28. Hannah
Hannah
Iwaited for Brakkus to say something. Ask for Otto.
Tell me to leave. Remind me I had no right to hold his son after I’d walked out of this house.
He said nothing. The silence filled the living room, heavier than the limestone fireplace.
Otto whimpered into my neck, and I tightened my arms around him as I looked at Brakkus.
“How long has he been like this?”
“Since you left.”
The answer hit me hard enough that I stopped rocking. Otto’s fist tightened in my shirt, and I made myself move again.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Brakkus came into the room, stopped behind the leather sofa, and gripped the back with both hands.
“He stopped eating right.”
Lola made a small sound near the kitchen, then pressed her lips together.
“He barely sleeps,” Brakkus said. “He wakes up screaming. I used the cloths. The ointment. The teething toys. Everything you showed me. It helps for a minute, maybe. Then he goes right back to screaming.” His eyes moved to Otto. “He stopped speaking. He’s back to staring into space.”
My throat tightened. No one had called me. The thought landed hard enough to sting, but I swallowed it down. Brakkus already looked like a man one hard word away from breaking. I shifted Otto higher on my hip and eased one finger under his chin.
“Let me see, sweetheart.”
He fought me for half a second, then let me turn his face. His cheeks were flushed from crying, but not fever-bright. I checked his gums, his little tusks, the wet shine in his eyes, the pace of his breathing.
“When did he last eat?” I asked. “How much has he had to drink today? Any fever? Vomiting? Wet diapers?”
Brakkus answered each question like he was handing me something fragile while his fingers flexed against the sofa. I nodded and kept my hand moving over Otto’s back.
“Okay.” My chest hurt. “You should have called me.”
His eyes lifted to mine. “I know.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
He looked down at the rug between us, at the blocks and soft tusk toys scattered near Otto’s playpen. “Because I didn’t think it was fair.” His voice scraped low. “After what happened. After I let you walk out of here. I wasn’t going to drag you back into my mess because I couldn’t handle my son.”
Otto whimpered again. I turned slightly, and he burrowed closer.
“What mess?” I asked.
Brakkus’s face changed. He let go of the sofa and stood to his full height.
“Nadia’s parents are forcing a formal hearing in the Old Quarter. I have to take Otto across the country and stand in front of the Forum while they argue I’m not fit to raise him.”
Silence settled over the living room.
“He’s like this,” Brakkus said, looking at Otto in my arms, “and I’m supposed to put him on a plane.”
“Why did it escalate this fast?” I asked.
“It didn’t. This was always coming.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“You leaving didn’t remove you from the petition.
Their prior argument was that a human shouldn’t be raising an orc child.
After you left, the argument became that Otto’s attachment to you was destabilizing.
The petition used you either way. It was a double bind from the beginning. ”
“Leaving didn’t help the case. And now he’s like this.” The floor seemed to tilt under my feet.
Otto’s face pressed harder into my neck.
“What happens at this hearing?” I asked.
“It isn’t a custody case. Not yet.” Brakkus dragged a hand over his mouth.
“What the Vossics are after is standing. Meaning the right to intervene in how he’s raised.
To get it, they have to convince the Forum my home is unfit and his welfare is at risk in my care.
If the Forum grants them standing, they take that finding to a Texas family court, where they can file for custody directly. ”
“So, your attorney is traveling to New York for the hearing?”
“No. She’s not coming. My attorney can advise me, but she can’t argue it for me the way one would in a human court.”
I shifted Otto, and he let out a small, miserable sound.
“In my professional opinion.” I kept my voice calm, the voice I used with frightened parents in hospital rooms when I needed to explain something serious. “Otto needs a familiar caregiver with him through travel, disruption, unfamiliar people, and a stressful proceeding.”
Otto’s fingers flexed in my shirt. I rubbed my thumb along the back of his head, where his wispy hair curled damp against his scalp.
“He has already regressed from separation and instability,” I said. “Taking him across the country into a hostile environment without the person who has been managing his routines, feeding, sleep, and tusk pain would make that worse.”
“You don’t owe me that,” he said.
“This isn’t about what I owe you.” I kept my hand moving over Otto’s back. “It’s about what Otto needs.”
Brakkus’s eyes came back to mine. He didn’t argue.
Lola wiped under one eye with the side of her finger. “I’ll start dinner,” she said softly.
Then she slipped back into the kitchen, leaving Brakkus and me alone in the living room with all the things we were not saying. He stayed beside the sofa while I remained in the middle of the rug with his son in my arms.
“When do you leave?” I asked.
Brakkus took a breath. “Three days. I chartered a private jet for the trip.”
“That should help.” I shifted Otto higher and rubbed his back. “That will give us time to prepare.”
I spent the three days getting Otto ready the way I’d prep a fragile patient for transport.
I kept his feeding and sleep rigid so the flight would be the only thing that changed.
I called Hesta twice. Once to ask whether it was safe to travel him at all, once to have her walk me through warning signs to take seriously.
