Introduction
Cedar is not just a peasant, but a peasant’s servant, sold by her parents in exchange for a cow. When orcs arrive in her village, she is not heartbroken to see them murder her vicious master. But when she’s caught fleeing, the leader of the orcs, a foul and scarred beast, decides to take her as his own.
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Lord Kargorr’s only mission is to destroy humankind. Since the ice melted and the grrosek returned to this plane, he is intent on reclaiming his kin’s land. Taking a human concubine is the beginning of his plan to sow an army of half-orcs—but he doesn’t expect how much this one human would challenge him. Soon, she might become more than just a concubine.
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But will Cedar ever truly submit, even when she’s carrying his orcling? Or will Lord Kargorr be the one to bow down when he realizes who she truly is to him?
Chapter 1
Cedar
“Cedar!”
The shrill voice grated on her, like metal scraping over metal. Cedar glanced down at the piglet in her hands, which was still sleeping. She’d been sitting with the mother, a pig she called Bread Pudding, since the sow gave birth.
Nobody else knew the names she gave the animals; it was a private thing she shared with just herself and the creatures she cared for.
“I’m in here,” Cedar called back, returning the piglet to the pile all huddled around their mother’s engorged nipples.
Lissa appeared in the barn doorway, a shadowy figure blotting out the light. Cedar didn’t have to see her face to know that she was scowling mightily. The woman was always scowling, ready to unleash her festering anger.
“Where have you been?” Lissa snarled as she stalked into the barn. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Why?” Cedar asked, dusting the straw off her knees as she stood up.
“There’s no bread, no vegetables, and no meat, either. What are we going to eat for supper?” The gnarled woman pointed at the piglets. “Maybe we should butcher one of those for tonight.”
Cedar put herself between Lissa and the pigs. “They’re much too young,” she told the old woman in her coolest, calmest tone. If she raised her voice, Lissa would read it as insubordination, and then she’d bring out the switch. “Just let them grow up some and we can have a nice suckling pig. Right now there’s barely any meat on them.”
Lissa scoffed. “We need something to eat.”
“I’ll figure it out.” Cedar didn’t know what she could possibly scrounge together, but she’d come up with something. They had plenty of eggs, and she’d found some wild onions and tubers in the woods yesterday. Maybe the bread was stale, but she could dunk it in egg batter and probably save it.
Lissa shook her head and let out a hmph. “We’re going to have to butcher one of your precious little piggies soon. Unless you want to starve like your parents almost did.”
As a younger girl, Cedar was traded for a single cow. That was all. A daughter for a cow—that’s how hungry their family had been. When Lissa had bought her, Cedar knew she would most certainly be a slave for the rest of her life, or until Lissa finally died.
That thought brought her comfort from time to time.
Cedar’s hands clenched at her sides as she remembered how her mother had simply turned her back on her daughter when the deal was done, but she stuffed them in the pockets of her skirt so Lissa couldn’t see. The old lady didn’t miss it, and her eyebrow arched.
“Having a thought?” she asked sweetly, the tone she used whenever she was itching to pull out the switch. It wasn’t so much about punishing Cedar as it was about Lissa’s deep-seated need to inflict pain on others, whether human or animal. Everything was Cedar’s fault, from now into eternity. When Lissa needed someone to hurt, her servant was there.
“Not at all,” Cedar said. “I’ll come and get started on dinner.”
Off in the distance, she heard a metallic ring. It must be Rodan, their neighbor, working on horseshoes.
Lissa took one last look at Bread Pudding and her new litter. “Don’t get attached, Cedar,” she said in an imperious tone. “You know better.”
Of course Cedar knew. The animals never lasted. When Lissa needed extra copper for whatever new thing she fancied that week, they would be down one more pig, as the cows were long gone. Then another pig, until they had nothing left to eat and no more money with which to buy more.
Then it was on Cedar to figure out how to feed them until Lissa came up with another scheme. She cheated merchants whenever she could, making bad deals and selling snake oil—her supposed “herbal remedies.” No one in town liked or trusted her, which meant she had to seize on travelers or peddle her wares in other villages.
Cedar sometimes thought about marrying, perhaps one of the guards who stood on the edge of town to keep watch for orcs. But then he would have to buy her from Lissa, and who would want to take on that cost for a wife of ignoble birth?
It was a hopeless endeavor to think about such things. Sometimes Cedar fantasized about catastrophes that might befall Lissa and bring an end to her reign: an animal attack, perhaps, or an orc raid. Cedar hadn’t known the way life was before the ice melted, but when she overheard some older children role-playing as big monsters and battling each other with sticks and stones, her mother sat her down and told her what she knew.
