Her Troll Defender (Beastly Falls)

Epilogue

Loth

Six years Later

“S top!” The shrill shout comes from near the river. Jumping out of the hole I just dug, I set my senses to the east. An easy jog and they’re in view in just a few minutes.

Elsie and Ali are splashing each other in the creek. Still wearing their family portrait outfits at that Orla at Mortal Threads helped Jasmine pick out.

The dappled sunlight makes the whole image (without sound) look precious and wholesome. Ali, in slacks and a button-down shirt, has Jasmine’s soulful eyes and my fangs. Elsi is in a white dress, dark hair like Jasmine’s loose down her little back, and my staunch sense of duty.

With the sound added in, it’s a different story. “You’re always telling me what to do!” Ali shouts as he splashes Elsi.

“Because you don’t know anything!” she quips back at him. She tosses a stone. It lands next to him, splashing him even more.

“What’s going on here?” I ask, arms crossed in an attempt to be stern. “You aren’t supposed to be down here without one of us, right?” I raise an eyebrow in question.

Immediately, Ali drops his retaliation stone and they both turn to look at me, those soulful eyes telling me all sorts of lies about how sorry they are.

“Where’s your mother?”

“Right here,” Jasmine says from behind me. She has a basket under one arm as she waddles toward the river. She looks stunning in her yellow sundress that hugs her rotund belly. “I would never leave them alone. I was following a mushroom trail and ended up farther away than I thought.”

I snort my laugh, walk over and grab each kid with an arm. They shriek with laughter and wrap their scrawny, wet arms around my neck. Carry them out river to the picnic blanket spread out under the fir tree.

“Jasmine, what are we going to do with these two?” I ask seriously as they wiggle and giggle on the blanket. Ali’s foot kicks the watermelon, and it starts to roll down toward the river.

“Ali!” Elsie screams, like the end of the world is about to happen. She holds her little hand out to the watermelon, fingers stretched out, like her beloved is falling down a snowy mountain to their demise.

Two jumps over, I stop it rolling with my foot, bring it back over, set it on the blanket again. “I’m serious, Jasmine. Not sure what to do with these hooligans.”

Elsie and Ali look abashed. Jasmine, standing behind them, hand supporting her belly, silently laughing. Gods, she is so radiant. I still can’t believe she’s mine. Every day I wake up, roll over to see her next to me, and thank the stars above and the rocks of the foundation below that she fell through the boundary wall and was trapped here in Beastly Falls with me.

“Loth.” She clears her throat to get rid of her giggle. “I’ve told you this before. There’s nothing to be done. Hope is lost. All we can do is feed them and tickle them and hope that the next one will—” here she gives dramatic pause to stare into their puppy eyes as they’ve turned to look at her, “—be just like them.” And with that, a cheer goes up, I thump down on my knees to tickle them, and Jasmine sits back in the Adirondack chair I made her. She loves it, though she complains how hard it is to get out of it these days.

Later, once we’ve cracked open the watermelon and eaten to our hearts content, and Elsie and Ali are spread out in the sunshine, drowsy and happy, I tell them a story.

“Did you know that once, six years ago, your mother got lost in this forest? And I saved her. In this very spot.” I jab a finger into the ground to indicate here. My children’s eyes grow wide. It’s hard to explain just how beautiful they both are. I was terrified when Jasmine first told me she was pregnant, that she would give birth to monsters. Babies that looked just like me. That it would break her—if not physically, then emotionally—to have half-troll children. But surprisingly, they are the most beautiful iteration of us both. From day one, they have taken my breath away.

Elsie’s lip trembles as big tears fill her eyes. “Lost?” she whispers. “Mama, were you scared?” Jasmine envelops her in her arms, having crawled out of her comfy chair to lounge with us on the hard ground. She gives me a look that I’m going to pay for making her child cry.

“A little. But I was also angry that I was lost. I didn’t like the forest back then.”

Ali wiggles in under Jasmine’s other arm, not wanting to miss out on a hug. “But you do now, right Mama?”

“Of course, my loves. I love the forest. But not as much as I love you, and you, and your dad.” She kisses them each on the top of the head.

“And that’s why this is your favorite part of the forest, right Daddy?” Elsie asks, but she knows the answer.

“This is my favorite part of the forest, pumpkin. Because I have so many good memories here.” Elsie’s eyes dance in delight and she bounces up and down against Jasmine. This is certainly her favorite story.

When it’s time to go, they complain, but help me clean up when I remind them we have to finish painting the mural on the stones in the baby’s new room. All the way home, Ali carrying the picnic basket, Elsie carrying the blanket, and my arm looped around Jasmine’s waist, they declare what they want to paint. “A giraffe!” “A penguin!” “Oh, yes! With a rookery. Did you know they make nests of rocks?” “And ants! Ants like rocks. We should paint them too!”

Jasmine and I laugh to ourselves. I whisper in her ear, “Thank you wife, for being here with me. I never in a million years imagined such a full and beautiful life for myself. And you did it. You made this.” I hold her close as we walk.

“Oh Loth. You’ve filled my heart with so much love and tender care. I love you.”

∞∞∞

Thank you for reading Her Troll Defender.

If you loved Her Troll Defender , please check out the other books in this fun, small town paranormal romance collaboration: Beastly Falls .