Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
If her life ever became a memoir, this chapter would be titled: The Moment I Realized I Wasn’t Lost—Just Finally Arriving.
The storm still raged outside, throwing itself against the mountainside as if trying to claw its way in. But inside the cave, the hours slipped by in warm, easy silence. Wren had never expected that a place made of stone and shadows could feel gentle. Safe. Like a pause in the chaos of her life.
She and Gunnar had spent the day in a quiet rhythm that felt older than the two of them.
He carved, she tinkered with scraps of driftwood and metal, the fire snapped and purred, and Ketty occasionally strutted through as if supervising both of them.
Nothing dramatic happened. Nothing frightening.
Nothing that should have made her heart feel this ridiculously full.
And yet it did.
The contentment should have scared her. Usually, it would have. But instead of running from it, she found herself settling deeper into it, like slipping into warm furs after a long walk through snow.
Which left too much room in her head for the thing she kept circling around all day.
The words he’d half-mumbled that morning—dream-words about being bound, about the sun, about a mate.
He’d brushed them off. But they lingered in her thoughts like a low hum she couldn’t tune out.
As evening pressed close and the wind outside screamed harder, Gunnar stirred a pot over the fire with quiet, methodical focus.
The smell of herbs and slow-cooked meat filled the cave, rich and comforting.
He moved with an ease that made something flutter low in her stomach—strength and gentleness in equal measure.
She wasn’t sure when she started watching him. Or when watching him became staring.
But when he glanced back, she jerked her gaze away and pretended immense fascination with a crack in the cave wall.
Smooth. Very smooth.
“Dinner smells amazing,” she said, forcing nonchalance.
“It’s just stew,” he replied without looking up.
“Sure, but you make it sound like you didn’t catch half of it yourself or season it like some ancient wilderness chef with trollish instincts.”
He huffed, a sound that was almost a laugh. “You are strange, little human.”
“I get that a lot.”
He handed her a carved wooden bowl, their fingers brushing briefly. The touch sent a spark through her so sharp she nearly drop-kicked herself into the fire. His eyes flicked to hers, something unreadable—something too intense—there for just a heartbeat.
They ate in silence, the kind that felt like a shared blanket, warm and close. But the tension buzzing beneath Wren’s skin finally pushed her to set her bowl aside.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked.
Gunnar paused. His attention snapped fully to her, blue eyes steady and unblinking. “You can tell me anything.”
The words wrapped around her like a thick fur—unexpected, protective, and far too comforting.
“Okay.” She exhaled, bracing herself. “The thing is, I didn’t just randomly pick Iceland for this trip. I mean, technically I did, but I’ve been drawn to this place for years.”
“A pull?” he asked. “What kind?”
“The kind that didn’t make sense,” she said, twisting a thread on her blanket.
“It started when I was eight or nine. I found a National Geographic magazine in the school library. Iceland was on the cover—ice caves, black sand beaches, all that. And the second I saw it, something in me just woke up.”
He stilled, listening in that intense, quiet way he had, his entire focus trained on her.
“It sounds silly,” she went on. “But I’d look at the pictures and get this weird feeling like I’d been there. Like I remembered it.”
Gunnar’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
“And sometimes,” she said softly, “I’d get flashes. Not dreams exactly. More like fragments. A tall silhouette in snow. Tusks. Eyes like light through ice. He should’ve scared me. But he never did.”
The fire popped between them.
She hesitated before saying the next part. “When I met Ketill one day when he stopped by my cabin, he wasn’t the figure I’d been seeing. Similar. But not the same.”
Gunnar’s expression didn’t shift. But something in the air did—quiet, sharp, like a wire pulled taut.
“And then,” she whispered, “I met you.”
His throat bobbed in a hard swallow.
The moment stretched, warm and fragile and turning over like something alive between them.
“You are the one I’ve been seeing,” she said, voice barely more than breath. “Not in perfect detail. Not enough to understand it. But enough to know.”
Gunnar didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. Just looked at her as if the world had shifted beneath him.
Finally, he said, voice rougher than she’d ever heard it, “Wren, you don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“But I do,” she insisted gently. “Maybe not everything. But enough to know that being here, being with you, feels like the first thing in a long time that isn’t wrong.”
His eyes softened, though the tightness in his body didn’t ease. “Wren.”
“And I think,” she whispered, “this, whatever this is, might be why I came to Iceland. Why I’ve always felt like I was looking for something my whole life.”
