The question reverberated in the cavern with the thoroughness of a stone dropped into a very still pool, and for a moment every conversation, every maternal troll, every cage-escaped wolf, every fae looking decoratively unbothered against an iron door, every single thing in the room paused and collectively redirected its attention to Kara.
She looked at the ceiling.The ceiling was stone and unhelpful and offered no guidance.Rude.
“Great Luna help me,” she said, to no one and everyone, with the tone of a woman accepting the terms of a situation she had not negotiated and could not appeal.She looked back down at the child and gave him a small smile, and shrugged.“I think that’s probably up to your parents.I’ve never been an aunt before.I might suck at it.”
Torvik shook his head.“People who suck don’t help others.You helped me, so you’re not sucking.And you’re going to have a baby.I can be your baby’s friend and protect it.”He gave a sharp nod as if that somehow made his words law and tightened his grip on her finger and looked around at the assembled crowd with the serene authority of a child who had gotten the answer he wanted and saw no reason to continue the conversation.
Gavril, from somewhere behind her, made a sound that Kara recognized as his version of a laugh, brief, controlled, the kind that arrived and departed before it could be held against him.“Let’s just be glad it’s not Jen that he asked to be his aunt,” he said.“With Kara, at least the kid has a chance at being somewhat normal.”
“My mate is not raising a troll child,” Nick practically snarled.
Kara tapped his hand that still rested on her stomach.“Babe, maybe let’s not insult the troll race by implying that it would be uncool to raise a troll child.Yeah?”
“Bit late for that,” Wadim said, as he straightened his jacket, and then pulled Zara to him.“The bossy one, who totally doesn’t look a day over 99, looks like she’s ready to feed Nick to some rabid baby trolls.”
Kara groaned and leaned her head against Nick’s shoulder.“And now you’re insulting their babies.Have any of you ever tried to use a filter?”
“Wasn’t born with one,” Wadim said.
“Don’t like using one,” Zara added.
Aphid’s voice was smooth as he answered.“Fae aren’t exactly known for their verbal tact.”
Gavril legit snorted a laugh.“We’re all quite clear on that.We know Perizada, remember?”
Kara glanced around at all the trolls.Some were watching them with quiet interest, others were still going about doing the bidding of the three eldest women who seemed to be in charge, and others looked quite annoyed that there would be no supernatural stew to eat for dinner.
“I feel like it could be worse, I mean considering past situations we’ve been in.This one feels a little less dire,” Rachel said.
“Now that we’re out of the cages and it looks like they’ve lost interest in eating us?"Wadim asked.
“Exactly,” Rachel nodded.
Zara cleared her throat.“I think everything feels less dire when nobody wants to eat us.Although, it also removes a bit of the excitement.My adrenaline is beginning to drop and I’m realizing how hungry I am, which means Kara must be starving because she’s feeding two.”
The Troll King, still on one knee, raised his ancient eyes to Kara’s across the cavern.Something moved in them that she didn’t have a name for yet, something that had been waiting a long time to see what it had just seen, and had now seen it, and was deciding what came next.
The ground pulsed again, deep and slow, from somewhere far below.
And Torvik, wholly unconcerned with ancient prisons and deep-dwelling corruption and the weight of danger pressing down from all directions, leaned against Kara’s leg with the casual confidence of a child who had decided she was safe, and stayed there.
CHAPTER6
“There are moments a male realizes he is no longer the protector, but the one being managed.Mine happened when troll grandmothers decided I was unfit to supervise my pregnant mate because I wasn’t fat enough.”~Nick
Nick had faced rogue wolves,vampires, demons, fae warriors, hybrids, and once, a furious gypsy healer wielding a cast iron skillet with frankly concerning accuracy.
None of them had unsettled him quite like the elderly troll female currently poking him in the chest with one thick, claw-tipped finger.
“You are too thin,” she announced.
He stared down at her, certain he had heard wrong.“I’m what?”He tried hard to keep the wolf out of his voice, but at the moment, his beast was contemplating how much trouble it would cause if he bit the old female’s finger off.Probably too damn much, he mentally told his wolf.
“Too.Thin.”Her black eyes narrowed beneath a brow ridge that could have anchored a small bridge, and she made a slow, judgmental sweep of him from boots to shoulders, the way a butcher considered a cut that wasn’t quite worth the asking price.“Who protects a pregnant female with no winter fat?”
Across the cavern, Kara made a strangled sound around the steaming bowl someone had pressed into her hands.Nick had growled at her not to eat it until he’d sniffed it and tried it, but she’d threatened to bite his arm off if he touched her food.And she was totally serious.Her human teeth can’t hurt us,his wolf told him.That’s not the point,he told the beast.When he’d snapped his teeth at her, to show her real teeth that could actually bite an arm off, she’d laughed.Not a polite laugh, not even a controlled one.A full, ribs-out,Nick is suffering and I am here for itlaugh, the kind that made her shoulders shake and her eyes water.One of the troll matrons hovering at her elbow patted her between the shoulder blades as though Kara were a delicate, breakable thing in need of careful handling, and not the woman who had survived horrors that still made his wolf want to claw a hole through the world.
Traitor,he thought, though his words lacked any heat, even in his own mind.His female could laugh at him all day long if it meant she was healthy and happy.He never wanted to see the look on her face that had been there when he’d pulled her from Ludcarab’s clutches.He never wanted to feel her body shake with tears that were wretched from her soul.It was eating him alive that he hadn’t been able to keep her from being put in a cage like an animal by the trolls.But praise the Great Luna, the king of the trolls had a change of heart ...because she’s a healer.Nick was trying to figure out why they hadn’t asked Rachel about her scent.He’d asked her and she’d whispered that her wolf was most likely covering her magical scent to protect her.Kara wasn’t a wolf; she didn’t have that form of protection.His eyes stayed on her despite the elderly troll female still up in his space.
