by Pixie Unger
“Like you ever need a reason to have extra books,” I teased. “How did you learn to read?”
“Badly,” he chuckled. “Get clothes, we will get food.”
I smirked. “I’m wearing more clothes than you are.”
He nodded solemnly, then smirked.
I found a clean jumpsuit and marveled that I could hardly wait for wool so we could start making real clothes again. The scaled-down orc clothes didn’t feel like they counted. As soon as I was dressed, Iago grabbed a takeout breakfast from the cafeteria in the school and we headed out to the construction site with the morning workers.
Iago led me into the barn so we could have a quiet corner to eat and talk.
“I have never asked, Mina, but now I need to know. Where were you before you were brought here?”
I looked down at my bowl of breakfast hash and tried to think about how to best answer that.
“You lived in that building, yes? Were you hunting orcs?”
I tempered my response with, “I was just trying to stay alive. I don’t think I ever killed anyone.”
“Alright.” He was quiet for a moment before he asked, “Did anything bad happen to you?”
“Besides having the whole world break, you mean?”
He gritted his teeth. “Were you beaten or raped, I mean.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to know if I should be hunting the other people who were living in the—”
“No!” I snapped. “You leave them alone!”
Iago watched me for a long moment, waiting for the fear and adrenaline to drain away before he nodded. “You were caught looking for food.”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Were you a hunter? Did you set snares?”
“Just tell me what you want to know, Iago,” I ordered, feeling exasperated. “You’re being very patient with your questions, but I’m not up to a morning interrogation.”
“There will not be fruit here until the spring,” he explained. “Romeo has work. Mac has work. I need to know if you will hunt with me or stay with Tybalt.”
“Hunt for people or hunt for food?” I wondered.
“I would never take you hunting for people. I don’t want you anywhere near the sort of people I hunt.” He gave me a long look to make sure that had sunk in before he continued. “Not all humans who want to eat meat can actually hunt for it.”
I nodded. “I can. I’ve set small snares. I can fish and I can clean fish and rabbits. I’m not great at plucking birds, but I’ve done it. Plus we will be able to grow some vegetables in the house.” Still, I wanted to know, “What will Tybalt do?”
“I don’t know,” Iago admitted.
“He told me an interesting story about how he ended up on Earth,” I stated, hoping to get more information.
“We don’t speak of that. Ever. If you want to keep him, that is important,” he insisted sharply.
“Why?”
This time it was Iago’s turn to ignore the question and concentrate on his food. I had long since reached the point where I had given up on getting any answers when he said, “They didn’t just send anyone. We were sorted first. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped keep some of the really bad orcs away. No one came who wasn’t screened.”
“Because they might be really bad people,” I suggested.
He shrugged. “There would be no way to know, now. We can’t get their records from home, so the ones in charge might kill the person rather than risk it.”
“Oh.” My mind was racing. I had no idea why Tybalt was here, and there was no way to find out. “Shit.”
Iago reached out and put his hand on my arm. “Mina? You are safe. It took us almost ten years to get here. We all grew up since we left.”
“You don’t look old enough to have spent ten years traveling,” I mused. “I guess I don’t know how orcs age.”
Iago shrugged. “Slept through some of it. Spent time learning how to speak your language, or at least trying. I rushed to get better when I met you. There was lots of school. If you don’t want to hunt, I would not be afraid to leave you with Tybalt.”
“You go away for weeks at a time,” I accused.
“Not anymore. Now I would just go hunting small things to eat. The more we can do on our own, the more Warden will leave us alone.”
“Until we have a random family of alpaca farmers living across the yard from us,” I grumbled.
“No one will move that close if you say no.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “Women who … accept us get special treatment. There is a whole group of them who had orc children living by the river. The Mothers. You don’t have to have a son,” he hurried to add, “you are helping humans take care of themselves. That is important. We can’t keep you as, um, pets.”
“I need some time to get used to being out here before more people move in,” I admitted.
Iago started looking cagey. “What if it is Erika?”
I laughed. “You were there last night! Erika doesn’t want to live in the barn!”
He nodded a little. “Maybe a house on the other side of the orchard?”
“Is that already decided? Doesn’t she get a say?”
“It would be helpful if she agreed. Warden wants to start a town here,” he replied. “He wants someplace safe for Jo to live. There are more human women choosing us, but that is hard for some of the humans to see. More human women than human men now. Better to have safe towns of humans who don’t hate us.”
“You want me to talk her into it,” I growled.
“No,” Iago denied, shaking his head. “Lucky will talk her into it. I just want you to let him.”
As I finished eating, I wondered how exactly he would do that. Was it going to be a case of persuasion, or one of him insisting? Then Iago took me to see where the orcs were installing my stove and finishing cobbing the walls. After that, we walked about a mile through the trees, then came out on a second construction site at the hole-in-the-ground stage.
“This place is a lot bigger than ours,” I noted.
Iago nodded. “Ours can be bigger later,” he offered. “If you need.”
I just shook my head. “When do the solar panels for our house arrive?”
Iago gave me a confused frown.
