Chapter 6 #2
Because ten minutes ago his mate had been in pain.
Ten minutes ago some ancient thing beneath the troll realm had pushed up through the stone and touched her.
He’d felt it and she’d felt it, and still she’d continued.
It had attempted to touch the life inside her.
And Nick had been behind iron bars, helpless and snarling, while her face went pale and her hand flew to her stomach.
She had also threatened to hit him in the face with a troll limb, so he supposed in retrospect, she was probably okay, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was not okay and wouldn’t truly be okay until he had her in his arms and he could look her over himself.
The memory made his claws press against the inside of his skin, looking for an exit.
The elderly troll female poked him again.
He looked down. “Stop doing that.”
She huffed, unmoved. “You need meat.”
“I don’t need–”
“And sleep.”
He growled.
“And less growling. Growling shakes the baby.”
Nick blinked at her. “That is not how babies work.”
The female regarded him with the flat, unimpressed patience of every grandmother who had ever lived. “You know babies?”
He opened his mouth.
He closed it.
Across the cavern, Kara coughed into her bowl with the kind of vigor that suggested she was burying a laugh inside it. Again.
The female nodded once, as though she had won an argument that hadn’t been formally opened. “Exactly. Sit.”
“I’m not sitting.”
The black eyes narrowed by a single, dangerous degree. “Do you want the mother upset?”
His gaze snapped to Kara before he could stop it.
She was watching him over the rim of her bowl with that look. The one that said she was trying very hard not to smile because she loved him, but also because she found his current suffering wildly entertaining and was willing to pay good money for a longer performance.
His wolf huffed in his chest, defeated by a tactical maneuver that hadn’t been fair from the start. Nick sat.
Wadim made a sound that started as him clearing his throat and ended somewhere in the vicinity of a sob.
“Not one word,” Nick warned.
Wadim pressed his lips together so hard they paled, and he nodded with the solemnity of a man at a funeral he was personally enjoying.
Torvik scooted closer to Kara, his small palms padding silently against the stone.
The child’s gray skin had lost the sickly black threading that had crawled out from the wound on his leg, and his too-large amber eyes looked brighter now, soft and curious, though there was still a fragility to him that pulled at Nick’s protective instincts like a hook.
“You glow,” Torvik told Kara, his tone serious as if he was reporting something incredibly important.
Kara’s whole face softened. “Only when I’m showing off.”
The boy nodded, accepting this as fundamental natural law. “Can you show off again?”
“Not right now, sweetheart.” Kara glanced across at Nick, and for the first time since the healing, the humor in her eyes thinned out. “I need to rest a little.”
Nick was across the space before anyone could move to stop him, not that anyone tried. The troll matrons parted for him in a slow, grudging tide, several of them giving him the narrow-eyed, sidelong scrutiny of females not entirely convinced he was qualified to stand near his own mate.
He crouched at Kara’s knees and laid both hands on them, one on each, his thumbs settling against the familiar shape of her like he was anchoring himself there. “How much did it take out of you?” he asked, voice low.
She laid her hands over his, “I’m okay.”
His wolf snarled in response to the words, which it had heard before and did not believe.
Kara sighed. “I’m tired. Not dying. There’s a difference.”
“You should have let me know how much it hurt and took out of you.” He frowned as he realized something. “You somehow blocked it from me. I don’t like it when you block me.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was a little busy not letting the troll child die, Nick. I wasn’t blocking you on purpose.”
His jaw tightened. He turned his head and found Torvik still pressed against Kara’s side, watching him without an ounce of fear, the way only very small creatures and very dangerous ones could.
“You scared her,” Torvik said.
Nick blinked. “What?”
Kara made a small, dismayed sound. “Oh, wow.”
The boy frowned, working through his words with the careful effort of a child pulling together truth from fragments. “You roared loud. Her heart jumped.”
Nick looked back at Kara, and the world around them quieted in his hearing. “I scared you?”
“No.” Her answer came too fast.
His eyes narrowed.
She glanced away, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear in the small, telling movement she always made when she was about to admit something she didn’t want to.
“Maybe a little. But not because I thought you’d hurt me.
Never that.” Her voice dropped, soft enough that the troll matrons couldn’t hear her over their own breathing.