It had begun far north—that’s where the first sightings were. A great warm spell came over the land, and crops were dying everywhere. The orcs came out of the melted ice, or so the first reports said. Monsters, each like a man that had swallowed another one, with hulking brows and great tusks protruding from their jaws.
An orc was a beast with clawed hands and a hideous face that tore down everything in its path, spreading like a plague. The orcs rode upon saber-toothed cats that had emerged from the prehistoric ice with them. But they were so relatively few in number—only those that had emerged from their frozen tombs—that humanity was able to hold them back. The orcs kept their locations secret and crept out to seize and take before vanishing again.
They had been spotted in the highlands recently, but never came this far south.
As Cedar stepped out of the barn into the fading afternoon, a man shouted far off down the road. Perhaps an escaped horse had broken through a metal gate, and that was the noise she’d heard.
Thinking she might help catch the horse, Cedar jogged to the path that led away from Lissa’s rundown patch of land. Their neighbors were a good way down the lane, with their much bigger plot. And yet, even from here, Cedar could hear old Rodan yelling.
She peered over the bridge that crossed the creek. Another clang rang out, and Cedar paused, torn between going to see what was amiss, in case she could help, and fearing what she might find.
“What’s going on out here?” It was Lissa’s voice again.
“I don’t know.” Cedar heard Rodan cry out, and it was an agonized sound.
Footsteps. She thought the ground was moving underneath her as dozens of pounding feet got closer, and prickles covered her skin. From around the side of Rodan’s house streamed huge, green bodies covered in pelts and bones.
Orcs.
Beside her, Lissa shrieked, and it startled Cedar enough for her to realize she had to move, or she would die. Because when her mother had called orcs monsters, she had understated it.
These were abominations.
With a speed born of pure terror, Cedar ran as fast as she could, away from the sound of Lissa’s screams.
---
Kargorr
His heart was beating fast, so fast, thundering in his ears in that soothing, feverish drum. He relished how it swelled his muscles larger, filling them with his hot blood, until fat veins trailed down his shoulders and hands.
The hands that now held his steel axe aloft. The grrosek hadn’t forsaken all their old ways, but many of them. It was a good trade though, a stone axe for a steel one. Blood flowed much faster, much thicker, and the humans they came across bent under steel like so many stalks of wheat.
Lord Kargorr loved the sound it made, the blade burying itself into flesh, and he had to admit those puny creatures had invented one good thing in the time the grrosek were away.
His horde approached the village from the south, as Kargorr preferred to do. The north was their home, the place they had come from and would always return to, so the humans were never prepared for an attack from the south. The guards had been easy to take down, caught unawares by predators that streamed at them from both sides. But the cries had carried, and other humans came out armed.
Lord Kargorr’s number wasn’t great, but because this was no fortified outpost—merely a village—it would be enough. He and his warriors cut down every man and woman they came across. Survivors didn’t tell stories, didn’t spread the word.
He had torn through the farmer himself because his rage had demanded sacrifice. The rage, that heady, delirious thing that drove all orcs at the core of their beings, urged him to stick his sword through the man’s belly. A shriek followed, and one of Kargorr’s warriors speared a woman like a piece of meat.
It was time to finish this. Kargorr tossed the body down and gestured for his horde to follow. They had left some of their number behind to collect what they could from the villagers’ homes and storage sheds. What they took from this village would feed the parog well for many moons.
He turned a corner around the farmhouse, and a terrible screech greeted him. It was a bony old human woman with a face like a badger, standing at the end of the road.
He would silence her.
But then something caught his eye. A fleeing shape—a woman in a tunic and dirty green skirt—was sprinting away from the house, off into the woods. The pale skin of her calf flashed, and Kargorr lowered the axe he was preparing to throw at her backside. She was sturdy, and clearly in possession of her senses if she was running for her life. In addition to the sound of their screams and the taste of their blood, humans also made good prizes. Others from his own parog had taken humans as slaves, as concubines, or whatever other service a grrosek could imagine for themselves, and those humans performed well once they were broken and cowed.
“Chase her,” he snarled to Orgha, his closest warrior. “Bring her back to me alive.”
While his right hand raced off after the disappearing waif, Kargorr seized the old woman by the throat. It stopped the sound in her lungs, and she thrashed against him.
“Are you her mother?” he ground out, trying to wrap his mouth around the human language. It was so ugly. He opened his grip enough that she could let out a squeak.
