Chapter Three
Harper
Harper had expected primitive.
She’d done her research, read the academic papers and the breathless features and the government reports, but some part of her brain—the part shaped by twenty-five years of media coverage that framed orcs as noble savages or dangerous others, never just people—had expected something closer to a historical reenactment. Huts, maybe. Furs. Torches.
What she got was a solar-paneled, Wi-Fi-enabled, architecturally stunning community nestled in a mountain valley that looked like someone had asked Frank Lloyd Wright to collaborate with the earth itself.
The buildings were stone and timber, yes, but they were also insulated, heated, and designed with a sophistication that spoke of decades of evolution.
Green roofs sprouted with native plants.
A medical clinic boasted equipment that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a university hospital.
The forge, famous now, its products sold worldwide, sent up artistic plumes of smoke that tourists probably paid to photograph.
Harper stood at the settlement gates and felt the specific irritation of having her assumptions demolished.
Note to self, she thought. Check your biases at the door, Stone. You’re better than this.
A delegation waited for her. Three orcs in what she’d come to recognize as ceremonial dress, carved bone ornaments, leather and fur over modern base layers, expressions that ranged from cautiously welcoming to openly suspicious. And at the center, the prince himself.
Drake, son of Drak and Emma, looked different in person than he did in press photos.
Every image Harper had seen presented him as polished, suits, podiums, the perfect PR product.
In person, he was... bigger. Not in the way Koroth was big (she’d seen photos of the War Chief; the man was essentially a geological formation with opinions).
Drake was tall and broad but lean with it, built for speed and grace rather than brute force.
His features were a striking blend: his mother’s dark eyes, his father’s strong jaw, tusks that were smaller than a full orc’s but still prominent enough to make his smile something you had to reckon with.
He wore no suit today. Traditional orc clothing layered over modern fabrics, his dark hair pulled back, a carved pendant at his throat. It was a statement: I am orc. I am home. You are in my territory now.
Good, Harper thought. She preferred people who made statements. Statements could be interrogated.
“Ms. Stone.” His voice was warm, resonant, pitched to welcome. Every syllable was exactly right, which meant every syllable was calculated. “Welcome to Ironpeak. We’re pleased to have you here for the anniversary celebrations.”
“Thank you, Chief Drake.” She used the title deliberately, watching his reaction. A flicker, there and gone, something that looked like discomfort.
“Just Drake. I’m not chief. My father holds that title.”
“Not yet, anyway,” she said, and watched the flicker again, sharper this time. Two sentences in and she’d already found a pressure point. Interesting.
He recovered smoothly and gestured for her to walk with him. The guided tour began, and Harper recognized it immediately for what it was: theater. Carefully curated theater, performed by a man who knew exactly which angles to present.
The school: bright, modern, bilingual signs in English and orcish, children’s artwork on the walls that made Harper’s cold journalist heart do something inconvenient.
The cultural center: artifacts and oral histories preserved with museum-quality care, elder Shala, ancient, dignified, clearly the clan’s institutional memory, offering a greeting that was warm but measured.
The forge: spectacular, undeniably impressive, gorgeous photos guaranteed, investigative value zero.
Harper let herself be guided. She smiled in the right places, asked the expected questions, made the expected sounds of admiration. And all the while, she catalogued what she wasn’t being shown.
The extra patrols she’d clocked at the perimeter, twice the number you’d expect for a peaceful settlement.
The tension in Drake’s shoulders every time they passed a communications building he steered her away from.
The military-grade antenna array on a structure he identified as “weather monitoring equipment” with the confidence of someone who’d rehearsed the lie.
Weather monitoring equipment did not require that kind of encryption hardware. Harper had spent enough time around intelligence infrastructure to know the difference.
“This is impressive,” she said as they completed the circuit. She meant it. The settlement was genuinely remarkable, a testament to twenty-five years of ingenuity and determination. But sincerity wasn’t the same as satisfaction. “What aren’t you showing me?”
Drake’s stride didn’t break. His expression didn’t shift. But something changed in the quality of his attention, the way a hunter’s focus sharpens when the prey does something unexpected.
“I’m showing you Ironpeak,” he said. “All of it.”
“You’re showing me the version of Ironpeak you want in print.
It’s a good version. Very photogenic.” She stopped walking and turned to face him, because she’d learned a long time ago that the most important conversations happen when you stop moving.
“But I’ve been doing this for seven years, and I can tell the difference between a tour and a performance. This is a performance.”
For a moment, half a second, maybe less, she saw something behind his eyes that wasn’t diplomatic or calculated or polished. Something raw. Then the mask slid back into place, seamless as water closing over a stone.
“You’re welcome to explore the settlement at your leisure,” he said. “Within the designated areas. We have security protocols.”
