Page 37 of Alien Orc's Prize

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you’d… you’ddothat. 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, Ican’tregret 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 thewalls, 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 mywife,” 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,anywoman, 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 ahumanthing. That is atrue matething.”