Chapter Fifteen

S AVANNAH WASN'T SURE how to describe how she felt after Zane took her in the way of their kind, roughly and without mercy, invoking incredibly intense pleasure, other than it only heightened the ecstasy still ebbing and flowing through her.

Zane rolled her over and repositioned them until they were fully on the bed, and he was over her. He cupped her cheek and looked at her with love and desire, almost reverently. "Your inner Valkyrie is no longer repressed, mitt hjertes flamme ." He trailed his hand from her cheek down her chest between her breasts. "Look."

She gasped when she looked down to find her skin emitting a soft, unwavering golden glow. Not sputtering and unsure, but solid.

"I would ask you what it feels like, but I can feel it within you," he murmured, his eyes flickering between dragon and human as if both sides were eager to experience it. "I feel the incredible warmth and silent, easy power. The inborn need to protect those you love at all costs." His gaze rose to hers and returned fully to his dragon eyes. That was the side of him that had loved her first. Loved her from the very beginning. "Your inherent need to protect me above all others."

"Because I did...do," she whispered, feeling that not just in this life but very much the last. "From the moment my inner Valkyrie first ignited on Múspellsheimr." She blinked, trying to grapple with what that meant. "Zane, I was...how then..."

"How did you not free yourself earlier from your captor?" he kept going when she trailed off. He cupped her cheek again, so loving in the way he looked at her it eased her inner strife and terrible confusion. "I couldn't say other than perhaps it had to happen the way it did in order to free the others. Time I needed to convince my fellow males to free our females. To leave that life behind and start anew."

"To be there... here , to help bring peace," she said softly, feeling the truth in that. "To help everyone come together in peace so dragonkind might go on. So that so many others afterward from that era straight through to the twenty-first century would have a chance at a better life."

"It seems like too much to ask of even a goddess," he said gently. "One who barely understood what she was."

"It does," she granted, reflecting on it. "But such a gift came out of it." She cupped his cheek in return. "Several gifts, even if my son didn't survive, that as much as I suffered, I gained in the end. Loved in the end on several fronts." She shook her head once. "And that can't be a bad thing."

"No," he said softly, however clear his regret that somehow, someway, things hadn't ended well for the two of them.

They said little more, too caught up in looking at one another, cherishing each other as he wedged her thighs apart and filled her once more. After that, driven by passion that only ever seemed to get stronger between them, they made love to the sound of thunder and rain. To a warm wind that coated their steamy, sweat-slickened skin with icy ocean spray. They lost themselves in flashes of lightning caught in a million bits of mica as they adored one another's bodies and relished each other's souls.

She lost count of how many times she climaxed, only that it was endless and addictive. Or so she thought until they must have dozed off during lovemaking yet again because she bolted awake to discover they weren't where they were supposed to be. Seeming to sense it as well, Zane bolted awake and manifested a blade.

"Are we dreaming, or is this a memory?" she wondered, taking in the lush forest around them. Dawn was about to break, and the bed and stormy weather had vanished, leaving them lying in cool, dewy grass.

"I don't know." Zane chanted them into clothing, pulled her up, and kept his blade at the ready. "Perhaps a bit of both." His dragon eyes flared, and he frowned, growing upset. "I sense you in our last life. You're so incredibly sad."

A low, heartbreaking, keen rumbled through the forest almost the moment he said it. Desperate to go to her incarnate, he pulled her after him, slowing just before they reached a clearing ahead, where her dragon lay curled up in a ball, keening in misery.

"I was losing so much," she said softly, feeling what her incarnate felt. "First, my offspring, then you. It was only a matter of time before you had to turn me away for good and marry Zoey."

Zane tensed and narrowed his eyes when a hooded figure made his way toward Savannah's dragon. Seeming to sense him, she raised her head, not alarmed like she should have been because a seer approached but perhaps hopeful.

"I knew him," she said softly. "He had recently lost his brother, so he understood, to a degree, what I was going through."

"And he played on those emotions," Zane said darkly as memories flooded them both. "He was angry his brother had been extinguished by Rafe and was determined to pick up where his brethren left off."

"You mean continue with his and his sibling's goal to exterminate dragons from this world," she said. "Something I couldn't see clearly when he befriended me, offering friendship when I was at my lowest."

"Yet that's not all he offered you over the months, is it?" Zane said through clenched teeth. "Somehow, he helped you keep me from knowing about him. Kept me from seeing him within your mind and no wonder because he was offering you the impossible."

"He was," she whispered shakily, shocked her incarnate had been duped so easily, but then, broken hearts were especially vulnerable. She shook her head, baffled by her naivete. "He was offering me the resurrection of my son. Something he claimed he could do because he was born of this world, therefore especially powerful."

"I know." Zane sounded more furious by the moment. "He offered you something he knew you couldn't refuse. Played on your broken heart." He clenched his blade tighter as her incarnate allowed the seer to rest his hand on her shoulder in comfort. Remembered what he'd sensed from her when he had finally learned the truth. "He was so convincing that you..."

She didn't blame him for biting off his words and growling when the memory faded, only for an all-too-familiar nightmare to manifest in its place. One, not surprisingly, that took place dauntingly close to the standing stones.

"Oh, God," she whispered as the seer smiled at her warmly, despite the venom in his dark eyes, and urged her to follow him.

"Come, my new friend," he urged gently. "Join me. Greet your offspring within my magic so you can pull him back here and be with him again. Be with him always ."

"No." Savannah shook her head. "Please don't listen. Don't do it!"

