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monstersandmaw · 5 months

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Whuff, folks, this is a really really long one!! I hope you enjoy it - it kicked my butt and had to be re-written after I got 3k words in and got bogged down with backstory.

(For reference, if this were a commission, at 12k words it'd be £120. You can read it now for $5/£4.50! You can also read all my back catalogue of Patreon stories too when you sign up. Browse my masterlist for free though here.)

Orcs came out pretty high on the 'favourite monsters' poll over on Patreon, so I went with two, and a satyr because I like sassy satyrs...

Content: arranged marriage, strained parental relationship for the reader, gender and body neutral reader, childhood friends to lovers, some light D/s play, culturally accepted polyamory, consensual polyamory, penetrative sex, oral sex, a plug, and a lot of fluff because it's me. Wordcount: 12k (!)

Final note: a 'scop' is the Old English/Anglo-Saxon word for a bard. I gave the reader's people Rohirrim/Anglo-Saxon vibes for this.

“You’re giving me deja-vu summoning me over to you like that, mother,” you said with a wry drawl in your voice as you sauntered over to one of the two wooden thrones at the far end of the longhouse at her request, and warily eyed the sheaf of paper held casually between her first two fingers. “Last time you looked at me like that, I was twelve and I ended up fostered with the Mountain Clan for six years. Where are you planning on sending me this time?”

You'd meant it for a joke, but the look in her eyes immediately kindled a churning worry in the pit of your stomach when you spotted it, and your expression fell.

“Mother?”

“It wasn’t so bad in the end, was it?” she said archly, one eyebrow rising. “You still write to the warchief’s son on a monthly basis like a lovesick minstrel, though I’m honestly surprised those beasts can fathom out the alphabet.”

Actually, most orcs knew two alphabets: the Trade Tongue, and their own runic language.

This barbed back-and-forth with the Lady of the Hold was nothing new for you though as her often-overlooked, middle child of three, and you took it in your stride, though the insult to Vorstag’s people cut deep. In your time fostering with them, you’d come to love the orcs for their passion and overt love of life — to love one in particular — but no matter how fondly you talked of your time with them, your own people didn’t seem able to get past the orcs’ belligerent reputation or the myriad stereotypes perpetuated about them in the cities, where there were far fewer of them.

Ignoring your mother’s comment about your continuing contact with your adoptive clan, you came to a halt in front of her and stood there, one hip cocked to the side, idly tapping your wooden flute against your thigh. You’d been practising in one of the shadowy corners of the longhouse until she’d called you over to join her. Her eyes flickered to it momentarily before returning to your face, and she sighed.

The Lady of the Hold was an intimidating woman and it was hard to affect calm in front of her, even with your stage-training as a musician and a scop from Widsith before you’d left to live with the orcs. Now, regarding you from her throne, your mother wore clothes of rich silk and fine wool befitting a queen, with thick fur trimmings around her neck, and her ears and throat and hands dripped with glinting gold jewellery bought and paid for by the fine war horses your people bred and raised for the royal stables and noble houses. Even if her attire hadn’t matched that of a queen, her hard glare would have made any monarch quaver. Many people whispered that while the jarl and his wife technically ruled together, it was your mother who truly governed the territory.

She certainly still governed your life well into adulthood.

“I have here a proposal from the Plains Clan…” she said, indicating the paper held at arm’s length between her first two fingers, like it was a spell that might go off any second.

“Oh?” You tried to look casual, but something about it made you uneasy. Her answer to the Plains Clan’s proposal would concern you in some way, you had no doubt. Not least because you spoke orcish like one born into an orcish clan, and you had connections to the Mountain Clan, who were on good terms with their plains neighbours.

Just the thought of those connections made your heart ache: memories of the orc who had made your teenage years in the mountains a dream instead of the nightmare it might have been; who had grown into adulthood with you in lockstep to become your best friend; who had given you your first, exhilarating ride on a warg; who had shared your first kiss at the Winter’s Heart feast, and more besides when you were both older.

“Mn,” she hummed, standing regally and pacing back and forth on the wooden dais in the way she did when she had a problem that was yet unresolved. That did nothing to settle you, but you waited her out. “They have proposed something which I never thought they would to a human: marriage.”

“To you?” you blurted in surprise. “But they know humans don’t mate with more than one other — not formally, at least,” you amended since you knew of at least three people in the settlement who were very happily in a relationship with each other, though they weren’t married in the eyes of the Faith. Not that the Faith had much reach out here, so far from its seat in the royal capital.

“No, not to me, you fool,” she scoffed, irritated at your assumption and, no doubt, at your casual use of the orcish term ‘mate’ instead of marriage. “To one of my children, and since you are the only one unmarried and unpromised, it will have to be you.”

“Married? Me?”

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#poly #patreon exclusive #orc x orc x satyr x human #orc x human #satyr x human

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