Chapter 8 #2
“Again, I wonder what the Great Luna was thinking in making such a bond between us,” she admitted softly. “I’ve never seen fear hit him that hard, and that fast.”
Gavril’s gaze drifted toward the tunnel leading deeper into the cavern system, toward where Nick and Kara had disappeared earlier, and for a moment he looked like a man reading a story he had lived too closely to forget. “Neither have I.”
He leaned back slightly against the stone wall behind him, though nothing about him truly relaxed. The blade across his thigh stayed balanced exactly where it had been, as though his body simply refused, on principle, to be unprepared.
“For dominant males like Nick,” he paused, choosing the words carefully, the way he always did when he was trying not to wound something just by naming it.
“Protection becomes identity. When we cannot shield the ones we love, it tears at something foundational. We do not just feel helpless. We feel like a part of us has become useless, and even died.”
The we was not lost on her.
Rachel looked down at the glowing water again. “He loves her so much.”
“Yes.”
“She’s still so young in many ways. But she was forced to grow up, and is still being forced to face things that females her age should not have to.” Rachel’s heart ached for Kara. Like the other healers, she’d come to see them as younger sisters. She loved each of them deeply.
“She stopped being young a long time ago,” Gavril said quietly. “Now she’s becoming dangerous.”
Rachel blinked at him, waiting for him to continue.
Gavril’s expression remained calm, thoughtful. “I watched her stand in front of an entire troll kingdom while something ancient searched through her magic, and she still found the energy to mouth off.” One dark brow lifted slightly. “That requires either tremendous courage or severe brain damage.”
Rachel huffed softly.
“She protected that child without hesitation, not just her own, but the one she healed as well,” Gavril continued. “Even knowing it exposed her.” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Warriors notice things like that. Wolves notice it even faster.”
Rachel let his words settle into the quiet between them and found she could not argue with a single one.
The trolls had changed after Kara healed Torvik.
The guards no longer watched Kara with suspicion.
Now they watched her carefully, reverently almost, the way the faithful watched something they were not entirely sure they were allowed to touch.
She hadn’t missed the way troll females had begun leaving food near their chambers, dense loaves still warm from the cooking stones, carved wooden bowls of something root-sweet and earthy.
Older trolls lowered their gazes slightly when passing her in the tunnels, the barest tilt of the head, the kind of gesture that came from a people whose respect had to be earned before it was given.
Suddenly, she felt a faint rumble, so soft that had she not been a healer and very attuned to magic, she might not have noticed. Rachel frowned faintly. “The mountain feels sick. It’s as if it’s trying to rid itself of whatever has begun to invade it.”
Gavril went very still. She knew he was focused on her, and on what she was sensing. The silence stretched between them before he finally said, “I feel it, too.”
Gypsy healers felt sickness the way a wolf smelled blood, and she had been smelling both since they were dragged below the stone.
“Like something spreading through roots underground. Corruption, but…” Her face tightened as she searched for the word, because the one she kept circling back to felt too alive to say out loud. “It’s hungry.”
A muscle ticked in Gavril’s jaw. “And now Kara and the baby might be connected to it somehow.”
Rachel wrapped her arms loosely around herself, the damp fingers of one hand curling against the fabric at her opposite elbow. “I hate not knowing what to do, or being unable to do anything. It’s maddening.”
“That,” Gavril said dryly, “ is exactly how I feel when you’re in harm’s way. So welcome to my world.”
She shot him a look.
He held up one hand. “I stand by my statement, you don’t have to like it.”
Rachel tried not to smile again and failed miserably.
The sound of approaching footsteps echoed faintly through the cavern tunnels before either of them could say anything else, the rhythm of two pairs of boots moving easily in time with each other, familiar as a heartbeat.
Her wolf lifted her head inside her anyway, ears pricked, checking, before she recognized the scents and the pattern of the stride and eased back down.
Wadim appeared first, looking entirely too pleased with himself for a wolf currently trapped beneath a mountain inhabited by giant trolls.
Zara followed close behind him, her eyes immediately sweeping over Rachel’s face in assessment, the way a packmate checked on another packmate before asking anything out loud.
“You look like you’re contemplating an escape plot, with or without casualties.
