That earned him a quiet laugh.It was a small sound, a little cracked at the edges, but it was real, and for a moment the cavern did not feel quite so heavy.The sound faded quickly.Rachel's fingers stilled in the water.The reflected blue light moved across her knuckles in slow, glowing bands.
“Something touched the baby.”Rachel had felt it.The healer bond was something altogether different than the mate bond, but no less intense.Especially when intense emotions were present.“It was dark, malevolent.But she protected it with her light, her magic.She’s able to wield her healer magic in tandem with her witch power, and it kept whatever that was from getting near the child.”She paused and then added, “I think it has something to do with Raja.”
The words settled heavily between them.
Gavril did not immediately answer.Rachel appreciated that about him.He never rushed to fill silence just because it existed.He let her words be what they needed to be, which, in a world full of people who filled every quiet moment with noise, was its own kind of kindness.
Finally, he asked quietly, “You’re sure?”
She nodded.“I felt it when the magic surged through the cavern.”Her throat tightened slightly around the memory of it, the way the air had seemed to bend inward toward Kara, and toward the small, impossible life Kara was carrying.Her gypsy magic had known it before her mind had, the healer in her recoiling from a presence that did not belong inside a womb.“Whatever is moving beneath this realm noticed her.Not Kara specifically, at first.The baby.And it very much felt like magic that emanated from the Nushtonia.”
Gavril’s jaw flexed, a slow tightening of muscle along the line of his jaw that she had come to read as clearly as any of her own moods.
“That explains Nick,” he murmured.“I mean, any male would have been struggling to get to their pregnant mate, but he was practically feral.”
Rachel turned on the stone and looked at him fully, drawing her hand out of the spring and resting her damp fingers against her knee.“He’s barely holding himself together.”
“He thinks he failed her.”Gavril shook his head.“He thinks he’s failed her over and over again.It does something to a man, something irreversible, when his mate is hurt.And the way Kara was hurt, that’s a male’s worst nightmare.Considering when we first arrived, we didn’t really know the trolls’ intentions, his mind no doubt jumped to the worst case scenario.Unfortunately, it will be a feeling that might take a long time to go away, if it ever does.”
“But he didn’t fail her,” Rachel insisted, her chest getting tight as she remembered the way Kara had looked when she’d been brought out of Ludcarab’s clutches.She’d looked like a shell of the person she had been.Her eyes had been haunted.Slowly, the light in them had returned.Though she was rarely seen without Nick, Kara had begun to manage being away from him and the light still stayed.
“He knows that here.”Gavril tapped two fingers lightly against his temple.His mouth pulled into the ghost of something that was not quite a smile.“But our wolves don’t love logically.You cannot reason a male out of a terror his beast has already decided is going to happen.His every thought was most likely seeing her in various stages of torture.”
Rachel’s chest ached at the quiet understanding in his voice, because he understood.The wolf who had found her and claimed her and refused to let the world have her knew exactly what that shape looked like when it fractured.
“Again, I wonder what the Great Luna was thinking in making such a bond between us,” she admitted softly.“I’ve never seen fear hit him that hard, and that fast.”
Gavril’s gaze drifted toward the tunnel leading deeper into the cavern system, toward where Nick and Kara had disappeared earlier, and for a moment he looked like a man reading a story he had lived too closely to forget.“Neither have I.”
He leaned back slightly against the stone wall behind him, though nothing about him truly relaxed.The blade across his thigh stayed balanced exactly where it had been, as though his body simply refused, on principle, to be unprepared.
“For dominant males like Nick,” he paused, choosing the words carefully, the way he always did when he was trying not to wound something just by naming it.“Protection becomes identity.When we cannot shield the ones we love, it tears at something foundational.We do not just feel helpless.We feel like a part of us has become useless, and even died.”
Thewewas not lost on her.
Rachel looked down at the glowing water again.“He loves her so much.”
“Yes.”
“She’s still so young in many ways.But she was forced to grow up, and is still being forced to face things that females her age should not have to.”Rachel’s heart ached for Kara.Like the other healers, she’d come to see them as younger sisters.She loved each of them deeply.
“She stopped being young a long time ago,” Gavril said quietly.“Now she’s becoming dangerous.”
Rachel blinked at him, waiting for him to continue.
Gavril’s expression remained calm, thoughtful.“I watched her stand in front of an entire troll kingdom while something ancient searched through her magic, and she still found the energy to mouth off.”One dark brow lifted slightly.“That requires either tremendous courage or severe brain damage.”
Rachel huffed softly.
“She protected that child without hesitation, not just her own, but the one she healed as well,” Gavril continued.“Even knowing it exposed her.”His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.“Warriors notice things like that.Wolves notice it even faster.”
Rachel let his words settle into the quiet between them and found she could not argue with a single one.
The trolls had changed after Kara healed Torvik.
The guards no longer watched Kara with suspicion.Now they watched her carefully, reverently almost, the way the faithful watched something they were not entirely sure they were allowed to touch.She hadn’t missed the way troll females had begun leaving food near their chambers, dense loaves still warm from the cooking stones, carved wooden bowls of something root-sweet and earthy.Older trolls lowered their gazes slightly when passing her in the tunnels, the barest tilt of the head, the kind of gesture that came from a people whose respect had to be earned before it was given.
Suddenly, she felt a faint rumble, so soft that had she not been a healer and very attuned to magic, she might not have noticed.Rachel frowned faintly.“The mountain feels sick.It’s as if it’s trying to rid itself of whatever has begun to invade it.”
