Chapter 11
Jordan
I sat on my deck, watching the sun melt into the mountains as twilight crept across the sky. My laptop screen cast a pale glow over the job postings that had started to blur together—ER positions in Nashville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga.
Chattanooga.
My cursor hovered over the listing. Erlanger.
A top-tier emergency department with a reputation that preceded it.
The pay was excellent, the benefits solid, and they were offering five shifts instead of seven.
On paper, it was perfect. More than that—it was home.
Or had been, once upon a time. I'd grown up there.
My aunt Gail still lived in the same house on Missionary Ridge where I'd spent awkward Sunday dinners after my parents died.
I should call her and let her know I might be coming back.
We'd make small talk, promise to meet for coffee, then let months slip by in comfortable silence.
That's how it had always been with us, even after the accident.
She'd tried her best, but grief sometimes had a way of building walls instead of bridges.
But Franklin. God, leaving Franklin felt wrong.
I pushed the laptop away and leaned back, letting the evening breeze wash over my face. Franklin was supposed to be a pit stop, just another temporary landing place in the path of my career. Instead, it had become more of a home than Chattanooga ever was, even with all my childhood memories there.
I'd miss my friends for one thing. The night they'd heard about my firing, they'd descended on my doorstep armed with cheesecake and wine. Kelsey had already spread the word about what happened with Ardin, but my friends knew me well enough to see past the official story.
"Okay, spill. What's really going on?" Sarah had demanded, pouring wine like she was preparing for a long night. We'd sprawled across my living room in our usual formation—me curled in the corner of the couch, Tori cross-legged on the floor, Kelsey claiming the armchair like a throne.
The wine loosened my tongue. Or maybe it was just the relief of being with people who really knew me, without judgment or expectation. Either way, the confession tumbled out before I could stop it.
"I think I fell for Ruka."
Silence. Then Kelsey's face split into the most insufferable grin I'd ever seen. "The Orc chief? Oh my God, I knew it."
"You did not."
"Jordan. Please. The way you talk about him? You get this dreamy look every single time."
Heat flooded my cheeks. "I did not get a dreamy look."
"You absolutely do," Sarah chimed in, eyes dancing with amusement.
Tori leaned forward, practically vibrating with curiosity. "Okay, but seriously—what are they like? I mean, really like? Everyone's got opinions, but you've actually been there. You've spent time with them."
And just like that, the floodgates opened.
We talked for hours—about the Orcs, about Ruka, about how attraction doesn't follow a script or check boxes on some predetermined list. My friends didn't flinch, didn't make me feel like I'd confessed something shameful or strange.
They just listened, asked questions, shared their own thoughts about the Orcs who'd emerged from underground five years ago and turned the world sideways.
These women were my anchor, my chosen family. Leaving them would tear something loose inside me. But the truth—the truth I could barely admit even to myself—was that I didn't want to move far from the Orc village.
From Ruka.
He haunted me. Morning coffee tasted different because I remembered sharing tea with him in his dwelling, the steam curling between us like a question neither of us dared ask.
Job searches became an exercise in distraction—my eyes would glaze over mid-scroll as his voice echoed in my memory, that deep rumble that seemed to resonate in my chest. The way he'd pause before speaking, choosing his words with the same care he gave everything else.
Those dark eyes that saw straight through every defense I'd ever built.
I'd fallen down the research rabbit hole hard.
Forums for interspecies relationships. Academic papers with titles like "Cross-Cultural Bonding Patterns in Post-Integration Society.
" Personal blogs from humans who'd chosen Orc partners.
I'd bookmarked half the internet, reading late into the night, searching for.
.. what? Permission? Precedent? Proof I wasn't losing my mind?
Because this was insane. Six months ago, if someone had told me I'd be lying awake fantasizing about an Orc chieftain, I would've laughed. But Ruka had demolished every assumption I'd ever made about attraction, about connection, about what it meant to truly see someone and be seen in return.
I'd dated my share. Good men, mostly—doctors, professionals, guys who looked perfect on paper. But none of them had ever made my pulse race with just a glance. None of them had ever made me feel like I was standing on the edge of something vast and terrifying and absolutely right.
