Free Embrace the Night by Caris Roane

eyes crinkling and the three rolls of his forehead lifting slightly. “So you are the latest mastyr to get struck by lightning, eh?”
    Jude laughed. “Lightning. You’ve described it exactly right.” He leaned his forearms on the railing as well and shifted his gaze out to sea. He liked Davido, one of the ugliest trolls in the Nine Realms. But he was ancient, wise, and had tremendous charisma. If he’d been a vampire, he would have been fierce. But his troll height, at least a foot shorter than Jude’s, had forced him to carve out a different kind of life for himself, one that he wore with grace.
    “I didn’t know until I fed from Hannah, what was really going on. We’d had a mutual attraction for months, but each of us had kept the stops on. Then a wraith-pair showed up at dawn outside the Gold Rush and Hannah saved my life by burning the mated vampire.”
    “Sweet Goddess! You didn’t mention this when we pathed together this morning. How did she burn him?”
    “She’s harnessed fire in a way I’ve never seen before.”
    “My wife will be well-pleased to learn of this. She said she was feverish until you called. Now I understand why.”
    Jude shifted slightly to face him. “What would you do in my shoes? I mean, if I leave her alone, another mastyr is bound to come after her. And the worst ones won’t hesitate to abduct her.”
    Davido left the railing, pivoting toward Jude, as he rubbed his thumb in the valley between the top two ridges of his forehead. “Give her a helluva lot of security, and maybe stick close for the next few days. Nothing is settled until you forge a bond with her. I know this feels sudden, but it seems to me, with what you’ve just told me, that your relationship with Hannah has been building for a long time.”
    “I suppose if you look at it that way.” The sound of laughter drew his attention inside the house. The women had descended, Vojalie elegant and remarkable in a flowing lavender and green casual gown and Hannah in her blue jeans and white shirt.
    At least she was smiling, which was a good sign.
    He couldn’t help turning in her direction like a compass needle drawn to true north. From the time he could remember, he’d thought Hannah beautiful beyond words, especially close up. Her eyes were her best feature, then her full, high cheek-bones, her straight nose, her lips. Or maybe it was her expression, as though lit from within with the sheer joy of life.
    “Try to think of it,” Davido said quietly, “as a problem to be resolved, or even a string of small problems, rather than a massive disaster that needs to be torn asunder.”
    “It feels huge.”
    Davido laughed. “Love always does.”
    But before Jude could counter this completely inaccurate remark about ‘love’, Davido moved swiftly inside. He crossed to his wife and took her hand, kissing her fingers. The old troll seemed to be a great romantic at heart.
    Jude remained by the doorway, watching but not listening. Hannah didn’t know how well she fit into his world, or how comfortable she was with realm-folk. But then she’d been raised in the Gold Rush, and from the first day that the U.S. had opened up official relations with the Nine Realms, her father had welcomed Realm-folk into his bar. Jude had held Hannah when she was born and had seen her through every phase of her life.
    But even from the first, she’d had a real love of life that he’d responded to. Maybe he’d even encouraged her, pushed her to go to college back east, to take a summer and tour Europe, even to spend a month on a sailing ship. He was sure in that time she’d meet a soul like her own and return to Port Townsend with a husband.
    In the end, she’d come back engaged to Mark Jackson, a controlling asshole that had made Jude want to punch his lights out. Jude had never been happier when Hannah dumped his sorry ass. Sell the Gold Rush. What a douche!
    Hannah’s mother had died way too young, when Hannah was only seven. Jude had