Chapter Ten

jorn KNEW TWO things as Rune cried out in pleasure, and he exploded deep inside her yet again. He would never let her go now he'd felt the extraordinary pleasure of lying with her and that, this time, their lovemaking had shown her something just like the standing stones had.

"What is it, min lille elskling ?" he said softly once he could find his voice. He cupped the back of her head when her tears trickled down his neck where she'd buried her face during passion, as eager to breathe him in as he was her.

"Change," she whispered hoarsely. "So much change. Too much change."

While tempted to ask what that meant, he knew better. She would not tell him. If she did, it would only ever be what she felt he needed to know. What could not alter fate. Yet this time felt more personal as if it had to do with the two of them, so he had to try.

"Tell me." He tilted her chin until her teary gaze met his and continued soothing her by stroking her gently here and there, offering comfort where she needed it most. From the moment he'd first kissed her, his inner beast understood her body. What eased her tension and brought her the most pleasure.

"I cannot tell you," she whispered, looking at him with her heart in her eyes. "You know that."

"I do," he conceded, doing his best to set aside the indescribable feeling of her tight sheath still pulsing around him despite her grief. How intensely her body responded to his. "Do I not have the right to know my fate, though? The fate of the woman I love? My mate?"

"Not if it could change what I feel coming." She cupped his cheek. "Because some things are bigger than even us, min store kj?rlighet. Some things have to matter more."

"Nothing matters more than you," he said because it was true. He searched her eyes. "Surely you know that, Rune. Feel that." He shook his head, refusing to let fate get in the way of them finally being together. He pressed his hand over his heart. "This." Then, he pressed it over her heart. "And this, our heartbeats as one, matter more to me than anything. They always have and always will."

Rune offered a small, wobbly smile and placed her hand over his. "You have my heart." She rested her other hand over his heart. "As I have yours and they will always beat as one, true flames, final flames, my love." She shook her head. "Nothing can extinguish final flames as they are eternal."

He wasn't entirely sure what to make of her answer other than it was cryptic in the ways of seers and gods. Of prophecy and seeing the end before things had even begun.

He knew that was all she would give him for now because, despite seeing more inside her mind than he had before, it would only ever be as far as her divinity allowed. His safety and the fate of so many would always come first.

"Just love me, jorn," she whispered, her voice ragged with emotion. "For now, just hold me in your arms and love me."

Understanding there would be no more answers and needing to comfort her above all else, he did as asked, and loved her. Over and over, as morning turned to afternoon and afternoon to dusk. Cold wind and icy snow pellets replaced the sun just as she'd foreseen and battered the animal skin surrounding them.

He barely caught any of it, though, but lost himself in Rune and the endless waves of intense pleasure she brought him. Nothing felt like being inside her and filling her with seed time and time again. Nothing so primal yet deeply stirring to his soul. She was everything and more to him as she let go in his arms and gave herself to him. Sometimes, she rode him, and other times, he took her from behind, enjoying the raw, animalistic way of taking her like a dragon, but always, they ended up with their limbs wrapped around each other, struggling to get closer.

They must have drifted off in each other's arms at some point because he stirred awake when thunder cracked overhead. For the first time ever, he was startled to find Rune awake before him, sitting at the tent opening, staring into the darkness.

"We have to go soon," she said softly, sensing he had awoken. "We have to be somewhere."

"Where?" he asked, concerned because she seemed to be in some sort of trance or perhaps even caught in a dream or memory. He chanted them into clothing and wrapped a fur around her. "Where do we need to be, Rune?"

She pointed into the woodland and whispered, "That way."

Everything morphed around them when she said it, and he was no longer crouched in the tent behind her but back in their nightmare, surrounded by verdant trees. Back in another memory. A different era.

Another life.

The only difference now? He could see so much more, from the standing stones just through the woodland to the churning storm overhead. One not born of violent weather but of the gods.

