Page 29 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
Tears blur my vision. I blink against them.
“You didn’t protect me,” I say. “You took part in my story like it was yours.”
He opens his eyes. Blue-gray and tense under shadow. “But I didn’t betray you. I was honest from the moment you came back.”
I look at him, heart thumping. “That doesn’t undo everything.”
He stands, silhouette framed by fog and blossom. “No,” he says. “But I can stop letting fear of this bond keep me silent about what matters now.”
I swallow back trembling.
“You’re the one grown in these roots now too,” he says. “Not by blood, but by choice. Because I should have told yousooner. Shown you sooner. Trusted you with the truth when you deserved it.”
“I’m not sure what to do with the truth,” I say quietly. “When nothing I believed was mine alone.”
He kneels again, placing his palm over my hand in the roots. “Then let me help you carry it. I don’t expect forgiveness. But I expect you to keep telling me what matters—every time the orchard wakes and when it trembles for you.”
I feel the pulsing in his palm. It matches mine.
The wind rises, swirling petals around us in a soft spiral, as if the orchard approves of what doesn’t break—forged in betrayal but tempered in reckoning.
We sit for hours in that root-scented hush, wind hugging old bark, waiting for the orchard to decide whether to mourn, to wake, or to let us be.
We stand together finally, roots between us like silent promise.
No illusions about our past. No false normal.
Just truth. And the weight we choose to carry.
CHAPTER 18
GARRUK
Iknow she’s not ready to hear it—hell, I’m not ready to say it—but the orchard’s hum has turned to a growl underfoot, and I feel the weight of what I’ve buried press harder with every step I take toward the porch where she waits, arms folded tight across her chest like she’s already bracing for a blow she doesn’t understand yet.
The dusk is thick tonight, heavy with the kind of quiet that comes before something breaks. The orchard’s whisper isn’t wind—it’s warning. The glyphs down my spine itch like they've been summoned. My boots hit the wood with a finality that makes her lift her head, and I see it—right there in her eyes—that flash of hope she hasn’t let herself kill yet.
I almost choke on it.
“Ivy,” I say, low and deliberate, trying not to sound like the storm I feel gathering in my chest. “We need to talk.”
“You’re not the first man to say that like it’s a prelude to betrayal,” she mutters, but her voice wavers at the edges, sharp wrapped around soft. “Go on, then. Say what you came to say.”
I look at her—really look at her. She's got her mother’s set to the jaw, her father’s stubbornness, and something all her own that makes the orchard lean closer every time she breathes. Shebelongs here more than anyone ever has, and the truth that’s rotted in my mouth for too long starts to rise, bitter as old ash.
“I knew,” I say finally. “Before you ever came back, before the will was opened—your father told me everything. About the land. About the bond. About you.”
She doesn’t move. Not even a blink. Just stands there like the roots are holding her steady because I’ve gone and ripped the ground out from under her.
“He asked me to stay,” I go on. “To guard the orchard. To protect the bloodline. To make sure, if anything happened, the land didn’t lose its anchor. And that meant… staying near you. Even if you never knew it.”
Her mouth opens, closes. She exhales sharp through her nose like it’ll cut through the rage building behind her eyes. “So all this time—you’ve just been what, babysitting me for a dead man?”
“No,” I say fast, stepping forward before she can bolt. “No. It wasn’t like that.”
“Then explain it, Garruk,” she snaps. “Explain how I’m supposed to believe anything that’s happened between us wasn’t just part of the damn plan.”
“It wasn’t,” I growl, jaw tight. “I stayed because I made a promise, yes—but I loved you before I ever knew what that promise meant.”
