Chapter 12 #2
“Princess, this doesn’t mean we can’t be together—”
“That’s exactly what it means.” She squeezed her eyes shut, but didn’t turn her face away, thank the gods.
Of course, that just meant I could see the tears squeezing from under her lids.
“The League was very clear on that. If we don’t—” Her voice caught, and she swallowed.
“If we don’t conclude our personal relationship, they’re going to terminate the Terrors’ franchise rights, since it goes against their rules. ”
Well, this was some bullshit.
Still, part of me was comforted to know it wasn’t her plan, and she was hurting just as much as I—no, I hated her pain even more than I hated mine.
My Kteer growled, and I echoed it, running my hands up and down her arms, trying to comfort her. “Lila, we’ll figure it out,” I vowed softly. “For now, what does this mean for the exhibition?”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, dropping her chin. “I don’t know.”
“They can’t cancel it—they can’t make us cancel it. Plenty of pairs skate together without being romantically linked, yeah?”
“Yes,” she sniffed.
“Well, okay then.” As much as I hated the thought of not being able to claim her as my Mate in front of everyone, I knew her initial reaction was the safest; I couldn’t do anything to endanger the team, not any more than she could.
I couldn’t choose between my Mate and my team…could I?
“Lila.” I lifted her chin with my hand. “Look at me, dkaar.”
“What does that mean?” she blurted, then winced. “I’ve been meaning to ask.”
I hesitated, wondering if it was worth the heartache. But I would always be truthful with my Mate, even if she couldn’t be my Mate. “Beloved. It means beloved.”
Her blue eyes had gone round. “Oh. That’s…beautiful.”
My lips twitched. “Lila, we’ll get through this exhibition tomorrow, okay? We’ll skate the best damn show, raise money for the kids, and make the Terrors and your father’s company look great. Then we’ll sit down with Maddie and the legal department and figure out what to do. Yeah?”
I didn’t like how long it took her to nod, but eventually she did. “I don’t think—” Her voice caught. “I think, until then, we should…”
Don’t say break up. Don’t say break up.
“Pretend?” I offered hopefully. “Pretend to keep our distance?”
“Yes.”
My heart clenched at the thought of staying away from her, even for twenty-four hours, but I would pray it wouldn’t be permanent.
Her hand still on my cheek, Lila stretched up on her toes as if she would kiss me, then froze, winced, and backed away. Every part of me ached to reach for her, but I made myself let her go.
“I’ll…I’ll see you tomorrow,” she whispered, eyes anguished, before she turned and hurried away.
I curled my hands into fists, my claws digging into my skin, because the pain was easier to focus on.
As she ran from my life, a small voice whispered into my heart: How can you claim you’ve been honest with her if Lila doesn’t even know she’s your Mate?
Kardok
Thursday night was the longest one of my life.
I never thought my apartment could feel so empty. I never thought I could feel so empty. I clung to the desperate hope that if we could just get through this exhibition, Lila and I could figure out how to fix this.
That didn’t stop me from tossing and turning.
At one in the morning, I went down to the small gym in my complex, and I ran ten miles on the treadmill. It didn’t calm my mind—or my Kteer—but after a hot shower I was at least able to fall asleep.
I woke too early, and too angry.
My anger was directed at the League, at the human world that said orcs were good enough for their entertainment but not their daughters, and at myself.
By the time I finished breakfast, that anger had shifted to someone else: Rex Fairbanks, who seemed to represent all of that shit.
He’d raised Lila to think her perfection reflected on him, and he probably didn’t want her Mated to a wicked, wild orc like me.
Hells, he was probably the one to tip off the League!
A real estate tycoon like him wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize one of his contracts.
It wasn’t until I was in my car that I realized I wasn’t driving to the complex. Instead, I’d headed toward Fairbanks Enterprises corporate offices, and I wrapped that anger around me as I stalked into the lobby.
The receptionist’s expression lit up when she saw me. “Kardok! Can I get your autograph?”
I was momentarily taken aback but rallied. “Mr. Fairbanks. Is he here today, or at the ice complex?”
She blinked flirtatiously. “He’s here. Want me to see if he’s taking visitors?”
