25. Brakkus
Brakkus
Otto’s scream ripped through the baby monitor in the pitch-black darkness.
I was out of bed before I realized what was happening, bare feet hitting the floor, heart already punching hard against my ribs.
At the end of the hall, Hannah’s door stood open.
I stared at the room for half a second. The bed was stripped down to the mattress pad. She was gone.
Otto screamed again. I rushed into the nursery and found him standing in the crib, both fists shoved into his mouth, his little face wet and twisted. His sleep shirt was bunched under his arms, and drool soaked the front of it.
“Hey, buddy. I’ve got you.”
I lifted him out. His body was stiff against my chest, legs kicking, fists still jammed hard against his gums. I carried him to the changing table and peeled one hand away long enough to check his mouth. The tusk ridge was swollen, hot, and angry.
“All right. All right. We know this one.”
I grabbed the clean washcloth from the basket, took him into the bathroom, and ran it under cold water. Hannah had shown me the pressure. Not too high. Not too soft. Right along the ridge. I pressed the cloth carefully against his gum, but Otto jerked his head away and screamed harder.
I carried him out of the bathroom, down the hall, and past the open door of Hannah’s room. I didn’t look in this time. Looking in didn’t change anything.
Otto screamed against my shoulder the whole way to the kitchen. I filled a bowl with ice water, dunked the cloth, wrung it out, and tried again. He shoved my wrist away with both little hands. Water dripped down my arm and onto the floor.
“Come on, buddy. This helped before.”
He cried harder.
I opened the refrigerator drawer where Hannah chilled his tusk teething rings. I found the ointment from Hesta in another cabinet, dabbed it onto the teething ring, and tried to get the ring into his mouth. Otto clamped his mouth shut, turned his face into my chest, and wailed.
I paced in front of the windows the way she used to, the pool black outside, the kitchen lights making my reflection huge in the glass. I kept trying to get him to chew on his chilled teething ring. Finally, after about ten minutes, he let me get it into his mouth.
“Betta, buddy. Say betta.”
He didn’t speak, but his crying thinned. His body went heavy in my arms, and he stared over my shoulder at the darkness. I stood there with my son limp against my chest, wishing Hannah would walk through the kitchen door and make everything better.
The next morning, Otto sat in the high chair with dark circles under his eyes, one fist resting against his mouth. I plated soft eggs, cut them into small pieces, and set them on his tray.
“Breakfast, buddy.”
He looked past the plate.
I loaded the spoon with some eggs and lifted it into the air.
“Here comes the airplane.” My voice sounded rough from the night. “Open the hangar.”
I touched the spoon to his lower lip. He turned his head and food smeared across his cheek. Then his hand smacked down on his plate, and he spread the eggs in a yellow streak across the tray. Lola came into the kitchen entry with her purse on her shoulder and stopped.
“Oh, mijo,” she said softly.
“He’s tired,” I said. “Bad night.”
She set her purse on the counter and washed her hands. “I can try to help.”
“I’ve got it.”
Otto picked up the spoon, stared at it for a second, and dropped it over the side. It hit the floor with a bright plastic clack. Lola bent to pick it up.
“Maybe Hannah would know what he needs.” Her name hit the air in the room harder than the spoon.
“We’re fine,” I said. Otto stared at the empty wall behind me, eggs cooling on his tray.
I picked him up and took him into the study while Lola cleared breakfast. The playpen sat in the middle of the room since I started pretending I could work and parent at the same time. I set him inside with his foam tusk, his stuffed dragon, and a stack of blocks.
I woke up my computer and answered three emails. Manufacturing delay. Costco placement. A licensing approval for a Brute Squad Halloween costume I did not have the energy to hate. Then Otto started crying. I pushed back from the desk and lifted him out.
“Hey. Hey, little brute.”
I walked a lap around the office past the glass door to the patio until his crying eased and his body relaxed against my shoulder. The moment I set him back in the playpen, he started crying again, louder than before.
I checked his diaper. Clean. Offered water. Refused. Stuffed dragon. Refused so hard it hit the side of the playpen and rolled under my desk.
“Buddy, I don’t know what you want.” He didn’t either and that was the worst part.
By the time he finally went silent, I had reopened the Vossic claim and reread the same page four times without absorbing a word. My phone sat beside the keyboard with Hannah’s contact open. I stared at her name for a long moment before locking the screen and setting it aside.
