Page 36 of Alien Orc's Prize
“Stay there or I will pin you to the soil with my blade like the worm you are.” Galbrath’s gaze went back to me. “Luna. It matters very much to me what you think.” For a moment, it felt like it was only us two in the field, only us two in the world. “I am listening.”
“I think… I think he’s using his vehicle to spread something. Some kind of toxin or fungus or… I don’t know. But he was just riding around out here in the middle of a wheat field, alone atnight, without his vehicle’s lights on. Like he didn’t want to be discovered. And he was staying at the inn beside the field you told me just started to fail out of nowhere.”
Galbrath kept his blade aimed at Althrop as he kicked the vehicle over onto its side.
“There’s nothing there…. That’s not…” Althrop whined from the ground. Galbrath ignored him, running his free hand all over the underside of the vehicle.
Then, he froze.
A soft click, and he withdrew his hand.
It wasn’t empty. It held a cannister.
At that moment, the sound of many boots tramping down the path towards us crashed through the air.
“Get this to Barrett,” Galbrath said stonily, handing a breathless Padreth the cannister. “And getthat,” he stabbed his knife towards Althrop, “to a cell.”
CHAPTER 19
GALBRATH
Iled 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,whyhadn’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 surewhy. 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.”