My truck became a monument to my indecision. I'd grab my keys, march outside with purpose, slide behind the wheel. I knew the route to the Orc village by heart now—I'd traveled it in my mind so many times. Once I made it all the way to the highway, indicator blinking, ready to merge.
Then my phone would buzz. Student loan payment due. Rent reminder. Interview confirmation. The weight of reality crushing that wild, reckless hope in my chest.
I'd pull over. Sit there gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles went white. Turn around. Drive home. Open my laptop. Rinse and repeat.
But the wanting never faded. It lived under my skin, a constant ache, a compass needle pointing stubbornly in one direction no matter how hard I tried to recalibrate.
Every practical bone in my body screamed that I was being ridiculous—you don't upend your entire life for someone you've known for weeks.
You don't throw away years of study and sacrifice and student debt for a feeling.
Except it wasn't just a feeling. It was a certainty, bone-deep and undeniable, that I was meant to be there. With him.
I just needed the universe to give me a sign. Something to tell me I wasn't completely insane for wanting to burn my carefully constructed life to the ground and follow my heart into the unknown.
The next morning I got it.
The email arrived at 6:47 AM, its subject line practically glowing on my screen: "Emory Healthcare - Lead ER Physician Position."
I nearly dropped my phone. My fingers fumbled as I opened it, heart hammering against my ribs.
Dr. Patricia Chen—the intimidatingly brilliant department head who'd grilled me for an hour and forty-five minutes during a video call two days ago—was offering me the job.
Lead ER physician. The words blurred as I scanned down.
Competitive salary that made my eyes widen, comprehensive student loan repayment assistance, full benefits package, generous relocation stipend.
Everything. She was offering me everything I'd clawed my way toward through sleepless residency shifts and mountains of debt to achieve.
This is it, I thought, staring at those perfect, professional paragraphs. This is the sign.
The universe had spoken. Stay the course. Be sensible. Choose the career you've bled for, the stability you've dreamed about since your first day of med school. Atlanta was a thriving city—culture, opportunities, a real future stretching out before me like the yellow brick road.
I should have been dancing. Crying with relief. Calling everyone I knew.
Instead, I felt like someone had scooped out my insides and left me hollow.
I read the email again. Then again. Waiting for the joy to hit, for that surge of triumph and certainty that should come with getting exactly what you’d worked for.
But all I could see was Ruka's face in the firelight, feel his hands cradling my jaw like I was something miraculous, remember that bone-deep sense of home I'd felt in his village—a feeling I'd never experienced in any hospital, any house, any moment of my carefully planned life.
Dr. Chen needed my answer by Friday. Forty-eight hours to choose which version of my future I wanted to live.
I closed my laptop and escaped to the deck, clutching my coffee like a lifeline. I tried to summon excitement for this incredible opportunity. Tried to convince myself this was exactly the sign I'd begged for.
But my heart knew better. It knew I was holding the wrong answer whether my brain agreed or not.
I was nursing my third coffee of the day when I saw him—a figure materializing at the end of my driveway like something out of a dream.
My mug stopped halfway to my lips.
That walk. God, that walk. Unhurried but purposeful, broad shoulders cutting through the sunlight with the kind of confidence that made the world rearrange itself around him. The sun caught green skin, dark hair, and my heart simply stopped beating.
No.
It couldn't be.
I set down my coffee before I dropped it, my hands trembling as I gripped the deck railing.
He kept coming, each step bringing him into sharper focus, more real, more possible.
The rational part of my brain—the part that had gotten me through organic chemistry and gross anatomy—insisted I was hallucinating.
Sleep deprivation. Stress. A psychological break brought on by impossible choices.
But then he was climbing my deck steps, and there was nothing imaginary about the way he filled the space, the way the air itself seemed to thicken with his presence.
Ruka.
My sign hadn't come in an email. It had walked up my driveway like Mr. Darcy emerging from the mist, and I couldn't breathe.
"Ruka?" The word scraped out of my throat. My mind spun with the details of how he stood before me, then I remembered.
My address. I'd pressed it into his hand before I left, my handwriting shaky on that scrap of paper. In case of emergency. In case you need me.