Chapter 6
“There are moments a male realizes he is no longer the protector, but the one being managed. Mine happened when troll grandmothers decided I was unfit to supervise my pregnant mate because I wasn’t fat enough.” ~Nick
Nick had faced rogue wolves, vampires, demons, fae warriors, hybrids, and once, a furious gypsy healer wielding a cast iron skillet with frankly concerning accuracy.
None of them had unsettled him quite like the elderly troll female currently poking him in the chest with one thick, claw-tipped finger.
“You are too thin,” she announced.
He stared down at her, certain he had heard wrong. “I’m what?” He tried hard to keep the wolf out of his voice, but at the moment, his beast was contemplating how much trouble it would cause if he bit the old female’s finger off. Probably too damn much, he mentally told his wolf.
“Too. Thin.” Her black eyes narrowed beneath a brow ridge that could have anchored a small bridge, and she made a slow, judgmental sweep of him from boots to shoulders, the way a butcher considered a cut that wasn’t quite worth the asking price. “Who protects a pregnant female with no winter fat?”
Across the cavern, Kara made a strangled sound around the steaming bowl someone had pressed into her hands.
Nick had growled at her not to eat it until he’d sniffed it and tried it, but she’d threatened to bite his arm off if he touched her food.
And she was totally serious. Her human teeth can’t hurt us, his wolf told him.
That’s not the point, he told the beast. When he’d snapped his teeth at her, to show her real teeth that could actually bite an arm off, she’d laughed.
Not a polite laugh, not even a controlled one.
A full, ribs-out, Nick is suffering and I am here for it laugh, the kind that made her shoulders shake and her eyes water.
One of the troll matrons hovering at her elbow patted her between the shoulder blades as though Kara were a delicate, breakable thing in need of careful handling, and not the woman who had survived horrors that still made his wolf want to claw a hole through the world.
Traitor, he thought, though his words lacked any heat, even in his own mind.
His female could laugh at him all day long if it meant she was healthy and happy.
He never wanted to see the look on her face that had been there when he’d pulled her from Ludcarab’s clutches.
He never wanted to feel her body shake with tears that were wretched from her soul.
It was eating him alive that he hadn’t been able to keep her from being put in a cage like an animal by the trolls.
But praise the Great Luna, the king of the trolls had a change of heart .
. . because she’s a healer. Nick was trying to figure out why they hadn’t asked Rachel about her scent.
He’d asked her and she’d whispered that her wolf was most likely covering her magical scent to protect her.
Kara wasn’t a wolf; she didn’t have that form of protection.
His eyes stayed on her despite the elderly troll female still up in his space.
Finally, Nick took his eyes off his mate. He folded his arms across his chest and met the elderly troll’s gaze with what he hoped was wolfish dignity. “I kill things.”
The female snorted, an enormous sound that ruffled the front of his shirt. “Yes, yes. Skinny males always say this.”
Wadim, somewhere behind him, made the strategic mistake of laughing.
Nick turned his head slowly, the way a predator did when it had decided which neck deserved priority.
The historian sat on a broad stone bench beside Zara, rubbing at the inside of one of her wrists where the cage magic had left a faint, pink burn.
His eyes were watering with amusement, his shoulders shaking in tiny, traitorous increments, and the idiot looked entirely too pleased with their current situation.
“Careful, history boy,” Nick growled.
Wadim lifted both hands in surrender, the picture of innocence and the very opposite of convincing. “I’m not laughing at you.”
Nick stared.
Wadim’s mouth twitched at one corner, then the other, and finally gave up the fight altogether. “Okay. I’m sort of laughing at you.”
Nick continued to stare at him. He felt his wolf perking up at the thought of a hunt. An opponent worthy of his time.
Wadim sighed, the grin still on his face. “Fine, I'm mostly laughing at you.”
Zara elbowed her mate in the ribs without looking at him, the way she did most things involving Wadim, with practiced precision and zero ceremony. “Be nice. He’s having a hard day.”
“I was locked in a cage, unable to get to my pregnant mate,” Nick said.
“Who I still can’t get near because she’s become the project of some matronly female trolls who’ve decided I have to get fat in order to be a worthy mate.
