Chapter One
The bar was at the edge of a border town, the kind of place where nobody asked questions and everyone minded their own business. Audrey Griffin pushed through the heavy door and made her way to the back corner booth, where her crew waited.
Tyler, Cole, Owen, Natalie, and Shauna looked up as she approached. She slid into the worn vinyl seat across from them.
These five people were her family now. The only family she had left.
Tyler had been with her the longest, teaching her how to hunt when she was just an angry fifteen-year-old runaway.
Cole and Owen were brothers who’d lost their parents during the orc war and had spent the last decade making the green beasts pay for it.
Natalie was their tracker, sharp-eyed and deadly with a rifle.
Shauna handled their communications and logistics. She kept them one step ahead of both human authorities and the Orc Council.
Tyler raised his beer bottle, and the others followed suit.
“To ten years of hunting and finally finding the bastards.”
Glass clinked against glass. Audrey brought her bottle to her lips. Her hand shook just slightly. The beer was cheap and bitter, but she drank it anyway.
Natalie leaned forward, her elbows on the scarred wooden table.
“I can’t believe we did it. How did you finally confirm it was Morgath the Skullreaper’s horde again?”
Audrey set her bottle down.
“The skull helmet was the key. Only one orc captain is known to wear a massive horned skull, and I spent the last six months tracking down witnesses from different states, piecing together where his horde moved during the war.”
Owen nodded.
“We found an old trucker who’d seen the horde passing through Wyoming, heading north toward Montana. The timing matched.”
“Three days after my family was killed in Colorado,” Audrey said.
Cole tapped his finger against the table.
“We cross-referenced with reported orc sightings and found that Morgath’s horde had moved through Colorado during that exact week fifteen years ago.”
Shauna pulled out a small notebook, flipping through pages covered in her neat handwriting.
“We also found a survivor from a town twenty miles from Audrey’s who remembered the skull-masked orc leading a raid. She said she’d never forget it. The skull had these massive, curved horns that made him look like death itself.”
Audrey took another sip of her beer.
“The final confirmation came two weeks ago, when we tracked down a former soldier who’d fought Morgath’s horde near the Canadian border. He’d heard them speaking about their journey north from what they called the southern territories.”
Tyler leaned back into the booth, satisfaction shimmering in his green eyes.
“The pieces fit. Morgath’s horde carved a path from Colorado to Montana during the war, and Audrey’s family was right in that path.”
The bar was loud with the sounds of pool balls cracking and a jukebox playing old country songs. The other patrons paid them no attention, but they still tried to keep their voices low.
Audrey let the noise wash over her, as her mind drifted back fifteen years ago.
She’d been ten years old, small for her age, when her parents had shoved her into the storm shelter in the basement of theirhouse. She could still hear her mother’s voice, tight with terror, telling her to stay quiet no matter what she heard. Her parents were frantic. They couldn’t find Danny, her older brother. They ran back upstairs to search for him while she waited.
A few minutes later, the screaming started.
