Chapter 20
Hanna
Iwas at the front of the building, exploring the tiny green space that Ribbon insisted we needed to visit, when I heard the engine. A low, purring growl—smooth, expensive and polished.
The kind of sound that I’d become used to with all the expensive vehicles that belonged to our cluster of witches and orcs. But this one sounded... familiar in a way that I didn’t like. Then the car pulled into view.
A sleek black luxury sedan—glossy enough to reflect the treetops from across the street, gleaming in a way that practically screamed money and manipulation. The Greyleaf crest was printed discreetly on the license plate frame and my stomach sank.
I cursed myself for thinking I was safe enough to venture outside of the security of the building. I’d grown accustomed to Savla’s presence and his aura of protection. I was an idiot.
My parents stepped out of the car. My mother first, immaculate in charcoal silk like she’d been pressed straight from a magazine ad. My father was right behind her, face arranged into that practiced look of disappointed concern. Even after three years of not seeing them, they looked the same.
Then Corwin emerged from the back seat with the same perfectly styled hair, same smug smirk and the same cologne that smelled like arrogance and citrus. My heart dropped into my shoes. My mother gasped dramatically when she spotted me.
“Hanna. Oh, darling. Look at you,” she said, her tone filled with disgust. Her gaze swept over to where Ribbon sat next to me like he’d personally offended her with his presence.
My father added with a rehearsed sigh, “We’ve come to bring you home.”
Home. There was that word again. It had never meant what they thought it did.
Corwin slid his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels like he owned the place.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the runaway witch,” he purred, and I had to wonder what the hell I’d been thinking, agreeing to marry this tiny, pathetic excuse for a male. His smile sharpened. “Did you find yourself a pet to play house with?”
Before I could speak, movement caught at the corner of my eye.
Savla.
He appeared from the doorway of the building with Darak and Enka in tow—furious brown eyes narrowing as soon as he saw who stood across from me.
Corwin wasn’t a secret from him. I’d shown him all of the male’s social media and he’d scowled, looking from his picture to me as if he wondered what the hell I’d been thinking. I’d wondered the same thing.
He slowed his stride and came to stand beside me. Not touching and not saying a word. Just… present.
He was solid enough that my entire spine loosened. My mother stepped forward with a frown, her gaze flickering first to Savla and then to the two other orcs standing a bit behind us, like bodyguards.
“Sweetheart, listen. We may have been harsh before, but we miss you. Corwin misses you and your place is with us. With family,” she cooed in that voice that she always used when she wanted something.
Corwin didn’t miss a beat. “I’ve been devastated without you.” He said it like he was reading from a script. “I thought you’d come to your senses eventually.”
I folded my arms. “I came to my senses when I left.”
My father tried a softer approach. “Darling, your future’s at home with us. The apothecary. The Greyleaf legacy. This—” He gestured to the building, to Ribbon, and then to Savla and the other two males, “—this is temporary.”
My mother nodded sympathetically. “You can’t possibly thrive here.”
Something hot and steady rose in my chest. Rage, yes, but something else, too. Belonging.
“I am thriving,” I stated, my voice firmer than any of them had ever heard it. I saw my mother’s brow furrow, but it was Corwin that responded.
He snorted. “Sure. Running around with orcs. Playing with frogs.”
A loud croak echoed from behind Savla’s leg—Ribbon had apparently taken offense to being called a frog.
Corwin smirked at the sound. “You can’t be serious right now, Hanna. This is embarrassing,” he scoffed.
My cheeks heated with humiliation even though I didn’t believe a single word he was saying. Old wounds starting ripping open.
Savla shifted then. It was just one step and it wasn’t enough to touch me, but it was enough to put his body between me and Corwin’s line of fire.
His jaw was clenched, his shoulders were squared, and I saw his claws flex. The same ones on the left that he took such care to keep sharp so that he could use them to chisel instead of a paring knife when he needed it. He’d trimmed the others on his dominant hand ever since he’d met me.
He still didn’t speak and I knew him well enough now to know why. He didn’t trust himself to. Not because he didn’t care—but because caring frightened him more than battle ever could.
My mother misread his silence entirely. “See? Even he doesn’t know what you’re doing out here.”
I inhaled sharply. “This is my choice.”
Corwin waved a hand dismissively. “Hanna, stop humiliating us. These things don’t actually care about you. Especially not him.” He jerked his chin toward Savla. “He hasn’t said a single thing since we got here. I think he wants you to leave.”
Savla inhaled sharply and for a heartbeat, a small sound left him—raw, agonized.
I understood what he was trying to tell me without saying it. Corwin was absolutely wrong about this male. He didn’t want me to leave. He just wished he could keep me closer. And I was going to find out what I could do to break the barriers so we could be together.
He thought defending me meant surrendering to something he wasn’t ready to face. I turned away from him and toward the people who had failed me in every way that mattered.
“I’m not getting in that car,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
My mother’s mouth thinned. “Hanna—”
“No.” I lifted my chin. “This is where I belong.”
Corwin scoffed. “With them?” The scorn in his voice was clear.
“Yes,” I said simply. “With them.” I replaced the scorn with pride, because this was the family I was choosing. The only one that mattered. ”Because they treat me better than you ever did.”
Everyone around me held their breath. Even my parents faltered. I stepped back, crossing the invisible line between past and present, city and clan, blood and chosen family.
Savla didn’t move, but he reached me through our bond. It was tentative, instinctive and unbidden.