Or you’re constipated. I’d prefer it’d be the first one,” Wadim said to Gavril, as he rubbed his hands together.
“So, how are we doing this? Smoking the trolls out of the mountain so we can make a break for it? Taking the little troll hostage in order to force them to let us leave? Ohhh, better yet, let’s wolf out and rip some troll heads off and take them as trophies.
” He held up a hand. “I don’t mean the kids, obviously.
That’s just wrong. Or the females. I’m thinking just the warriors, especially the ugly ones. ”
Rachel blinked. “How many times do we have to tell you to quit hanging out with Jen?” She looked at Zara. “You need to nip that in the bud.”
“I would, but watching them together is like watching a bad reality show. You just can’t look away,” Zara said as she moved toward them.
“Ignore him. He’s reached the stage of stress where he becomes aggressively conversational.
He’ll move on to another topic in about two minutes.
I think being away from his history dungeon is beginning to make him twitchy. ”
“I don’t get twitchy,” Wadim objected.
“Babe,” Zara said, “You absolutely get twitchy, worrying someone will touch things and mess your organized chaos all up. It’s cute, like how a puppy chasing its tail is cute.”
Gavril snorted quietly, the sound the closest thing to a laugh the wolf typically allowed himself in public.
Wadim pressed one hand dramatically to his chest. “Zara, my love, your cruelty wounds me.”
“You’ll survive.”
“I suppose I must.”
Rachel shook her head gently as the two of them settled into the space near the spring with the ease of a mated pair who had spent years orbiting one another, even though they hadn’t even been mated half a decade yet.
Wadim lowered himself to the stone floor and stretched his long legs out in front of him with an exaggerated sigh, propping himself on one elbow.
Zara folded down beside him with more grace than the movement had any right to produce, her shoulder just brushing his.
She let it stay there–that small, casual contact of wolf to wolf, mate to mate, the kind that most humans never even noticed and the kind that wolves needed.
“Despite my rather ruthless descriptions of escaping, I have officially decided trolls are deeply fascinating,” Wadim announced.
“Don’t you think you’ve covered this topic enough?” Zara asked as she side-eyed him.
Wadim ran a hand down her thigh. “Only to you. And as much as I enjoy sharing my knowledge with you, I feel it’s necessary that others get to experience some of what you do.”
She pursed her lips, though the look in her eyes was playful. “Better not be letting anyone experience too much.”
Gavril ran a hand down his face. “Apparently, Jen has gotten her gutter claws into this one too.”
Zara chuckled. “You have to admit, she’s kind of hilarious.”
“I will never admit such blasphemy,” Gavril warned.
Rachel nodded her head. “I agree with my mate. Admitting that would be like throwing gas on a fire.”
Wadim snapped his fingers. “Enough about gutter queen. I’ve got thoughts to work through, and it helps when I have a captive audience. Let’s think about it.”
“Or we could not and pretend we did,” Gavril grumbled as he went back to sharpening the blade.
Wadim ignored him and kept right on talking.
“Their oral histories alone could occupy me for decades. The older females love to tell of the past. And on top of that, they have documents of their ancestors. Hours and hours of reading about how their realm has survived without any outsiders disturbing them for so long.”
Rachel frowned. “I enjoy reading a good book, but that sounds like a good way to fall asleep.”
“To you perhaps. To me it sounds fascinating,” Wadim’s voice grew excited.
“I mean, think of it. How long has this current troll king ruled? And how did he become the king? Was there some sort of battle with the old king, or was he the son and inherited the position? And how long do trolls actually live? How long does it take for their young to grow up? What determines their appearances considering they all look so varied? And I don’t mean varied in the way humans are varied.
I mean, some of them don’t even have the same number of fingers and toes.
Their hair colors are like looking in a crayon box. And what about education? How do they—”
Zara suddenly leaned down and kissed him.
It was a long kiss. Rachel looked at Gavril, who hadn’t even looked up from his whetstone.
He looked deep in thought. She could have taken a look through the bond, but she often preferred it when he shared his thoughts without intruding.
Her attention turned back to the couple.
Wadim blinked after his mate pulled back.
“Well,” he said faintly. “That was unexpectedly rewarding.”
Zara smirked. “You were talking too much.”