Of Valhalla, fate, and the Nine Worlds.

"Yet born of darkness too," Rune said softly as he tried to pull her into his arms but could not in this otherworldly place. "A time between times." Her gaze drifted to an area no larger than the simmering remnants of a sizeable bonfire. "The true onset of the Age of Embers."

No sooner did she say it than ear-piercing thunder cracked overhead, shaking the ground, and a lightning bolt crashed into the same tree from his nightmare, only this time, things unfolded differently.

He didn't lose Rune to flames and darkness any more than she lost him.

Rather, she slipped her hands into his, and her dark, luminous gaze rose to his face, connecting with his eyes as the lightning ran the length of the tree trunk, zigzagged across the forest floor, and sizzled out between them.

"I do not understand," he said softly, confused by how a nightmare could transform so much.

"Because there is a nightmare within it," she said just as softly, following his thoughts. "Yet there is so much more."

Again, her words seemed to ignite what happened next because, one by one, five small fiery rings ignited where they held hands, and flames shaped much like an ivy leaf, or a heart as their twenty-first-century matriarchs would put it, sparked inside another fiery ring over their heads. Something in their era that symbolized fidelity and devotion.

"Final flames." Her tender gaze never left his face. "Born of love and embers."

As the fiery circles faded, the embers rose like sparks on the wind, and Rune kept speaking, but for some reason, her voice grew further and further away, impossible to make out. Panicked by the sensation and thought of her drifting away from him through time and space, as though a thousand years spanned between them, he tried to grab hold of her only to bolt awake in their tent.

"Rune," he cried out, only to find her sitting beside him, watching him with a small peaceful smile. A fire crackled, and food and drink awaited him.

"Good morn." Her skin was aglow in a way he hoped had more to do with their lovemaking than anything else. "How are you feeling?"

"Confused." He sat up, glad to see her alive, well, and right here. So glad, he ignored the food, pulled her onto his lap, buried his face in the crook of her neck, and inhaled deeply, taking in her scent. "And grateful you are still right here when I thought you were drifting away from me."

"Yet I did not," she murmured, dropping a soft kiss on his temple. "And if I ever did, min store kj?rlighet, I would find my way back to you, whether in this life or another."

Her words might sound comforting enough, but he knew well the double meanings that could come out of a seer's lovely mouth, never mind a goddess's.

"What was that, Rune?" He dropped kisses along her jawline and brushed his lips across hers, needing to taste her before he cupped her cheek and met her eyes. "What did we just witness? Why did we lose each other in our nightmare only to find each other at the true onset of the Age of Embers, as you called it?"

Or at least he hoped they had truly found one another because his inner beast felt on edge in a way that made it hard to see a clear path from everything they'd just witnessed. Then again, the path of a seer and goddess was never entirely clear to a dragon.

Even to the dragon who loved her desperately.

"As I said, we will never truly lose each other." Rune pressed her lips against his palm before cupping his cheek, too. "Because I will never stop loving you." She brushed her lips across his in return and traced his jawline and beard as if memorizing the cut of his features. "Not ever, jorn."

"Nor I, you," he swore despite the flicker of sadness he felt deep within her. A place only his dragon was allowed. Though difficult to push past his lips, he forced himself to say the words because she deserved comfort and to know his love and devotion to her was undying. "I will gladly follow you from life to life if we are not destined to finish our days together, Rune. Will—"

She put a finger to his lips before he could say more. "Speak not of destiny and fate, but trust me always, ja ? Know that..." She paused for a moment and seemed to search for the right words. Her loving gaze never left his face. "Know that wherever I might end up as time goes on, I will make my way back to you."

While she said it and meant it, he couldn't help but wonder if she trusted her own words because there was a hesitation in her soul that told him she worried about what stood between today and tomorrow.

What the future held.

Something he began to question when a commotion resounded outside their tent that proved unrest was no longer in their dreams and nightmares but very much here and now.