It wrapped around my wrist like a warm, invisible thread. In it, I felt a silent promise and a fierce, trembling confession he wasn’t ready to speak. Not yet. But someday?
The bond whispered.
Yes.
The second I stepped backward—toward the coven, toward the clan, toward home—something in Corwin’s face snapped.
The charming smile vanished and the polished veneer cracked like thin ice. His jaw clenched so tightly I heard the grind of his teeth.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he spat, taking a step forward. “You think you can talk to your family like that? You think you can walk away from everything we gave you?”
“My life isn’t yours to dictate,” I said, careful, steady. “And you haven’t given me anything.”
But Corwin’s eyes darted to Savla—broad, silent and immovable beside me—and something vicious sparked there.
“This thing?” he barked, waving at Savla. “This is who you’re choosing?” His voice rose, hysterical around the edges. “A brooding, mute orc-pet? A male who can’t even open his mouth to defend you?”
Savla didn’t flinch, but the air around him tightened—dense, electric and filled with something stormy.
Corwin kept going, voice climbing. “You think he cares? Look at him—he won’t even—”
“Enough.” Savla’s voice cut the air.
It was low, deep and cold enough to freeze the blood in the veins of everyone who was in the clearing. Corwin actually stumbled back a step. He hadn’t expected Savla to speak. He especially hadn’t expected that. Savla didn’t move closer, but Goddess Mother—it felt like he did.
“You don’t speak to her like that,” he said, voice quiet and lethal. “Not here. Not anywhere. I don’t ever want you speaking to her again.”
My heart thudded once. Hard.
Corwin’s mouth twisted. “Or what? You’ll grunt at me again?”
Savla’s jaw flexed—the only sign he was holding himself back. “I won’t repeat myself,” he said.
The silence after his words was a warning. A line drawn in the sand that he dared Corwin to step over.
Corwin scoffed, lifting his hands. “Please. You’re all delusional. Hanna, get in the car. Now. Before you embarrass yourself further—”
He reached for me and he really shouldn’t have. A wet, violent thwack hit his arm and Corwin screamed. Ribbon—who had been quietly simmering at Savla’s heels—launched himself like a missile straight at Corwin’s arm, that he’d already wrapped with his tongue.
“Ribbon—” I yelped, but I was far too late.
The toad tackled him with the weight of a mid-sized boulder. Corwin hit the dirt in a flailing mess of limbs and outrage. Ribbon puffed himself up like a furious marshmallow and croaked with all his might—a deep, guttural sound that shook the leaves.
Corwin scrambled backward, shrieking. “Why is it—Get it off!—Why is it so furry—?!”
“Stop moving,” Savla said calmly, arms crossed. “He’ll get bored.”
Corwin—who was clearly too stupid to listen to any good advice that was given—did not stop moving. Ribbon pursued with single-minded vengeance, hopping after him, croaking like a war horn. Corwin practically climbed over my father trying to get to the car.
My mother shrieked and my father pulled at Corwin’s collar. They piled into the car in a panic. Ribbon slammed himself at the passenger door with the force of a small meteor. The car peeled out and sped down the road, Ribbon chasing it like a furious swamp deity demanding tribute.
Then, I couldn’t stop myself. I laughed so hard that I choked and I folded into myself. Because as soon as the taillights disappeared—everything I’d been holding inside cracked open. My knees buckled and I sank to the ground, my breath shaking and my vision blurring.
All the old wounds ripped open at once—their voices, their scorn, their disappointment and their love that was never love at all. I didn’t sob and I didn’t wail. I just… broke quietly, the way kids from homes like mine learned to.
No hands touched me, but warmth settled at my side all the same. Savla lowered himself to the ground next to me—knees drawn up, forearms on them, staring ahead.
Close enough to embrace me but far enough not to overwhelm me. He was my quiet shield. The steady presence that I needed so I wouldn’t fall apart at the seams.
Savla was protective without being overly possessive. Present even though he’d never claimed me and he spoke only when my breath evened out enough to hear again.
“They don’t get to define you,” he said softly.
My throat tightened. “They tried.”
“You resisted,” he said in a firm voice that told me I couldn’t argue about that part.
I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve. “I feel like I shouldn’t be this upset,” I hiccupped.
“You can feel however you need to.” His voice was rougher than usual—like he was restraining emotion of his own.
I turned my head slightly to see him. He wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was staring at the dirt, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles were white.
“Savla,” I whispered. “You stepped in even though you didn’t want to.”
His jaw tightened. “He shouldn’t have said what he said. He shouldn’t have gotten close enough to speak to you or touch you,” he muttered, his words strained as though they were painful to him.
Something fierce and raw flashed through me.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” I whispered.
His breath hitched—quiet, but unmistakable. He still didn’t touch me. But he leaned just slightly—shoulder nearly brushing mine.
In his body was a silent plea, a reluctant surrender and a terrified, trembling want. I leaned back into his side just barely. Little more than a breath. He inhaled sharply, the air between us glowing with tension, allowing fear and longing to intertwine.
Ribbon returned then—panting heavily, triumphant, covered in dust and glory. He plopped his massive body directly onto my lap and croaked softly.
Savla huffed out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “He did warn him.”
Despite everything that had just happened and the pain that was still filling my chest at the expressions on my parents’ faces—I grinned.
Because I wasn’t alone. Not anymore. I had a clan, a coven, a toad and now I had...Savla. He stayed beside me until the last of my shaking eased.
Without touching. Without pushing. But never once stepping away.