Page 1 of Loved By the Orc

PROLOGUE

HARMONY

“What’s wrong, baby? What happened to make you so upset?” Tark frowned down at me, his bushy black eyebrows pulled low with concern.

“What makes you think I’m upset?” I looked up at him briefly—it was a long way to look. Tark is a full-blooded Orc, which means he’s over eight feet tall. I’m human, and tall for a woman, but the top of my head still barely reaches his elbow.

“You’re here early, for one thing. And I can always tell by the way you hold your mouth—and how tight your voice sounds,” Tark rumbled.

He has this deep, gravely voice that can sound absolutely terrifying when he feels like someone is threatening my safety. But it can also be incredibly soothing when he’s being sweet—which he always is with me.

My boyfriend is one big, green flag, and I’m not just saying that because his skin is literally olive green, (even though it is.) He also has tusks curving up from the teeth in his lower jaw and golden eyes that glow in the dark. He looks absolutely terrifying to be honest—I was so scared I fainted the first time I saw him. But the way he’s so sweet andkind to me, especially when I’m feeling down, is what drew me to him and it’s what I consider to be his defining characteristic.

He was giving me that worried look again and part of me just wanted to melt into his arms. But there was another part—a hard part—that wanted to make it on my own. A part of me that was still afraid to take the comfort I knew he would offer me if I just let my guard down.

“I’m fine,” I said, brushing past him and walking into his living room. I always felt like a kid in a fairytale when I spent time in his house—which is located off of Main Street in the magical town of Hidden Hollow.

All the furniture is too big for me—the chairs are so high I have to clamber onto them and so deep that if I sit all the way back my legs dangle like a little girl’s. The coffee table comes up to my pelvis and I sink into the carpet up to my ankles—it’s extra deep. Also, the fireplace is big enough to roast an entire cow in—not that Tark uses it for that. He’s a vegetarian, if you can believe it.

“Babygirl, please—talk to me,” he rumbled, coming up behind me and putting one massive hand gently on my shoulder. “Come on, what happened?”

I turned to face him.

“Nothing—I told you.”

He frowned and his face was suddenly scary, reminding me that he only showed his sweet side to me.

“Was it that asshole of a human boss again?” he growled and this time his voice had taken on a menacing tone. “Was he bothering you?”

“No,” I said, which was a total lie. It absolutelywasmy boss, Mr. Irving Price, the Director of Operations at Bentley Pharmaceuticals and my direct supervisor. He’d belittled me in front of several other people in my department that day and called me “stupid, and fat” which was really hard to swallow.

Naturally, on paper, that kind of thing wasn’t allowed at Bentley—at least not according to the HR Department. But in reality, Mr. Pricewas the CEO’s brother and he could pretty much get away with doing or saying whatever he damn well pleased.

In fact, it was thanks to Mr. Price that I’d found my way to Hidden Hollow in the first place. As I stared up at my Orc boyfriend, I couldn’t help remembering the very first time I’d ever seen him…

It was just another Tuesday at Bentley Pharmaceuticals…which meant that it was just another day of abuse for me. I was supposed to be an administrative assistant but my position was closer to that of office slave. Though maybe it might be more accurate to say I was my boss’s whipping boy. Or girl—you get the idea.

“Miss Ward, come here!”

Just hearing my voice called in that nasty tone made my stomach drop and my heart start thudding unhappily in my chest. I knew I had done something wrong again—or if not, Mr. Price, my boss, wouldmake upsomething that I had done wrong…some rule I’d never heard of that I had broken or some task he’d never actually assigned me had gone undone and now I was in trouble because of it.

“Yes, Mr. Price?” I asked, hurrying into his office.

My boss was sitting in his high-backed chair, rigid as a poker, as he stared down at a pile of papers on his desk. He was a thin man—my grandma would have called him “skinny as a string bean” and he was going bald up top. Because of this, he wore his hair in a classic comb-over with four skinny strands of dark brown hair scraped over the shiny dome of his skull. He had on reading glasses, which were perched on the very tip of his long, bony nose and his watery blue eyes were glaring angrily at me.

“Miss Ward,whatis this?” he demanded, gesturing to the papers on his desk.

“Er…those are the reports you asked for,” I said, wondering what I could have done wrong now. I had stacked them neatly and stapled them in the top middle of each sheet, like he demanded. When I had first started working for him, he’d thrown a fit because I stapled some documents in the top left corner. He demanded that I reprint all of them and “staple them correctly.” Ever since, I’d been careful to get that little detail right.

“These reports,” he said, glaring at me as he held one out. “The Rainard report is on top. And then right under that, the Connor report.”

“Uh…” I shook my head, mystified. “I’m not sure I understand what’s wrong.”

“Whyaren’t theyalphabetized?”Mr. Price demanded. “C comes before R in the alphabet—surely even someone asstupidas you knows that, Miss. Ward!”

“Alphabetized?” I repeated, shaking my head. “But Mr. Price, you never said?—”

“I did! I told you the minute you became my secretary that I wanted all the reports alphabetized!” he shouted, his narrow face going red. He began ripping the pages apart and throwing them on the floor around his desk. “How can you not understand such a simple thing? Howstupidcan you be?”

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