Chapter 7
“She is mine and I am hers. Sometimes that’s all that needs to be said with words. Sometimes the rest needs to be spoken with touch.” ~ Nick
The cavern they had been given was nothing like the cage they had started in.
They were still surrounded by stone, still rough in places along the back wall, still undeniably troll in its bones, but there was purpose in it now.
A wide sleeping platform had been carved directly out of the rock and piled deep with thick, gray furs that softened every edge.
Crystals embedded in the walls burned low and steady, throwing a quiet amber glow across the chamber that made the shadows feel like part of the room rather than something hiding in it.
Warmth seeped up from the floor itself, the kind that worked into the soles of your feet.
It was safe. It should have settled him, but it didn't.
Safety had not been something he trusted since she’d been taken by Ludcarab.
And he trusted it even less because now he’d watched Kara stumble under that invisible force in the cavern below, her free hand flying to her stomach, her face going the color of cold ash, and he had been too far away to catch her.
He had felt the wrench of it inside his chest like a tendon snapping.
The memory hadn’t loosened its hold on him since.
His wolf paced just beneath his skin, restless. He wasn’t angry per se, or aggressive, just unsettled, the way a predator was unsettled when its mate had been touched by something it had not been able to put its teeth into.
Kara stood near the far wall, her fingers tracing slow paths over one of the glowing stones embedded in the rock.
She studied it with the soft, unfocused attention of a woman who wasn’t really seeing the stone at all.
Her hair fell loose over one shoulder, the borrowed troll robe she’d been given gathered loose at her hips, and the soft amber light caught along the line of her throat and the gentle slope of her collarbone in a way that made his chest pull tight.
She was beautiful, but she looked tired.
Not weak. Never weak. He’d never use that word for her, because his female had endured so damn much from the moment she entered this unforgiving world, and she’d been fighting ever since.
He was supposed to make her life easier.
It was his job to take the burdens from her shoulder and bare them so she didn’t have to and yet, here she was looking like the fate of every race rested on her.
His mate looked vulnerable in the way she only ever let herself be inside walls she trusted.
There was a softness around her mouth, a slight slump to her shoulders that she would have hidden in front of anyone else. She wasn’t hiding it from him.
He hated that she had needed to hide it at all today, in front of trolls and a king and a child too small to know any of what he had been carrying.
Nick crossed the space between them slowly, the soft scuff of his boots over stone the only sound.
“Kara.”
She turned at the sound of his voice, and the moment her eyes found his, something in her expression shifted and softened.
That was the thing about her. She could be sarcasm and steel and stubbornness wrapped up in a five-foot-nothing package that argued with kings and outwitted demons before breakfast, but when she looked at him like that, like he was something steady, something safe to land on, it wrecked him every single time.
“You looked like a trapped tiger,” she said.
His grin was all teeth. “I’m a wolf, sweetheart. Much sexier than a tiger.”
Her brow lifted in the slow, knowing way that always meant she had already won the argument and was waiting for him to figure it out.
“Fine,” he sighed. “I don’t like being stuck in these walls. It doesn’t matter that we’re not in cages anymore. I’d rather sleep out in the forest where we can run if we need to.”
Her lips twitched at the corners, and warmth bloomed low in his stomach at the small victory of having coaxed it out of her. “The only thing you need to worry about is the old lady troll committee attempting to fatten you up.”
He stepped closer. Close enough now that he could feel the soft heat coming off her skin, close enough that her scent reached him in a slow, full pull.
It had been changing for weeks, deepening, layering with something richer and warmer than the vanilla note he had carried in his lungs since the day he met her.
His wolf surged toward it the way it always did now, possessive and hungry and reverent all at once. Mine. Always mine.
His hand came up between them slowly, giving her time to step back if she needed it, even though he already knew she wouldn’t. She never did. Not from him. His fingers brushed her cheek, his thumb sliding along the line of her jaw, and he felt the small catch in her breath under his palm.
There. That. That right there was what undid him every time, the tiny, involuntary proof that his touch still pulled her under as fast as hers pulled him.
