Chapter 16

Raz'jin

I don't want to be helped by this "good" human just as much as he doesn't want to help me, but I can tell we're both doing it for her.

It's obvious from his posture, his scent, his voice, that he cares for my Telise, too. But she's mine, and he knows it.

They go back and forth in Freysian as we head away from the town and the camp. We're deep in the human lands, but the trollkin have taken almost all of the surrounding posts, leaving our own guards to keep watch. I have no idea whatsoever how we'll get out of this alive.

Telise suddenly stops us, and her keen senses are listening intently for something approaching. She points off in another direction, and we continue to move where her hand is guiding us. Finally she stops walking and holds up a finger.

"I will return," she says to me, and repeats the same thing to the human man. He looks even less pleased than I to be left alone together .

And then she's gone, silently moving through the trees. Clever thing.

We sit and wait for what feels like far too long. Has she been caught? And then, like a shadow from the mist, Telise reappears. She nods and points.

"This way," she says, then repeats the directions to the other human. The three of us start to move again and soon we come upon a small farm. The occupants have all fled, and it's not important enough of a landmark to have a guard. Inside a pen are two horses past their prime. But they have four legs, and they can carry us a good way.

We saddle them up, and when it's time, the man helps me up onto the larger horse. It's just as undignified for him as it is for me, and that brings me a modicum of pleasure.

Before Telise gets up on her own horse, the other human hugs her. I bristle, but I know he's not coming with us. Anyway, there's no reason to be jealous—at the end of the day, she'll always be mine.

And then we're off. The man waves a few times, then ducks back into the woods.

We stay off the main road, keeping to the tree line so we can't be easily seen from passers-by. We come to a stop and stay out of sight as a small patrol of trollkin march past, and then continue on our way.

Settlements thin out the farther we get from the capital, and the invasion has forced out any humans who might have remained. We stop in multiple abandoned homes to pick up supplies, and Telise cleans and re-dresses my wound. Then we continue on again.

We spend nights curled up in what furs we could find and carry with us, looking up at the stars. I can't get proper medical attention on my leg, so I can already tell it's healing wrong, but there's nothing we can do about it in the meantime. At least it's clean and not infected.

There's nowhere we can go, a troll and a human. Soon the human lands give way to the hilly, brush-covered plains. The horses are tired after days and days of walking, and so are we. Eventually we find a river flowing with clean, cool water, both sides rimmed by tall trees. I can almost put weight on my leg again, so we take off our clothes and bathe. Well, bathing is one of the things we do. The horses give us odd looks as I take Telise against one of the riverbanks, lapping her up with my mouth before I slide into her from behind. She bends over, moaning my name, and I wait until she's good and ready to burst before I empty myself inside her. I shove it as deep as I can, wondering if maybe this time, if I just try a little bit harder, I can fill her up with one of my whelps.

One afternoon, we're spotted by a group of three humans. They see Telise first and ride towards us, calling out pleasantries—until they see me riding beside her, and start to pull out their weapons. But Telise is moving already. She leaps off her horse, one arrow flying. It takes out the first human in the chest, and then she unleashes another. As both arrows land in their targets, she vaults off the ground and takes out the last human with a dagger to the throat.

I watch all of this happen, of course, from the safety of my horse. She's fast and deadly, and I'm just glad that she's on my side. If it hadn't been for Blizzek and his blunderbuss that day, I would be dead.

She also just murdered three of her kinsmen to make sure they wouldn't hurt me, and that touches me more deeply than anything.

I would kill anyone for my Telise, but I'm not sure if I'll ever have the chance again.

Telise

Soon the plains give way to the hilly lands of the Sandteeth. How strange that everything comes full circle.

We're out of food now, so it's up to me to hunt when I can. But Raz'jin is no slouch at skinning and butchering, and we take a few days to give the horses a rest and dry out some extra meat. We've been walking for weeks now, avoiding travelers who might be on the main road.

But our luck can't hold out forever. We need a plan, somewhere to go, away from the war.

We still have the emerald with us, so when we reach the nearest trollkin-controlled port, Raz'jin goes looking for someone who would be willing to carry us safely—and privately—to the Frattern Islands.

It's the best place I can think of for a human woman and her injured troll lover to go, where there will be no human guards to call me deserter and try to chop off my head.

Raz'jin is able to secure passage with a fellow troll merchant. He must have warned his countryman about me, because once we're aboard the ship, Raz takes my hood off.

"Damn," the other troll says, shaking his head. "Never seen anything like this, I'll tell ya that."

But one whole emerald was enough to shut him up, for now and for good. He treats us like first class passengers the entire three-week passage, even when he has to listen to us fucking late into the night.

Raz'jin and I both know that his leg will never quite recover, but at least he can walk now on his own, albeit with a limp .

"Go on, you strange kids," the merchant says when we finally make land at Eyra Cove. "Go do whatever it is you do."

Without the emerald, neither of us has much in the way of coin, but Sden's old shop is empty and has a nice room up above it.

"Can you stay here alone?" I ask one night, as we eat some of the last food we can afford to buy.

"I'm not an invalid," Raz says, getting up to his feet as if to prove his point.

"Invalid?" I ask. He explains the word to me. "Ah. I didn't think you were. But I'm going to leave for a long time."