“Who?” she croaked.
He shook her like a rat. “The girl.”
“She’s—she’s a servant!”
He cocked his head. From the direction of the woods came a scream, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he found Orgha dragging the woman in the green skirt out of the trees.
“A servant,” he repeated, tasting the unfamiliar word. “You mean a slave?”
“W-w-well, no—”
He’d heard enough. He tightened his hand again, closing in on her windpipe, and she let out a harsh gasp. Orgha returned, dragging the green-skirted woman behind him. When she saw his hands around the old lady’s throat, she stopped cold. Her hardened brown eyes traveled from his chest to his throat, and then to his face. Her dark hair was thick and fierce, and his gut clenched as she scowled at him. Her face was filled with hatred, and the ferocity of it licked his insides.
Kargorr leaned toward her, still holding the woman gasping for breath and clawing at his huge hand where it was wrapped around her neck. He brought some of the girl’s hair to his nose and sniffed her. She jerked back, trying to put space between them, but Orgha held her fast.
There. That smell. The moment it filled his nostrils, Kargorr’s groin ached. It was a bolt of lightning through him, and he knew then that she was his.
He straightened and lifted the frail old woman into the air between them. Then he snapped her neck.
Chapter 2
Cedar
The orc stared right at Cedar as the crunch of bone breaking filled the air between them. Lissa’s head fell to one side and hung limply there, then he tossed her body away like it was little more than a used toy.
Cedar was next. Surely this monster with the dark eyes that glowed red around the edges would do something even worse to her, something more painful and brutal. She could almost taste the blood on her tongue.
That was when Cedar spotted the other orcs headed toward the barn.
“No!” she called out, thinking of Bread Pudding and the new piglets. Cedar tried to pull away from her captor, the one who had chased her into the woods, but his grip was like iron. “Don’t kill them! They’re just babies.”
The orcs ignored her. But this one towering over her, with the scar that ran from his temple on one side of his face to his jaw on the other, where his tusk had clearly stopped a massive blow... he turned to them and shouted something in his deep, growling language. They halted.
“What is in there?” the monster asked Cedar, and she was surprised to hear familiar words fall from his lips. His pronunciation was poor and his accent was thick, but she understood him.
“Pigs,” she said, trying to still her quivering voice. “Just born. Piglets.”
She didn’t think it would work, telling them to stop, but he seemed to be considering it. Then he called something else in his tongue, and the other orcs resumed their march into the barn.
That was it. Now it was Cedar’s turn to meet her end. But the big orc with the long scar didn’t raise his axe to behead her. Instead, the red faded from his eyes until they were pure black again, and he tucked the axe into his waistband before grabbing her by the wrists from the bastard who had caught her. Cedar couldn’t help the scream that came out when he hoisted her up over his shoulder like she was a bag of goods.
Then he turned to the others and called out something in his own tongue. Cedar watched as Bread Pudding was led out of the barn, and two big orcs hefted her up into a cart, followed by her suckling piglets. Cedar tried to free herself as the horses were rounded up and cinched to the cart, but the scarred orc’s grip was like iron.
Then he turned and headed back toward town. Cedar kicked and shouted and clawed, but it was like she wasn’t even there. He was an unforgiving pile of bricks.
All along the road were bodies, people that Cedar had known for the last four or five years. She realized she’d lost track of how long she’d lived with Lissa.
Lissa, who was now dead.
Most unexpectedly, a thrill surged through her. Cedar was finally free of that old tyrant. She was dead. Perhaps she should have felt some kind of sadness, some kind of regret at seeing Lissa’s body broken and limp on the ground, but she didn’t. No, but now she was a prisoner of another kind, with a different pair of shackles.
“Where are you taking me?” Cedar asked, grunting as the big orc’s shoulder dug into her belly.
“You will find out,” was all he said in return.
As they passed down the main road, other orcs began to emerge from the houses loaded up with bags full of goods. They had pillaged for everything they could get their hands on.
Cedar should have mourned these innocent people. They didn’t deserve this, after all. But each of them had looked away as Lissa tormented and beat Cedar day after day, right in the main square, and so for a moment, she let the guilt roll off her and decided she would much rather focus on how she was going to escape her new captor. Who knew what he wanted her for? She needed to get away before she could find out.
But this orc was powerful, as tall as a mountain and hard as a rock, and carried her like she was nothing. She feared that she was now in a far worse prison.
More wagons were hitched to horses and loaded up with goods and livestock, which, besides Bread Pudding, had all been butchered and now lay in piles. This was everything the village had.