His chest tightened until it ached. “You scared me,” he said quietly.
Her eyes dropped for the space of a heartbeat before lifting back to his. “I know.”
“I couldn't get to you.” He’d already said it, probably too many times but it was on repeat in his mind.
“I know, Nick.”
His jaw flexed, a muscle ticking near his ear. “That’s not something I handle well.”
She let out a soft huff that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You handled it by ripping apart a troll cage and almost starting a war. We’re supposed to be getting their help, remember?”
“I had no way of knowing if you were in danger, yeah? You know my wolf instincts are to kill anything that keeps me from you. Nothing will ever change that. I’d kill Fane himself if it came down to getting to you.” It was not an exaggeration.
She frowned. “Don’t say that. He’s our friend and the Alpha of alphas.”
He shrugged. “He’d do the same to me if I attempted to keep Jacque from him. Every male wolf would. It keeps things interesting. Never a dull moment with mated male wolves always on the verge of killing someone or something.”
The smile she gave him didn’t quite reach her eyes, and that was what moved him forward.
His hand slid down from her face to her shoulder, then along the slope of her arm in a slow drag of fingertips and palm until he found her hand and laced their fingers together.
He tugged her in by the grip until there was no space left between them, until the soft front of her body met the harder line of his and her chin tipped up automatically to keep his eyes.
“You’re different,” he murmured.
He felt her body still against him. The smallest stiffening, there and gone, like a held breath.
There it was. That flicker behind her eyes that she would never name out loud. Insecurity. The new, quiet uncertainty of a woman whose body was changing under her own hands faster than her mind could catch up.
She glanced away from him, just barely, her gaze sliding sideways toward the glowing wall. “Well, yeah. That tends to happen when you’re growing an entire human.”
His free hand came up immediately, his fingers slipping under her chin and turning her face gently back to his.
“Don’t,” he said softly.
Her brow furrowed. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like that’s something I could ever not want.”
Her breath hitched audibly between them.
He watched it. He felt it. He let it settle into him before he moved his other hand from her hip to the soft, low curve of her stomach.
The swell wasn’t pronounced yet, just a gentle change under her robe that he had to know to feel for, but it was there.
Real. Present. His palm spanned it easily, his fingers fanning out across the warm fabric, and the weight of what was beneath his hand caught him in the throat all over again.
His. Theirs. “Do you have any idea,” he said, voice dropping low, “what this does to me?”
Her lips parted. “Nick.”
“You smell different.” He leaned in until his nose brushed the soft skin just beneath her ear, and he dragged a slow inhale that pulled her scent all the way down into his chest. His eyes slid closed at the way it hit him.
“Stronger. Warmer. Like every part of me is being pulled toward you, whether I want it or not. And I always want it.”
Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt, twisting in the fabric.
His wolf pressed closer to the surface, the heat of it spreading through his skin like a banked fire someone had just blown across.
“You taste different, too.” His mouth grazed the line of her throat as he spoke, a barely-there brush of lips that made her shiver against him.
“Sweeter. And something else underneath it. Something that makes it very hard to think about anything except getting my mouth on you.”
A slow flush climbed up her chest and into her cheeks, beautiful in the amber light.
“Stop,” she whispered. There was no protest in the word. None at all.
“Not a chance.” His hands moved to the soft tie at her hip, his fingers working the knot loose with slow, deliberate care.
He refused to be rushed through this. The robe loosened.
He gathered the front of it in both hands and parted it gently, easing the fabric back from her shoulders, letting it slide down her arms and pool at her feet in a soft hush of cloth.
He didn’t reach for her right away, instead he looked at his mate. Took in her lovely form. His breath left him in a long, low exhale, the kind that came from somewhere beneath the lungs.
“Look at you.”
She shifted under the weight of his gaze, one of her arms moving instinctively across her stomach.
His hand caught her wrist with the careful grip he’d never used on anything but her, and he drew it gently back down to her side.
“No,” he murmured. “Don't hide.”
Her voice came out softer now. "I'm not hiding."
His brow rose in challenge. “You are.”