Healer's Debt (Orcs of the Severed Tusk #1)

An orc warchief. A debt-bonded human healer. Eight weeks of forced march through enemy territory.

Griet Tarn has spent nine years as property. Sold twice, wages garnished to pay a debt her father took and fled, she stitches soldiers together for causes she doesn't believe in. When her mercenary company is slaughtered by an orc warband, she expects to die.

Instead, the warchief offers her a deal.

Rahsk needs a healer who can keep him alive through eight weeks of forced march to his mountain homeland. In her freedom. Her debt cleared. Every last coin of it.

Griet takes the deal. She doesn't ask why the warchief insists she march at his side. Why he gives her boots that fit perfectly and a knife he carried for thirty years. Why every orc in the warband calls her "his healer" like the words mean something she can't see yet.

Because Rahsk isn't just protecting an asset. The courtship gifts, the public claim at the feast hall, the warrior who loses a hand for touching her — it all means something in orc culture that Griet has been too stubborn to recognize. He's been courting her. And everyone knew it but her.

Now she's falling for the warchief who owns her contract, and she has to is this real, or just another cage dressed up as a choice?