Chapter 13: Alaric Gives In
Alaric’s skin still felt too tight, humming with the aftershock of his own capitulation. He moved through the cold granite corridors like a ghost, the echoes of the harem’s shared ecstasy and the god’s seismic fucking still reverberating in his skull. He needed air, or something like it—the frozen, empty vastness of the mountain’s highest exterior ramparts.
He pushed through a heavy iron-bound door and stepped out onto a windswept ledge. The sky was the color of slate, the world below a patchwork of white and gloomy green. And there, leaning against the battlement with his back to him, was Kragor.
The orc had returned. He was just standing there, immense, still as a monument. His leathers were stained with dust and something darker. The wind carried his scent back to Alaric: sweat, iron, cold stone, and a deep, musky animal heat that made Alaric’s mouth water. Kragor’s shoulders rose and fell in a slow, powerful rhythm. He was staring out at the horizon, but Alaric could feel the restless energy coiled in his frame, a live wire thrumming with unsated power.
Alaric froze, caught between retreat and a gravitational pull he could no longer deny.
“I can smell your confusion,” Kragor said, his voice a low rumble that cut through the wind without effort. He didn’t turn around. “It stinks of pretty, human thoughts. It’s finally given way, hasn’t it?”
Alaric’s throat was dry. “Given way to what?”
Kragor turned then, a slow, deliberate pivot of impossible mass. His eyes, like chips of black flint, pinned Alaric where he stood. A brutal, knowing smile touched his lips. “To what you really are. What you’ve been since you first laid eyes on me. A little bitch in waiting.”
The words should have sparked fury. They only lit a fuse of shameful, trembling heat in Alaric’s gut. He said nothing.
Kragor took a single step forward, reducing the vast space of the ledge to an intimate cell. Alaric had to crane his neck to look up at him. The details were overwhelming: the thick, corded veins in his neck, the crude scar cutting across the bridge of his nose, the faint sheen of sweat on the bronzed green skin of his chest. The bulge in his leather loincloth was already substantial, a soft, heavy weight promising harder things.
“I saw you,” Kragor murmured. “Watching my screens. Watching my boys get each other off while I worked. Your hand in your pants. Your little Vaelmont prick getting hard for my devastation.” He leaned down, his breath hot against Alaric’s face. It smelled of ozone and blood. “You weren’t horrified. You were jealous.”
Alaric’s resolve, what little was left, shattered. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” he whispered, the confession torn from him. “Your muscles. Your strength. The way you… you fucked that city into the ground. That monstrous… everything about you. It makes me want to…” He choked, the filthiness of the thought both terrifying and exhilarating. “It makes me want to melt. To just open up and take whatever you give me.”
Kragor’s smile widened, revealing sharp teeth. “Finally. The pretty prince finds his tongue for the truth.” He straightened, looking down with a mix of amusement and conquest. “I wondered how long your courtly manners would hold out.”
“What do you want from me?” Alaric asked, his voice shaking.
“What’s mine,” Kragor stated simply. “You’re the fifth. The last knot in the net. I’ve known since I first broke free from my prison and saw you standing there, trying to be brave. All that brittle pride. I knew it would crack. I was just waiting for you to hear it break.”
He reached out a single, callused finger and traced it down Alaric’s cheek, over his jaw, to the frantic pulse in his throat. The touch was shockingly gentle, and somehow more degrading than a blow.
“I’ll have you,” Kragor said. “I’ll ruin that tight, virgin hole of yours for anyone else. I’ll make you forget your own name. But on one condition.”
“Anything.”
Kragor’s eyes glinted. “You go to Lady Lara. You look her in her pious, noble eyes. And you tell her you don’t belong to her anymore. You tell her you belong to the monster who leveled the world. You tell her you’re mine.”
The command landed like a physical blow. Lara. His wife. The last tether to the man he was supposed to be. The fear was cold, a sudden splash of reality in the fever dream. He saw her face, her steady grey eyes, the quiet strength he had always leaned on. “What… what will it mean? To be yours?”
Kragor laughed, a short, brutal sound. “It means your pretty mouth is for my cock. Your tight ass is for my pleasure. Your thoughts are for my glory. It means you stand with my harem, you service my needs, and you find your purpose between my legs or under my boot. It means you are claimed.” He leaned in again, his voice dropping to a visceral growl. “It means when I hump a mountain into gravel, you’ll know it’s because I’m thinking of splitting you open on it.”
