13. Brakkus
Brakkus
It had been a long damn day. I took the Costco placement video call with Otto in his playpen, beating his foam tusk into the rim. He lasted about eight minutes before he wanted out. I had to disappear from the screen with my Bluetooth headset muted to take him out.
After that, he was toddling across the floor going after my computer cords. I finalized the placement discussion while on my knees moving the cables under my desk. He had an afternoon nap that ran short, and a lunch that mostly went on the floor.
Mondays were Lola’s deep cleaning day with the maid company she brought in once a week. I couldn’t ask her to take over with Otto. I could have rescheduled the meeting, but I’d wanted to finalize with Costco as soon as possible. It was a major deal, and I was motivated to push it through.
The afternoon had been slightly easier, with fewer calls to field. After the maid service left, Lola made dinner and I ate with Otto in the kitchen. I’d gotten him to bed half an hour ago, exhausted and grateful Hannah would be back at any minute.
Days like today were a perfect reminder of everything she did and everything she took off my plate.
I was sitting in my office finishing up some final paperwork when my phone buzzed with a security notice. Hannah’s car was passing through the security gate.
A few minutes later, I heard the front door close. I tabbed through the security feeds on my phone and found Hannah in the kitchen. Spying on her had become a bad habit I wasn’t ready to break.
What had started out as suspicion had turned into something else.
She opened the fridge and pulled out the leftover King Ranch casserole.
She dished herself a plate and put it in the microwave.
She stared at it rotating for a moment, her red hair in a messy bun, her shoulders slumped.
When it dinged, she pulled it out. Before sitting down, she grabbed a wineglass from the cabinet and filled it from the open bottle of red on the counter.
She then moved everything to the table and began picking at her meal, shoulders hunched. She looked tired. The kind of bone-deep exhaustion that was beyond anything that happens in the body.
Hannah took a long swig of wine and polished off her casserole. The look on her usually sunny face was so gray and worn in the pale-yellow kitchen lights. It did something to me I couldn’t define.
She took her plate and glass back to the counter, rinsed the plate and put it in the dish rack. She picked up the wine and poured herself a second glass.
I’d never seen her drink. There was a first time for everything.
But it signaled something I wasn’t ready to face.
Hannah was carrying a load I hadn’t been willing to acknowledge.
The weeks of spying on her, of suspecting her, I hadn’t seen her.
I hadn’t wanted to. Now… for the last week I’d been avoiding her.
Why? I knew why. But I still wouldn’t name it.
I clicked off the security app and headed to the kitchen.
When I got there, she was already gone. I’d thought I’d missed her.
But then I saw movement outside the kitchen patio door.
She was moving toward the fence that separated the yard from the hill that sloped down into the valley behind the house.
I grabbed a beer from the fridge, popped the cap and went out the sliding door, closing it quietly behind me.
I felt like I was walking up on a creature who might bolt and run away. Part of me knew I’d been a monster. Figuratively speaking. Even if she didn’t know it. The crickets were chirping loudly in the warm night air. A spangle of stars spread out over the valley.
Hannah was leaning against the stucco fence, staring into the distance. She glanced over her shoulder as I approached, looking shocked and apologetic in the dim light from the pool. She turned like she was about to go when I reached the fence and rested my elbows against it beside her.
“It’s nice out here,” she said, turning halfway to leave.
“It is. This is where I come to think.”
She eased back against the fence. “I can see why.”
We stood there for a while, the silence between us filled by the song of crickets and night birds in the forest. I watched her profile in the blue glow of the patio lights as she took another sip of wine.
“Did your sister get moved in?” I asked.
“We got everything moved over. It took all day. She was mostly packed when I got there, but she’d just started the day before.
Moves always seem to expand more than you anticipate.
We unpacked the truck and got all her furniture in place.
She’s still got the unpacking to do. But I gave her five hundred dollars to help her settle in.
It’s a less safe neighborhood twenty minutes from her job.
I have to admit I’m a little worried about her. ”
I took a swig of beer. “Sounds like a long, hard day.”
“It’s just what you do for family,” she said, her voice thin.
“You do that kind of thing a lot?” I asked.
I knew that her family leaned on her from the PI report. The brother. The dad. All of them.
“More than maybe I should,” she finally said, staring into the valley. “It’s a habit I can’t seem to break.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She drank the rest of her wine and set the glass on the fence, folding her arms under her for comfort.
“My mom died of cancer when I was nine,” she started.
