“Thank you.”
His throat closed.
He didn’t trust his voice for a moment, so he tightened his arm around her and pressed his cheek to the top of her head.When he could speak again, he found her hand on his chest and laced their fingers together over his heartbeat.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered.“You and our baby.Always.”
Her breath evened out against him.For the first time since they’d entered this mountain, his wolf curled up inside him, content.The world was still ending somewhere out there.Raja was still loose.Something dark was still rising under the roots of this realm.But not in this room.Not tonight.
In this room, his mate slept in his arms with his mark fresh on her shoulder, his child warm under his hand, and the bond between them sang the way it had been built to sing.
For now, that was everything.For now, that was enough.
CHAPTER8
“Sometimes surviving together looks less like heroics and more like sitting beside someone in the dark so they don’t have to carry the weight alone.”~Rachel
Rachel satcross-legged near the edge of the underground spring, her fingers trailing slowly through the water as soft blue light from the cavern moss reflected across the surface in lazy, rippling patterns.The trolls had carved this resting cavern deeper into the mountain than the holding chambers, and though the stone walls still carried the same immense, ancient weight, the space felt quieter somehow.Less like a prison.More like a respite.Like a space to just breathe.
The water was warmer than she had expected.It felt relaxing against her skin, and she let her hand drift through it while she tried to ignore the low, constant hum she had been feeling beneath her palms every time she touched the stone.The mountain was humming back.Not loudly or even clearly.But enough to remind her wolf that nothing in this place was truly still, and enough to prickle along the edges of her healer’s senses like a splinter she could not quite find.
Behind her, the steady scrape of a whetstone stopped.As an act of good faith, the Troll King had agreed to give them weapons, though they had claws and teeth, and it was a gesture they respected.But the sharpness of the blades had been lacking in her mate’s opinion.
“You’re thinking too loudly again,” Gavril said.
Rachel glanced over her shoulder.Her mate sat several feet away on a flat shelf of stone, one knee bent, an old blade resting across his thigh.He was not actually sharpening it anymore.He had stopped doing that at least ten minutes ago.Now he simply watched her with that quiet, coiled stillness dominant wolves carried when they were pretending not to be on alert, the stillness of a predator who had long ago learned that patience was its own kind of weapon.
Rachel sighed softly.“I wasn’t aware that thoughts made noise.”
“They do when they start weighing down the entire room.”He winked at her, his lips turning up into a small smile, one he reserved only for her.It was a smile she knew so well that she could see it clear as day even when she closed her eyes.“You need to be careful or you might squash me into a rug, and then Peri would be ticked off that she wasn’t the one who got to make me carpet.”
“Well, you’re not wrong about Peri being pissy about it.But I highly doubt my thoughts can squish you into a rug.”Rachel chuckled.“Not to mention, you’re in your human form.A human skin rug is just gross.”
“How do you know?Have you walked on a human skin rug?Maybe it’s very smooth.”
“Of all the many conversations we’ve had over the centuries, this might be one of the oddest.”A smile tugged at her mouth despite herself.
Gavril’s gaze softened fractionally when he saw it, and she felt the warmth of it answer along the slender, steady thread of the mate bond between them, a low golden pulse under her ribs.“There she is,”came his voice, gentler through the bond than it was aloud, though he said it aloud, too."There she is."
Rachel looked back toward the spring before the warmth in his expression could settle too deeply beneath her skin.He had a way of looking at her sometimes that felt like he was seeing a version of her that she was not sure she had earned, and she did not know what to do with that on a good day.She certainly did not know what to do with it on this one–a day when they’d nearly been troll food, and then like a car wreck inflicting whiplash, suddenly they were being treated like guests.All because Kara was a gypsy healer.And Rachel hadn’t missed the interest in the Troll King’s eyes when he’d mentioned that he knew that Rachel was a healer, too.
“I’m worried about Kara,” she admitted.“Sometimes I wonder why the Great Luna created us.”
“Beautiful females?”Gavril teased.He was trying to ease her fretting.She’d tried to keep it from flowing through their bond.She didn’t like him worrying about her.Her mate, who was so stoic and strong, yet could soften in an instant when a child was under his protection.“I know why she created you, because she knew us males would be Neanderthals without you.Grunting, fighting, acting like rabid dogs fighting over a bone.”
She turned so that she could see him but still run her fingers through the water.“You’re in an interesting mood this evening.”
Her mate shrugged, a casual motion that wasn’t his style.Gavril’s movements were always intentional with purpose.He wasn’t one to waste energy on fruitless motion.Jen had teased him that if he continued to sit so still, he’d eventually turn to stone, and once that happened, she would use him as a coat rack.Rachel had no doubt she would.
“I don’t like it when you’re so unsettled,” he explained.“I can’t fix the situation, at least not yet, but I can at least make my female feel less stressed.”
Rachel knew she wouldn’t be able to appease him with words.He’d see right through them, especially since he had access to her every emotion.So, she just went back to letting out the words that were running through her mind.“She's trying very hard to pretend she isn't terrified.But after what she went through with Ludcarab, there’s no way she doesn’t have some form of PTSD.She hides behind her feisty attitude and bravado.And she does it quite convincingly, unless you know what to look for.As a healer, I could practically feel the fear rolling off of her.I can’t believe Nick didn’t kill everyone in the room the minute his cage opened.”
“To be fair, Kara would attempt sarcasm during the apocalypse,” he pointed out mildly.
“She absolutely would.”She shook her head.“I blame Jen.”
He inclined his head in agreement.“That’s because most things that have to do with our females are Jen’s fault.And Nick would probably threaten the apocalypse itself if it looked at Kara wrong.”