“No need,” I growled, my tusks gleaming menacingly. “He’ll see me.”
As I strode toward the stairs to take them three at a time, I heard her call, “Fourth floor, but I’m calling ahead.”
Dammit, I wasn’t going to be turned away.
Sure enough, Fairbanks’ assistant met me as I stomped into the office atrium on the fourth floor. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kardok, but Mr. Fairbanks is terribly busy—”
I brushed past her, heading for the largest door. “Not too busy for his daughter.”
She made a squeaking noise, but stopped objecting, as I flung open the door and glared at the older man who was looking up from his desk.
Rex Fairbanks looked surprised as any male who had not expected to find a large, angry orc in his doorway on a Friday morning, but was not, notably, afraid of one.
“Kardok,” he said, not unpleasantly, nodding toward the chairs across from him. “Sit down.”
“I’ll stand.”
Rex studied me for a moment, then leaned back in his chair with the unhurried ease of someone who had conducted a thousand difficult meetings and found none of them particularly problematic. “Suit yourself.”
I crossed my arms. “Your daughter is breaking up with me.”
Something shifted in the older man’s face—not surprise, not satisfaction. More like a man who has just been handed a piece of information that doesn’t fit the shape of what he thought he knew. “Is she?”
“Because of the League compliance letter.” I watched his face carefully.
“Threatening the Terrors’ franchise rights.
” He gave no indication he knew what I was talking about.
“Because of a conflict of interest between her relationship with a player and your ownership of this facility—fuck me, you saw the letter, right?”
Fairbanks’ blue eyes—so like his daughter’s—had widened slightly, and now he gave a little shake of his head as I realized the truth.
“You didn’t know,” I breathed, some of the anger leaching out of my shoulders.
The older man looked confused—not the reaction of a man whose plan was playing out. The reaction of a man who had just discovered his daughter had been carrying something heavy entirely alone.
“No.” The word came out clipped. He picked up his pen and set it down again, which I suspected was what Rex Fairbanks did instead of swearing.
“I didn’t know. But it’s logical—I forgot that part of their old-fashioned rules, or I would have found a way to address it when you two began seeing each other.”
Address it. He’d known we were together and hadn’t objected. He was saying he would have tried to help?
I frowned, confirming. “She didn’t tell you about the letter?”
“She never does.” He said it quietly, almost to himself, and the frustration in it wasn’t directed at me. He turned his chair slightly toward the window, looking out at the city.
“She’s been solving problems alone since she was twelve years old. I let her, because she was so good at it, and because it was easier than examining why a twelve-year-old felt she needed to.” He was quiet for a moment. “That’s not something I’m proud of.”
I folded my arms across my chest, trying to hide my feelings from my expression. I didn’t want to like this male, not with the grudge I’d been holding since last night.
But…he hadn’t known.
This hadn’t been his idea.
And he regretted the way Lila thought she had to be perfect for him? Dammit, I appreciated that.
Rex turned back to me. He looked at me the way he’d probably looked at a hundred men across a hundred desks—measuring, assessing, making a decision about what he was seeing.
I held his gaze and let him look.
“You came here to fight for her,” he said finally. “Not to ask my permission.”
“Hells, yes. I don’t need your permission to date Lila, and neither does she.”
“You’re right.”
No, no, I wasn’t supposed to respect him.
My scowl deepened. “She thinks I’m good enough. I don’t, but it doesn’t matter what I think, or what you think. All that matters is what Lila thinks.”
And she thought I was good enough.
That realization made me feel…suddenly lighter somehow. Lila did think I was good enough. Her world might not welcome a hockey-playing berserker orc, but Lila did. She had.
And she hadn’t given up on me.
That was worth everything.
And I was going to do what needed to be done to keep her, even if that meant doing something unfathomable like quitting the team so there wasn’t a conflict of interest.
Fairbanks was watching me, and now he nodded once, as if this confirmed something. “Kardok, do you love my daughter?”
Love love love love.
The question seemed to echo through the room.
Did I love Lila? It was a…silly question. One that was easy to dismiss, but when I saw Fairbanks’ expression harden, I knew that hesitating hadn’t endeared me to him.
