Grumpy Pucking Orc

  Orcs On Ice

  Book 1

  Debra Dunbar

  Copyright © 2025 by Debra Dunbar

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Formatted with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Ozar

  2. Jordan

  3. Ozar

  4. Jordan

  5. Ozar

  6. Jordan

  7. Ozar

  8. Jordan

  9. Ozar

  10. Ozar

  11. Jordan

  12. Ozar

  13. Jordan

  14. Ozar

  15. Jordan

  16. Jordan

  17. Ozar

  18. Jordan

  19. Ozar

  20. Jordan

  21. Jordan

  22. Ozar

  23. Jordan

  24. Jordan

  25. Ozar

  26. Ozar

  27. Ozar

  28. Jordan

  29. Ozar

  30. Ozar

  31. Jordan

  32. Ozar

  33. Jordan

  34. Ozar

  35. Ozar

  36. Jordan

  37. Ozar

  38. Jordan

  39. Ozar

  40. Jordan

  41. Ozar

  42. Jordan

  Also by Debra Dunbar

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Ozar

  Iglared at the bright white of the ice at the end of the tunnel, a low growl escaping my lips. I’d always hated the waiting right before a battle, that period of inaction until the call to charge was given.

  Only we weren’t heading into battle, we were about to play a human game called hockey. Shirtless. With strangely curved sticks instead of swords.

  “This is stupid,” Eng muttered in Orcish. “We came here to find wives and take them home, not waste time dancing around on knife-blades for human entertainment.”

  Bwat shrugged. “Perhaps this is how we win a human female. Many species require the male to perform dance-like displays to show their suitability as a life-partner.”

  Ugwyll snorted. “What we need to do is grab the first sturdy female of childbearing years and drag her back home. That’s how we show our suitability as a husband. Not dancing and not wearing these stupid fucking shoes.”

  We all hated these stupid fucking shoes, but none with the white-hot passion of Ugwyll. The orc faced the same struggle as the rest of us, trying to balance on the knife-blades that ran the vertical length of our shoes, but it angered Ugwyll far more than it bothered the others. Ugwyll was agile and gifted in sports and battle, as well as being a scout of great renown beyond his clan. Repeatedly falling while wearing these things called skates was absolutely humiliating to him.

  It was humiliating to all of us. Except for Eng, that is, who had spent our one practice before this game leaning against the wall with a bored expression on his face.

  “This isn’t a dance, it’s a fight,” I reminded the group of orcs.

  “I thought it was a contest,” Ugwyll said. “Hitting the flat minotaur turd with a curved stick past the enemy team and into their nest.”

  “Net,” Bwat corrected. “They call it a net. And the turd is a cuck.”

  “Cuck.” Ugwyll laughed. “Isn’t that what the humans call their hand-axes?”

  “That’s ‘cock.’” Bwat had been diligently studying the human language of English. We all had, but Bwat knew far more than any of us. “They also call their cock a Johnson, a dick, a penis, a⁠—”

  “I don’t care what humans call their hand-axe.” Eng reached down to cup his, a gesture hindered by the large gloves he wore on his hands and the hard plastic device we’d all needed to affix over the area between our legs.

  “Shut your mouths and focus,” I growled. “We’re about to go into battle and we need to win.”

  A muscle twitched in Ugwyll’s jaw. He glared out into the arena as if that were the foe we were facing and not the humans twirling around on the ice like they were indeed dancing. Eng, on the other hand, just snorted.

  “Right. We’re not going to win. First, none of us know the rules of this game beyond putting the minotaur turd into the other team’s net. Second, none of us can remain upright on these knife blades for more than a few seconds. There will be no winning. This isn’t a fight or a contest or anything we should lower ourselves to participate in. You idiots can slide around out there for the next hour or so but I’m not going to make a fool of myself.”

  “It’s our job,” Bwat insisted. “We were told we needed to have jobs if we wanted to stay here, and this was the only job we were offered.”

  “Don’t care,” Eng announced. “I’m not doing this, and I’d like to see the human brave enough to try and make me.”