Just how many orcs were out there, after all? And what had this one chosen her for?
---
Kargorr
He rather enjoyed the way the human woman’s warm little body rubbed against him as she struggled and squirmed. Her energy didn’t wane nearly as soon as he had expected. She had a lot of fight in her.
His warriors led horses pulling carts full of goods, both of which they’d taken from the village. When they reached the most difficult part of the climb up into the mountains, though, they’d have to abandon them, because the carts couldn’t handle the terrain. Once they released the horses, he would call the rest of the parog to come help transport what remained.
It would be two days before they got that far, which made Lord Kargorr ponder whether it was time to move the parog to somewhere easier to reach, less walled off from the human lands, if he wanted to achieve his mission.
The pig and its piglets would prove complicated to get home, but the human woman had wanted them, and the parog could use the live offspring in the future. A pig roasted over the fire was the perfect thing for a celebration, and he imagined there would be a few of those to come.
Yes, this woman... she was perfect for his purposes. It had become clear to him when he tossed her over his shoulder and she fought back with all her strength. She was resilient, and her body was tough. She would carry many fine orclings for him.
Until now, Kargorr had been much too busy reclaiming land for the grrosek to be bothered with siring offspring. It would draw his attention away from what was important: taking back what the humans had stolen in the thousands of years his own people had been trapped in the ice.
But with this raid, with this woman now hanging limp over his shoulder, Kargorr imagined something else. Many of his warriors had taken humans in the past to help sate their needs, to swallow up the dripping remnants of their rage when they returned from the battlefield. They said there was nothing like returning from the fight and sinking your cock into a perfect cunt.
Perhaps Kargorr could have a vessel to sate his own rage, something soft and giving to fuck when his veins ran too hot and his hands were still covered in blood. A place to bury himself, where he could continue his line and have hardy orclings who grew into fine warriors themselves.
Yes, that’s what this feeling was telling him. It was time.
And if this human was as delicious as he imagined her to be, then he would find another, and another to bear him half-blooded grrosek, who had proven to be excellent fighters and archers. The half-breeds had the gift of far sight, when an orc himself could only see what lay a hundred paces in front of him. They were skilled artisans, too, with a precision to their movements that made them perfect for working with steel. The grrosek had succeeded in making rudimentary steel weapons on their own, until the half-breeds emerged and could hone and sharpen them. They could learn human techniques, too, but remained loyal to their parog, where they had been born.
As the woman finally lost her strength, Lord Kargorr tucked her under his arm instead. She was light, probably too light. He would have to feed her good meat with lots of melting fat to return her to a state where her womb would be ready. He would keep her in his tent, nested deep in his bed of furs, until she was plump and heavy with his horde.
The woman awoke when they began to climb into the hills. Once more she fought, biting and clawing, but to his thick, dense body she was barely more than a kitten. She left a few long scratches on him, but he would teach her later that such behavior was unacceptable.
The sun was heavy on the horizon when they stopped to pitch camp, but he did not let her go even then. She was quick, and he couldn’t have her running. Once the fire was started and the fresh meat cooked, Kargorr forced her down into his lap. She struggled mightily, which had the gratifying effect of the woman rubbing herself all over his groin.
Still, it wasn’t time yet. She needed ripening.
He offered her food, but the woman stubbornly turned her head away and bit her lips to keep them closed. With her dark eyes set as hard as her mouth, he warned her, “I will make you eat if you do not listen.”
Still she didn’t answer, glaring at him with everything she had, so he shoved the meat into her mouth. She fought him, but he was far stronger, and soon the food was between her teeth and halfway down her throat. She choked and struggled until at last she gave in to her hunger. Then she snatched the next piece away from his hands and set about tearing it apart, chewing it with a look in her eye that made sure he knew she didn’t like being told what to do.
Soon the fire died down, and his warriors made their way to their own beds. Kargorr picked her up and carried her to his traveling furs, and when she realized where they were headed, she dug her nails into his hands and bit deep in his arm.
“No!” she shouted, earning smirks from the other orcs. “You can’t!”
But Kargorr’s skin was tough as leather and his hands were calloused from his practice with an axe, and all her ferocity did was irritate him as he tugged her under the furs and pulled her tight against his body. Still, she didn’t stop her wriggling.
Finally, tired from a long day of traveling, Kargorr snapped at her. “Stop. I will not fuck you. Tonight is for resting. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
“For you, maybe,” she snarled back. “I won’t rest until I’m free of you.”
He grinned at the ferocity in her voice, in the clench of her jaw. She would make a fine concubine and mother to his orclings.
