Page 2 of Grumpy Pucking Orc (Orcs on Ice #1)

Jordan

“ I t was wonderful of your parents to get us all tickets,” Abby said, handing me one of the beers she’d carried over from the concession area.

“Yeah, and the seats are awe-some,” Willa added as she took her own beer from Abby.

The seats were awesome. The tickets to see the new Baltimore Tusks? Well, the jury was still out on that one.

At first I’d been excited by my parents’ gift.

I’d grown up in Buffalo, New York, practically skating before I could walk.

While I’d never played on a children’s league or school hockey team, I’d participated in plenty of pickup games with the local kids, goofing off on an ice-covered pond near our house.

And I’d loved the occasional professional games my parents had taken my brother and me to.

An NHL team for Baltimore seemed like a dream come true for hockey fans, but when it was announced that this team would be made up of orcs, my excitement had wavered.

It wasn’t that I had anything against orcs; I’d never even heard of them being real until last month.

Supernaturals seemed to be all over the place in the last few years.

The angels practically ran things. There were demons, shifters, vampires, elves…

And now orcs.

This would no doubt be the first of many supernatural sports teams. It felt strange, but teams like the Tusks were a logical step toward reflecting the changes all around us.

One of my friends from the gym was a werewolf.

Demons owned several Baltimore area businesses.

There was an elf barista at my favorite Starbucks.

The trio of enthusiastic black dudes in line for beer beside us were vampires.

But orcs ?

Advertisements had shown these giant, muscle-bound, green, half-naked guys with tusks jutting from their lower jaws and a steely look in their eyes.

I’ll admit, they looked impressive. But my first thought was that it wouldn’t be fair to pit orcs against humans.

Who in the world had approved this? It had to be against some NHL regulation, or occupational health and safety code.

The humans would be slaughtered—and some of these human players made millions of dollars a year.

Why would any NHL team agree to risk their players against a team of orcs?

And who in their right mind would be willing to watch such carnage? Not me .

But my parents had bought me tickets, excited for me to attend this inaugural game of our new hockey team in Baltimore. So here I was.

“Let’s hurry up and get to our seats.” Abby bounced in excitement, nearly spilling her beer.

“Orcs on ice,” Willa drawled as she followed me through the rows to our spot. “Sounds like a Disney movie…or a reality show. I wonder who will get voted off the island?”

“Or who will get the rose?” Abby laughed. “It’ll be fun. I love hockey.”

We all did, but I wasn’t sure if what we were about to see would be hockey or a gladiatorial contest. Hopefully the Red Wings wouldn’t end the game carried out on stretchers.

We settled in with our beers, commenting on the hotness level of the visiting team as they warmed up on the ice.

No matter how the game turned out, it was good to get together with Abby and Willa.

The past few weeks we’d all been swamped at work, and our schedules hadn’t seemed to align.

Sitting here drinking cheap draft beer and ogling guys made me feel like I was back in college and not an overworked professional trying to grow my practice in a competitive market.

“Here come the orcs,” Willa announced.

I turned my attention to the huge green dude skating out of the tunnel. He didn’t seem to be very steady on his skates, but he remained upright. The ones who followed him were worse. Within seconds, there was a pile of green bodies at the edge of the ice.

“Why are they shirtless? Not that I’m complaining or anything,” Abby said.

“I wonder if their dicks are proportionate to the rest of their bodies,” Willa said. “If so, they’re gonna have a hard time getting laid. I mean, I like to think there’s a hole for every rod, but anatomy has its limits, and nobody wants to explain that kind of injury to an ER doc.”

“None of them can skate,” I said, because although the naked chests and questions about penis-proportion were important, the orcs’ lack of basic skills on the ice took priority in my weird mind.

Yes, I was more fixated on the orcs slipping and sliding than their sculpted chests or their potentially painful cock size.

Although now that I thought about it, the one guy who had remained standing and wasn’t hugging the wall did have an amazing set of pecs. And arms. And abs. And the thighs filling out those tight pants weren’t exactly shabby, either.

“That first dude has to be nearly seven feet tall,” Willa commented. “I’m not a particularly short woman, but I wouldn’t even come to his shoulder. He’d need to pick me up to kiss me. I could give him a blow job from a squat.”

