Chapter 15

Rhokar

I wake slowly, floating in a languid, sated haze and surrounded by a sweet, addictive scent.

For a moment I'm pleasantly disoriented, my mind catching up with the fact that I'm in Ella's bed, in Ella's house, after having spent the entire night buried deep within Ella's heat.

Gods and above, the sounds she made as I took her again and again, well into the night… I feel my cock twitch as the memories roll over me in a jumble of flashing images.

On her knees. Over the edge of the bed. In the shower. On the kitchen counter in the middle of snack time. Back in the bed again.

I couldn't get enough of her, nor she of me. It was as if we were making up for the missed time these past two years, and I can still feel the echo of her pulsing over my shaft even now.

The reality of it hits me, and I groan with a mixture of desire and sleepy need. I most definitely did not get much sleep last night.

But I force my eyes open as I gaze at the empty spot Ella had just occupied, before she'd slipped out of bed and pottered around the room for a robe only moments ago, and headed out. My desire to be near her overwhelms my desire for sleep.

I'd told her what I need if she were she to open her body to me, and she had agreed… She'd agreed.

To being mine. To being with me. It's everything I've wanted and avoided, everything I've been afraid to reach for all these years, and I rub both my palms over my face in a rough gesture before I swing my legs off the mattress and sit up.

She wants me for more than just my body. She said she was mine.

I do nothing to stop the big, stupid grin that spreads across my face as I hear signs of life downstairs, and I push my naked ass out of bed with a ridiculous bounce, contemplating swaggering out in my birthday suit and possibly fucking her on her couch as a pot of coffee brews.

But she seemed to have a lot of windows on my brief glance around last night before I'd swept her upstairs, and I don't think she'd appreciate the neighbors catching a full-frontal view of my dick swinging through her kitchen.

I throw on my jeans, and push my loose hair back from my face as I slip out, hearing hushed voices by the front door.

A female speaks with Ella, and I don't recognize any of the scents wafting upstairs besides the one that belongs to my woman, but there's something… someone foreign, yet somehow entirely familiar here. My steps slow by the banister, and my brows furrow.

What is that scent?

"Gracie, I know I said to come, but now

is not a good time. Just take them to Main for ice-cream for an hour or two."

"Wait, wait, is he here right now? I didn't see another car in the driveway."

My bare feet hit the stairs, and I tilt my head as I sniff the air.

" Yes, he's here, and he doesn't know about them. I need you to get them out—"

"Get what out?" I mutter as I hit the bottom rung, my gaze locked on the two-seater stroller the woman at the door holds at an angle away from me.

Both females' eyes snap over to me, I can feel their shocked gazes, but I can't tear my own away from the stroller. Two sets of chubby green legs poke out, bouncing happily.

Ella makes a choked sound, and I glance at her briefly as I move around to look at the two small passengers.

"Who are…?" But my words die in my throat as I catch sight of the orc toddlers sitting placidly strapped into their seats, their smokey-sweet baby scent hitting me in the chest.

My mind blanks out, and a shiver runs down my spine.

I crouch before the toddlers.

"Ella?"

She doesn't respond, and I can't rip my gaze away from the kids to look at her expression. They stare up at me curiously, their huge eyes the same almost-black as mine, their skin the same shade of green as mine, their pointed little chins both matching exactly what I see every time I'm shown baby pictures of myself.

And their scent, an overwhelming mix of Ella's smoked honey, and my own. There isn't even a question about who they are.

I let out a long, slow breath, and look up at their mother. "You would hide my children from me?"

No emotions run through me right now. None.

"What's that? Ice cream you say?" the other woman squeaks into the pressing silence after my words, and she begins to roll the stroller backwards and out the still open front door. "What a great idea, babies, and afterwards we can check out that diner for some food, wouldn't that be nice…"

I can hear her continue to mutter in a nervous, high-pitched voice as she hurries away, but my eyes never leave Ella's.

She's staring down at me with a guilty, wide-eyed expression, her lips moving as if she wants to speak but can't quite manage to get the words out.

"You would hide them from me?" I'm still crouched by where the stroller had been. "All this time?"

"I…I wasn't hiding—"

I stand up abruptly, and her body startles, hands coming up to clasp at the opening of her robe.

"All this time, Ella?" I should be angry. There should be anger flowing through me at her deception, at her insult

in denying me the knowledge of my children.

Children. I have two children.

But instead, my voice comes out even softer as I process this information. "You tried to send them away before I could see them. You have your friend looking after them, away from you, so that I wouldn't find out. You…don't want me as their…as…"

I am the father of two children.

And they've grown without me even once laying eyes on them.

"No, Rhokar, that isn't how this is." The guilt in her eyes deepens, or maybe it's pity. When she takes a step forward, her hand reaching out towards my arm, I flinch back to avoid her touch.

"Two years," I rasp. "Two years of pregnancy, birth, development, and growth. I've missed…" But then I shake my head, feeling my brows lower, and I amend the statement. " You've denied me two years of my own children."

