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### Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Gyda Lionrock thinks her visit to Asclan Peaks is for one reason and one reason alone--to procreate and finally welcome that child of her own. She could have never guessed she would also leave something behind inside the mountains, but it was her heart that stayed with one of Asclan Peaks' notorious inhabitants: the seven-foot-tall, barbaric orc commander named Orvar. Orc of Mine, Book One: The Breeding Moon, is the first book in the series about Orvar and Gyda. A fantasy romance, set in a world where orcs and humans have to interbreed to survive. But what if they fall in love? BOOK ONE. mature
Complete Chapters 45 Rating 4.8 ( 204 reviews ) Age Rating mature {"language":"en","storyId":833271,"genres":[{"name":"Romance","path":"/genres/romance"}],"authorName":"S. Glasssvial","authorPath":"/Glasssvial2121","status":"complete","lastUpdatedAt":1789127600,"chaptersCount":45,"rating":4.8088235294117645,"reviewsCount":204,"ageRating":"mature"} Chapter 1 - Pray GYDA
The night sky was clear with not a single cloud, just the inky darkness enveloping everything. I was sitting in front of my window, staring out at the almost full moon; tonight, she was stunning, shining so brightly that her light was enough for me to make out the mountains in the distance. So, yes, she was beautiful tonight. But she also frightened me in a way because I knew that tomorrow night, she would be completely full.
It would be her twelfth full circle of the year.
And during that twelfth full moon, my mother would send me off to the same mountains I was looking at right now: Asclan Peaks. I was sure of it. This year would be different from all previous years. This year, she would send me there!
I’d never been there before, never even left my own town. But I knew about the place and it was surreal to think I’d be heading there soon. The mountains were orcs’ territory, and it had been that way for many, many centuries.
Only once a year were humans willing to cross Asclan Peaks’ borders. And only once a year were they welcomed.
And for sure, the twelfth moon was the cause of that.
This was when the fertile women—one from every family—would be sent out to walk the Trimar Pass, crossing borders to the mountain kingdom to meet and breed with Asclan Peaks’ notorious inhabitants.
These annual gatherings between the two species weren’t without good reason. Due to the severe lack of human males and the complete extinction of female orcs, there was no other choice but to crossbreed to produce offspring. It was not ideal, but things had evolved that way. The strange thing was that the babies born would be either orc sons or human daughters. Only very occasionally would a human son be born, and people considered this a wondrous miracle, a cause for tremendous celebration! The baby boy and his family would gain great fortune and lead a good life since everybody worshiped boys and having one in your family would be a ticket to the elite.
Why no orc daughters or mixed half-bloods were born, nobody knew. It just didn’t happen.
So now, I was sure that it had come to my time to travel during the breeding moon, something that had been long coming since at twenty-six years of age, everyone considered me an old maid. Most women my age were mothers already.
I was not, but I was secretly yearning for it if I was honest. My mother knew this, yet she had never let me go to visit Asclan Peaks. She, as the head of our family, was the one to decide.
Sometimes, it felt as if I missed out on all the things that motherhood had to offer. I could see the unconditional love between my sisters and nieces, also longing to give such love to a child of my own. Of course, I loved all my nieces to death and had my hands full with them, being their favorite family member. But still… I wasn’t their mother.
And in quiet, in secret, I believed I would be a good mother too, that I deserved a chance.
So, yes, a part of me was excited about tomorrow, but the other part of me was hellishly scared and intimidated. So afraid of what had to happen to conceive that child of my own…
And the fear came because of the orcs. People always said that these orcs, members of the Azuk clan, were disgusting and aggressive barbarians by nature, that they were vile and mean, hostile to all but their own.
I had once seen them too, long ago, when I’d accidentally encountered a pair. I was playing too close to the borders and saw them from a distance. It was only a glimpse. Yet that glimpse was enough to terrify me to such a point I honestly didn’t wish to see any more of them. I had goosebumps just remembering!
Their rough, cracked skin was a sickly shade of grayish-green, adorned with bruises and scars. They had razor-sharp teeth with two lower tusks way too big to fit in their mouths. These tusks looked quite bizarre, and the thought of kissing such a hideous creature was repulsive. Pointy ears and square jaws they had, too, making their heads look ridiculous. And tall as giants they were at almost seven-foot-tall, and not even skinny. No, their grotesque bodies were a massive immovable block of muscles, solid and bulky, a vast frame carrying enormous weight that caused tremors whenever they walked.
“Please, Luna…” I whispered at the gentle moon. “Please, bless me with a human son. It would bring great fortune to my family.” I held my palms together as I prayed. “And if you cannot bless me with a son, then please let me be blessed with a healthy baby girl. Anything but an orc son. And…please keep me safe. Luna, dear Luna… I am sorry for asking for such personal things. I hope you won’t find my request unfitting. It’s just that I am scared, Luna.”
And hanging over all of this was also the thing I hardly dared think about, which was that it was not only a physical thing. There was more to it than that. More reasons to fear… I’d heard that some women never returned from their journey. But where did they go? And what if I was next? What if I would never return home?
