Page 1 of Claimed By the Mountain Man Orc
Chapter 1
Mazie
There'sacertainkindof silence you only experience in the deep of winter.
The kind that feels like the whole forest is holding its breath, waiting for something to disturb the perfect crystalline stillness. Every branch droops heavy with snow. Every pine needle is encased in ice that catches the weak afternoon light and throws it back in fractured rainbows.
I pause on the trail, breath puffing white in the cold air, and adjust the camera strap around my neck. The leather has gone stiff in the cold, biting into my skin even through the thermal layer beneath my parka. My fingers are already stiff inside my gloves, the supposedly "arctic-rated" ones that promised to keep me warm in any condition.Liars.But I press record anyway, watching the little red light wink back at me like a knowing eye.
"Okay, listeners," I say, pitching my voice low and steady the way I've practiced a thousand times. "This is Mazie Cole withThe Cryptid Chronicles, coming to you live from the base of OrcMountain—home to more legends, tall tales, and blurry photos than any other spot in southern Appalachia. Today, I'm here to find out if there's more to those stories than moonshine and imagination."
My words echo faintly in the stillness, swallowed by the snow-laden trees. No wind rustles the branches. No birds call out warnings or territory claims. Just me and the crunch of snow under my boots, each step breaking through the frozen crust with a sound like shattering glass.
I grew up not far from here, in a little town that pretends monsters don't exist.
But I saw one.
Once.
It was winter then too. I was ten, stomping through the woods behind my grandparents' cabin with a stick I pretended was a sword, when I spotted it—huge, broad-shouldered, moving through the trees with a grace that no human that size should have. Green skin that seemed to absorb the winter light. Shoulders wide enough to block out the sky.
I ran home screaming, my sword forgotten in the snow, my heart hammering so hard I thought it would burst. My parents called it a dream, their voices tight with the kind of patience reserved for children's wild imaginings. The kids at school called me Monster Girl for years, the nickname following me through elementary school like a curse.
Now? I call itmotivation.
I've built a whole career around finding the truth, peeling back the curtain between folklore and fact. My podcast has forty thousand subscribers now, people who tune in every week to hear me chase shadows and rumors through forgotten places. Most of the time, it's raccoons in garbage cans and hunters with too much imagination and too much whiskey. But a few times—just enough times to keep me searching—I've found things thatdidn't fit neatly into the world I was raised to believe in. A set of tracks in Oregon that belonged to no known animal. A pattern of livestock deaths in Montana that followed moon cycles. Strange lights over the Nevada desert that my expensive equipment couldn't explain away.
And if anything's real, it's the creature I saw that day.
The snow deepens as I climb, each step requiring more effort. The trail—if you can call it that—winds between ancient hemlocks whose branches form a cathedral ceiling overhead. My breath comes harder, each inhale burning, and each exhale adding to the frost gathering on my scarf. The temperature's dropping fast as the sun slides toward the western ridges, and even through my insulated boots, I can feel the cold seeping in, stealing sensation from my toes.
Then I see them.
Footprints.
I freeze mid-step, one boot hovering above the snow. Not animal tracks—too long, too heavy, the edges too clean. The shape is vaguely human, but the stride length is... impossible. No human takes steps that long, not even someone over seven feet tall. And the depth suggests weight that shouldn't exist outside of bear or elk.
My heart kicks up, shifting from the steady rhythm of exertion to one of frenzied excitement. I crouch, pulling off one glove despite the cold, brushing snow away with numb fingers to get a better look. Five toes, wide splay, deep indent—whoever made these weighs a lot more than I do. The snow within the print is compressed into ice, meaning these tracks are recent but not fresh. Maybe an hour old. Maybe less.
"Gotcha," I whisper, and my voice sounds strange in the silence—too loud, too human.
I follow the trail uphill, my pulse racing. Every few steps, I glance up, scanning the trees for movement, for any shift inshadow or light that might betray a presence. The prints veer toward the river, half-covered by drifting snow that blows across the trail in serpentine patterns. I can hear the water now, a low rushing sound.
Something catches my eye.Movement.A shadow gliding between the pines, there and gone so quickly I almost convince myself I imagined it.Almost.
I lift the camera with trembling hands, zooming in, the lens catching a glimpse of something greenish against the gray-white world. Broad shoulders that taper to a narrow waist. A flash of something pale—tusk or bone or tooth.
It turns.
Eyes meet mine across the distance—gold and bright and far too intelligent for any animal I've ever studied.
Before I can think, before rational thought can override instinct, I'm moving. Running.Chasing.
My boots slip on hidden ice, my camera bumps against my chest with each stride, but I don't slow down.I can't slow down.
Branches whip against my coat with sounds like small explosions. The prints are fresh now, clearer, leading straight toward the water. I can see where he—it—whatever—moved through the underbrush, breaking branches that still weep sap, leaving disturbed snow that hasn't yet settled.
"Wait!" I shout, like an idiot, because I'm talking to a legend, calling out to a myth as if it might respond in English.