Later that afternoon, my attorney rang the doorbell. I’d just gotten Otto’s shirt changed. He’d rubbed pear puree down the front of the last one. I met her at the door with Otto on my hip.
Eleanor Marsh stood on the front porch with a leather folder tucked under one arm.
She was an orc wearing her human form, maybe ten years older than me, with short black hair pinned back at the nape of her neck.
She wore a tailored navy pantsuit with a light blue blouse and low-heeled leather pumps, the kind of outfit that looked professional but relaxed.
“Brakkus.”
“Come on in.”
I stepped aside for her, and we walked into the living room. I put Otto in the second playpen near the sofa and handed him his stuffed dragon. He let it drop to the floor. Eleanor crouched, grabbed the dragon, and handed it to him.
“Hello, Otto.”
He stared past her shoulder and didn’t take the toy. She waited another second, put the toy in the playpen, and took the chair across from me.
“All right,” she said, opening the folder. “Let’s talk about what the Vossics are doing.”
Eleanor pulled a stack of papers from the folder and handed it to me.
“They’re pushing for expedited review,” she said.
I leaned forward. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning the Forum agreed to hear the petition. There’s a date now.
” She turned a page. “But understand what this hearing decides. It’s not whether you keep Otto.
It’s whether the Vossics get any say over him at all.
That would include his care, where he lives, who raises him.
Whether they’re allowed visitation. Lawyers call it standing.
Right now, they don’t have it. This hearing will decide if they get it. ”
“And if they get it?”
“Every decision you make about him would include them, and they can reopen the custody case any time your situation changes.”
“This is insane.”
She set the folder down. “The clan Forum can’t take him under human law.
He’s a Texas child with a living father.
What it can do is make findings. That the household is unstable.
That the child’s welfare is at risk in his father’s care.
Findings from a clan body are admissible in a Texas family court. ” She let it sit.
My jaw tightened. “Then Hannah leaving should have helped. She’s the thing they keep pointing at.”
“Right now, she’s undefined. That’s the problem.” Eleanor didn’t soften it. “With her gone, she’s whatever they say she was. A human employee who got too close to a grieving child and then disappeared. That’s the version that ends up in the record.”
In the playpen, Otto had crawled to the side closest to the hallway. He gripped the mesh with both hands and stared through it, waiting for someone who wasn’t coming. Eleanor followed my gaze, then looked back at me.
“If Hannah Brooks is only the nanny, they can call her disposable on the record. If she is your true second mate and a long-term member of Otto’s household, that is a different argument.”
Otto started crying before I could answer. It was low at first, a tired whine that scraped up his throat. Then his face folded, his little hands tightened around the mesh, and the sound broke wide open. I set the papers on the coffee table and reached into the playpen.
“Hey. I know.”
He came up stiff in my hands. I sat back on the couch with him in my lap, one arm around his middle, the other rubbing slow circles over his back. He twisted immediately, pushing against my forearm, both hands reaching toward the hallway.
“Hush, buddy. I’ve got you.”
I picked up the sippy cup from the coffee table and angled it toward his mouth, but he turned his face away.
I tried the chilled tusk ring next, and he shoved that away too.
Otto pushed against my arm again, his little body straining hard enough that I had to shift my grip so he wouldn’t tip off my lap.
Eleanor leaned forward. “As I was saying, if Hannah is truly your second mate, you cannot treat her like an embarrassing complication at a clan hearing. You need to make it official.”
My hand tightened over Otto’s stomach. “I’m not going to pressure her into a bite.”
“I didn’t say you should pressure her.”
Otto’s crying broke into hiccups. He sagged back against me.
Eleanor’s voice stayed even. “But if she accepts the mate bond and completes the claiming bite, that gives us the cleanest argument. Short of that, the Vossics will continue to define her as a disposable human nanny. Without a formal claim, your involvement with her makes the case worse.”
I knew it in my bones and my blood. I knew it every time I caught the ghost of her scent in the hall and had to breathe through it until the need for her passed.
Knowing she was my mate was not the part I doubted.
I doubted myself. I doubted the man who had brought a stranger into his house and watched her through the security cameras.
The man who had let her soothe, feed, and love his son, and then let her leave when things got hard.
Maybe the Vossics were right about one thing. Maybe everything I touched got turned into spectacle and damage. Nadia. Otto. Hannah.
Otto sagged against my arm, exhausted. I pressed my mouth to the top of his head and closed my eyes.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I said.
When Eleanor answered, her voice was quiet. “Then start by not letting them decide who you are to each other.”