GYDA

Amira was a leader and I a follower. It wasn’t spoken out loud, but during the hour or two we’d spent together, it had become clear.

I suppose I’d always been a follower in life. At home, I usually did everything Mom and my sisters told me to do. After all, I was the youngest out of my siblings, so it had always been like that.

Amira probably became independent far earlier than I had, coming from the other side of town. The poorer side. Her hands also felt so much rougher than mine, a sign she wasn’t unacquainted with hard chores.

Not to say that I was a lazy person, because I wasn’t. My life was always busy, filled with the many tasks I had to fulfill each day. Morning to evening. But as a child, I’d always been free, outside and playing. I wasn’t the son my mother hoped to get as her last child, but I hadn’t led a terrible life under her roof and commands. I knew she loved me and wanted what was best for me and my sisters and nieces.

I held Amira’s hand tightly in mine when she grabbed the curtain and pulled it to the side before the both of us stepped into the unfamiliar.

It was a large room. An immense space which, just like the hallway, was illuminated by torches that hung on the stone gray walls, providing a soft orange light that danced on the decorated walls. But what was very different from the hallway was that, in here, it was packed with orcs. Tall, broad, muscular giants of men they were, all naked from the waist up, showing off mounds of muscles that seemed to be as solid as the room’s rocky interior.

Goosebumps caused my hair to stand up straight now that I was in their presence.

A few of them played the drums, making that familiar deep pounding sound we’d been hearing ever since we went inside the mountain. Some orcs drank from goats’ horns passing as cups, some were conversing, and some were laughing. But they had one thing in common: they were all looking at the group of women standing on the sideline. Watching them with dark, hungry eyes.

The presence of two new women didn’t go unnoticed, either. The second the curtain fell back into place behind my back, a few orcs looked me straight in the eye. My heart went wild, thumping inside my chest as they observed me as I observed them. A few of them ran their tongue over their bottom lips like I always did when Mother had prepared a succulent piece of roast in the oven and hungrily watched it broil.

I felt like one of those roasts right now…

The fact the drums stopped playing only made it worse. I could hear my heartbeat whooshing in my ears.

The orcs did nothing further besides watching and, after a few seconds, they went on with what they were doing before, speaking a language I had never heard before, while their eyes stayed on the women.

“That’s their language,” Amira whispered in my ear. “It is orc-tongue.”

“You’ve heard it before?” I asked.

“Yeah. I heard it when they came over to our house a few times. But I can’t understand any of it.”

Their words were so different from my language. They were harsh and guttural. Maybe it was their big tusks that made talking harder. I could only imagine those things had to be in the way.

How could my mouth fit against those lips when we had to kiss? How could I ever kiss such lips? Goodness, some of them were even more hideous than others. A few didn’t even own their nose anymore. Instead, there was a big, black hole in the middle of their faces. Some had torn ears, some had broken tusks, and some had no tusks at all. One had a scar so big, it stole more than half of his face.

I prayed he wouldn’t be the one to breed with me. Just looking at his monstrous face made me sick and breathless.

I shook my head at my thoughts. “W-what are we supposed to do now?” I asked, my legs trembling. The orcs hadn’t given us any instructions. In the back of the room stood a large table with at least a hundred chairs but nobody sat at it. I really wanted to sit but didn’t dare to suggest it.

“This is my first time in Asclan Peaks too, remember?” Amira replied. “Let’s just stand over there.”

She meant we should stand beside the other women. They probably waited for instructions as well. That was what my mother had ordered me to do, anyway. She’d said I should wait for the orcs to lead us.

“Yeah,” I answered. But it was then that I noticed Olivia stood among them as well. “But not over there. Let’s stand on that side.” I pointed to a spot nearby, a little further away from the women.

“Sure,” Amira said. “The one with the pretty black curls is the bitch, huh? The one that cut off your hair?” she asked, looking at Olivia with daggers for eyes. “You want me to pay her a visit?”

“No! As much as I dislike her at this point, I don’t want the others to hear what she did. I know a few other women by face and if our mothers hear it was her that did this to me, there will be a war between our families.”

“You’re too kind. I would have taken her down if I were you.”

I chuckled nervously. “She’s just a kid.”

We walked over to my chosen spot and leaned against the wall, waiting. The wall was cold against my back, but I was too overheated to get cold. Sweat trickled down my forehead and made my palms slippery.

It then came to my attention that the orcs’ hair was long and looked well taken care of. In fact, their haircuts were surprisingly beautiful. Some of them had hair so long it reached their hips. It was full and shiny and black, with decorative braids that looked better than my braiding work! I suddenly got the feeling Olivia had been right: these men really seemed to have a thing for hair. I swallowed a big lump in my throat, thinking about my pathetic cut.

Oh, crap. I was so fucked. Olivia had ended my life by cutting my hair! Maybe I shouldn’t have been so weak and should have cut hers too! It wasn’t fair she had done this to me.

“Are you okay, hun?” Amira asked.

I took a big breath. I shouldn’t get a panic attack at this moment. I should focus. I shouldn’t let Olivia see I was in this weak state.

“Y-yeah,” I said with a trembling voice.

The room went silent when the orcs stopped talking. I took another big breath, and as I exhaled, a few orcs I hadn’t seen up till now stepped to the front. They were taller and broader than any other orc I’d seen. One of them—the middle one—walked up front.

My breath hitched in my throat when I noticed his eyes found mine and stayed on me. He looked at me with a stern frown carved into his dark-gray skin. One of his eyes was black as coal while the other was lighter, more like a light shade of brown, but they both twinkled with the torchlight reflecting in them. His lighter eye, the left one, had a scar running over it from his forehead to his cheek.

He was enormous and not only in height. He was at least twice as broad as I was, maybe even three times!

The fact that every other orc went silent and bowed his head in this man’s presence, made me realize he was their leader.

Just like them, he wore leather pants and was half-naked from the waist up. His pants were tight and snug around his body, inviting my eyes to the place between his legs, where I found an ample bulge. I silently gasped while looking at it, wondering if this was that thing Fiona had told me about. The part of him that held his seeds, the essence to create a new life, sown into my womb. His manhood didn’t seem to be shaped like a finger, though. More like a cushion.

I swallowed as I tore my eyes from his crotch.

He had the longest hair of all the other orcs. The dark strands were bound in a half braid and the ends reached his muscular, big thighs. His hair was long, thick, and as black as his eyes were. He possessed a beard as well, something that seemed common among orcs.

The man was hideous.

Ugly enough that just looking at him caused shivers to run over my back. But at least he still had a full nose, as well as two perfectly shaped pointy ears, and two intact tusks that curled around his thin gray bottom lip.

I felt Amira’s fingers curl around mine and tightly gripped her hand. There was a tension in the room that made me wish for their horrible music to start again. This silence was even worse.

No music came, but the silence was broken as the leader began to speak…

.