“The solar-powered stove. Isn’t Romeo working on that?”
That didn’t help with the confusion. “Sun-powered stove,” he corrected carefully. “It is … orc tech. It will be inside the oven.”
“Huh. That’s cool,” I marvelled. “Or, I guess, technically it’s hot.”
He didn’t get the joke. I swear I am wasted on these boys.
----
It was interesting, building with Tybalt. He often didn’t pick the right words, but he always paid really close attention to the fine details. Like the bottle walls; I had no idea how he had found so many colours and shapes of bottles to use, but the walls were effectively art installations. Everyone I asked agreed that Tybalt had designed them and bullied the builders into arranging the bottles carefully.
The closer we got to moving in, the more his pride in his project showed. It was the little things, like that he had found tomato seedlings for the greenhouse, but had them in hanging planters growing upside down. Then he found me strawberry plants that had different colours of flowers. While I was looking for pots, he had been finding gorgeous tile for the floor.
It was the last day of building, and the rest of the builders had left in the shuttle hours ago, though Tybalt and I were still putting things away. My dishes were random, but they went into the cupboards. There was a pot rack for my pans, and boxes of plant books for the shelves. Everything had a place, we just needed to put stuff away.
I remembered Mom saying “No man has ever been shot while washing the dishes” when she was talking about all the things she loved about Dad. Yeah, helping around the house might not be a classic turn on, but it seemed to run in my family. Tybalt just being here, taking the time to help, felt comforting an
d loving to me.
“Didn’t color the walls,” Tybalt pointed out, then added, “yet. Can make your sleeping room dark again, if you want.”
I rocked back on my heels and looked around instead of continuing to stare at him. “The light is nice here. Dark is good for sleeping, but I’ll have to see how that goes.”
He hummed and passed me another book.
I took it, but didn’t shelve it. “Tybalt? You did an amazing job on this place. I know it was a lot of work. Thank you.”
He gave me a shy smile, which was still oddly out of place around the tusks. Somehow I had learned the difference. I leaned over and kissed his lips before sitting back up to watch him in the failing light. The house was perfect, the sun was setting, flooding the place with warm orange light, and Tybalt was incredibly handsome, bathed in gold.
He hummed at me. “Tired?”
“A little,” I admitted.
“Time to go?”
“We missed the shuttle, Tybalt,” I pointed out.
He just shrugged. “Iago will come for us when you are ready.”
I thought about Jo talking about surveillance. “How will he know?”
Tybalt dug in a pocket and pulled out a one inch or so cube. “I will call him.”
I looked around the place. “Do we have lights?”
He nodded, then he stood up and walked over to the stove. The pipe was gone and there was a touch screen with symbols I didn’t recognize. “Touch here.”
I poked at the place he was pointing and the glass bottles in the walls lit up. I gasped. “It’s beautiful!”
He grinned at me. “Can make it brighter or not.”
I shook my head. “This is perfect!” I assured him, putting a hand against his chest. I could feel his heart jump beneath my palm. “You did so good!”
He just watched me with twinkling eyes as I wandered around looking at all the lights. All the glass was shades of blue and sea green, and it was like walking through an aquarium or a tasteful kaleidoscope.
My room didn’t have a normal window, but it had a whole wall of bottle mosaic and a wall of windows that opened into the greenhouse. There was a skylight over where the bed would be. The bathtub was more like a small tiled swimming pool in the greenhouse space. There were already large tropical plants growing around it. “How did you get those?” I asked.
Tybalt licked his lips. “Romeo traded to get them. They came from a warmer place.”
“I bet.” I pointed at one. “That’s the only one I know the name of. It’s a delicious monster plant.”
He looked worried and shook his head. “No. Don’t eat.”
I giggled. “You’re right, not a food plant, but that’s what it’s called. Or a Swiss cheese plant. It’s just the name. But it’s big and green and beautiful.”
“Romeo will be pleased you like.”
Romeo wasn’t there, being all sweet and getting my panties wet. “I know that Romeo has been working really hard getting the stove to run, but I'm pretty sure the plants were your project.”
Tybalt considered that. “Couldn’t do it except that Romeo knew about suns. Orcs want that. I’m surprised he got sent.”
I looked around the place. I kind of wanted to fuck the guy into the floor. “It’s a shame there aren’t any blankets.”
He perked up at that. “Yes, I have blankets here,” he replied as he walked over to a stack of boxes. “You pick your blankets first. The others stay in—” he kicked the crate. “—for family nest. Come out at night.”
“You know,” I teased. “The best way to see what it’s like to sleep in my room, is to sleep in my room. Do you think we can?”
He stopped moving and his expression froze. “You want the others to come?” he asked slowly, as though he was expecting me to tell him to leave.
I smiled and broke out my flirty voice. “No. But we should probably tell them we’ll be staying here tonight.”
Tybalt looked more cagey than anything in response to that, which was as startling as a bucket of cold water.
“We don’t have to. We can go home if you want,” I offered, trying to keep my voice light. Just because this whole thing was really working for me didn’t mean Tybalt felt the same way. He had wanted me in the orchard, but that was then. This was now. Things could have changed.
