Page 52 of My Orc Nanny

When she didn’t say anything else, I dropped my chin to her head again and hummed in encouragement.

“I felt you,” she whispered so low I had to strain to hear it. “I just…knewwhere you were, Aswan.”

Slowly, my lips curled. “There is a knowing.”

“That’s the Mate bond? I knew where you were, and I knew how to get there. I had this feeling that if I could get to you, I would get to Benny, but…Iknewwhere you were, and I drove right to the ferry dock.”

MyKteerpurred in satisfaction. “That’s the Mate bond, Hannah. And it will only get stronger.”

She nodded, bumping my chin, then glanced up at me. “Would you mind if…tonight, could we just…”

Maybe itwasthe Mate bond, but I knew what she was asking. “I’ll hold you,dkaar,” I whispered, “for as long as you need.”

But when I woke in the middle of the night, Hannah was no longer wrapped in my arms. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and padded down the hall to the open door of Ben’s room.

She was lying in the twin bed beside her son, her arms wrapped around his small frame, her face buried in his hair. And I couldn’t blame her.

If I had the right to hold him like that, the right toclaimhim, I would. I would roar to the world that he wasmine, my son, and I would protect him from all the dangers and fears that threatened him.

But I couldn’t.

Not until Hannah was ready.

Sighing, I backed out of the room and gently shut the door. Unable to help myself, I poked my head into Tova’s room. She was sleeping innocently, face down in that spread-out ungainly way of hers that was her way of tackling everything one hundred and ten percent.

Smiling, I knelt beside the bed so I could lean over and kiss her cheek.

“I love you,d’pin,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to her temple. “So very much. And one day, you’ll know that.”

When I went to check on Joshua, he was whimpering in his sleep. I scooped him up and paced in the small room with him until he calmed, and my eyes grew heavy. After tucking him back in with Mr. BunBun at his side, I sat on the twin bed—the bed where my Mate had slept for so long—with my elbows on my knees, watching him.

So sweet, so innocent. So full of life and love and energy. And I was helping to raise him. I was…I wascreatinga human, who would one day be a grown man. Even if I was only ever his nanny, I would one day stand before the gods of the ancestors andknowI had done something good, something right with my life.

I had helped raise Joshua and Tova and Ben to be good people, and wasn’t that all I could ask for in a life well spent? A Mate and knowing I’d helped make the world a better place?

Yes.

Even if that’s all I ever had, it would be enough.

Hannah

It feltas if I’d been crying all night, but today?

It was Saturday. The sun was shining, the air was warm already, and it was a perfect day to do something special as a family. Something to wipe away the horror of yesterday and the struggles we’d have to face in the future.

Struggles we’d face together.

I propped my shoulder against the door of Joshy’s bedroom and watched Aswan sleep. I guess he’d been as restless as I’d been last night and found his way in here. Watching over my children even in sleep.

No.

Notmychildren.

When I accepted Aswan as my Mate, when I trusted him with Joshy, Tova, and Benny, we’d become a family. He cared for my parents as if they were his own. He took pride in our home. We were a family now, and deep in one another’s hearts.

They wereourchildren now.

And they needed to know that.

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