” Nick wouldn’t admit it, but their words hit deeper than he liked.
He’d already failed her one too many times.
So to have these old females tell him he couldn’t care for her was like a stake in his already damaged heart.
“We do not mean her any harm, wolf,” the forehead female told him, her voice every bit as stern as it had been when she told him he was too skinny.
“She is a healer, she is important, and the child she carries is important. We only want to help you keep her safe. You’re skinny and sensitive, too.
You’re going to have to get thicker skin while having a pregnant mate.
She’s going to eat you alive and spit you out. ”
This time it wasn’t only Wadim who laughed. Even Gavril and Aphid joined in. Though Gavril at least had the good taste to turn away.
“I’ll remember this when they start picking apart each of your flaws,” he told them. Then his eyes were back on Kara. He didn’t like having them off of her for too long. There was a part of him that was still worried he’d lose her again if he wasn’t watching her every second.
Kara lifted her bowl in a small toast from across the cavern. “I’m good, babe. Got my porridge and this delicious drink, whatever it is. I don’t think you need to worry.”
“I’ll always worry about you,” Nick said, the words coming sharper than he intended. He softened his tone as he continued. “You are precious to me, yeah? And so is our child growing in your womb.”
“Don’t argue with him,” Rachel told Kara. “When it comes to this, you won’t win.”
Kara met his eyes. “I’m really okay and I don’t get the feeling that they have any other agenda than to help us.
” Her gaze softened and Nick felt her love flowing through the bond to him.
He felt himself relax a small amount. He wouldn’t fully relax until she was in his arms again.
She’d been holding him back, not wanting to offend their one-time captors, and now hosts.
“Besides, I healed a child and apparently became troll royalty.” She peered into her bowl.
She frowned and bloody hell it was adorable.
One of the elderly troll females took the empty bowl and then handed her a full one in replacement.
Kara smiled like a kid on Christmas morning.
Then continued, “Or possibly troll property.
I'm not totally clear on the legalities.”
“You don’t belong to anyone but me,” Nick all but snarled. He hadn’t realized he’d taken several steps in her direction until Gavril pressed a large hand to his chest.
“Easy,” the older wolf said. “Look at her. She’s good. She’s safe. You know none of us will let a thing happen to her. Be calm.”
Nick took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Gavril wasn’t his alpha, but he was more dominant to Nick, and that helped his wolf gain a little bit of control.
Aphid stood stiffly near the far wall, every line of him radiating affront.
The fae warrior had clasped his hands behind his back in the rigid, parade-ground posture of someone who needed all five fingers occupied to keep from gesturing rudely, and his expression had been carved out of irritation and dignity in equal measure.
Sometimes Nick forgot how touchy fae could be, not to mention proud because they are so powerful.
No doubt, he wasn’t taking the whole “got caught in a troll cage” very well.
“I would like to state,” Aphid began, in the carefully even voice of a male holding his temper with both hands, “that I remain opposed to being captured, caged, magically restrained, and then offered fermented root paste as an apology.”
The orange-haired troll who had earlier suggested eating Nick perked up at the words. “Root paste is honor food.”
Aphid’s eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “It tastes like manure disguised as dirt.”
“How would you even know what that tasted like?” Wadim asked, his brow furrowed. “I mean, just for cataloguing purposes for me to archive, of course.”
Kara’s bowl came down so fast some of its contents sloshed over the rim. “Aphid.”
“What?” the fae asked, blinking innocently.
Kara snorted. “That was almost funny.”
Wadim leaned toward Zara, lowering his voice to the hush of a man dictating field notes. “Documenting: fae humor emerges under conditions of extreme captivity. Also, he knows what manure tastes like.”
“I heard that,” Aphid said.
“I hoped you would,” Wadim replied, without looking up.
Nick should have been relieved. He told himself this firmly.
They were alive. They were out of their cages.
Kara was safe. The troll child, Torvik, was breathing and whole and currently sitting cross-legged on the stone near Kara’s feet, gazing up at her like she had personally hung the moon and possibly invented snacks.
But his wolf had not settled. Not even a little.