Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Jonus
Asoft knock on the bedroom door pulls me from a dead sleep.
It’s still dark outside.
I lie still for a second, assessing. It’s not the sharp two-raps-then-one of a security alert. This knock is deliberate and quiet. Someone who doesn’t want to wake Sloane.
I extract myself from her carefully. She murmurs and reaches for the warm space I’ve left behind, her fingers grasping at the sheets. My chest aches at the small, unconscious gesture, as if even in sleep she can’t stand to be apart from me.
After last night, my hands on her body, her voice breaking on my name, her telling me she loves me…I should be at peace. Instead, I’ve been lying awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, my mind racing in circles I can’t seem to break.
She said she loves me. And I said nothing back.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I pull on a shirt and open the door.
Garlen stands in the dark hallway. No tablet, no phone, just my cousin in sleep pants and a bare chest, looking at me with those steady, serious eyes that remind me he’s the smartest orc I’ve ever known. “We need to talk,” he whispers. “Alone.”
I glance back at Sloane, still asleep, her auburn hair spread across my pillow. Then I nod and follow him.
We move silently through the dark house, past the kitchen, to the basement door. Garlen opens it and leads the way down. The stairs creak under our combined weight.
The basement is different now. The cage is gone as are the chains.
The reinforced walls remain, but the space has been transformed into storage and a workshop.
Garlen’s overflow of books lines one wall.
There’s a workbench where he tinkers with carpentry projects — he built Zoe’s bookshelf down here last month.
But I remember helping drag my cousin down these stairs, wild and snarling, his tusks fully extended, his eyes seeing nothing but red.
I remember the sound of chains locking into place, the heavy steel door of the cage slamming shut.
I sat in a chair in this exact space for hours, watching Garlen pace and howl for Ellie while I tried to keep him calm.
There are two chairs I suspect Garlen set up for us earlier.
We sit.
My cousin leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I know what happened last night.”
I stiffen. “How—”
“I scented the change in both of you this morning when I knocked on your door. I’m not judging you. I’m asking if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You look like you haven’t slept.”
“I haven’t.”
“Because?”
I rub at my face. “Because she told me she loves me and I didn’t say it back.”
Garlen lets that sit for a moment. He doesn’t rush to fill the silence. “What did you say?” he finally asks.
“I touched her and brought her to climax.” I stare at my own hands, the bruised knuckles. “But I didn’t say the words.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” I stop. Start again. “Because saying those words is a vow. It’s the beginning of everything and she’s not ready for all of that yet. She doesn’t fully understand—”
“Based on what Ellie’s told me, she seems to understand quite a bit.”
“Knowing the facts and being ready to live them are different things, Garlen.”
He studies me with that quiet intensity that makes everyone around him feel like they’re being read. “Or maybe you’re the one who’s not ready.”
My jaw tightens. I want to deny it, but I can’t.
“My mother said those words to my father,” I hear myself say.
“She told him she loved him and then she left the commune. Left the both of us. Just... disappeared one day without even a note at first. There was a search because everyone was worried that she’d been hurt in some way, until finally a letter arrived and it turned out she was just tired of living with orcs.
She was tired of me, too. You know my father didn’t survive the loss. ”
“You’re afraid that if you say it, she’ll leave too?”
“I’m afraid that if I say it and she leaves, I won’t survive it. The way he didn’t.”
Garlen exhales slowly and leans back in his chair.
“You know I was chained in this basement, completely out of my mind. Then I finally upgraded to being chained in my own bedroom. And every single day, I was terrified that when spring came and the chains came off, Ellie would look at me and decide what she felt was pity, not love. That she’d move back to the house next door and I’d be alone with the memory of what I almost had. ”
“But she didn’t leave.”
“No. She married me the same day the chains came off. But I had to trust her enough to let the chains come off. I had to risk it.” His eyes hold mine. “Sloane told you she loves you. She said the words first, which means she took the risk before you did. The least you can do is match her courage.”
That lands. Hard. It’s true that she put herself out there, vulnerable and trembling, and I responded by making her come and then telling her to go to sleep.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“There’s something else,” Garlen continues, shifting forward. “Ellie told me about the phone call with Sloane’s editor. The article is almost ready and her editor wants her back in DC.”
“I know. I was there when the call came in.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“What can I do? I can’t ask her to give up her career for me. That’s what her ex-fiancé did and it destroyed everything between them.”
Garlen stares at me with an expression I’ve only seen him use on students who’ve said something spectacularly stupid in his classroom. “Jonus. Are you serious right now?”
“What?”
“You organized an extraction team and flew to Colombia in forty-eight hours to pull this female out of a cartel compound. You carried her through forty kilometers of jungle. You hired former Navy SEALs.” He leans forward. “And you’re telling me you can’t figure out how to move to Washington DC?”
I blink.
“You’re an Irontree,” he continues, his voice gaining that authority that makes humans shut up and listen.
“You have resources, you have skills that work from anywhere in the world, and you have a female who thinks she has to choose between you and her life’s work.
She shouldn’t have to choose. Tell her you’ll go with her. ”
“But this family is here. You’re here. Dane and Laurie—”
“We’re a phone call and a plane ride away. Keric is in Maine. Kelt is in Maine. Family isn’t a zip code, Jonus.” He holds my gaze. “Family is what you and Sloane are building right now.”
“What if she doesn’t want me to come with her?”
“Then she’ll tell you that. But you need to give her the option.
Right now she thinks she’s stuck choosing between you and DC because that’s the only framework she’s ever known.
Her ex-fiancé expected her to sacrifice everything.
Be different. Tell her you’ll follow her anywhere. ” He pauses. “And mean it.”
I’m quiet for a long moment. Then something comes out that I haven’t told anyone. “I found a house.”