So with a sigh, I reached for the chair, pulling it out and plopping myself into it. I planted my elbows on my knees and leaned toward him.
“Mr. Fairbanks, my heart loves her, yes.” I hadn’t told her that any more than I’d told her I was her Mate. “But it’s more than that.”
“No, it’s not,” he said coldly, his voice stiff. “Trust me, I’ve been married four times, I know what is necessary, and love is—”
“For humans, love is something you can fall out of,” I interrupted him. “That’s why you’re not still married.”
The older man’s mouth snapped shut and one of his brows rose, as if inviting me to continue.
It wasn’t until I felt my claws digging into my chest that I realized I was trying to scratch the itch my Kteer had been plagued with, and I took a deep breath. This wasn’t the sort of thing I’d ever expected to have to explain to another male, much less the father of my Mate.
But if I wanted Lila…
“Orcs—some orcs who are lucky enough…” I trailed off with a wince, then shook my head and started over.
“Among my kind, there’s something called a Mate Bond.
Someone the gods choose for you—a fated connection.
” I watched his face, which didn’t give anything away.
“It’s not a feeling, Mr. Fairbanks. It’s not just love.
It’s a recognition, a knowing. The way you know your own heartbeat. ”
Rex was listening carefully, watching me as if he wasn’t sure what to make of me.
“Lila is my Mate.” The words felt…enormous.
“That means it’s not something I chose, and it’s not something I can unchoose.
It’s permanent. Not the way marriage is permanent on paper.
” I searched for the right words. “The way the tide is permanent or the mountains are permanent. It doesn’t stop because circumstances change. ”
Rex was quiet for a long moment, watching me. The pen rested in his fingers, but he didn’t fiddle with it, didn’t move at all.
Finally, he took a deep breath. “You’re going to marry my daughter.”
“If that’s what she wants.” My chin rose.
“But what I’m telling you is that even if she never wants that—even if she decides this is over, and I need to let her go—she’s still mine.
My Kteer, my instinct, every part of me that’s feral and orc and not very civilized… it recognized her. That doesn’t stop.”
Rex sat with this. I could imagine him thinking of his daughter gliding elegantly across the ice in the complex he’d built for her because she’d loved to skate, and he hadn’t known what else to do with that love.
“Hearts, minds, souls,” he said finally. Quietly. “Linked.”
I dipped my head once firmly, my hand dropping from my chest. “Yes.”
When the corner of his mouth curled upward, he looked like his daughter when she was about to tell a joke.
“Well, Kardok, that vow sounds like marriage to me. If you do it right.”
Then something shifted behind his eyes—something more private, and older.
“I’ve spent my whole life looking for what you just described.
” He said it without self-pity, just the clarity of a man who has examined himself honestly.
“Four times, I thought I’d found it. Four times, I was wrong.
Or I wasn’t paying attention. Or I was working.
” He paused. “Lila watched every one of those marriages. She watched me search and fail and search again.”
“She thinks she’ll make you look bad,” I offered, not caring if I was adding to his pain in an effort to make him understand his child.
“That’s what’s underneath all of this. It’s not just the League.
Besides the threat to the team, she thinks her happiness—our happiness—costs you something you can’t afford. ”
Rex was quiet for long enough that I wondered if I’d overstepped. Then he exhaled, a slow and deliberate sound.
“Then I’ve done a poor job raising her to believe in her own worth.” He said it simply, without deflection.
Now the pen began to flip from finger to finger. “My daughter is not responsible for my reputation. And she has never been responsible for my happiness. If she’s spent years believing otherwise, then it’s because I allowed it without realizing, and I’m sorry for that.”
He looked at me directly. “I’m still searching for the level of love you just described, Kardok. And if I found it—if someone offered me a forever like that—I wouldn’t let anything stand in my way.”
“Not even the OHL?”
Rex Fairbanks picked up his phone.
“I’ll handle the OHL, son.” His lips pulled into a savage grin of a predator, one I’d seen on the ice and in a mirror. “You go convince Lila that your forever is worth more than their rules.”