Page 1 of The Orc's Captive Bride
CHAPTER ONE
The first thing Thea noticed was the cold.
Stone pressed against her cheek, rough and unforgiving, and her muscles screamed a protest as she pushed herself upright.
The second thing she noticed was that she was naked.
Well. That’s different.
Her glasses—miraculously intact—sat askew on her nose. She straightened them with trembling fingers, and the world sharpened into focus.
Stone monoliths rose around her in a perfect circle, each one three times her height. Beyond them, an endless expanse of pale grass rippled under an impossibly blue sky. Mountains hunched on the horizon like sleeping giants, their peaks white with snow.
There was no sound except the soft sloughing of the wind whispering through the grass. There were no trees, no buildings, no people.
No explanation.
Her breath came faster as the academic part of her brain—the part that had earned her three doctorates before she turned thirty—tried to categorize what she was seeing. Stone circle. Megalithic structure. Post-holes would indicate Bronze Age construction, but the stones themselves…
She looked up at the nearest monolith.
No weathering. The surface was unmarked by centuries of rain and wind, which meant these weren’t ancient stones. They were new… and she was naked on the altar stone in the middle of the circle.
A brief wave of panic washed over her as she scrambled off the stone, clinging to it as her legs wobbled.
Why was I laid out as a sacrifice in the middle of an empty stone circle?
The last thing she remembered was the burial site in Norway—the one that had the university department in an uproar because the runes didn’t match any known runic alphabet. She’d been called in as the expert, the prodigy who could crack any linguistic puzzle. She’d been tracing the engravings on the burial stone, carefully recording the odd symbols when the world exploded into light—blinding, all-consuming light that had tasted of copper and felt like falling.
And now she was here.
Wherever ‘here’ is.
Ignoring the panic still hovering at the back of her mind, she forced herself to take stock of the situation. The angle of the sun indicated late afternoon. She would need to find shelter. Clothing. Water. Food.
Instead, she turned back to the stones.
Just a quick look. Five minutes. Maybe they hold the answer.
The engravings covered every surface, flowing from base to apex in continuous lines that her eyes wanted to follow. They weren’t runes—at least, not any runes she’d ever studied. The symbols were fluid, almost organic, as if someone had taught water to write.
She approached the nearest stone, moving silently across the grass. Up close, the markings seemed to glow with a faint silver light that might have been a trick of the afternoon sun. Or might not.
She automatically reached out to trace one of the symbols, and the moment her fingertip touched the engraving, golden light exploded beneath her skin.
Her heart hammering against her ribs, she yelped and jerked back, stumbling over her own feet. But there was no pain, just a lingering warmth that spread through her body.
She stared at her hand. It looked normal. It felt normal, except for the faint tingling that made her think of static electricity and that one time she’d accidentally grabbed a live wire in the university’s basement storage.
What the hell?
She touched the stone again.
Nothing. Just cold granite beneath her finger.
She pressed harder, tracing the symbol she’d touched before. Still nothing. But when she pulled her hand away and looked at the engraving, something shifted in her perception. Thesymbol no longer looked entirely foreign. It reminded her of… something. A word on the tip of her tongue. A melody she’d heard in childhood and half-forgotten.
Fascinating.