Ella's brows mirror mine in a scrunch. "I didn't deny you anything, Rho. After that night, I didn't know how…how to find you."

"It was you who chose to fuck without protection," I say, taking another step back from her as my eyes dart all over her robed figure, as if I could find some sort of answer in her silhouette. "You who chose to reject my number. You who disappeared before my eyes even opened the next morning."

She doesn't think I'm worthy. She never has, not from the very start. Last night's words were just that to her—words. Empty and spoken in the heat of the moment, without meaning or intention. She thinks our children will be better without a father at all, rather than having me in the picture in any way.

She doesn't care. She doesn't care.

"Rhokar, what? You can't lay that all on me." Her voice is strengthening with heat, with defensive anger in her tone, and her eyes are alight with that anger. Still, I can't pick my heart up off the floor to feel a response to her emotion as I stare at her.

"I didn't think I needed protection," she continues, "didn't know I got pregnant! How can you blame me for all the things I couldn't have known?"

Maybe I am a harsh male. Maybe I'm too quick to anger, too slow to show affection. Maybe I don't smile often enough and work too much and have no sense of humor and all the things Morgatha accused me of before she left. But I'm trying, gods damn it. I'm trying.

I guess that's just not good enough for Ella.

That's when, finally, the anger does come.

"You've been here almost a month," I growl, and I clench my fists by my side. "Did you know by then?"

She presses her lips together and doesn't respond.

"Did you not realize that they were mine? Have you fucked so many orcs that you've lost count over the years? Jumbled us all together?"

She takes in a sharp pull of air at my harsh words, and a matching fire flickers behind her blue eyes. "I know who their father is," she says quietly.

"But you didn't tell me." I take another step back from her, my lips curling down around my tusks. "You think keeping those kids away from me is for the best."

"I didn't know how you'd react."

"It doesn't matter how I'd react. I have a right to—"

"It does matter!" she suddenly cries, and when she steps towards me her finger is pointing accusingly at my chest. "You acted like you hated me, Rhokar. Like you despised the sight of me, couldn't stand to have me in the same room. What was I supposed to think? That I'd tell you we've got kids, and you'd suddenly love me?"

My gut twists at those words for some reason, my heart stuttering and all air squeezing out of my lungs at the word love .

"Should I have begged the man who threw insults at every turn to come and play house with me over the weekend? How did I know you wouldn't hate my babies more? Hate the sight of them, the proof of our coming together that you so clearly seemed to want to forget about?"

Another twist in my gut, another clench in my heart. But it boils up and spits out as anger. Protective, defensive anger. "You're the one who wanted to forget me. You're the one who used me and left."

"It was a one-night stand, Rhokar! I didn't do anything wrong!" Her dark hair is messy around her face, still fluffed from sleep and falling into her wild, angry eyes. "I get you've got issues, but you're not the only one with problems! I'm dealing with shit too . I've got attachment issues, an ex who divorced me because I couldn't have kids, a career that demands as much attention as a newborn—and I've got twins. From you. A sexy, fucked up orc who I

wish I'd taken a chance on, if I hadn't been so afraid. I told you I was afraid, and you're still turning this on me."

"Don't … " I take a deep pull of air, squeezing my fists harder. "Don't play the victim. Don't change the subject." Another one of Morgatha's favored tactics. Twist the argument, weave it around and around until it's about every fault I have, and the original issue gets lost in the fallout.

"Play the victim?" Ella splutters in outrage.

"This is about your decision to keep my children away from me. I'm their father, damn it!" My heart thrums violently against my ribs, waves of anger and heat slicing through my entire body. "I have a right to be in their lives. You denied me that right. You denied it from them, too.

You didn't even try."

She stops her angry advance on me, dropping her finger as I stand fast before her. And then quietly, she opens her mouth and says, "Do you know what I thought when I first saw you standing in your office, waiting for me?"

I huff and don't respond. How on earth am I supposed to know the answer to that?

"I' thought … " she continues softly. "I' though, I'd finally found you. I' thought, for the briefest moment, that I'd gotten a second chance to fix my mistakes and overcome my fears, and see if you were the man that I needed you to be. If I could be the woman that you needed."

The squeeze of my heart is painful now, and I no longer know what it means.

"And then your face changed, Rhokar, like you were looking at something disgusting. You demanded that I get out. And you didn't look at me with anything but anger and disdain for a long time after that."

A silence rings between us, and my fingers loosen at my side.

"How was I supposed to know what to do?" she whispers. "I am

trying, Rhokar, but I don't have a manual. And I'm doing it all alone."

"You didn't have to be alone." Don't. I should have said, don't.

But her brows are already scrunching again, and when she takes a step back and grabs the door handle, I realize I'm standing right on the threshold of her doorway.

"I didn't want to be alone," she grits through clenched teeth. "I've already told you I didn't know how to find you. But you're not listening to a word I'm saying, are you?"

The door starts to swing shut, and I take an instinctive step backwards. "Wait—"

But it shuts in my face, and all I can do is stare at it.