Page 2 of Single Pucking Orc

“Somewhere she can sleep tonight?”

“I have a second bedroom.”

Mildred’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“I don’t have anything to put a baby in once she gets there,” he clarified. “But the room itself is fine.”

His house was fine. Better than fine. He liked his house. He’d bought it because he was tired of apartments and wanted a yard big enough for a grill. It was comfortable, clean, and—most of the time—reasonably tidy. The refrigerator contained actual food. His laundry generally made it into drawers rather than living indefinitely in a basket.

He just didn’t own a single thing designed for a person who weighed less than his equipment bag.

“Then we start there,” Mildred said, making a note. “But I want to be clear about something, Mr. Stonebreaker. This is temporary custody while the legal process moves forward. You are allowed to say no. If you aren’t prepared to take responsibility for a six-month-old today, there are other arrangements we can make while you decide.”

Charlie pulled her fist out of her mouth, and a long strand of drool followed it. Then she reached for him.

Her arm was nowhere near long enough, but that didn’t seem to discourage her. She strained forward against the bar of the carrier, her fingers opening and closing with tremendous determination. He leaned over without deciding to.

Charlie caught a fistful of his neatly trimmed beard first and yanked hard enough to make his eyes water. He laughed despite himself and offered her a finger as a diplomatic alternative. She abandoned his beard, wrapped both hands around his thumb, and immediately tried to drag it into her mouth.

He did not take his thumb back. Something inside him rearranged itself, quietly and permanently.

My daughter.

A surge of protective instinct came with the words, a surge so strong he nearly swayed. His grandmother used to talk about instincts like that, instincts that had kept orcs alive in the mountains for thousands of years. He had always assumed she meant it metaphorically.

Apparently not.

Charlie held his thumb and stared up at him.

“Of course I’m taking her.”

Mildred sat back very slightly, and her face relaxed.

“Then,” she said, “let’s talk about car seats.”

The baby superstore out on Route 9 covered more square footage than the Enforcers’ practice facility. He stood at the mouth of aisle six and understood, for perhaps the first time in his adult life, what it felt like to be genuinely outmatched.

There were seventeen kinds of bottle nipple. Not seventeen brands. Seventeen kinds. Slow flow. Medium flow. Fast flow. Variable flow, which sounded like a plumbing problem. Stage one, stage two, stage three. Wide neck. Narrow neck. Anti-colic, which he didn’t understand and was vaguely afraid to.

Charlie was perched in the carrier, watching everything with those huge dark eyes. She got hold of the safety strap and tried to bring it to her mouth.

“Don’t eat the cart,” he told her.

She ate the cart.

“Can I help you find something?” a voice asked from his elbow as he gently removed the strap from Charlie’s grasp.

He looked down and found a girl in a store apron who couldn’t have been more than nineteen. She wore the bright, determined expression of someone who had decided in advance not to be intimidated by a six-and-a-half-foot orc hockey player staring helplessly at a wall of nipples.

“I hope so,” he said. “What’s a flow rate?”

“How fast the milk comes out. It goes by age, mostly. How old is the baby?”

“Six months.”

“Okay. So you probably want a stage two. Maybe three if she’s a fast eater.” She reached for a package. “Is she breastfed or formula-fed?”

“Formula. Mildred gave me the brand.” He looked back at the wall. “She didn’t explain any of this.”