Chapter Eight

THE MOMENT THE weather shifted outside their tent, jorn's eyes shot open. His inherent need to protect Rune was as strong as it had been since they were babes when he'd shifted for the first time to protect her.

Something was wrong.

Despite it being the last thing he wanted to do after such a perfect night of laughing, talking, and being together, he roused Rune.

"Something has changed," he said softly but urgently. "Something is very wrong."

"What is it?" Rune asked drowsily. She sat up on her elbow and blinked at the dim light coming through the tent. "I do not..."

She trailed off when she sensed the same as him. Despite their fire being down to ashes, the air was warmer, and the wind and smattering of snowfall mixed with icy pellets against the tent had stopped.

"We are no longer on the edge of a cooler season but mayhap closer to midsummer," he murmured, pulling a blade free before he moved toward the entrance, determined to protect her.

"jorn?" she whispered, her thoughts coming through clearly enough. She was forever amazed by his need to protect her when it should be the other way around. But they had been doing this since childhood, so it was not changing, nor would it ever. Since the moment he'd been laid down beside her as a babe and their eyes first met, she was his to protect.

"Ja?" he whispered back, making a gesture that she stayed back and positioned himself so anyone who dared burst into the tent would have to go through him first.

"Yet again, I must remind you I'm the most powerful seer ever born and a demi-god," she whispered. "So I should protect you. "

"No," he bit back under his breath. "I am a dragon... your dragon, so I will protect you ."

He heard her all-too-familiar sigh before she chose not to stay behind him and moved to his side. She rolled her eyes as she held up a small blade to defend herself, well aware he preferred seeing a weapon in hand to the immense magic of which she was capable nowadays. Magic she was nowhere near harnessing when she had fallen off his dragon over the sea.

"Might we open the tent flap and see what waits to slay us?" she whispered.

"You mock ?" He frowned at her. "At a time like this in the Forest of Memories?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" She flicked her wrist and held magical flames in one hand and her blade in the other, just as she had in their youth when she'd thought him stubborn. "When I can do this and so much more?"

"I can do that too," he ground back.

"I know," Rune exclaimed softly. "You are a dragon." Clearly not as concerned about the environmental changes as he was and determined to behave just as she had when they had squabbled as children, she twirled her forefinger and shrugged. "But can you do this?"

He bit back a smile when a tiny black dragon, mimicking himself of course, curled up into the air, flicked its spiked tail at him, and roared fire at the tent opening until it became transparent for them but not anyone lurking beyond, keeping them well hidden.

"I think we both know I cannot do that," he said softly, forever amazed by what she could do. More so, the whimsical way she went about it despite the darkness lurking in her via her seer and Fire Demon heritage. He imagined she would always be that way no matter where life took her. She would help via magic in a fashion some might find jarring but would, as their surroundings became clearer to them, show a person what they were meant to see.

In this case, it was an entirely different forest than the one they had been in the night before. Instead of barren branches, the towering trees were mightier and thicker with vibrant green leaves. The air smelled different. While there was still the scent of sea salt, it was earthier. The soil beneath their feet was darker and richer.

"Is this a memory?" he said, jarred by how familiar everything seemed.

"I believe so." She stepped out of the tent before he could stop her. "And we are safe...relatively speaking."

"That does not sound safe at all," he grumbled, joining her with his blade still at the ready.

"Yet it is." Drawn by something, she drifted further into the forest. "At least for us, caught in a memory such as we are."

Determined to defend her, he remained by her side and kept scanning the forest and sky, certain there was trouble to be found here. Darkness, to be sure.

"Do you hear that?" Rune whispered, walking through the woodland as if she knew precisely where to go. "So many voices...so many stories...so much love...and heartache."

"I hear nothing." He frowned and shook his head, disliking the tears brimming in her eyes. "We should go back and remain by the tent until this memory passes."

"We are not here to remain by our tent," she murmured, "but to find our way back to our nightmare...back to our truth."

