Chapter Ten
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Jasmine
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Ihonestly have noidea what I'm doing or whether this new life I'm living is real.I mean, how can it possibly be real, right?
But my adventure continues.I started with three orcs in my house, then learned I was fated to be an orc mate, and got my brains fucked right out of my skull—I may have gone in a virgin and come out with a lifetime of experience in twenty-four hours—now I'm their bride, and I'm still not sure if this is a fever dream.
Oh, and my birthmark—my heartfire sign—seems to have reset back to a comfortable spot, at the three mark.All they had to do was claim me as theirs before that one moon was engulfed in darkness.Guess I'm not dying...as long as I stay here, though.
It's now been ten days since I first arrived here.Not once did I think about home.Well, not that there's anything back home anyway.I may have told them I have plenty of mates when I thought "mates" meant "friends," but I lied.
Penny is my only friend, and she's too busy with her family to notice I haven't checked in yet.I'll have to find a way to let her know I'm okay, though.
Oh, and the other thing I left home: a mafia crime lord who will kill me on a whim if he so decides.What kind of life would I live, always on the lookout for when I'm going to be taken out?
I'm just an ordinary, average girl trying to make it to old age.
But I'm not really just an ordinary, average girl right now.
I'm an orc wife.It's not like we had a wedding or anything.I gave them tusks; they give me pleasure and protection from the elements.
And man, are there elements.Everything can kill and will kill me if given a chance.Their land is so desolate, barren, hard, and dry.The curse the warlock laid on the orcs of Kraukug is just so sad and breaks my heart.
Their elder couldn't save everyone, so he saved the bloodlords, the royalty of Kraukug, and hoped for the best.
I also learned the reason they couldn't grow anything and instead lived off something that looked like flour, which they turned into tasteless bread, was because of a pest problem.
Except the pests are giant things that look like bears and would eat anything that grew from the ground.For all the power and strength of the orcs—I know they could fight off those pests with their bare hands—fighting them was not a solution.They multiplied at an obscene rate, apparently.
But now, with their tusks grown in, those same pests cower down and scamper away, never to return again.
I've learned to understand these orcs too.And asked a question I should have asked much sooner.How are they able to speak English?Their elders taught them the language, apparently.Humans are considered a threat to them and their war stance is to learn everything about the enemy especially the language in which they communicate.Lucky for me, I guess.
Alexander showed me the lay of the land and how to plant things.His patience is legendary, and when my first shoot started to show, he said I was gifted, and I beamed the whole day long.
I love gardening.What?It's amazing how everything grows within days here in Kraukug.I planted potatoes and carrots the other day and had a bounty to pick from today.I call them potatoes and carrots because they look like potatoes and carrots, except both are green and, thankfully, edible.
Marquis does nothing but tease me, pushing my boundaries day in and day out.But he's a master in the kitchen, and he taught me how to make salves and tend to the many cuts and wounds they get from just one day on their land.
Tristian teaches me how to fight.He has no patience, and we end up fighting ourselves.He's convinced I'm going to encounter a creature and be killed if I don't know how to defend myself.I do love annoying him, though.
I wear the dresses I was gifted, all neatly laid in a coffer made of rough-spun cloth and completely shapeless.
My shoes are boots, similar to the ones my orcs wear.I haven't thought once about my shoes back home.