The thoughts terrified me but had no other choice. If I did not go, I would face a lifetime of childlessness and isolation. It was the only way for me to conceive, coming as I had from a peasant family; I would never be able to marry a man, or even meet one. No, this was my only shot at getting a child. I needed to undergo this, not only for me but also for my family.
Luckily, things were so much better now than they had been centuries ago. Because before this annual meetings, the orcs had simply been taking our women and making them slaves. And how could anyone fight against that? They were strong and powerful, and we had almost no men to go into battle on our behalf. So why would the orcs wait for women to reach out to them and have those women for only one night? This was where Mother Moon and nature came in, because for some reason, all the orc babies conceived in hostility would die.
After that discovery, things had gotten a lot safer. If an orc wanted a son, he now accepted he had to wait for a woman to come to him, a woman who would lie with him willingly and without too much stress to her—though it probably was never a great experience for the woman despite all this.
“Please, protect me, Mother Moon,” I whispered again before I stood and crawled into bed. “And help me through this. Protect me against whatever may happen to me tomorrow.”
I knew that breeding was almost always successful, but was also still a subject that nobody wanted to talk about, and thus, nobody did. At least not in detail.
But I hoped I would get at least some information tomorrow! My mother and sisters surely wouldn’t just send me off into the mountains without at least some knowledge of what was going to happen to me during the breeding moon! Right?
I tried to ignore the questions creeping into my mind, haunting me night and day, even as I tried to gain much-needed rest. I needed to sleep well tonight, craving the energy as I did not know what awaited me tomorrow. But sleep, as usual, was refusing to come, leaving me awake well into the night.
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### Chapter 2: Chapter 2
Mother was up early, as usual, sitting in her favorite place, the kitchen. “Good morning, my Gyda,” she said the moment I entered for breakfast.
My Gyda . Mom only called me that when something was up.
Our small kitchen was always crowded with my nieces running all over the place, and spilled breakfast soiling the counter and floor. This was a day as usual, living with so many in one house.
“Sit down,” my mother ordered, looking at me.
Her order came as no surprise. But it was a bit of a surprise that she and my sisters had let me sleep in late today and prepared all my favorite food for breakfast. The table was full of it.
I felt my heart speeding up, growing anxious, even more than I’d already been. It had all become so real now. I truly was going to take this journey today, wasn’t I?
“And the rest of you leave us,” my mother said to the others as she joined me at the table.
My two older sisters, Anandi and Emmy, took the little ones with them, while I, my mother, and my eldest sister stayed behind.
“We need to talk,” Mom said. “But first, let’s eat. Fiona and I waited for you, so we could eat together.”
I nodded, watching how my mother placed all kinds of food on my plate. Boiled eggs, oatmeal pancakes, bread, fruit, dried meat, and a variety of nuts. Quite different from our usual breakfast, consisting of mostly old bread and maybe an egg or two if we were lucky. There was something major going on today. For sure, there was.
“Thank you,” I replied, almost too nervous to eat. Why did it somehow feel like my last meal? “But...can we maybe talk during breakfast? I already know what will happen today, anyway, and I can’t eat like this. I don’t like the silence. And I’m nervous, Mom.”
Then I said, “Mom, you are making me nervous. And this...all this.” I waved my hand over the table filled with all manner of goodies. “This, Mom,” I repeated, as if it needed reinforcing. Of course, it didn’t.
She looked down, playing with her fingers, then folding a napkin. But then she answered. “Very well. Of course, you already know what will happen today, so I don’t really understand why you’re making a big issue of it. You have been pestering me with questions about this day for years. Anyway, you eat, then I will talk.”
She waited for me to stuff a big bite into my mouth and then set off talking anyway, no doubt realizing that this was the one time I couldn’t speak a single word.
“Tonight, it is the twelfth full moon,” she started. “And during this year’s breeding moon, you shall cross the borders. Just as your sisters have done before you.”
She was visibly uncomfortable talking about it. It made me wonder if my sisters had never asked anything about it. Was I really that strange for wanting to know the details?
“To finally mate with an orc?” I asked.
“Well...yes. Though we don’t call it mating, you know that.”
“I’m sorry. I meant breeding with an orc,” I replied, even though I didn’t know what the difference was.
What I did know was that breeding with an orc was a shameful and disgusting act. And I did not quite understand everyone’s views of it.
Sure, it couldn’t possibly be a pleasure to be intimate with such an ugly creature, but why was it something to feel ashamed of? That confused me so much. Most of our new lives started this way. My life, my sisters’ and their daughters’ lives had all begun like this, without exception.
So, why was it still considered so taboo?
And why weren’t we virgin women properly informed and educated about it? I think it involved kissing the orc and being physically close to him, like cuddling, but that was all I knew.
I looked at Fiona. All this while, she had stayed quiet and eyed me silently, obvious worry and sympathy readable in her big green eyes. Did she pity me?
“Yes. You will breed with one of the orcs and hopefully, Luna will bless our family with a son this time. A human son that is. Not one of those... those abominable creatures .”
