Prologue
They say Earth was green.
I don’t believe them.
Green is the color of the mold that grows on the hydroponic filters in the lower decks of Haven-7 when the air scrubbers start to fail.
It’s the color of the synthetic sludge we eat when the shipment from the Vyre is late. To me, green isn't life. It’s decay.
But the stories?
They’re all we have. My grandmother used to whisper them to me while the station hummed and groaned around us, a lullaby of oceans that stretched forever and a sun that didn’t need a fusion core to keep from flickering out. She’d talk about "flowers," things that grew out of the dirt just to be beautiful.
That’s why I have the tattoo on my wrist. A small, black-inked daisy. It’s a reminder of a home I’ve never seen, for a girl who’s lived her whole life in a tin can orbiting rocks that don't want us.
Humanity didn’t leave Earth; we were evicted. Overpopulated, exhausted, and broken, we took to the stars and found out real quick that the universe is a crowded, hungry place.
We’re the bottom-feeders of the galaxy. We live in the shadows of species that look at us like we’re nothing more than clever vermin.
I’ve seen them all through the reinforced glass of the docking bays.
The Vyre come first. They’re tall, spindly things with skin like polished opal. They move like they’re dancing and look at you like you’re a bug under a microscope. They handle the tech. They’re the reason Haven-7 stays in the sky, and they never let us forget it.
Then there are the Drann. Massive, lizard-skinned brutes who smell like swamp water and old copper. They do the heavy lifting, the mining, the dirty work. They’re mean, but they’re predictable. You stay out of their way, they don’t step on you.
And then… there are the Orcs.
The first time I saw one, I was six years old. He was seven and a half feet of raw, terrifying muscle, his skin a deep, bruised shade of forest-green.
He had tusks, real, jagged bone peeking over a heavy lip, and eyes the color of burning amber. He didn't walk; he prowled. The air around him seemed to get hotter, thicker, vibrating with a heavy, masculine musk that made my lungs feel tight.
My mother pulled me behind her skirts so hard she nearly bruised my arm.
"Don't look, Amara,"she’d hissed, her voice trembling. "They’re soulless. Barbarians. They’ll rip the heart right out of your chest just to see it beat."
That’s the lesson every human girl on Haven-7 learns before she can read: The Orcs of Orkan Prime are monsters. They live for the hunt, for the blood, and for the kill. They don't have mercy, and they sure as hell don't have hearts.
I used to have nightmares about those amber eyes. I’d wake up sweating, feeling like a predator was breathing down my neck, waiting for me to trip, to fall, to be weak.
I didn't know then that the nightmares were just a rehearsal.
I didn't know that my own blood, the people who gave me life, would be the ones to throw me to the wolves. Or that the monster I feared most wouldn't just take my heart.
He’d claim everything else, too.