Looking pained, he admitted, “Might not be allowed to stay. No one is here to watch.”
“Good?”
He shook his head. “What if you want me to stop?”
That made me lean away from him. “If I want you to stop, wouldn’t you just stop?”
“Yes!” he snapped. Then he sagged. “But you couldn’t make me.”
“Tybalt?” I said quietly. “Making you stop is your job.”
He blinked at that, and I went back to shelving the books.
“Mina?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
I shook my head. “I’m just understanding that you have different expectations.” I studied a book about propagation by grafting and sighed. “Should I be afraid of you?”
“No,” he replied softly.
“Are you afraid of you?” I whispered back.
“Sometimes,” Tybalt admitted. “I don’t want to do this wrong.”
“Alright. Should we ask Iago to come get us? Or do you want to stay some more?”
He took the little cube out of his pocket and moved to the other side of the house to call the guys. There was a long, hushed conversation in orcish with all of the guys putting in their two cents. Eventually, Tybalt came back and helped carry out the empty book boxes.
“There were a few blank books in that box,” I noted.
That got me a sheepish grin. “Shh! Don’t tell!”
I laughed, but it was followed by a yawn. “Sorry,” I murmured. “What was the verdict? Are we staying or going?”
“Your choice.”
I nodded. “Grab the blankets. We can just sleep. It’ll still count as the first night in the new house.”
I ended up snuggled against Tybalt, watching the faintly flickering light from the bottle walls. I was almost asleep when he whispered, “I want to touch you, Mina.”
I wasn’t awake enough for conversation. Why couldn’t he have said that an hour ago? I wondered to myself, but I hummed my agreement.
“I want to know what your skin feels like,” he continued. “Your legs are so soft against mine. I want to know the rest of you.”
“That would be nice,” I agreed. I opened my coverall and pressed his huge warm hand against my stomach.
“You should rest,” he protested, but didn’t move his hand.
“Mmmhmm,” I agreed.
We nodded off in a tangle like that, and I slept well. Right up to the point where some strange orc yanked Tybalt off of me in the morning. I panicked and screamed, “Let him go!” Then I was even more surprised when he did.
The attacker growled at me and I instinctively just screamed back at him, which made him step back. Tybalt turned and stood between me and the guy, helpfully zipping up my coveralls, drawing my attention to it having been a tits-out encounter.
“He is worried because we are alone,” Tybalt explained.
“Yes! We’re alone in my room! In my house! What is he even doing here?” I demanded.
“Finishing the house,” Tybalt replied gently.
“He should have knocked,” I grumbled. “He shouldn’t be here.”
“They will wait outside,” Tybalt said, then the orc left. Orcs left, as in more than one. How many of them were on a work crew? Too many.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t think of what would happen when they got here.”
Tybalt leaned down and pressed his face to mine. “They are here and they will wait outside.”
“Thank you.” I hugged him then. Tybalt was warm, and I just felt safe with his arms around me.
I jumped when someone pounded on the front door. “Go away,
asshole,” I muttered.
“Me or him?” Tybalt asked hesitantly.
I chuckled and hugged him tighter. “Him,” I assured.
“I will tell him to go.”
“But you’re warm and that means I have to let go,” I protested.
Tybalt chuckled. “They might have brought breakfast.”
Reluctantly, I let go, making Tybalt laugh a little harder. “Jo’s going to be mad, I’m messing up the work schedule,” I groaned.
“She can be mad. We can eat. They can come back later,” he assured me as he got me to sit back down on the blankets.
“Thank you.”
He sort of snorted in agreement and passed me some sort of bun. It was a little crumbly and had a vaguely nutty flavour. “Thank you,” I repeated.
He nodded. “They think you are keeping me now,” he observed.
“Of course I’m keeping you.”
His eyes went wide and he beamed at me. “Really?”
I laughed and took the water bottle he offered me. “Yes, really.”
“I didn’t know that,” he admitted.
I grabbed him by the shirt. I would have hauled him in for a kiss, but in reality he was my anchor, and I pulled myself closer to him. Which is how I ended up straddling him, grinding slightly against his lap.
“Mina!” he whined.
I groaned and pressed my forehead to his neck. “Sorry.”
Tybalt gave a frustrated roar. “You don’t want them to see.”
I looked around. Unless someone came right up to the house to press their face against the glass and peer into the dark house, they weren’t going to see anything. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. “They won’t.”
That got me a worried look.
I sighed. “Yeah, okay. That’s a bit—” I stopped abruptly as he unzipped my jumpsuit. He nuzzled my neck and licked at my breasts. I wiggled out of my coveralls, keeping the blanket over my shoulders. Tybalt watched my face as he ghosted his fingers over my skin. I crawled back into his lap and wrapped the blanket around both of us. Tybalt was stroking my cheek when he whimpered, “Please?” and I pushed down his pants.
“I wanted you so bad last night,” I admitted.
“I didn’t know,” Tybalt gasped. “I wanted you, too.”