---
Cedar
Even after he fell asleep, the big creature did not release his iron grip on her. He had forced food down Cedar’s throat in front of the fire while the other warriors, males and females alike, devoured their meals. Some even had loud sex, right there among them. Cedar tried to close her ears to it, because she knew she needed the sleep if she was going to figure out a way past this monster, but still their cries and moans filled her head.
Her plan was to wait until the massive orc had finally loosened his hold on her in his sleep, and then she would seize the opportunity to pull free. She listened to the slow, steady beat of his huge heart against her ear, feeling each of his breaths against her cheek. He was dirty and reeked of sweat, but she imagined so did she. His body had a musky, heavy scent to it, and she could feel his power in that smell—almost taste it.
Cedar did not expect to fall into a deep slumber herself, pressed tight against the orc’s bare chest, his breaths hypnotizing her. She dreamed the road leading to Lissa’s house ran red with blood, and an orc rose out of it, covered in it, reaching toward her with it dripping from his hands. He had a scar running from one side of his face to the other, ending in a deep groove in his tusk.
But when he grabbed her, he held her close, as if trying to comfort her inside the nightmare he had created.
---
When Cedar awoke, it was daylight and she was strangely cold. When she opened her eyes, she found herself alone under the thick pelt. Instantly, she was wide awake. She remained prone, pretending to sleep as she studied the other orcs. They were occupied with loading goods and packing up camp, all their backs turned to her.
Here was her chance. Rather than getting to her feet and running, though, she slowly climbed out of the bed, pretending to roll it up when a female orc with a shaved head, except for a massive braid, glanced over at her. Then Cedar walked slowly, without urgency—though she wanted nothing more than to sprint away at full speed—through the camp, past wagons being loaded and a pair of orcs arguing. She couldn’t outrun any of these huge monsters, she knew, so she had to capitalize on their distraction.
No one spared her a look as she crept by. The cool wind bit at her exposed legs as she started down the hillside, throwing her thick skirt up into the air. She took one long stride, then another, ready to whisk herself away and find some human town, somewhere else, somewhere she could start over, maybe—when something massive and hot grabbed her wrist.
“Going somewhere?” a voice snarled.
Cedar was brutally yanked backwards, the air thrown from her lungs when she met an unforgiving surface. Slamming into the orc’s chest was like colliding with a rock.
“No,” Cedar coughed out. Who knew how he would punish her for trying to run? So she thought fast, and then said, “I just needed to pee.”
She couldn’t see his face as he stood behind her, holding her captive, but she hoped he was considering her lie. The orc didn’t move or speak, and his hand tightened even further around her wrists.
“Then finish,” he growled, his head leaned down surprisingly close to hers. His hot breath warmed her cold skin. “I will watch you.”
Cedar didn’t know if she had heard him right. “Watch me?”
The big orc released her arm and, when she turned to him, one of his tusks was raised high on his cheek in a smirk. He urged her forward, clearly unwilling to repeat himself.
She had no choice. Cedar did, luckily, have a little water inside her from not having gone all night, so when she peeled down her undergarments, she had something to give. The orc studied her closely, his arms crossed, and for a long time it wouldn’t flow under his watchful gaze. His eyes were dark and stony, but eventually, her bladder released. The orc didn’t even twitch as it poured out of her onto the grassy ground, but her own body was white-hot with humiliation.
When she was finished, Cedar moved to pull up her clothes again, but the orc barked a command: “No.” He stomped toward her and reflexively she stumbled back, tripping over her undergarments. He crouched down and tore them off of her. “None of these.”
“But I’ll freeze!” Cedar knew where they were headed. High above these hills sat the snowy peaks of the mountains the orcs called home, and if she had nothing to wear under her skirt...
“You will not. Neither will you leave again without my permission.”
He grabbed her around the waist again and hauled her up over his shoulder. Her hip was already bruised purple from the day before.
“Please,” she moaned. “Don’t carry me again.”
“I will today,” he answered. “As punishment for trying to escape. Next time, I will have you bound and then dragged along the ground. Remember you are mine now. You will never, ever leave.”
Finally, Cedar wondered if he was right, if she would truly be trapped as his bedwarmer, his slave, from now into eternity.
From one master to another. At least Lissa hadn’t had a cock. At least Lissa hadn’t carried her for days on end like a bag full of vegetables. At least Lissa had given her a cot on the floor from time to time.
Tears bit at the back of her eyes, but Cedar stiffened her lip. She wouldn’t give this beast the gratification.