I plaster on my brightest smile, the one I've perfected over eight years of managing increasingly impossible situations. It's the smile that's survived bridezillas in white dresses, corporate merger negotiations that threatened to combust, and that particularly memorable evening when the mayor decided the ice sculpture was a suitable opponent for hand-to-hand combat. The expression stretches across my face with unyielding determination, all teeth and professional charm, even as every muscle in my jaw screams in protest at the effort required to maintain it.
"Good morning, everyone," I announce, my voice crisp and authoritative, pitched to carry across the assembly without wavering. "Welcome to Whispering Pines Wellness Retreat. I'm Romee Lin, your event coordinator for the next three days, and I'm genuinely thrilled to be here facilitating what promises to be an absolutely transformative experience for all of you."
The words tumble out in their carefully rehearsed order, each syllable practiced and perfected, because this is what I do, Icommandsituations through professional will and an itinerary so comprehensive it borders on architectural.
The massive Orc, the one who stepped off first, the one whose shadow I'm still standing in, reaches out with one enormous hand, plucks the laminated welcome itinerary from the display stand beside me, and looks down at it. His expression doesn't change. He doesn't even blink.
Then, with slow, deliberate precision, he grips the laminated card between his massive fingers, one set of claws at the top edge, another at the bottom, and applies pressure with the casual confidence of someone who has never encountered resistance in his life. The cardstock doesn't stand a chance. It splits with a sharp, decisivecrackthat echoes across thegravel courtyard like the snap of a bone, and both pieces drift downward in a lazy, almost mocking descent. They land at my feet with a whisper of defeat, curling slightly as they settle, the color-coded schedule I spent three meticulous weeks perfecting now reduced to two sad, crumpled halves.
I stare at the ruined pieces, my gaze tracing the fragments of carefully organized itineraries, the perfectly color-coordinated time blocks, the morning meditation sessions highlighted in soothing pastels. My eye begins to twitch—a small, involuntary betrayal that I absolutely cannot afford to have happen right now, not in front of this massive, impassive Orc and certainly not in front of whatever witnesses might be watching from the edges of the assembled crowd.
The Orc continues to regard me with an expression of complete indifference, his dark eyes flat and utterly devoid of any semblance of apology or contrition. When he finally speaks, his voice emerges like the grinding of tectonic plates—deep, resonant, and fundamentally immovable. "No kale," he rumbles, each word a stone dropping into still water, and I can feel every carefully maintained shred of my professional composure trembling dangerously in its wake.
My fingers tighten around my tablet until the edges dig into my palms, and I feel my professional smile stretch so tight it might crack my molars. Deep breath. Slow, controlled, murderous deep breath.
I am going to need alotmore coffee.
CHAPTER 2
THRALL
The tiny human stares at the laminated card with a look that suggests I've just committed a war crime against office supplies, and I feel the faintest stirring of satisfaction settle somewhere in me. It's petty, objectively speaking, but I've spent the last six months fighting with investors who think mandatory corporate wellness retreats will somehow magically transform my hyper-aggressive engineering teams into cooperative team players who give a shit about each other's feelings. The least I can do is establish exactly how much patience I have for color-coded meditation schedules, which is to say, absolutely none whatsoever.
The human continues to stare, her perfectly polished professional mask flickering through micro-expressions I recognize from every board meeting I've ever dominated. Shock, fury, desperate calculation, and finally, the terrifying resolve of someone who has absolutely no intention of backing down despite the overwhelming evidence that they should. Her eye twitches, a tiny, involuntary spasm at the outer corner, and I file that information away with idle interest because it's the first genuine crack in her otherwise impenetrable corporate armor.
She's small, even by human standards, maybe five and a half feet at most, with dark hair scraped back into a high ponytail so severe it probably gives her headaches. Her blazer is tailored within an inch of its life, sharp enough to cut, and she's holding her tablet like it's a religious artifact she's prepared to defend with her life. The scent rolling off her is sharp and caffeinated, espresso and citrus with an underlying thread of something floral that's probably expensive perfume designed to project confidence in boardrooms. It's completely wasted on me. I haven't been impressed by perfume since I was sixteen and still thought humans were exotic.
She takes a breath, slow and deliberate, her shoulders rising and falling with exaggerated control, and I can practically see her internal countdown ticking down from ten. When she opens her mouth, I expect tears, or resignation, or possibly a polite request for me to please respect the itinerary she worked so hard on.
