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I gulp and turn back to the flatbreads I’m preparing, ready to go on the hot stone. “Trent came to me last night.”
Penny stills her work.
“He offered me a crust of bread and some jerky.”
She raises both eyebrows, and I feel strangely guilty that it was more than she got.
Then her face softens, and her lips tug up. “Happen the bastard short-changed you if it was your first time. Sneaky bastard.”
“I didn’t want to. I should have—I remembered what you said. But when he put me on my knees, I froze, then tried to push him away. Which is when Doug came upon us.”
Her lips tighten a little. “Trent’s not the worst of them, lass, that’s for sure. They prefer persuasion, but they don’t always take no for an answer if persuasion does not work. And some are just rough bastards who enjoy hurting a lass. You’re lucky Doug came upon you if fear had taken to you. None will touch you now.”
“They won’t?” My brows draw together. I glance over my shoulder to find Doug staring back at me with an intense expression. Goodness! He somehow appears more monstrous and beastly when his white skin glistens in the morning sunlight, emphasizing the deep brooding pockets of his face.
“You’ll know because no other men will come around,” Penny says dryly, drawing my attention back to her.
I blush a little. “When I first arrived, I was taken to General Tulwin’s tent. I’m to be a companion for a fairy girl. I told you as much. I didn’t tell you what else he said.”
“And what else did he say?” Penny is all interest.
“That I should find a mate, and if I did, he would honor it when I was taken to Krug… My mother said the same thing to me the night the Blighten came.” Tears pool in my eyes. “She said I should find a big brute and align myself to him for protection. Only I don’t think she realized what it was like here.” I nibble on my lower lip as I hoist over a fresh sack of flour. “I don’t know who to pick. I don’t knowhowto pick. Do you… Do you know anyone as might be a good choice?”
She snorts out a laugh. “Lass, this is a hard life. The ones who are mean enough to protect you are mean in other ways. I’ve seen Luca mooning over you, but he’s young and weak for a beta lad—and happen no amount of hard life is going to fix that. He would be kind to you, but he couldn’t protect you. I will think about it. But I don’t envy you this choice. I agree, it is better to have one than to have many. If you’re free to mate, then you’re lucky indeed.” She chuckles suddenly. “Pity you can’t mate Doug.”
The moment the words leave her mouth, we both still. She chuckles again. “Now there’s a thought.”
“Could I?” I blurt out before I can better think about how it might come across.
Her brows draw together in thought. “I don’t rightly know. I mean, lasses are taken as pets or concubines more often, but occasionally they do become mates.”
“He is definitely an orc, then?” I glance back to him and gulp. Yes, Doug is still staring at me with the same brooding expression.
“I’ve heard he’s a shifter,” she says. “Well, that his father was a wolf shifter. A powerful alpha by all accounts. Doug has never shifted. They call shifters as cannot shift mutes, and they are shunned by packs. Just as he is shunned by the orcs because he’s white and cannot talk.”
“How terrible,” I say, feeling instant empathy for the big, beastly male. “I wonder what he would look like if he shifted.”
“A ferocious beast, I’ve no doubt,” Penny replies. “Happen he would be a wolf, maybe. There are ways around it, I’ve heard, that powerful shifters can encourage mutes to find their inner beast. There are no shifters here save some occasionally find themselves as bondservants. But they are usually betas. Alpha shifters do not make good bondservants. And all this might be just a fanciful tale as folks are wont to tell. Even so, Doug is only half shifter and might not even have an inner beast to call upon.”
I’m only half listening to Penny, for I’m thinking about Doug as a mate. I’ve had exactly one interaction with him. Yet my heart is fluttering in a strange, hopeful way. How do I know in an instant that he has a good heart? I can’t possibly know. Yet I’m sure that he does.
“…and he killed a man once…” Penny is saying.
My head snaps up. “What? Who?”
“Doug,” she says. “The man had raped a lass, from what I heard—left her near death. Doug was enraged and killed him with his bare hands. Ripped his body apart. Threw his head in one direction, a leg another, an arm yet another. Hideous by all accounts. The orc masters were furious. They don’t care what we do so long as we are fit to graft for them. That’s how he got those scars on his back, from the whipping.”
I have not seen Doug’s back, so I cannot vouch for any whipping scars, but I take Penny at her word. I want to be horrified that he tore a man limb from limb. Only I’m really not, when I know that man raped a woman. After that frightening moment with Trent, I sense my vulnerability in a new light. Maybe Trent would not have pressed the matter even if Doug had not come along. But maybe he would have used heavier means of persuasion, or even forced me if I’d still resisted. Besides all this, Penny has admitted that there are worse men here. I feel great empathy for that woman who had suffered thus, but also pride in Doug, the fierce white orc who is mute in more ways than one, for meting out swift justice. That he used his own hands to such effect does not horrify me but rather lifts him to heroic heights.
“The bondservants don’t often step out of line, and less so with Doug. They’re mean bastards, some of them, but nothing compared to an orc. He may be white and a shifter’s bastard, but he’s higher than a human, even if he’s lower than an orc.”
ChapterFour
Jasmine
When I take to my bedroll that night, I determine that the strange, compelling, white orc, who is also a shifter, who cannot speak nor shift, who is muted in two ways, is going to be my mate.
There are obstacles in this path: many of them. First and foremost is the fact that he terrifies me and, even so, he’s the ugliest being I’ve ever met. I have yet to work out how I might overcome all of this and be intimate with him, but I will.