Garlen raises an eyebrow.
“Two doors down from Dane and Laurie. I contacted the real estate agent.”
A slow smile spreads across my cousin’s face. “You contacted the real estate agent?”
“It’s a nice house with four bedrooms a big yard and mountain views.”
“Four bedrooms.” His smile widens. “Planning ahead?”
“It might be hard to tell from this conversation so far, but I’m an optimist.”
Garlen laughs. “Tell her about the house. But also tell her that if DC is where she needs to be, you’ll buy a house in Georgetown instead.
The point isn’t the location but that wherever she goes, you go.
That’s what she needs to hear. That’s what no one has ever offered her.
My opinion is that if modern orcs give females the option of not only living with us in communes, but basically anywhere that feels right, the less likely we’ll find ourselves living as single fathers. ”
I nod slowly. He’s right.
I lean back in my chair and rub my hands over my face. There’s something else I need to talk about and it’s harder than the rest. “There’s something else,” I begin. “Garlen, I’m twice her size. What if I hurt her? What if—”
“You won’t hurt her. When the time comes, your instincts will guide you. Your body will know exactly what to do. It’s built into us — the need to pleasure our mate, to make sure she’s satisfied, to be gentle when gentle is required and...” He pauses. “Less gentle when she asks for that.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“Extensively.” A rare grin from my usually serious cousin. “Trust me. The first time with your mate is nothing like what you fear. It’s everything you’ve imagined and then some. Your body was made for hers. Literally.”
“I’m also concerned about the feral instinct,” I say. “It’s building. Obviously, I don’t want to end up chained in the basement.”
Garlen’s expression sobers immediately. He knows this territory better than anyone alive.
“Every time I think about those surveillance photos,” I continue. “About someone watching her through our window, being close enough to photograph her — I see red. My vision tunnels.” I hold up my bruised knuckles. “I punched a wall two days ago and barely managed to pull the hit.”
“How bad is it?”
“Five. Maybe six. It’s manageable, but it’s climbing. The fact that this is late May helps. If this were winter...”
“You’d need the cage.”
“Yes.”
Garlen is quiet for a moment. Then he asks the question I’ve been dreading. “Have you felt the urge to kidnap her?”
I don’t answer right away. The silence itself is an answer.
“Once,” I finally say. “Last night. After I touched her and she fell asleep. The need to claim her, to mate her, to fill her with my seed was so overwhelming I had to physically leave the bed. I stood at the window for twenty minutes, just breathing, trying to get myself under control.”
“That’s why I stayed chained after we moved upstairs together,” he responds.
“Not because I was afraid of hurting Ellie physically, but because I was terrified I’d take her and fill her with my seed before she’d had the chance to choose me with a clear mind.
” He meets my eyes. “I couldn’t live with that.
Even if she ended up loving me — even if she was happy — I’d always wonder whether she truly wanted me or whether I’d stolen the choice from her.
And that’s why you keep yourself in check.
That’s why you told her you’d wait until the danger passed and she could think clearly. ”
“Yes.” My voice is rough. “That’s exactly why.”
“Good. Fear keeps you honest and in control.”
I lean forward, my elbows on my knees. “What happens if someone attacks while I’m already on the edge? Those photos were a warning shot. What if they deploy a scent bomb, the way they did with you and with Keric?”
“I’ve been thinking about this too. We still haven’t gotten to the bottom of who is manufacturing those and how they are getting out to humans.
The scent bomb is lethal because it causes us to explode into instant, primal, winter frenzy, like an orc from ancient times.
But you need to know, when I broke out of the cage after the scent bomb hit me,” he says slowly.
“When I ran through town to the school, everyone assumes I was completely gone. That the feral took over entirely and there was nothing left of me in there. But there was a part of me — small, buried deep — that was still thinking. Still choosing.” He holds my gaze.
“I ran to Ellie. Not randomly or in a blind rage, I knew exactly where she was and I went straight to her because I was kidnapping her to not only make her mine but to keep her safe. The feral didn’t make me dangerous to my mate.
It made me dangerous to everyone else. And Keric, even feral, even after a direct scent bomb to the face caused him to kidnap his female and take her to a mountain cave, he managed to stop and ask Anna for consent before he mated her.
The others said that was impossible, but he did it. ”
“There’s hope.”
“Yes.” His expression is grave. “But it was close for both of us. I barely stopped myself from throwing Ellie over my shoulder in that parking lot. Keric carried Anna into the mountains without her permission and she was screaming at him to stop. The feral is real, Jonus. It is a genuine threat to your female’s ability to consent.
Don’t take what I’m telling you as permission to relax. ”
“I won’t.”
“Stay in control. And if you feel yourself slipping — if it gets past a six — you come to me. Or to Dane. We’ll do whatever it takes. We have the cage materials in storage and we can rebuild it in hours. And we still have all the chains.”
We both stand up.
“Thank you,” I say. “For this. For coming to get me before dawn.”
“You’d do the same for me. You tackled and chained me when I needed it and sat down here with me through the worst nights of my life. Kept me sane when I wanted to rip the walls apart. This is just me returning the favor.”
We climb the stairs together. Dawn is just breaking through the kitchen windows, pale gray light filtering across the hardwood floors.
The house is still quiet. Garlen heads to the coffee maker without another word, moving into his morning routine like we didn’t just have the most important conversation of my life in his basement.
I return down the hallway to the bedroom. Our bedroom.
Sloane is still asleep, curled on her right side, her auburn hair spread across my pillow.
I crawl back into bed beside her, pull her close and press my lips to the top of her head and breathe her in.
Today, I’m going to tell her everything. That I love her. That I’ll follow her to DC or stay in Truckee or move to the damn moon if that’s what she needs. That I found us a house with four bedrooms and that she never has to choose between me and her career.