Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
RAGNAR
Ragnar couldn’t see straight. He was so bleary-eyed from working on potions and elixirs and all the other things that his people needed that he wasn’t sure what time of day it was. He’d been working for hours.
Days, really. Days on end where he was barely home and if he was home, he was sleeping. Eating was hard enough. But his people would need more of these healing potions and all the magic he could give them if they were going to fight the humans. The king had decided they would take the fight to Maia’s people. If the humans continued to stay on their mountain, then the trolls would force them off of it.
This mountain was theirs. For years, they had allowed the humans to wander over their land. All because they’d known the humans couldn’t get into their home. But now they could. Now the humans had proven they knew of at least one entrance, which meant they had been watching the trolls for too long. Now, they had to make sure that the humans couldn’t continue to do so.
Sighing, he rubbed his eyes and tried his hardest to keep going. His magic was already depleted, but it had been so for days on end now. All he wanted was to crawl back to his home, get into his bed, and pray his wife turned in her sleep to rest against him.
Those were the best parts of his evening. No matter how hard the day was, at least she leaned against him. At least she sought him out in her sleep for warmth or reassurance or whatever it was. At least he could hold her while she wasn’t aware of what she was doing.
Because otherwise, he didn’t see his wife. And that drove him mad.
Gunnar strode into the room, carrying another armload of clean bottles that needed to be filled. “When was the last time you saw Maia?”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
His brother grinned and set the box down a little too hard. The sound of rattling glass filled the room. “She’s doing well, you know.”
“I would prefer to hear that from her lips.”
“Too bad you don’t talk to her anymore.”
Ragnar was going to punch him right in the mouth and make it so that his brother stopped talking about his wife like he knew her better, like Ragnar didn’t know what was going on in her life.
Because he didn’t. He had been absent for the better part of two weeks now. And he desperately missed her. A human.
Groaning, he dropped his head onto the desk and rested the aching muscles in his neck. “We were getting along so well, too. We’d made progress, brother. Real progress.”
“You mean you tasted her pussy, and you’d do anything to get another taste?”
Ragnar heaved a sigh. “Shut up.”
“So I’m right.”
“Of course you’re right. But when would I get a taste when I’m always working and only return in the middle of the night?”
There came the sound of a chair screeching against the floor, and then the wood groaning under the weight of his massive brother. “Interesting. I suppose you could always wake her up.”
“That feels less than willing.”
“You’d know if she was willing.”
Ragnar didn’t want her to mistake it for just a dream, though. He wanted her ready and willing and dripping like she had been in the kitchen. Just the thought made every muscle in his body tense and his cock so hard that he thought it might burst.
“You could always go to the brothels. There are plenty of women there who would love to have you back.”
But he didn’t want to go to the brothel, either, because at some point his mind had shifted to wanting red hair wrapped around his wrist. He wanted to count the freckles on her shoulders and lick at them like they were tiny drops of caramel. He wanted to twist her body into every position he could think of just to see if he could get that sound to come out of her mouth again, like it had the first time he’d made her come.
And then the second.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “I have no interest in a moment of release. I want all of this to be over with so I can convince my wife to fuck me.”
“You could go right now.”
He stared at Gunnar in silence. It wasn’t fair of his brother to tempt him like that. He had too many duties, too many things to do right now that would lead his people toward victory. This was his duty to the entirety of troll kind.
And somehow, Gunnar was still staring at him like he was an idiot.
“Well?” his brother asked.
“You know I can’t go anywhere right now. I have too much to do.”
“You don’t have too much to do that you cannot return home, fuck your wife, and be back in...” Gunnar’s lips mashed together. “An hour or two? Three hours, if you don’t break her.”
“There is much I could do here in three hours.” But he wasn’t thinking about making potions or grinding up healing herbs. He was thinking about what it would be like if he hooked her knee over his shoulder and drove into her soft, wet heat.
Three hours wasn’t enough. He’d need more. There were too many things he wanted to do and so many ways he wanted her to scream. He’d need five hours, and then maybe he would be satisfied enough. At least for a little while.
She’d have to eat, after all.
“I’ll cover for you,” Gunnar said, grinning far too wide. “You need a break, Ragnar. You need to get all those thoughts out of your head or you’re going to make a mistake.”
“I don’t know if she’ll even want me.” Or if she was even ready.
But if he spent a few hours making sure she was prepared, she could take him. And damn it, now he was drooling. Wiping at his mouth, he tried to hide the reaction from his brother, who was still grinning from ear to ear.
He had to do something about this reaction. It wasn’t natural to feel this way about a woman—that much he knew. Their father certainly hadn’t followed their mother around like a panting beast.
“Go on,” Gunnar said. “I’ll cover for you. And then we can see what to do about the rest of this business.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. Ragnar stood, heading out the door and up a winding stairwell. The room in the depths of the castle had always been for healing, but it was far away from the entrance. It took some time for him to walk through the crowds of people who were working, all of them finding something to keep them busy at times like these. From the people who kept the castle clean, to the blacksmiths working on weapons, to all the generals who trained their warriors, it was always bustling here.
Ragnar usually enjoyed these crowds. He would take his time walking through them all, ensuring that he said hello to everyone he had healed before. Many of them wanted to speak with him about potions or stiff shoulders. And normally, he wouldn’t mind.
