Page 63 of First Comes Orc, Second Comes Baby
“Either/or. But she would have called me if you’d died or been seriously injured, so. . .”
“And you let me go anyway?” she exclaimed.
“It’s female’s circle business. I can’t interfere.”
“Why, you circle whipped—”
He snarled at her.
“Did you just gnash at me? Did you just gnash at me!” She smacked him on the nose. “I’m telling your mother! And the circle, because Ipassed their stupid poison cupcake test.”
He paled.
But she was just warming up. “You should be scared. Did you know back in the old days—”
“What did they tell you about the Old Days?”
“In the beginning of the days of the Orcs of Uthilsen, our gods and goddesses still walked among us—”
He relaxed. “Oh. The fables. Those are just stories.” He cleared his throat. “Did they mention anything about knives?”
She ignored the part about knives. Let him wonder. “You know us Humans believe you Orcs aren’t originally from Earth.”
Brahnt sneered. “Faetales.”
Charlotte perked up. “Do you believe in the Fae? Are they real?”
His expression blanked. “So, about your induction into the female’s circle—no, donottell me what happened, that’s forbidden—but did everything go. . .well. Is my mother. . .”
“Day drinking?” She glanced out the giant windows. “Well, night drinking now. I don’t think so? The ladies congratulated her on snagging a decent enough Human for her son.”
Brahnt sagged into the back of the couch. “Thank the Allmother.”
Charlotte sniffed. “Why don't you go take a shower and relax? I'll go warm up the soup. Did you leave the heads on the prawns?”
“Of course I did, darling. The head is where all the flavor is.”
She rose, patting him on the shoulder. “Go shower.”
Charlotte busied herself taking the soup out of the fridge and putting it on the stove to warm up. She set up bowls, spoons, and glasses of an appropriate wine, then turned and padded down the hallway to enter the bedroom.
He was humming, a low, sonorous song with a guttural edge to the word and an accompanying beat—his heels marking time on the floor. Charlotte knew the Orcs still spoke their own language despite the mass migration from across the ocean centuries ago, but it was rare to hear it.
She listened for a moment, then went to bed and picked up the blade she’d slid under a pillow.
Brahnt didn't glance up when she entered the bathroom. It was one of those showers with no curtain or sliding glass wall, so she untied her robe and let it drop to the floor and walked quietly behind him, sliding one arm around his waist, letting the dual showerheads rain down on her. He paused singing long enough to hum his pleasure at her presence, and that was when she slid the knife blade against his throat.
Brahnt stilled.
“You're mine,” she said carefully in the words Regine and Milgrida had drummed into her. “I will have no other. I claim you as my husband and will defend my mate with blood, mine and my sisters’.”
The Orc tensed. She lifted the blade a hair, enough to let him turn and when he did, he stared down at her for a split second, then went down on one knee, head bowed. She pressed the blade against the vein of his neck.
“Will you yield, or will you fight?”
“I yield,”he said softly, and when he looked up, his eyes were bright. Brahnt rested a hand on her stomach, fingers spread wide.“I yield to my wife.”
She slowly lowered the knife. “I know the shower isn’t very romantic, but they said I had to take you by surprise or it didn’t count.”
