He stood slowly from the edge of the bed.‘You’re not going alone.”
She smirked at him.“You say that like I would ever think you’d let me goanywherealone.”
He shrugged.“And you say that like it’s unreasonable.”
“I say that like you nearly tore a cage apart last time I stepped a few feet away from you.”
His wolf surged so hard that he felt it behind his ribs: The king demanding she leave the cage.Her face going pale even as she remained brave.Her hand flying to her stomach.The bars under his palms.He shoved the memory down hard enough to taste it in the back of his throat.
Kara’s expression softened the way it always did when she felt the shift in him through the bond, even when she didn’t have the words for what she was sensing.She slid carefully off the bed, the furs whispering as they fell behind her, and stepped close enough to rest her palm flat against his chest.Right over his heart.Right where she always put it.
“Hey.”Her voice gentled.“I’m okay.”
“For now.”It came out before he could stop it.
Her eyes searched his face for several long seconds before she sighed.“Nick.”
“I know, yeah.”He closed his eyes briefly.The warmth of her hand stayed against his chest, steady.“I know I’m being intense.”
“You’ve always been intense.”She pressed closer to him.“I like that you’re intense.Let’s just try and keep it under control while the trolls still like us.”
“You’re carrying my child while some ancient corruption beneath this realm keeps trying to sniff you out like a bloodhound.”He opened his eyes.“I feel like intense is justified.”
She held his stare for exactly half a heartbeat before snorting softly.“Okay, when you say it out loud like that, it does sound stressful.”
He turned, grabbed the thick, black cloak hanging from a peg carved into the chamber wall, and brought it back around her.He worked the heavy fabric over her shoulders with care, pulled the hood gently into place, and settled it just above her brow.
His fingers lingered along her jaw.
Mine.
The thought had become terrifyingly constant.
Another knock sounded.More urgent this time.The hardness of the troll’s knuckle made the sound flatter than knuckles should, and Nick wondered, briefly and with no particular relevance, what trolls’ bones were actually made of.
He turned toward the doorway, every protective instinct in him sharpening to a point.Something had changed.He could feel it through the soles of his boots.
The mountain was restless this morning.The stone carried a faint vibration under his weight now, subtle enough most people wouldn’t notice it.Wolves noticed everything beneath their feet.
Kara felt it, too.Her eyes lifted to his.“You feel it?”
He nodded once.
The vibration came again, a slow pulse that traveled up through the floor and into the bones of his ankles before it faded.
Not an earthquake.Earthquakes didn’t have rhythm.
Not movement either.Movement didn’t carry weight like that.
Almost like a heartbeat.Low.Ancient.Wrong.
The mineral veins in the wall dimmed all at once.The silver light that had been steady since they’d woken now flickered, brightened, flickered again, like something had passed too close to a candle and disturbed the air.
Beyond the doorway, voices rose somewhere deeper inside the mountain.Trolls calling to one another in their rough, percussive language, words Nick couldn’t translate but didn’t need to.He’d heard enough of his own packmates shout in tones like that to know what they meant.Heavy footsteps thundered through the corridors, more than one set, moving fast.
His wolf surged upright inside him.
Danger.
