Page 6 of His Orc Warrior

Fate had ways.

I prayed this was one of her plans coming to fruition.

Chapter Five

Lucas

The week had gone slower than slow. Every day seemed to take a week. And it wasn’t because work sucked, it didn’t. It wasn’t because of crappy weather—for the most part it had been fine. And it wasn’t because I felt like dirt—I was healthy as could be. Nope. It was dragging because I couldn’t wait to go to my orc event.

There wasn’t a single time I was on my phone when I didn’t look at the ticket, and multiple times, I checked it solely to look at it. To say I was excited would be the understatement of the year.

But it went beyond excited, crossing into nervous energy territory. I wasn’t sure why I was so nervous about the event and even less sure why I had first-date nerves going on. That was exceptionally weird, given that I was just going to hang out with a bunch of cosplayers and random people who thought that was cool while we ate and played games.

But that didn’t change how I felt or the way I was acting. Logic apparently had no place in my head today.

I’d tried on four outfits already, and none of them seemed good enough. I looked at the bed, at the heap of jeans I had tried on, snagged my favorite of the lot, and threw them on. There wasn’t going to be a better pair in my dresser, so it must be the shirt that was the issue. Or me. I was probably the problem.

Back to the closet I went to find another shirt. Something was going to look good because, well, I needed it to. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have to dress semi-decent for work. The clothing was there for me to choose from. I just needed to do the actual choosing.

Three more shirts later, I finally settled on a slim-fit button-down that accentuated my smaller build. If I were going on a date, this would always be my first choice. And as I spun slowly in front of my mirror, I felt confident and scarily like I was about to meet some hot alpha for dinner. What was wrong with me?

“Lucas, you’re being ridiculous.” I shook my head at myself.

Bolg had spent the entire time sitting on a pillow in front of me, just watching me as I made a mess of the room. He had to think I was being ridiculous, too, because even he was smart enough to know I didn’t need to be all fancy to go to a cosplay gaming event.

“I look fine.” Or at least I was going to keep telling myself until it was time to leave.

With two hours left, that gave me too much time to burn my nervous energy. The event wasn’t in a part of town I was overly familiar with, so I used that as an excuse to open up my laptop and distract myself. I started searching the address. I knew it was a store—that much had been clear in the beginning—but I sort of suspected it was going to be big, one of those that took up an entire city block.

It wasn’t.

It was tiny, and from what I could tell, the store itself had closed permanently, which meant someone had just rented out the building. That was okay though. It was a party, and people hosted parties in hotels or event centers or lodges all the time. Renting out an abandoned store wasn’t an odd choice, but it was a boring one.

What was odd, though, was that when I looked up the event, I found no mention of it anywhere.

I could get to the event page using my ticket, but just typing in the name? Nothing. Not even a hint.

No one talking about it on social media.

No advertisement.

No website.

Nothing.

And that’s when reality hit me. Today was probably going to suck, and I’d spent all this time excited and nervous for something I’d probably spent ten minutes at.

Best-case scenario, I was going to go see a couple of people who thought, “Hey, I got nothing better to do but dress like an orc for the day and show up to this random party.” And that would be it.

But also…if somebody thought it was a good time to get dressed like an orc, maybe they were the kind of people I’d want to hang out with. Going in with a negative attitude was going to assure that I had a bad day, and who needed that? No one.

I couldn’t let my anticipation get too high, because then nothing would meet my expectations. But also, deciding it was going to be a flop and disappointing myself before I even arrived? What good was that doing me?

Nothing.

“Hey, Bolg, let’s go for a quick walk, and then Daddy’s gotta go and see about a green man.”

He put his head back down on the pillow. He had no interest in moving. I didn’t blame him.

---