And I worked out how I’d manage this tusk pain on the plane, where I’d have to use a cooler to keep his teething rings cool.
When I opened the front door the morning of the flight, the sun lay in pale gold bands across the driveway. The live oaks threw long shadows over the G-Wagon. Somewhere beyond the house, sprinklers ticked over the grass.
Brakkus carried the bags out two at a time, the wheels bumping over the threshold, and the back hatch lifted with a soft mechanical hum.
“You’re okay,” I told Otto as I carried him to the car. “I’ve got your teething rings. I’ve got your cup. I’m coming too.”
Brakkus loaded the last of the bags while I buckled Otto into the car seat. I climbed into the seat beside him in the back.
“I’m right here.”
His small hand closed around mine, damp and tight. Brakkus shut the back hatch, got behind the wheel, and started the engine.
The private terminal was a low building at the edge of the airfield that looked more like a hotel lobby than an airport.
Leather chairs, a coffee bar, tall windows looking straight out at the jets on the tarmac.
No security line, no crowds, no boarding announcements.
A woman at the desk knew Brakkus by name and had someone take the bags before we’d finished crossing the room.
Otto stayed clamped to my hip through all of it, and none of the quiet reached him.
The attendant walked us straight through a glass door and out onto the tarmac, where the jet sat waiting with its airstairs already down.
The engines weren’t running yet, but there was a low roar from the other aircraft and wind coming across the open pavement with nothing to break it.
Otto flinched at the first blast of it and buried his face in my neck.
“I know,” I said into his hair. “Almost there.”
It had cream leather seats, wood veneer on the tables, and thick carpet. The seats were as wide as armchairs, arranged in facing pairs with fold-out tables between them. A low couch ran along one side toward the back. The ceiling was low enough that Brakkus kept his head bent until he sat.
He secured the car seat. When he was done, I set Otto in and buckled him.
I sat beside him, put the diaper bag and cooler on the table, and pulled out his sippy cup.
Brakkus sat across from us, huge and silent, his knees wide and his hands curled over the armrests.
The engines started, and Otto’s body went stiff in his seat.
The jet rolled forward, swung out onto the runway, and then the push came, that long shove back into the seat as we picked up speed and lifted. Otto’s face crumpled. I got the sippy cup to his mouth before he could scream.
“Swallow for me, baby. It helps your ears.”
He drank, and his eyes filled but the scream didn’t come. The ground tilted away in the window. My stomach dropped with it, and Otto grabbed for my hand and held on. By the time we leveled off, Otto had fallen asleep.
Once we leveled off, the attendant came back through the cabin.
She was an older woman with silver hair in a low knot.
She moved quietly when she saw Otto asleep.
She ran through the menu: a hot lunch, a cheese and fruit plate, sandwiches.
Brakkus ordered the lunch. I hadn’t eaten since before dawn and only realized it when she asked, so I took the same.
“And something plain for him when he wakes, if you have it,” I added. “Toast and a banana.”
She asked what we wanted to drink. Brakkus said coffee. I said the same. Lunch was braised short rib and polenta. We both ate. Neither of us said much.
Otto slept through the landing and woke when I lifted him from the car seat.
His eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, then sharpening as the new sounds reached him: the whine of the stairs being lowered, voices outside, and wind moving across the tarmac.
He tucked his face against me and gripped my shirt.
“I know,” I murmured. “New place.”
After we loaded into the back of a black Escalade, Otto sat silently in his car seat, watching everything from under damp lashes. I sat beside him and looked out through the tinted windows as the city slid past us.
The Old Quarter was nothing like Breakstone. Breakstone had been a working-class town where orcs walked openly in true form, argued outside shops, hauled equipment through the streets, and laughed loudly enough to be heard from a block away. It had felt rough, alive, and honest.
This place was something else. Old stone buildings crowded narrow streets beneath iron balconies that curled over shaded sidewalks.
Courtyards hid behind arched gates, and clan halls stood at prominent corners with carved lintels and heavy doors.
They were solemn and private like old Masonic temples built for people who had never needed to explain their power to anyone.
Most of the orcs I saw were in human form, dressed in tailored suits and expensive coats with polished shoes and immaculate hair.
They moved through the streets in quiet groups, professional and restrained, carrying the kind of confidence that did not need to announce itself.
The Old Quarter was beautiful and intimidating in equal measure.
Otto’s small fingers tightened around mine as the Escalade turned onto a narrow street, and I squeezed back without looking away from the window.
For the first time since I had known him, Brakkus looked like an outsider. At his private Austin estate, every camera and locked gate answered to him. In the public version of his life, his name was printed on T-shirts, fight posters, and protein tubs.
Here, in these narrow streets behind tinted glass, with old stone clan halls rising around us and polished orcs moving past in quiet groups, Brakkus looked like the wrong kind of orc. He had new money and was a showman who had built an empire out of acting like a violent clown.
As the Escalade rolled deeper into the Old Quarter, the distance between Brakkus and me seemed to grow smaller. We were both outsiders trying to protect Otto.