With shaking hands, I pull it on. It’s too damn tight in the chest and it reaches my knees like a dress. The one place I excel, my boob size, makes the tunic uncomfortable, but it’s dry and clean.
“Vek, lo faikon.” LB motions me to follow her.
After leaving the storage room, she turns down a side tunnel much narrower than the main tunnels and with a lot less light. There’s a dark wood door cut to fit the surrounding stone perfectly. LB flings the door open to a dark chamber, pushes me inside, and slams the door shut.
I spin around and pound against the wood while looking for a handle or even a crack in the door, anything which I can use to pull it open.
Terror races through me in this dark, unknown space. The lack of noise heightens my anxiety. Anything and anyone could be inside, watching me…targetingme. Or perhaps I’m alone and standing on a precipice to a deep pit. One step could be my last.
A scratching sound makes me whirl around and raise my fists,ready to strike whoever is here. More than once, I spin in another direction, listen, and then nothing happens. I reach for the door and my fingers brush against cool stone. I inadvertently moved away from the door.
With fear as my companion, I sink to the floor, pull my knees to my chest, and wait…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ATOX IM GRAK
“Where is she?” I demand of Daelix, who guards the entrance to Mount Racha’s tunnel system where nearly a third of my people live. The moon is high in the sky and only six fires burn at the base of the mountain, with a few dozen people drinking and talking.
“The outsider is in your chambers, Atox. I saw to her needs as I would any helpless animal,” my sister says behind me. I did not spot her at any of the fires. But I didn’t look for her either. Ossa is usually in her chambers with her younglings by now. I should have expected she’d ambush me like this.
“Your tone and words teeter on disrespect, Ossa.”
“Sojek told me what happened.”
“Did he return with the tools the moxxel owed us?”
“Yes. Did you think he wouldn’t?”
Why do all the females in my life think they have permission to talk to me thus?
“Sojek is responsible for his actions and has been dealt with accordingly.”
“The human?—”
“Will be my mate.” As grak, I have the privilege to interrupt, but others do not.
Nor do they have the right to judge me. As Ossa is doing. The ridges of her brow lift and her nose flares. She’s displeased with my choice of mate.
Taking a human female to give me younglings had been my idea, as a way of saving our species from extinction, but the humans had the final decision of which female they’d give me. I’d seen my female before, in Pen’Kesh.
Physically, she appealed to me more than any other human female I’d seen. I’d considered bargaining for her that very day, but then Ryko disobeyed orders and the human known as Lily went missing which in turn upset the humans. I was in no position to demand the female who’d caught my eye with her courage and curves.
And there arises the uncertainty surrounding this female. Why did the humans choose her for me?
Did they see me watching her? Did they think she would be in a better position to spy on me and my warriors if I wanted her?
I must reserve judgment of her, give her time to prove herself. To prove she is not here to spy for the humans.
“She smells, she’s ignorant of our ways, speaks in a strange tongue, and is too small to birth orc younglings,” Ossa continues complaining. I’m only half-listening to her, because what she says doesn’t change what must be. “Younglings that will be half-human, brother.Ifthey survive birthing.”
“My younglings will survive. And you will not speak like this of my female to others, is that clear, Ossa? She and others like her are our future. We have so few younglings now and even fewer adult females for all the males we have. Warriors who deserve a female. One day your Sojek and Duvik will want females as well.”
“But a human, Atox?”
“If a human is good enough for me, then one will be good enough for your sons.”
Her mouth snaps shuts, but she grinds her tusks against her upper lip.
