Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Wren woke slowly, caught in that hazy place between dream and dawn where everything felt unreal in the nicest way—soft, warm, sheltered.
Her guardian angel had definitely outdone himself this time, probably thinking, she deserves a reward for whatever she had done in her life.
Her cheek was pressed against something solid and wonderfully hot, her legs tangled in heavy furs—and in him.
Gunnar.
The realization brushed across her consciousness like a warm hand, drawing a slow, dreamy smile to her lips even before she dared open her eyes.
She was draped over him like a second pelt, her thigh thrown across his waist, her arm splayed across the wide, warm plane of his chest. He was all heat and muscle and immovable presence, his heartbeat a slow, steady drum beneath her palm.
The air around them smelled of woodsmoke and pine sap and snow and him, that grounding scent of earth and storm, ancient and intensely alive.
Outside, the wind screamed against the rock walls, a reminder of the blizzard still raging, trapping her here. But cocooned against Gunnar’s body, the storm felt distant and harmless, like a wild thing pacing just beyond the safety of their den.
She shifted ever so slightly, and that tiny movement drew a deep, low sound from his chest—a rumble somewhere between a growl and a sigh. A sound that sent heat skittering through her stomach.
Oh.
Wren froze.
Because there—solid, unmistakable, and hot—was his arousal pressing against her hip.
Her breath caught.
Gunnar stirred. His voice came out thick with sleep, a gravelly murmur that vibrated right through her cheek. “You’re awake.”
“Maybe,” she whispered, not moving. “I could pretend I’m not. It’s really cozy here.”
He huffed something like a laugh, the movement shifting both their bodies. “You talk too much. Even when half-conscious.”
“And you grumble too much,” she countered, daring to lift her head an inch so she could look at him, “even when half-asleep.”
His hair was mussed, falling over his forehead; his tusks caught the faint glow of the dying fire; his expression was soft and unguarded in a way she doubted many had ever seen.
He looked less like a creature from a winter tale and more like someone in the middle of a dream she wasn’t ready to wake from—raw, powerful, undeniably male.
He met her gaze, lids heavy, eyes blue as glacier ice. “If you keep wiggling like that,” he rumbled, “you’re going to start trouble, little human.”
“Maybe,” she said, pulse stuttering, “I’m already starting it.”
His hand slid up her back, slow and deliberate, the pads of his fingers tracing her spine in a way that lit every nerve in her body. She shivered, and he felt it—because his next breath sharpened.
The kiss began as nothing more than a question. Her lips brushing his, warm and tentative. A test. A spark.
He answered with a low growl that thrummed against her ribs, his fingers sliding into her hair as if drawn there by instinct.
He kissed like he spoke: sparingly, intensely, with nothing held back once he committed.
His mouth moved against hers with surprising gentleness for a creature built of stone and storm, his breath warm and steady, his hand anchoring her as if he feared she might disappear if he didn’t hold her close.
And oh, she melted—into the heat, the weight, the dizzying surge of want. The world narrowed to the taste of him, the scrape of his tusk near her lip, the deep warmth of his body wrapped around hers.
Then—
“Mrrrrow!”
Something thumped against the furs near her feet.
Wren jolted, nearly rolling off Gunnar entirely, while he groaned and dropped his head back to the pillow of his arm.
“Ketty,” he muttered, sounding profoundly resigned. “Excellent timing. As always.”
The enormous Yule Cat crouched at the foot of the bed, tail lashing with smug authority. A dusting of snow clung to her fur, like she’d just stormed in from the blizzard for the sole purpose of supervising them. She meowed again—louder this time—an unmistakable feline announcement of I see you.
“Oh, great,” Wren moaned, burying her burning face against Gunnar’s shoulder. “Your cat just cockblocked us.”
“She enjoys doing that,” he said grimly. “Claims she’s guarding my virtue.”
Wren snorted into his skin. “Pretty sure that ship sank a long time ago.”
He gave her a strange sideways look at that—brief, unreadable—but before she could question it, Ketty hopped onto the bed with the grace of a falling boulder. She circled once, plopped between them like a furry wall, then placed one massive paw directly on Wren’s stomach.
“Well. I guess that’s that,” Wren laughed breathlessly.
“She approves,” Gunnar said flatly. “Or she’s claiming the warm spot for herself.”
Wren scratched the cat’s chin. Ketty purred so loudly it vibrated the bed. “I can’t compete with this level of possessiveness.”
“You could try,” he murmured, voice deepening in a way that made her toes curl again.
The air thickened—charged, warm, humming with everything unspoken—but Ketty stretched a paw and smacked Gunnar in the chest.
He sighed. “Fine. Fine. I’ll make breakfast before she uses me as a chew toy.”
Gunnar slipped out of bed with that quiet, daunting grace trolls seemed to have, pulling on a loose shirt as he stalked toward the fire pit. The storm outside raged louder, wind screaming around the cave’s entrance, but the warmth inside was startlingly domestic.
Wren pulled another one of his shirts over her head—big enough to fall to mid-thigh—and padded barefoot toward the fire. Gunnar stood bare-chested beside it, flipping something in an iron pan, the muscles in his back flexing with each motion.
She swallowed. Hard.
