Page 1 of Alien Orc's Prize

CHAPTER 1

GALBRATH

“They’ve brought you another one.”

I was so grimly focused on the black-spotted and wilted wheat in the field before me that I barely registered the words of my advisor.

“They’ve brought me another what?” I asked Padreth absentmindedly. I fingered one of the unhealthy stalks as the field’s tenant, Old Farion, looked on, his face haggard with stress. It looked like the stout old male’s heart was about to give out.

Failing crops tended to do that to a farmer.

They tended to do it to princes, too, if they failed in wide enough swaths.

Which they were coming perilously close to doing.

“Another prospect,” Padreth replied. A hint of irritation entered his voice when I did not immediately respond, my mind running over thoughts of fungus and minerals andwhat in the great span of the sea is happening to the wheat this year?“Awoman.”

Old Farion just about jumped out of his hide when I straightened and spun, my expression no-doubt thunderous. Padreth, who had known me since we were both too small andstupid-fingered to lace our own boots, inhaled sharply but did not flinch.

“A woman? Another one?Now?”

Now, when I was busy trying to figure out how I was going to feed our court, our villages, our people into the winter?

“I’m busy. Send her away. A woman!” I growled, baring my tusks at the dying wheat, as if the crops were solely responsible for my mother and younger sisters’ endless attempts to foist the daughters of wealthy merchants and noblemen off on me. It had started up not long after my father’s death. First, in little spurts and sprinkles, like water forcing its way through a very fine chink in the wall.

But lately, that chink had inexplicably widened, letting through a veritable deluge of rich, fertile, simpering females.

It was enough to drown a man. Especially when he was only just getting himself settled on the stormy sea of responsibility his father king’s death had left behind.

“They are only worried. They want to see you king,” Padreth explained. As if I needed explaining to. “And that will not happen until-”

“Until I produce an heir. Do you think I am unaware of the laws of succession and heirship in this nation, Padreth?” My voice was low, dangerous with warning, but Padreth merely stared innocently back at me and gave a soft grunt that seemed to say, “Maybe?”

If he were any other man,any other man, he’d be dead on his feet for that. Old Farion briefly closed his eyes, as if expecting any moment for Padreth’s life’s blood to spray out all over his already beleaguered wheat.

Padreth, not quite oblivious to my mood but also not quite caring, ploughed on.

“I think it gives them a sense of control. With the wheat doing poorly, getting you settled with a wife and a babe in her belly is something they have at leastsomeinfluence over.”

Influence my arse. If anything, their meddling was only making me run even faster from the idea of marriage than I otherwise would.

“I do not need an heir or to be named king to rule. I’m already doing it,” I reminded my advisor and oldest friend pointedly.

“Of course,” Padreth said. I felt satisfied for a moment, thinking he’d finally agreed to close his tusks against each other in silence. But this was Padreth. And so it really was only a moment of reprieve.

“But,” he went on, undeterred by the bludgeoning rage I could feel smashing itself into my expression, “if something were to happen to you, your line is not secured. Without your own heir-”

“Then my cousin Althrop will assume power not half a heartbeat after he’s done dancing a gleeful little jig before my death pyre. Iknow all this.”

“I know you know.”

Oceans help me. This is what I’m dealing with.

“Padreth,” I said, after sucking in a swift breath and turning my voice into something stony. Cool and remote. “Make a note.”

Padreth diligently pulled out his tablet in order to mark down his prince’s words.

“I have, thus far, been far too patient and generous a monarch. Today that will change.”

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