Abby sighed. “It would need to be a fast blow job because I just can’t hold a squat for long.”

“We can work on that,” Willa told her. “Give me six months and you’ll be able to crack walnuts with your ass cheeks.”

She wasn’t kidding. Willa was a personal trainer at our gym and had a dedicated group of clients on the side for private sessions. I was pretty sure army sergeants could learn a thing or two from her. And I’d bet good money she actually could crack walnuts with her ass.

“Oh, jeez, this is gonna be a shit show,” Abby said as others skated onto the field to help the orcs stand and make their way to the bench. “They really can’t skate. How the heck does Baltimore have a hockey team that can’t even skate?”

I had no idea. It wasn’t cheap to buy an NHL franchise, and I knew there were a lot of hoops to jump through. Why the owner had gone to all that trouble only to populate his team with a bunch of supernaturals that couldn’t skate was beyond me.

Although the owner was a demon, which might explain everything.

At least this wasn’t going to be the human bloodbath I’d feared. The orcs would likely spend most of the game sprawled out on the ice while the Red Wings evaded the bodies and scored goals left and right.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Initially, I’d been worried about the human team and the unbalanced matchup. Now, I was worried about an opposite unbalanced matchup.

Orcs. I was worried about a bunch of seven-foot-tall, muscle-bound, green-skinned, fierce dudes who looked like they could take on a team of dragons and come out on top. I know it was weird, but I felt sorry for these guys.

“Maybe we should drink every time an orc falls down?” Abby suggested, interrupting my angsty thoughts.

“I don’t know about you two, but I don’t want to spend tomorrow puking from a massive hangover,” I said.

“From the way those guys skate, we’ll all end up dead of alcohol poisoning before the first intermission,” Willa added.

I sighed, looking as the orc who’d been first out of the tunnel returned to the ice, skidding his way to the center of the rink. “I guess this means we won’t be taking bets on the winner or the score.”

Abby laughed. “Score? I’ll wager twenty bucks that the Red Wings win by more than ten goals.”

“More like twenty goals,” Willa scoffed.

It felt kind of wrong to be making fun of the orc team like this.

It was funny, but I got the impression that the orcs weren’t in on the joke.

I wondered if they’d been shoved into this with no training, no preparation, and no knowledge at all of the game.

It was one thing to be a clown or a stand-up comic by choice, another to be laughed at when you had no idea you were there to play the fool.

As the game began, I felt less and less like laughing.

The Red Wings were racking up goals at a speed that made it likely Willa’s prediction would come true.

The orcs truly did not know how to skate and had taken to stomping around the ice instead, hacking at the puck as though they were trying to split firewood.

Their sticks were breaking at an alarming rate, and the one time they got the puck, they sent it flying toward the ceiling, where it took out one of the lights.

One orc did nothing but lean against the wall and scowl at everyone, while the forward seemed to think his main goal was to tackle members of the opposing team.

That could have resulted in serious injury had the guy ever been able to get within a foot of any of the humans.

At the first intermission, our cups of beer were empty, and the Tusks had scored no goals.

The Red Wings had scored five.

I felt strangely heartsick as I went out into the concession area to get more beers. Then I overheard the commentary while in line. Hockey fans were leaving, disappointed that the game was so one-sided. The people that were remaining seemed to view the whole thing as if it were a circus event.

I got three beers and returned just as the players were taking to the ice again.

The Tusks didn’t seem to have improved their skating skills during intermission, but I could instantly see a difference in the orcs’ attitudes.

They were pissed—a least some of them were pissed.

The one guy continued to lean against the wall, sneering at the whole thing.

The forward, who’d been the only one managing to stay on his skates the first third of the game, took possession of the puck and used his size to slam into any human who came near.

Unfortunately, the humans managed to get their sticks in front of him, and he tripped over one, falling face-first to the ground.

The rest seemed to happen in slow motion. One of the Red Wings went for the puck and drove it straight into the orc’s face. Green blood flew, and the orc shouted a guttural word in a strange language, throwing out his arm to clothesline the human in the shins.