Alaric shuddered, a full-body convulsion of terror and want. The image was absurd, horrific, and unbearably erotic. He saw himself, pinned and impossibly stretched, a plaything for geological forces. He nodded, a jerky, helpless motion. “Yes.”
Kragor didn’t wait. His hand shot out, not to caress, but to claim. He grabbed Alaric by the front of his tunic, lifted him clean off his feet, and shoved him, face-first, into the sweaty, musky hollow of his exposed armpit.
The world vanished into scent and heat and rough skin. Alaric gasped, inhaling Kragor’s raw, potent musk. It was overpowering, animal, deeply masculine. It smelled of conquest and labor and pure, unadulterated power. He struggled for a second, instinctual panic seizing him, then went limp, letting the scent wash over him, through him, marking him.
Kragor pulled him out and before Alaric could take a clean breath, the orc’s mouth was on his. It wasn’t a kiss. It was an invasion. Kragor’s tongue, thick and rough, plunged past his lips, deep into his mouth, claiming the space with blunt, possessive strokes. Alaric gagged, his own tongue shoved aside, a spectator in his own mouth. He tasted salt, earth, and something primal. He whimpered, his hands coming up to clutch weakly at Kragor’s biceps, which felt like carved stone.
After a long, suffocating minute, Kragor released him. Alaric staggered, gasping, saliva slick on his chin.
“That’s a taste,” Kragor said, his own breath slightly ragged. “Now go. Do your last human chore. Then come to my chambers. Don’t bother knocking.”
Finding Lara was easier than Alaric feared.
He found her in the northern solar, mending a cloak by the grey light filtering through the high windows. Her fingers were steady, the needle moving with a precise, familiar rhythm. The domestic normalcy of the scene was a slap. It made the words in his throat feel like broken glass.
She looked up as he entered, her expression shifting from mild inquiry to guarded concern. She saw it on him, the stain of what he’d done, the musk of Kragor still clinging to his skin and clothes. She set her mending aside.
“Alaric,” she said, her voice soft. “What’s happened?”
“I need to tell you something,” he began, the words tripping out too fast. “Something I’ve only just… accepted.” He forced himself to meet her eyes, those clear, honest grey pools. “It’s about Kragor.”
“Go on,” she said, her hands folding in her lap, a gesture of tense patience.
“I’ve realized… I am his. The fifth.” He heard his own voice crack. “The final member of his harem. He’s known. I think he’s always known. And I… I can’t fight it anymore, Lara. I don’t want to fight it.”
He watched the meanings collide behind her eyes. The political alliance shattered. Their shared life, their marriage, crumbling to dust. The physical truth of what he was saying—that he would give his body, his submission, to that monstrous god. Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.
“Doing this means I have to end our marriage,” he continued, the finality cold and sharp in his mouth. “I can’t belong to you. Not anymore. I can only belong to him.”
Lara sat very still for a long moment. She looked down at her hands, then back at his face, searching for something. She didn’t find the man she’d married. She found this raw, wanting creature instead.
“I had a feeling,” she said, the words a quiet exhale. There was no anger in them. Just a profound, weary sadness. “Since he arrived. The way you watched him. The way you’ve been… absent, even when you were here.” She stood up, her movements graceful despite the weight in the room. She took a step toward him, but didn’t reach out. “Take this opportunity, Alaric.”
He blinked, stunned. “What?”
A strange, almost envious light flickered in her gaze. “If it were me in your shoes,” she said, her voice dropping to a confessional murmur, “I would absolutely lie with a god. How could you not?” She gave a small, helpless shake of her head. “Go. Be his.”
There was no explosion, no recrimination. Just a door closing with definitive softness. He stared at her, this woman he had loved, now releasing him with a clarity he lacked himself. He nodded, once, a choked thank you caught in his throat, and turned away.
The walk to Kragor’s chambers was a blur of cold stone and echoing footsteps. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of fear and sickening anticipation. The massive, rune-carved doors stood at the end of a deserted corridor, slightly ajar. Through the gap, he saw firelight and heard the low murmur of familiar voices—Eamon, Cassian, the others.
He didn’t knock.
He pushed the door open and stepped into a cavernous room dominated by a hearth large enough to roast an ox. The four harem members were sprawled on piles of furs near the fire.