridges on his forehead scrunch together and his lower lip pulls back, baring his tusks.

Oh, god, I’ve already pissed him off.

I want to scream I’m no one’s property! but sheer terror keeps me from speaking.

“Rucha vek, Atox,” the orc beside him, another beastly male wearing as many knives as him, says while glaring at my father.

I have no clue what they’re saying, but the orc won’t release my father, who’s turning pale. When my father cries out in pain, every hair on my arms and neck rises. But the orc… his lip curls back further. He’s enjoying hurting my father.

I can’t watch this. I just can’t.

Without thinking, I reach out and rest my hand on the orc’s, gently, not trying to force him to let go. He has a vise-like grip on my father.

I don’t know why I want to keep this orc from hurting him. He got what he wanted by selling me off. A seat on council, the highest level of government in our colony. Which means he can protect my sisters from a similar fate.

Maybe that’s what this is about. He’s sacrificing me to protect them.

I won’t risk my sisters.

“Please don’t,” I say to the orc as calmly as I can. I’m trying to hide my fear while praying my actions don’t make me look weak.

Leathery skin stills beneath my fingers. The orc stares at me, his dark green eyes swirling with flecks as black as onyx. “He touched you. You are mine. I have a right to take payment for damages.”

I don’t know what to say. My mind is blank, my entire world turned upside down.

My owner barks something at the orc beside him. I watch in fascination and horror at how those tusks move outside their lips as they speak.

My stomach churns. It’s a good thing I didn’t eat breakfast this morning. I haven’t eaten much since I’ve been told my fate two days ago.

“I’m not damaged.” Somehow, I push out those words in a steady voice. Talking back to this orc when I don’t know much about him doesn’t seem wise. Talking back to my father, well, I know his limits. Though he’s never hit me before today.

Or sold me.

The orc growls at my father before releasing him with a shove that sends him crashing into the thin wood door of our house. He could have done a lot worse, like hurl him into the adobe wall hard enough to break my father’s back.

From where he’s slumped in the dirt, cradling his broken wrist, my father yells at me. “You’ll never see Camila, Renata, and Marta again. Nunca, chica. Comprendes? It’s bad enough you’ll be whoring yourself out to those monsters. I won’t have you contaminating anyone else.”

Fuck me, I should have let the orc crush him.

There’s nothing noble about this man. There never was. I’ve been lying to myself all these years, and I can no longer do that.

Javier Garcia is now dead to me. I have no father. No home. No family.

I’m on my own, and I have to do whatever it takes to survive.

The orc moves closer to me, blocking the sun and casting me in darkness. I shiver as much from the loss of sunshine as from the sheer size of the beast looming over me.

“Come, female,” the male who kept my father from hitting me says. “We must leave the human colony before sundown.”

I can’t go with them. I’m not ready.

Two orcs flank me.

There is no out. No Escape.

When I landed on Kovos, the men in charge of our colony assigned me to farming. The pale-yellow fruit in my section of the fields is twice as large as a beefsteak tomato, has a thick skin similar to a pumpkin, and grows on vines. I spent most of the past two years cultivating, staking, weeding, and laboring over those vines. Women’s work, according to the men. I never complained because when you’re part of a colony, you do whatever’s needed to survive.

That never included the possibility of being sold.

To hell with them and their treaty. I’m not going to be a breeder, especially to a monster. I will fight him with all I have and regain my freedom.

The first chance I get, I’m going to do exactly what my father warned me not to do. I’m going to fuck this up.

Big time.