“I’m sure you do.”
They studied each other. Two professionals, each recognizing the other’s skill and resenting it.
Harper felt something else, too, something underneath the professional assessment, warm and inconvenient and completely irrelevant to the task at hand.
He smelled like cedar and woodsmoke and something she couldn’t name, something that made the animal part of her brain sit up and pay attention.
Down, girl. He’s a source, not a date.
“I’ll show you to your quarters,” Drake said, and his voice had an edge now that hadn’t been there before. Good. Edges were where the interesting stories lived.
* * *
The quarters were comfortable, a small stone dwelling with a real bed, a fireplace, and a window that framed the mountains like a painting. Harper unpacked efficiently, hung nothing on the walls, and immediately pulled out her Moleskine.
She sat cross-legged on the bed and wrote:
Settlement is 10x more advanced than media coverage suggests. Deliberate? PR strategy to maintain ‘noble savage’ narrative for tourism? Or just lazy reporting?
Extra security patrols – at least double normal. Why?
Comms equipment inconsistent with stated purpose. Military grade. Encrypted.
Drake: polished, prepared, performing. But cracks visible under pressure. Uses charm as deflection. Doesn’t like being called ‘chief.’ Why?
Follow up: What is he hiding?
She stared at the last line and thought about the retraction. About the last time she’d chased a story she could feel in her bones. About what it had cost her.
Then she thought about the congressional aide’s encrypted message. The military movements. The leaked memo. The children in the school, painting pictures of a world they trusted to stay safe.
She put down the notebook, laced up her boots, and slipped out into the dusk.
The settlement was quieter at night. Families behind lit windows. The distant ring of the forge working late. Stars so bright and thick they looked artificial, the kind of sky you forgot existed when you lived under D.C.’s light pollution.
Harper moved carefully along the paths she’d memorized during the tour, counting her steps, noting landmarks. Journalistic habit. Always know your exits.
She was heading toward the communications building, the one with the “weather monitoring equipment”, when she rounded a corner and stopped.
Drake stood on the ridge above the settlement, silhouetted against a sky full of stars.
Alone. No entourage, no ceremonial dress, no camera-ready smile.
His shoulders were down, his head tipped back, his whole posture carrying the weight of a man who had been holding something up all day and finally set it down.
In the moonlight, with his guard completely down, he looked nothing like the prince who’d given her the tour. He looked exhausted. He looked young. He looked like someone Harper might have wanted to know, in a different life, if she weren’t here to excavate his secrets.
She should have backed away. A good journalist knew when to observe from a distance. But Harper’s feet didn’t move, and she stood there for a long moment, watching a man she was supposed to be investigating look at the stars like they might have answers he couldn’t find anywhere else.
That’s the real him, she thought. Under all the polish. Under the performance.
That’s the story.
She turned to leave, and her boot snapped a twig that echoed like a gunshot in the silence.
Drake’s head whipped toward her. In the dark, his eyes caught the moonlight and reflected it back, and for one second she saw the orc in him, the predator, the warrior, the creature that had survived millennia of human fear because it was built for danger.
Then the mask came down, and he was the prince again.
“Ms. Stone.” His voice was ice and protocol. “The guest quarters are in the opposite direction.”
“I was taking a walk.”
“At night. Alone. In an unfamiliar settlement. Past the security perimeter.”
“Is there a curfew I wasn’t informed of?”
He descended the ridge in three strides that covered more ground than should have been possible. Up close, in the dark, he was overwhelming, the height, the breadth, the sheer physical presence of him. Harper was five-seven and she’d stared down men with guns. She did not back up.
“There are protocols,” he said. “For your safety.”
“Safety from what? I thought Ironpeak was peaceful.”
The question hung between them. She watched him decide whether to answer honestly or pivot to something diplomatic. She could see both options cross his face, the truth tugging one direction, the training pulling the other.
He pivoted. Of course he did.
“I’ll walk you back to your quarters,” he said.
Harper fell into step beside him. The silence between them was charged in a way that had nothing to do with professional tension and everything to do with the fact that she could feel the heat radiating off his body in the mountain cold, and she was fairly sure he could hear her heartbeat with whatever enhanced senses orc biology provided.
At her door, she stopped. Turned to face him.
“That version of you,” she said, nodding toward the ridge. “The one up there looking at the stars. That’s the real Drake.”
He went very still.
“This one?” She gestured at him, the squared shoulders, the neutral expression, the carefully composed mask. “The charming prince? That’s the performance.”
She went inside and closed the door before he could respond. Leaned against it. Pressed her hands to her face and breathed.
You’re here for a story, Stone. Remember that.
But her heart was hammering, and it had nothing to do with the story.