But right now? He wanted to get home to his woman so he could focus on them. Their relationship. The taste of her skin and the sound of her pleasure. All the things that he should have been focusing on since the beginning, and yet had been pulled away from multiple times. He just wanted and it was his greatest hope that she wanted the same thing.
He felt lighter than he had in a week. It wasn’t just about the sex that he was going to please her with, because he would use one of those recovery half hours to ask her how it had been going in the garden. He’d heard she had managed to tame the impossible troll. Birger didn’t hate her. He didn’t like her, of course, but he didn’t hate her. And that was saying something for the old man.
Every detail of her life was something he wanted to hear about. Did she like the job he’d picked for her? Did she hate it?
If he knew her as well as he believed he’d come to, she’d absolutely love it.
Ragnar inched by a group of new warriors he knew would stop him and ask about their sore muscles, trying to remain out of sight. They were the first to complain about how they were feeling during training hours. It was always an excuse for them to return home when they were feeling lazy.
The castle doors burst open and a single scout raced in. He was covered in dirt and red mud… although on closer inspection Ragnar realized it was blood. The troll ran through the front rooms of the castle, heading toward the throne without a single word to anyone else.
Ragnar stared at the open door. He could still leave. He could head out into the city and no one would come to get him. If there was something terribly wrong, someone would get sent out to his home and they would interrupt whatever happened there. If he hurried, there might be time for a single taste.
But he could feel the fear and anger that rose in the room at the arrival of the scout. Something was seriously wrong. That man had been sent out for a good reason, and coming back like that? Clearly, the troll had a message that could only be for the king’s ears.
“Wasn’t that the scout sent to the base of the mountain with the war band?” a troll murmured. “I thought they were supposed to leave and come right back?”
“Damn it,” Ragnar hissed, before turning on his heel and heading into the throne room with the other generals.
Too many questions burned in his mind, and none of them were going to get answered if he didn’t go into that room. The guilt would hound him until he returned halfway on the journey to his home. So he joined the others standing before the throne, waiting for the scout to give his report.
The young troll was breathing heavily, trying hard to stay conscious while the king stared down at him. Scouts weren’t allowed to talk until the king bid them to, and it was obvious this young man wanted to purge everything he had seen.
“Go ahead,” the king said, his voice grave.
“The war band reached the edge of the mountain. They put up signs to warn humans that we will hunt them, but it seemed like the humans knew we were coming. An army attacked us almost instantly, and there was more blood than I have ever seen. They had different weapons. Arrows that rained down from the sky. Swords that were sharp enough to pierce our flesh. Many died.”
Ragnar’s heart twisted in his chest. He didn’t enjoy hearing that trolls had died, no more than he enjoyed knowing he hadn’t been there to help. The other generals shifted on their feet as well, each of them likely having similar thoughts. They should have been there. If one of them had gone, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened.
“Ragnar,” the king called out. “Your supplies. Have they been replenished after the cave-in?”
“Only by half, my king.”
“We’ll likely need all those supplies and more, if I am correct. The humans have been watching us too closely if they were able to guess our next move.”
A grumble came from the troll beside him, an elderly man who had been a general for many years. “It’s almost as though there is a spy in our midst.”
Everyone shifted uncomfortably at the thought. But then they were looking at Ragnar. Like he knew something they didn’t, or perhaps, as though he housed someone they could not trust.
He bared his teeth in anger, shaking his head so his tusks glinted in the wisp light. “Don’t even say it.”
“It’s an explanation to a question we have no answer to.”
Gunnar walked up beside Ragnar, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’ve brought her to the gardens and back every single day. I’ve seen many humans who lie and cheat and steal. I’ve been around them my entire life, fighting them, losing to them, and I know a spy when I see one. That woman is no spy. But she is a troll wife, if you were willing to look.”
“All humans are the same,” another general proclaimed. A few other trolls nodded in agreement, grumbling under their breath about weapons the humans built and the acid they poured on innocent trolls.
He hated hearing it, but now was not the time for any of this argument. More so, it was yet another way for her to show her worth. “My king.”
King Egil’s eyes narrowed on him, as though he knew what Ragnar was about to ask. “Speak, healer.”
“My magic is stronger with the presence of my troll wife. I would like to bring her to heal the wounded warriors. She has use to me, and thus, to the rest of the trolls as well.”
Every single person in the room froze. Half of them watched their king with hatred in their hearts, willing him to say that was a boundary no one could cross. The other half perhaps knew the meaning of what Ragnar asked.
Let her prove herself again. Let her heal the trolls, the people who had taken her in. Even if they wouldn’t entirely trust her after that, they would at the very least know that she wasn’t the spy they thought she was.
After giving it some thought, the king nodded. “You may bring her. Gather your supplies, now, healer. Save all those you can and bring them back to Trollveggen.”
Ragnar turned swiftly, rushing back to the room where he would gather his supplies. Gunnar and three other trolls went with him, knowing they would be useful in carrying all the supplies that were necessary.
Gunnar stopped him at the door. “Go get her, Ragnar.”
“I need to tell you what to bring.”
“We know the potions. You’ve used them on all of us before. Get her here safely and keep an eye on those other generals. Not everyone thinks highly of Birger’s opinion, Ragnar.”
He nodded, fear already spiking through him. It might not have been the best choice to bring her, but at the very least, they had to try. He wouldn’t keep her in the dark forever, no matter what the others said.