Page 27 of Single Mom's Orc Daddy
“And if I leave her?”
“It might stop the unraveling. But only if the bond hasn’t rooted.”
I exhale through my nose. That bond has rooted. I feel it like a brand behind my ribs.
“You’ve seen her daughter’s mark,” Brekka adds. “That child is a keystone. She’s why Korrak is circling. Why the Hollow is stirring. She’s not just bloodline. She’s prophecy.”
The word lands hard in my gut.
“She doesn’t know that.”
“She will.”
“What do I do?”
Brekka’s expression softens, not with kindness, but with exhaustion.
“You already know.”
I don’t go backto the cottage for two days.
I run the wards. I double the iron stakes and walk the fog line until my feet blister in my boots. I hunt the woods for traces of Korrak’s presence and find a carved crescent in an alder tree near the southern ridge. A mark of watching. He’s patient, always has been. He likes to let people feel safe before he shatters them.
The second night, I sleep beneath a root arch, barely dozing, listening for the Hollow’s breath. And I dream of her.
She stands in a garden blooming too fast. Every flower opens the moment she looks at it. Her hands are glowing. And Mari dances between trees where the trunks bend to let her pass.
When I wake, my hands are shaking.
I pack my things. Leave the woods. Walk the steps back to her door.
She answersafter the second knock, still in the same sweater she wore that night, eyes wide and a little relieved before she catches herself and tries to stand taller.
“Hardin,” she says.
I nod, say nothing.
“Are you… alright?”
I look away. “Can we talk?”
She lets me in. The house smells like rosemary and something baking, like she’s tried to keep moving forward. The fire crackles in the hearth. Mari’s not here. Likely at Elodie’s for the afternoon. The silence between us stretches thin.
I speak first. “What happened the other night… it was a mistake.”
Her face doesn’t crumble. It hardens. Not like stone. Like bark. Like something still growing but scarred.
“Right,” she says. “Of course.”
“I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
“You didn’t ‘let’ anything happen, Hardin. I wanted it.”
“I know.”
“And now you’re what? Regretting it?”
I clench my fists. “I’m protecting you.”