She couldn’t even say the name. I could see her body trembling as if angry about the baby who did not even exist yet. The baby who might never exist.
To begin with, Mother was disappointed every time a daughter had made her way into the world. But even worse was that time Fiona had given birth to an orc son.
It’d been Fiona’s first time and, even though I was still a little girl myself, I could still remember how sad my eldest sister had been, and how uncomfortable.
“I waited until you reached another stage in life,” Mom interrupted. “Maybe that will make a difference. Your sisters were all so young when they first crossed the borders and you know the outcome of that, looking at your thirteen nieces.
So that was the reason she’d never allowed me to go to Asclan Peaks before! I had to be older and try to conceive her desired human grandson!
“But Madame Hiley’s daughter was even older when she first crossed, because of her sick childhood, and they were blessed with a son on her very first try!”
“I will try to bless you with a grandson,” I answered with as much grace as I could muster before shoving half an egg into my mouth before I said more than I wanted to.
Wow. The pressure . Unbelievable.
“Good, my Gyda. And you should eat a lot of eggs.” Mother said, looking pleased. “Madame Hiley said that would help. Here, have another.”
She shoved a boiled egg in its shell across the table toward me. It rolled and almost dropped off the edge.
“Mother—” I objected. Then I saw her foul look. “O-okay.” I took another bite of egg but put the one in its shell into my pocket. I didn’t plan on eating it; I would throw it outside later, when she was no longer watching my every move.
There were only so many boring eggs a girl could eat, and I’d had my fill. Besides, how could eating boiled eggs possibly help me... breed?
“Here. This is for you, sister,” Fiona said, placing something on my plate. I just hoped it wouldn’t be another egg. It wasn’t, thankfully.
It was a little bundle of herbs tied together with a tiny blue ribbon.
“Take them with two glasses of water. Madame Hiley may well believe in eggs, but my friend told me this may help to conceive a boy too.”
Now, I was confused. Eggs or herbs?
It was funny how everyone had their own weird ideas about how I was going to set about creating that special little human they wanted. As far as I knew, there was only one way, and that was to keep praying and hope to strike it lucky on the first try, just as Mom had mentioned earlier. To try and deliver the prize.
Fiona moved forward, touching my arm. She leaned in a little and whispered, “You’ll like the herbs. Jules said that for a boy, you have to—”
Despite her soft speech, Mom must have heard every word.
“Jules said so, hmm?” Mom asked, cutting her off. “Well, it didn’t help you, did it? Or her. How many girls does she have, again?”
“Oh, Mom. You know Jules conceived a son herself eventually. Surely, you of all people agree, Mom. If there’s even the slightest chance, we’ve got to try it.”
The way she said ‘we’. As far as I knew, I was the one who had to do this!
“I think you’re forgetting, Jules’s one boy died before he was born,” Mom went on. “He was weak, a skinny thing! Her mother showed me the little one when he was out. Looked like a deformed baby bird. Made me wonder if it was human in the first place.”
I quickly stuffed the clump of dried herbs in my mouth and drank down two glasses of water, hoping Mom and Fiona wouldn’t argue again, especially not about me.
They often argued and Mom could be so mean.
The herbs were scratchy, almost choking me as they went down, but after yet more water—warm this time—and a lot of impolite coughing, they were gone at last. I was just left with the faintest taste of rosemary and fennel, and a few other things.
“Good girl,” Fiona said when I’d finally managed to get rid of the whole herb thing.
“That was disgusting,” I replied, gagging once. “Gosh. How revolting.”
“It doesn’t have to taste good. It just has to help.”
“So...” I began. I wanted to know this now for once and for all. “What exactly will happen tonight? What happens when breeding with an orc?”
Mother took a deep breath through her nose.
“Well, you... You... You just let the orc take the lead and do not fight him. If you oblige, it will be soon over, and you can return home again,” my mother answered, absolutely ignoring my question. That didn’t tell me a whole lot. Why did I even think I would get a better answer? I should have known she would say something like this. She always had.
Fiona, however, seemed to understand my fears. “The place from which we bleed—”
“Hush, Fiona!” Mom shrieked, flapping her arms about as if it served a purpose. “She’ll find out for herself. We do not talk about these kinds of vulgar things, you know that! She will find out the same way we all do!”
“No.” Mother shook her head and then looked at me. “Gyda, you will walk the Trimar pass tonight, so put on several layers and pack warm clothes as it gets cold after sunset. Also, make sure you pack snacks and a flask of water, plus some clean clothes for the day after. It is a few hours’ walk. Oh, and let your hair down.”
“Yes, Mother,” I answered, wondering why my hair was so important.
“You will walk with Isolde’s daughter, Olivia. It’s her first time as well. That’s all you need to know. Now, let’s eat before it reaches lunchtime with breakfast still on the table.”
Mother’s words were the last ones spoken during breakfast.
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Authors can write and upload their manuscripts on Inkit for free and writers retain 100% of their copyrights while writing on Inkitt
Readers can read all books for free, without any ads and give the authors feedback.
Books that perform well based on their reader engagement are published on our Galatea app.
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