Chapter 14 #2
She held his stare for exactly half a heartbeat before snorting softly. “Okay, when you say it out loud like that, it does sound stressful.”
He turned, grabbed the thick, black cloak hanging from a peg carved into the chamber wall, and brought it back around her. He worked the heavy fabric over her shoulders with care, pulled the hood gently into place, and settled it just above her brow.
His fingers lingered along her jaw.
Mine.
The thought had become terrifyingly constant.
Another knock sounded. More urgent this time. The hardness of the troll’s knuckle made the sound flatter than knuckles should, and Nick wondered, briefly and with no particular relevance, what trolls’ bones were actually made of.
He turned toward the doorway, every protective instinct in him sharpening to a point. Something had changed. He could feel it through the soles of his boots.
The mountain was restless this morning. The stone carried a faint vibration under his weight now, subtle enough most people wouldn’t notice it. Wolves noticed everything beneath their feet.
Kara felt it, too. Her eyes lifted to his. “You feel it?”
He nodded once.
The vibration came again, a slow pulse that traveled up through the floor and into the bones of his ankles before it faded.
Not an earthquake. Earthquakes didn’t have rhythm.
Not movement either. Movement didn’t carry weight like that.
Almost like a heartbeat. Low. Ancient. Wrong.
The mineral veins in the wall dimmed all at once. The silver light that had been steady since they’d woken now flickered, brightened, flickered again, like something had passed too close to a candle and disturbed the air.
Beyond the doorway, voices rose somewhere deeper inside the mountain.
Trolls calling to one another in their rough, percussive language, words Nick couldn’t translate but didn’t need to.
He’d heard enough of his own packmates shout in tones like that to know what they meant.
Heavy footsteps thundered through the corridors, more than one set, moving fast.
His wolf surged upright inside him.
Danger.
Kara’s fingers closed hard around his forearm. “Nick.”
The stone beneath them pulsed again. This time the walls answered.
A low groan rolled through the mountain itself, deep enough that fine dust sifted down from the ceiling overhead in a thin, drifting curtain. The carved stone figures at the entrance rattled against the floor where they sat.
Nick’s hand found the small of Kara’s back and stayed there as they started for the doorway.
Kara knew something was wrong before they made it ten steps into the corridor.
The trolls were moving too fast.
Not panicked. Trolls didn’t strike her as creatures prone to panic, mostly because she suspected their species had collectively decided several centuries ago that panic was beneath them, right alongside small talk and indoor voices.
But there was urgency in the way the massive warriors pushed through the cavern halls, shoulders rolling, jaws set, their heavy boots grinding against stone hard enough to send dull vibrations through the floor and up into the soles of her feet.
A few carried weapons she hadn’t seen before–enormous axes etched with symbols that pulsed faintly blue beneath the silver mineral light running through the walls, the glow rising and falling in time with something she didn’t want to think too hard about.
And every single troll they passed looked directly at her stomach.
Kara fought the urge to tug the cloak tighter around herself.
Nope. Didn’t love that. Didn’t love that even a little.
It wasn’t the kind of staring she was used to.
It wasn’t lecherous, or hostile, or even particularly curious.
It was the kind of staring that made her feel like a relic being escorted past worshippers, and considering her most important job had been as a waitress, and her biggest decisions had been should I go home to the asshole foster parents or sleep in the park, this whole “revered carrier of awesome baby” angle was sitting weird in her chest.
She made a mental note to add it to her growing list of things therapy could not fix.
Nick stayed half a step ahead of her as they moved through the winding corridors, his body angled just enough to shield her without blocking her path.
His arm was wrapped around her waist, pulling her close to him, his hand never left the small of her back.
The warmth of it bled through the heavy fabric of her cloak, steady and grounding, an anchor against the strange unease pulling tight and low in her stomach–or maybe it was more like unease and a tiny future gymnast currently practicing combat maneuvers against her internal organs.
The baby shifted. Hard. Kara sucked in a sharp breath and pressed a hand instinctively against the curve beneath the cloak, fingers splayed wide.
Nick slowed instantly. “What?”
“Your daughter is trying to escape through my ribcage.”
His hand slid from her back to her stomach before she’d finished the sentence, concern flashing across his face.
The expression softened the second the baby kicked again beneath his palm, the sharpness in his eyes melting into something Kara had only ever seen on him since the night they’d found out about the pregnancy.
“She’s strong already.”