  It wasn’t the humans we needed to worry about, it was the demon who owned this team, and the angels who set the rules in this world. The days of raids, of plunder, of snatching human women and hauling them home over our shoulders were over. And that change couldn’t have come at a worse time.

  The noise from the crowd in the stadium increased in volume, and I adjusted my stance, trying to balance on the knife blades without having to hold onto the wall. Eng was right—this was ridiculous. But I’d dance around in these shoes if it meant I could return home with a wife.

  A wife meant children, and there was nothing in the world I wanted more than children. Pudgy, green-skinned babies to bounce on my knees. I’d teach them to fight, watch their tusks come in, celebrate their victories and comfort their tears. I’d had no siblings, but I wanted as many orclets as my wife would be willing and able to provide.

  Years ago, before the plague took the lives of so many, I would have been wed and have sired several orclets by this age. But with the deaths, my hopes had also died.

  Humans had been compatible breeding partners centuries ago when orcs regularly raided the human lands, bringing their females home along with gold, jewels, and livestock. Many of the orcs in our tribes had some human blood running through their veins.

  So here we were again. Leaving our clans and crossing the portals once more, but this time to only bring home human brides to have children with.

  Although if some pillage occurred along the way, that would have been icing on the cake.

  I’d expected to face battle. I’d expected screaming unwilling females. I hadn’t expected a group of winged beings to incapacitate the lot of us orcs as if we were newborns.

  It was the first of what would be many humiliations.

  We’d needed to agree to certain rules before we were released from the custody of the angels. No kidnapping unwilling human females to be our brides. No plundering. And jobs. The maintaining of gainful employment.

  So here we were, in our gainful employment, about to participate in a contest known among the humans as hockey while walking on these knife blades.

  An amplified voice shouted something unintelligible from the arena, and the crowd roared again.

  “Go, go, go,” urged one of the human assistants from behind us.

  Once more, I growled—this time louder.

  I was Ozar, son of Meig and Oala, a skilled warrior and a Guardian of Clan Heregut, a Commander of my Squadron. I wore the marks awarded to those who’d excelled in battle. I had much to offer a wife. And if this ridiculous contest was what it took to get one, then I would perform to the best of my ability.

  And I’d do my damndest to win. Because above all, I hated losing.

  Letting go of the wall, I stomped forward down the tunnel into the bright light. My bare shoulders brushed the sides of the hallway. Humans reached down from nearby seats, touching me. Again I growled, jutting my lower jaw forward so my tusks were even more visible as I stepped onto the ice.

  The stupid knife-blade shoes slid forward and I nearly fell on my ass, as I’d done the first and only time I’d attempted this. Thankfully I managed to shift my balance and somehow remain upright. The other orcs on my team exited the tunnel behind me, pushing me forward and sliding me across the ice. Ignoring the din of the crowd and the shouting of the amplified human announcer, I tried to focus on slowing my speed so I wouldn’t careen clear across the rink and into a wall.

  Most of the others didn’t have as graceful of an entrance. Eng groped his way along the wall. Bwat shot forward and flailed about, eventually face-planting on the ice. Ugwyll managed to remain on his feet until one shoe went wide and he fell backward. The line behind him went down like those dominos I’d seen the humans set up, until the last eight orcs ended up in a pile just outside the hallway.

  The roar went from cheers to laughter, and I felt a sharp surge of anger.

  No. I could not kill the humans. Not unless I wanted the angels to send me back home in shame. Without a wife. Doomed to be forever childless.

  “This way. This way.” One of the humans that worked for our team was ushering us over toward a seating area. Several other human support staff glided out to us, assisting the fallen onto their feet and helping them over to the box.

  I waved off a human who was trying to take my arm and stomped my knife-blades into the ice
as I made my way to our seating area, breaking off chunks and leaving scars on the smooth white surface.

  This was going to be a long and humiliating evening. And it would only be one of many. I sat in my chair, glaring at the human team and hoping that I found a willing human female to be my wife soon. Because it probably wouldn’t be long until I killed a human, or more likely killed a few dozen humans. And then my dreams of a wife and children would be over.

  Chapter 2

  Jordan

  “It 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.