“Because I knew you were terrified.” Her words became silent to the rest of the room as she used their bond to communicate.
“I know what you’ve been through, what we’ve been through.
I don’t like feeling those feelings coming from you.
We’ve walked through hell and made it out so many times.
Not only did we make it out, we came out of it with the most precious gift ever, something I never thought we’d have.
And she’s been blessed by the Great Luna.
She’s not going to give us a mini warrior only to take her away before she’s even had a chance to make a difference in this world.
I love you, Nick. And just like you want to protect me, I want to protect you.
I want to make sure that you feel the safety that you make me feel.
So, yes, I was scared, because seeing fear in your eyes for me, for us, is scary to me. ”
That truth landed harder than he wanted it to. It hit somewhere just under his sternum, and stayed there. He reached up and cupped the side of her face, brushing his thumb along her cheekbone, slowly, because his hand wanted to shake and he was not going to let it. “You were in pain.”
“I know.”
“And I couldn’t get to you.”
“I know,” she whispered.
The bond between them pulsed, warm and aching, and he stopped trying to keep his end of it shielded because there was no point.
He let her feel it. The fear. The rage. The love so deep that it lived in his bones, a constant living force that always pushed him towards her.
The helplessness that had nearly broken something inside him when she’d staggered under that unseen force.
She leaned into his touch and closed her eyes for a heartbeat. “I’m okay.”
“You keep saying that like it fixes what happened.” How could he get her to understand that one of the few things that could destroy him would be seeing her in agony?
Nick wanted her life to be peaceful. He wanted to give her all the things she deserved, including a life where something strange under the troll realm wasn’t trying to get to his mate.
Perhaps he should care more that the troll child obviously needed help.
But all Nick could see was his Kara. She was his constant.
His world. And he’d burn the rest of it to the ground, walk in the ash with a smile on his face if it kept her safe.
A faint smile tugged at her mouth. “It usually annoys you enough to distract you.”
“Not this time.”
Her eyes opened, soft and steady. “Nick.”
He swallowed past something that wanted to lodge in his throat. “I can handle a lot, babe. I can handle cages. Trolls. Bad food. Wadim documenting my humiliation for posterity.”
“Important historical humiliation,” Wadim called from his bench.
Nick did not look away from Kara. “But I cannot handle feeling you hurt and not being able to get to you.” It wasn’t a lie. No amount of humiliation could ever compare to not protecting his mate.
Her hand covered his where it rested against her cheek. Her fingers were warm. They were trembling, just a little, and that did nothing for his composure. “I saw a child hurt.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“And I couldn't not help him.” Her smile was small, her gaze direct. “It would hurt my soul to leave an innocent in such a state.”
“I know that, too.” Just like not clipping her wings, he couldn’t ask her not to be what she was. A healer. It was a part of her just like the cells in her body.
“And if it happens again–”
“Don’t.” He probably should not bark orders at her, actually he knew he shouldn’t, but his wolf was riding him hard. His beast wanted to wrap her in their arms and run. He wanted to get as far away from this place as possible and keep her locked behind a fortress.
Her eyes flashed, the gold in them catching the torchlight. “Nick.”
His wolf pushed harder, and his voice dropped with it. “Don’t ask me to be reasonable when you’re talking about possibly risking yourself and our baby.”
Her hand moved to her stomach, gentle and instinctive, as if to soothe a child too small to feel any of this yet. “Don’t go there again. I’m not trying to risk the baby.”
“Dammit, female.” He pressed his forehead to hers and let the contact steady him. “That’s what scares me. You don’t think about risk when someone is suffering. You just move. I admire it as much as I am frustrated by it.”
For a long moment, she said nothing. Then her breath left her in a shaky exhale, warm against his mouth.
“My stubborn mate, that’s what healers do.” She released his hand and ran it along his jaw.
He wanted to lean into her touch. Actually, he wanted to feel a lot more than her hand.
He needed her. He closed his eyes. She was who she was supposed to be, who the Great Luna intended her to be, Kara Luisa.
He loved her for it. He feared it. He respected it.
He hated it. All at once, all the time, and he had no plans to ever resolve any of those feelings into something tidier.
Before he could answer her, the cavern shifted.