But it was too late, and everything played out like her nightmare. The only difference was now she could see the voice that had tried to hold her back—see he never, not once, let her go or wanted her to leave.

"Why are you here alone?" Zane's incarnate wondered, his great red dragon stalking into the woodland. Savannah's incarnate stood staring at something unseen, so he nuzzled her neck, worried about her as he always worried about her lately. "Why are you..."

He trailed off when a cranberry-colored door, partially ajar with golden light, appeared in the shadows nearby. It had the same symbol at the top that had once been their salvation—a doorway into a new world.

A doorway the seer used to gain her trust and lure her dragon.

"For some reason, when the door appeared, whatever mental block the seer had created between us fell away, no doubt because of the power he'd used to create this illusion," Zane fumed. "When that happened, I saw inside your memories and understood what was happening, but by then, it was too late. He had too much of a hold over you, and I couldn't get through to you." Zane shook his head. "Our communication was broken, and your impression of me skewed. Your inner goddess tried to help, but again, it was too late and..."

He trailed off as her, their , nightmare unraveled in its entirety.

"Do not go that way," his incarnate warned, trying to scoop her up in his wings and hold her back, but he hit an unseen wall. "Do not trust what he tells you."

"But I have to," her incarnate whispered, mesmerized by the door. By all the hope it held despite being torn because some part of her didn't want to leave him. Some part still cared about him and wanted to protect him, but another part was skewed by the seer's influence over her, which made her think Zane was sinister and dark.

"You do not have to go because he is not there," his incarnate rumbled, referring to her offspring. "So do not let him trick you. Do not trust his claims nor be lured by the light."

Now she knew he referred to the seer.

Yet she was desperately drawn to the golden shimmer through the partially open door. So drawn, it became more and more difficult to remain with who had spoken to her. Yet she should. More than that, a part of her very much wanted to. Knew it was her place.

Zane was her place, even if she couldn't have him.

Even so, the seer's influence, in combination with her heartbreak, played tug of war with her emotions and perception. She feared Zane even as she longed for him. Loathed him even as she wanted to protect him.

"Then do not go," he said more gently this time, clearly catching her thoughts. "Do not leave me."

Never so conflicted, she tried to see him, but he remained just out of sight. Near her but somehow further and further away. And the further he grew, the more she was drawn to the door. The more it seemed to pull her closer.

"No," Zane's incarnate roared, but his voice sounded far off because she couldn't stop walking down the winding dirt path toward the light beyond the door. Could not stay with him any longer because her compulsion to go to who waited for her on the other side grew too strong.

"Stop, mitt hjertes flamme ," he roared in anguish. "Come back to me!" Then he said more. Words she couldn't hear. "My arranged marriage is no more, so there is every chance we can be together now."

"But there wasn't," Savannah said softly. "Like Zoey speculated, you would have had to marry another to help form an alliance and bring peace."

"Perhaps," Zane granted. "But I had hoped not. Hoped somehow my revelation might break the seer's spell over you and bring you back to me."

Yet it didn't. Rather, her nightmare kept unraveling, and she felt what her incarnate experienced all over again. How she briefly felt Zane's agony to keep her with him as if it were her own. Felt the overwhelming need to return to him. But it wasn't as strong as her need to go through that door and find, no, reunite with her son, so she kept walking until she ran. Fled toward a door now consumed in a fiery circle before he had a chance to compel her to return to him. Raced toward the light beyond.

Close.

Closer.

Her dragon pushed open the door, her heart aching and eager, only to be consumed in a magical fire the moment she stepped through. Meanwhile, his incarnate roared in anguish and raced toward the door, only for it to explode along with her in a burst of black, unnatural flames.

"What was that?" She shook her head and narrowed her eyes. "I've seen some of my friends die by fire at the end of their last life, but the flames never looked like this."

"Because they weren't." Zane clenched his fist and pulled her closer, clearly needing to feel her against him once more. To feel she wasn't lost to him but right here. "Your friends were certainly part of what led to this moment but did not suffer the same thing as you in that life nor this one."

A shiver raced up her spine moments before what he remembered manifested. The seer melted out of the shadows and pulled the dark flames into him before aiming a menacing, taunting grin Zane's way. "Long before the Valkyries rose up to protect Odin's chosen mates so they might oversee a unified life on Midgard, we knew they would be successful. Knew that despite our best efforts, Odin would see peace between species in this world." He sneered. "Peace with beasts who do not belong here. Who are capable of so much damage."

"You are right," Zane's dragon growled before roaring fire at him, only for the seer to evade him. "Damage to your kind if it's the last thing I do for what you took from me today."

"Yet you will not succeed." The seer's eyes glittered black beneath his hood. "Peace will come until the curse my brother and I created rises again one day and ends your kind once and for all."

This time, Zane's dragon tried to snap the seer up in his great jaw, but again, the letch managed to evade him. Worse still, he released a maniacal laugh and burst into the same black magical flames that had taken Zane's mate, leaving him without the satisfaction of ending him himself.

Savannah ignored the tears trickling down her cheeks as his incarnate roared in rage and anguish. Ignored her tears when he lay beside what remained of her fiery embers and released a deep, rumbling, keen and she felt his heart's flame seem to dwindle away along with hers.

"After all we'd gone through to get this far," she choked out, "to have it end like this."

In just as much pain, Zane pulled her into his arms and rested her cheek against his chest, letting her hear his strong heartbeat. "Yet we still found our way back to each other, and my heart's flame is once more ignited."

She sensed he was about to go on, but something caught his attention.

Something that brought them so much closer to their truth.