The moment she said that a small clearing appeared ahead with several magnificent standing stones, some higher than others. The very stones they had seen in the fiery circle over her fire at Mt. Galdh?piggen's Peak.

The same circle his little dragon had created the first time they saw him.

"Do you hear them?" Rune whispered reverently as if she didn't want to interrupt the sanctity of the location. " See them?"

"I see the stones," he replied, "but hear nothing outside of water in a nearby river and the wind in the trees."

"You do not see the runic symbols?" she marveled, approaching the largest stone slowly, clearly respectful of it. "Nor the memories that gave them life?"

He shook his head and kept eyeing their surroundings warily as she reached out, touched the stone, and traced her finger along things he could not see but didn't doubt were there.

"So beautiful," Rune whispered, her voice choppy with emotion. She placed her palm against the stone, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply before visibly shivering. "Yet dark, too. Sadness and grief." She relaxed as she saw more. "Yet still so much love." A small, sensual smile curled her mouth. "And so much passion." When she opened her eyes slowly, her outfit morphed into a long black hooded dress cinched at the waist, and she gave him a look that brought his inner beast to attention. "Not just others' passion, but ours."

As if responding to her revelation, a loud roar filled the sky, bringing him to attention in an entirely different way, and he scanned the sky with a frown. "That was a Múspellsheimr dragon." He inhaled, trying to catch its scent only to pick it up faintly, telling him it was upwind and a distance away. It also gave him a general idea of its bearing. "One even larger than those of our era. A first-generation Múspellsheimr beast."

That meant it had begun life on Múspellsheimr and ended up here on Midgard.

"Yet it has no interest in us." She slipped her hand into his and pulled him after her. "Quite literally."

He didn't understand what she meant until he heard muffled groans from further into the woodland. Rune put a finger to her mouth, slowed near a towering tree trunk, pulled him close to her side, and pointed to an area just ahead.

It took a moment until the shadows lifted, and the dappled sunlight shown down just enough for him to see a couple making love beneath furs in a bed of grass. Although he couldn't make out their features from this distance, the sound of their passion was unmistakable.

As was the feel of it.

His cock swelled with the sensation of what the man felt because jorn had lived it in another life. He had been in that woman's arms. In Rune's arms.

And it had felt exquisite.

From pressing his lips against her warm, soft skin to burying his cock deep inside her until he lost himself, he felt everything the couple experienced. The sensation of their sweat-slicked skin as their passion intensified and their mingled groans of pleasure. He even smelled the sweet musk of their lovemaking.

Then he felt even more when Rune reeled him closer until her back was against the tree, steered his gaze away from the couple to her face, and looked at him in a way that made his vision haze red with his inner beast.

She didn't say a word but pulled him closer and closer, stood on her tiptoes, pulled his lips down to hers until they hovered close but didn't touch, and whispered, "You can kiss me now, min store kj?rlighet. "

Not needing to be told twice, he wrapped a hand over her lovely backside, hoisted her against the tree to accommodate their height differences, and finally, at long last, closed his lips over hers. Having long imagined how this would go, he thought he would kiss her softly at first, savoring the moment, but he did the opposite. Between feeling what his incarnate felt combined with finally tasting Rune's sweet lips, he had no choice.

No doubt in the throes of what her incarnate felt, too, that was exactly what Rune wanted because she groaned in pleasure when their kiss turned hungry right away. She was just as desperate for what had been kept from them. Where he'd heard first kisses could sometimes be awkward, theirs was anything but as they fell into the rhythm they had shared in another life and their tongues tangled in perfect rhythm.

He had never felt anything so good or tasted anything so delicious, especially when their kiss deepened, fueled by the feel and sound of their incarnates' pleasure increasing. Their desperation to feel the same thing firsthand became a driving force, and he yanked up her skirts, bunching them in the back to protect her flesh from the bark, and hoisted her more firmly against the tree.

In turn, she did exactly what he hoped she would.