This felt dangerous. Not in the monstrous, clawed, mythical way. Dangerous because it felt normal. Like a morning she could get used to.
“This is weird,” she admitted softly. “Weird in a nice way. Like I woke up in some domestic fantasy with a seven-foot-tall mountain man.”
He didn’t turn, but the corner of his mouth lifted. “A fantasy? I look like a fantasy to you?”
“I mean—” she gestured at him helplessly “—I’ve had worse mornings. Usually fewer muscles. Slightly less fur. Definitely fewer blizzards.”
He glanced over his shoulder, amused. “You think this is normal?”
“Better than normal,” she said before her brain could intervene.
He stilled for a second, spoon hovering over the pan. Something flickered across his face—quick, intense, unreadable—but he masked it with a grunt and a plate shoved in her direction.
“Eat.”
She took the food, sat near the fire, and watched him move around the cave like he’d done this a thousand mornings alone. But today, there were two mugs. Two plates. Two sets of footprints in the snow-dusted stone.
She never should have felt as comfortable as she did. Not here. Not with him.
But she did.
“Gunnar?” she asked softly.
“Hm?”
“This doesn’t feel lonely anymore.”
He paused mid-motion. Slowly, very slowly, he looked at her.
Something changed in his expression. Warmth, maybe. Or longing. Or something deeper he wasn’t ready to name.
His voice, when it came, was low. Almost rough. “No. It doesn’t.”
A shiver ran through her, not from the cold.
But from the feeling that she’d just stepped into something bigger than either of them quite understood.
And the storm outside kept raging while, inside the cave, something gentler, quieter, infinitely more dangerous began to take shape between them.
The storm still raged out, possibly taking on a life of its own after his mother’s magic had conjured it. Inside the cave, the fire snapped and crackled, casting warm orange patterns over the stone. Gunnar liked mornings like this—quiet mornings, predictable mornings.
Except nothing had been predictable since the human arrived.
Wren sat cross-legged near the hearth, her bag beside her, hair mussed from sleep, humming some tuneless little song under her breath. She was always humming. Or talking. Or rearranging something. A whirlwind, a bright streak of color across the gray stone of his home.
And somehow, impossibly, it made the place feel fuller. Less empty.
Gunnar set his carving block on his lap, pulling his knife free. Only when the first shaving curled away did Wren seem to notice.
Her head tipped sideways. “You’re carving again.”
He grunted. Translation: of course.
But she smiled like he’d spoken poetry. “Can I watch?”
He shrugged—another grunt, but softer this time—and she reached into her backpack. Not for food. Not for clothes. For a battered pencil roll and a tin full of odds and ends: scraps of metal, wire, fabric, small smooth stones, a twist of copper.
He blinked. “What is that?”
“My art kit,” she said, spreading everything out like a miniature treasure hoard. “I do mixed-media sculpture. Found objects. Things with texture. Things people throw away.”
Mixed what?
She held up a shard of brushed metal and a tiny bit of driftwood. “I build pieces that blend organic and industrial elements. Chaos and structure. It’s weird, but it’s mine.”
He had never understood humans’ need to explain themselves, but the soft fondness in her voice made something warm kick behind his ribs.
“And what are you making?” he asked before he could stop himself.
Her smile widened, brighter than the fire. “A little sculpture of the way the storm felt. Not the scary part. The part where it was quiet. And beautiful.” She paused, glancing at him shyly. “And safe.”
Safe. Around a troll. He kept his face neutral, but the word burrowed deep.
She bent over her small pieces, hands moving delicately. Gunnar returned to his carving—slow, practiced strokes shaping the rough block. Even so, he felt her watching him again.
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“A bird.”
“Oh!” Her eyes lit. “Why a bird?”
He ran a thumb along the wood grain. “The wood wants to be one.”
She blinked. “The wood wants to be one?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “You listen. You feel where the lines are, where the curves lie beneath the surface. The shape is already inside.” He tapped the block. “I just let it out.”
Wren stared at him like he’d just revealed a secret doorway to another world. “That’s beautiful.”
He snorted. “It is just wood.”
“No,” she said gently. “It’s art.”
Art. He’d never used that word for what he did. His hands simply needed to make things the way lungs needed air.
She settled beside him, close enough that her knee brushed his thigh. Warm. Soft. Familiar already in a way that terrified him.
But they worked. Quietly. Together.
His knife whispered through wood. Her metal clinked and bent. The fire crackled. Their breaths mingled in the stillness, and Gunnar realized—slowly, painfully—that the cave felt different now. Less like a den built for one. More like… more like something shared.
She laughed suddenly, soft and delighted, holding up her sculpture: a twisting form of wood, wire, and a shard of silver, shaped like the curve of a wind-gust.
She looked proud. She looked happy.
Happy to be here.
The realization hit him like a blow. She could be content in this cave. She could wake here, work here, smile here. With him.
Hope—dangerous, bright, reckless—rose inside him, swelling against his ribs.
He forced his gaze back to the carving, throat thick.
She could stay. She might choose to stay.
He swallowed hard, letting himself imagine—for just one fragile heartbeat—that this warmth, this quiet harmony, this shared art might be what life could be like. If fate was kind. If she chose him.
For the first time in centuries, the cave did not feel like a prison.
It felt like a home.
And he dared, just barely, to hope.