“Kyle was two and Megan was five.” She sighed and her voice turned strained.
“My dad loved us a lot. He just… kind of fell apart after. He never really came back if I’m being honest. Not that I can remember that much before.
But that meant that if my siblings needed someone, it was me. ” Her voice went so quiet at the end.
“Hannah…” My heart hurt hearing her words.
I wanted to hold her, pull her against my chest and take all that suffering and responsibility away from her.
She’d shouldered way too much for way too long.
I stood there, looking at her, feeling like an asshole for suspecting her.
For spying on her. For pretending I didn’t feel what was happening to me.
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Everyone always told me I was so mature for my age. In a lot of ways, it’s what made me who I am. I’m a high achiever. I…”
“What?”
“It’s nothing…”
I let it fall into silence. She’d left nursing to do in-home care. She’d said it was for a change of pace. I had to believe it was because the woman had finally reached her capacity and had fallen into burnout.
My body shook with the awareness of it. It took everything in me not to take her in my arms. The scent of her was coiled around my brain, wafting into my nostrils and possessing me like a ghost.
“What was your childhood like?” she asked after a beat of silence. “I know you’re from the Breakstone enclave. What was it like growing up there? It’s a long way from the gated mansions of Barton Creek.”
“What’s there to tell…” I hedged, not sure how much I wanted to reveal.
“My people cut limestone. I was going to cut limestone. Crypto-terrestrials hadn’t come out yet when I was a kid.
So that was a defining moment of my young adulthood.
” I rolled the beer bottle between my palms. “M.A.U.L. was a kind of a joke from the beginning, but it was a way for us to give humans both sides of monsters. The terrifying, violent side, but as a satire of all of their fears. I knew then that the whole thing was stupid. But I took the chance to join the league. To make a name for myself. To get out of Breakstone.”
“That was brave of you,” she said, looking up at me, her face open. The sunshine returning to her eyes.
“My folks wouldn’t have said so. They thought I was betraying the family. Making a spectacle of myself. A lot of the older generation didn’t want to come out from under the bed, so to speak. They didn’t like that I was out in the world as an orc without the human form as a mask.”
“That must have been hard,” she said, her body angling toward me. Her hand had inched closer to my arm, like she almost wanted to touch.
“It was what it was.”
“Is that why you didn’t build your house in Breakstone?”
“Partly. Back home, they brag about me to anybody standing still. The local boy made good, and all that. But it also made me a freak. A spectacle. My parents never forgave me for that.”
“Brakkus. I’m so sorry.”
“It was worse for Nadia. Her parents are old blood. Old money. Their entire fortune was built on infiltrating human society at the highest level. They hated that I was her mate. But she chose me anyway.”
“That’s really beautiful,” she said, looking back out into the night. “I hope someday to find a love like that. But humans don’t have fated mates like orcs.”
“It was beautiful. When we met, I knew almost instantly. It took control and there was nothing I could do to deny it, even if I’d wanted to. Once you know, there’s no turning back.”
My whole body seized up as I realized what I was saying. “Orcs sometimes have… two…” My words were so low I almost didn’t hear them myself. The crickets chirped fiercely in the brush and the frogs seemed to join them from the creek in the valley.
“Two?” she said, looking up at me. The air between us was pulled as tight as a taped fist. I turned toward her, my heart slamming in my chest.
The scent of the little tiny woman beside me was filling me with every instinct I’d felt the first time.
But new and different and completely Hannah.
“Two…” she said again. I placed my hand on her arm, our bodies angling toward each other.
I leaned down, tilting over. I was in my orc form, and my tusks were out.
But Hannah, she stayed still, her eyes shimmering as I moved closer to her slightly parted lips.
I could feel her arousal in the air. Taste it in my throat. I wanted her. I needed her.
My hand closed around her arm. Our mouths were inches apart.
Her phone buzzed and the spell was broken. I stood back as she hurried to find her device. She pulled it out of her back pocket and looked at the screen.
“It’s my dad,” she said, her voice almost apologetic. “I should take this.”
Hannah started back to the house, answering her father’s call as she disappeared into the kitchen.
I was left leaning against the fence, wondering what had just happened. I was going to kiss her. My dick was half hard. If I’d kissed her, I wouldn’t have stopped.
At that moment, I knew. The thing I’d been avoiding. The thing I’d been trying to deny for the past week. But it was in me as clear as day. I’d just told Hannah it was undeniable when you feel it. And I felt it. Hannah Brooks, the tiny human woman, was my mate.