He closed his eyes briefly, as if steadying himself.
When he opened them again, the storm outside could have been screaming right through him, for all the wild ache in his gaze.
“If what you believe is true,” he murmured, “everything is about to change.”
She leaned in, heart pounding, breath caught in her throat. “Good. I’m tired of trying to fit into a life that never felt like mine.”
This time, when the silence fell between them, it wasn’t heavy.
It was electric.
And Gunnar looked at her as if she had just shifted the ground beneath his feet, and he wasn’t sure whether to brace or reach for her.
Maybe both.
It shouldn’t have shaken him.
He’d survived avalanches. Wars between witches. Centuries of wandering in darkness waiting for a sunrise he could no longer touch.
But her words—You’re the one—hit him with the force of a mountain collapsing.
Gunnar stood there, bowl forgotten, breath a slow, uneven drag that felt too loud in the quiet cave.
Wren looked at him as if she were seeing something amazing, not monstrous. Like his tusks and green skin and shadowed blood didn’t frighten her. Like she’d been waiting for him.
He didn’t know what to do with that.
Her expression softened as she watched him struggle for words he didn’t have. “Gunnar,” she whispered, voice threaded with something he didn’t dare trust. “Say something.”
He tried. But everything inside him had seized—hope, fear, disbelief tangling into one impossible knot.
“Wren.” His voice was low, rough enough that it startled even him. “You don’t understand what you’re claiming. What this means.”
“Then explain it to me,” she said, stepping closer. “Let me understand.”
Her body brushed his—soft warmth meeting stone—for one breath, one heartbeat. His hands curled at his sides, knuckles whitening as he fought the instinct to reach for her. Claim her. Pull her into his arms and hold her there until the storm outside gave up trying to touch her.
“You say you were drawn here,” he murmured, forcing the words out. “You say you saw something. Someone.” He swallowed hard. “But if fate has claimed you, Wren, then you don’t just step into my world. You become bound to it. Bound to me.”
Her breath caught, but not with fear. With something he didn’t recognize. Something warmer.
“I know,” she whispered. “It should scare me. But it doesn’t.”
His pulse slammed.
For centuries he’d trained himself not to hope. Hope was deadly for trolls. Hope turned to longing, longing to madness. But the way she looked at him now—with certainty, with hunger, with an affection that bordered on reverence—broke through every wall he’d built.
“You should be afraid,” he said, though his voice had lost that iron certainty. “Of what I am. Of what I could become. Of what it means for you.”
She shook her head slowly, deliberately. “I’m not afraid of you.”
The words settled under his skin like they belonged there.
Then she touched him.
Her fingers brushed his forearm, light as breath yet electrifying enough that his entire body went rigid. She traced up to his elbow, his biceps, the place where muscle and darkness met warmth and something frighteningly like tenderness.
His breath hissed through his teeth.
“You say I don’t understand,” she murmured, stepping into his space again. “So teach me. Tell me what it means. Show me who you are.”
Gods above and below, she had no idea what she was asking. Or worse, maybe she did.
He should have stepped away. He should have pushed her back, told her she was saying these things because she was cold, grateful, overwhelmed by the storm.
But Gunnar had never been a good liar. Especially not to himself.
“Wren,” he said again, her name cracking under the weight of everything he couldn’t say.
She rose onto her toes, her breath warm against his throat.
“Gunnar,” she whispered back, mirroring him, undoing him.
A low, involuntary growl vibrated through his chest. She smiled as if she’d been waiting to hear that sound.
And without breaking eye contact, she slipped her hand down his arm, laced her fingers with his, and tugged.
Not hard. Not demanding. But with intention.
Inviting him to come closer to temptation. To her.
She drew him toward the bed. His feet moved before he realized he’d made the decision. His hand tightened around hers—large, calloused, careful—as if he feared the world might snatch her away if he didn’t hold on.
“Wren,” he tried once more, his voice thick and raw, “if we cross this line, I may not be able to let you go.”
She pulled his shirt over her head and tossed it aside, standing in front of him, completely bare. Then she stepped back onto the furs, pulling him closer, eyes lit with something fierce and bright and devastatingly sure.
“Good,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to.”
Every last restraint he had shattered.
And Gunnar followed her into the shadows and warmth of the bed, knowing with absolute certainty that his world had just changed. And that he would burn the mountains down before letting anything take her from him.