Instead, she gasps with pure, undiluted horror, spins on her sensible flat heel with military precision, marches directly up to my chest, and jabs one perfectly manicured finger into the center of my sternum. I actually feel it through the fabric of my shirt.
"Pick. Them. Up."
Her voice cracks like a whip, each word enunciated with the kind of crisp fury that suggests she's two seconds away from physically forcing compliance, and I blink down at her with genuine surprise because absolutely no one talks to me like that, not investors, not board members, and certainly not five-foot-five event planners in blazers.
I don't move. I just stare at her, letting the silence stretch until it becomes uncomfortable, watching her face flush with color that climbs from her collar to her hairline in a fascinating gradient of mounting rage. Her finger is still pressed against me, trembling slightly with the effort of maintaining pressureagainst the solid wall of muscle she's decided to challenge, and I can see her jaw working as she grinds her teeth hard enough to crack enamel.
"Pick them up," she repeats, her voice a dangerous whisper that's somehow more threatening than shouting, "or I will personally ensure that every single activity on this retreat involves feelings journals and trust circles until you are begging me for the sweet release of a kale smoothie."
I raise one eyebrow, crossing my arms over my chest with deliberate slowness, forcing her to either step back or keep her finger awkwardly jabbed against my forearm. She doesn't step back. Of course she doesn't. Instead, she shifts her weight, plants her feet wider in a stance that screams confrontation, and glares up at me with the kind of unhinged determination that suggests she's fought bigger battles than this and won through sheer, unrelenting spite.
"This," I rumble, gesturing vaguely at the ruins of her itinerary scattered across the gravel, "is a corporate wellness retreat that I was legally mandated to attend by my investors, who seem to believe that three days of trust falls and breathing exercises will somehow transform my engineering teams into emotionally available team players. I agreed to show up. I did not agree to follow a color-coded schedule that includes morning affirmations and something called 'mindful journaling circles.' So no, I will not be picking those up."
Her eye twitches again, more pronounced this time, and she inhales sharply through her nose like she's physically restraining herself from violence. Then, without breaking eye contact, she crouches down, scoops up both halves of the destroyed itinerary, and pulls a roll of transparent tape from the pocket of her blazer with the grim efficiency of someone who came prepared for war.
She tapes the itinerary back together right there, standing directly in front of me, her movements sharp and aggressive,smoothing the tape across the tear as the laminated cardstock bends slightly under the pressure. When she finishes, she holds it up between us like a declaration of war, her grip white-knuckled around the edges, and locks her gaze on mine with unwavering intensity.
"You will participate," she announces, each word dropping like a stone into water, "because I spent three weeks organizing this retreat down to the minute, I personally vetted every single vendor, and I will not allow you to torpedo my promotion because you think you're too important to follow basic instructions. Do I make myself clear, Mister Orkenshade?"
The formal address lands with enough venom that I feel my own irritation sharpen into something closer to genuine annoyance, because she's not intimidated, not even slightly, and that's a problem I didn't anticipate having to deal with today. I lean down, closing the distance between us until I can see the individual flecks of color in her eyes, dark brown shot through with amber in the morning light, and I let my voice drop into the low, dangerous register that makes investors shut up and listen.
"I will do what I want, Miss Lin, and right now, what I want is to tell my team to go to the bar, order whatever they feel like drinking, and ignore every single activity on your precious schedule until this mandatory nightmare is over. If you have a problem with that, you are welcome to take it up with HR, who will politely inform you that I own sixty percent of this company and I don't take orders from event planners."
Her nostrils flare, color flooding her cheeks again, and for one glorious second I think I've finally broken through her corporate shell and she's going to start screaming. Instead, she takes another one of those slow, controlled breaths, straightens her spine until she's standing at her full, utterly inadequate height, and smiles at me with the kind of brittle, homicidal cheer that makes my instincts prickle with warning.
"Noted," she says, her voice dripping with false sweetness, and then she pivots on her heel, strides back to her position at the entrance, and retrieves her tablet with the air of someone preparing to launch a tactical strike.
She goes, mildly intrigued despite myself, and then I turn to address the twenty-three senior executives from Horde Tech who are currently standing in a loose cluster behind me, watching this entire confrontation unfold with varying degrees of amusement and concern. Garak, my Chief Technology Officer and the largest Orc on my payroll at nearly seven feet, is grinning openly, his tusks gleaming in the sunlight, and I know without asking that he's going to give me shit about this later.