He frowns deeply. "Where? Why?"

"Hunting." I need some way to make a living, and I only know of one way to do it. I also have gear and supplies hidden away in Culberra. As soon as the war is over, I'm going to make my way back there and retrieve it.

Raz spits into the fire. "I should be going with you." I know it hurts his self-esteem to sit here and wait helplessly for me to come back, and there's nothing I can say that will help. Even if he didn't have a busted leg, he would be too loud for what I need to do.

"Wait for me," I say, kissing his head. He pulls me down into his lap and bundles me up in his arms, encircling me completely.

"Always."

Raz'jin

It's a terrible thing to be without your other half, especially when that other half is putting her life on the line so you might survive.

But I know my human will return safely, because if anyone can take care of herself, it's Telise.

The war goes on and on. I find myself at the inn frequently since I have little else to do. The same bartender is there, but with spending so much time alone, I don't mind his prying questions.

"So you made up," he says with a chuckle while serving my beer.

I shrug. "Mates, you know?"

His eyes widen. "With a human?"

"When it happens, it happens."

He doesn't look as disgusted as I expected, more perplexed.

"Huh," he says. "Never know what you're going to find in this place."

I spend a few days searching the coastline for emeralds, but I don't see another like the one Telise carried in her pocket all that time. When I get back to Eyra Cove and the little leather shop, it looks like a hurricane has blown through.

"Raz?!" When I walk in the door, I'm almost bowled over by a small creature with her arms thrown around my neck. My Telise.

"You're back," I say. "I didn't expect you yet."

She's angry, relieved, and enamored all at once. "I told you to wait!"

"I'm sorry." She kisses me hard, and I return it just as fiercely. Then I pull a little rock out of my pocket. "I found this, though."

I produce a tiny round object—a pearl. It's no emerald, but it's nothing to sneeze at, either. Telise takes it in her hand and holds it up to the light.

"Oh! It's perfect. I know exactly where it should go." She leads me to the back room, where she's spread out all of her findings. There are beautiful hides of all sorts. She was busy. "Look at this." She pulls out a beautiful lion hide, the fur as smooth as silk and the mane bushy and full. She mimics tying it around her throat, holding the pearl up in the front. "What do you think?"

I wrap my arms around her, and she catches the pearl in her hand just in time.

"It's beautiful," I say, pulling her close. She gets that mischievous look in her eye that she only gets when she's about to tear off all my clothes. She's been gone for almost three months, and I'm more than ready to reclaim her. But I'm going to take my time about it and show her just how much I missed her.

I take off her clothes one item at a time, until she's standing naked in front of me. Something about her looks different, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

I push her against the bed, then fall to my knees in front of her. I'm going to remind her what it means to be home with me again.

At first, I tease just the outside of her with my fingers, and then bring my tongue to the tiny bundle of nerves right above her tight little slit. How she still looks so fragile and small after the way I've taken her... It mystifies me.

Soon she's moaning under my mouth, so I add one finger, and then two, until I'm licking her and pumping my fingers inside her, and she's crying for mercy. Just before she falls off the edge, I stop, and she gasps with indignation.

I waggle a finger at her. "Not yet." When I move up her body, though, I see something new. Her belly is less flat than I remember, and there are spiderwebs of pink lines sweeping up across it. "Hmm," I say, kissing her there. "What's this? Ate too many blueberries while you were out hunting lions?"

She doesn't laugh at my joke. Okay, sure, it wasn't a very good one, but —

"I think you can guess what it is," she says quietly. And when I look up at her serious face, it strikes me like a bolt of lightning.

"It can't be." I take a step back, soaking in the sight of her. Her belly is most definitely more swollen than it was when she left. Her breasts look a little bigger than I remember, and there's a new roundness to her cheeks, too. They're pink and shining.

At first, it feels like I've won some impossible prize. I've done it—we've done it. Now there's one, maybe even two of my whelps growing inside her. I want to bury my face in her tits, and then sink my cock deep into her and take her over and over again until she can't come around me even once more.

And then I take in the concern on her face, and I have to back up.

Wait. What does any of this mean?

"Is it mine?" I ask, suddenly feeling suspicious. She was gone for a long time. And that other human, whatever his name had been—I know how he felt about her.

Before I can finish the thought, Telise whacks me across the head. "Ow!" I clutch my ear. "That hurt."

"Of course it's yours, you moron." But she's cautiously smiling. "I just didn't think it was possible." There are so many unasked questions on her lips, ones that I have no idea how to answer. "How?"

I just shake my head. There's probably not a lot of scientific study in this particular area. But I did hear, once upon a time, that trollkin and humans descended from one shared ancestor.

"I don't know. But it's amazing." I feel across her belly and imagine the little creature growing inside there.

"Is it?" She doesn't look so convinced. "What will it be? Will I be able to..." She doesn't want to finish this sentence.

She's tiny—small enough to look like a large troll child. What would carrying my whelp do to her?

I'm starting to understand her worry, but I brush it off for now. "It'll be fine," I say, returning to my devotional. I'm going to make her feel so good that she'll never want to leave me again. "It wouldn't have worked if it wasn't going to be all right."

And for now, she believes me, because what other choice do we have?