Chapter Seven

T HOUGH SAVANNAH PRETENDED to be distracted by drinking her mead and recovering from the odd yet deeply sensual exchange she'd just shared with Zane's darker personality, the truth was she was extraordinarily aware of him. From his physical presence to his erratic thoughts to each and every word coming out of his mouth.

Most especially the deep rumble of his voice, thickened with emotion only she could hear, as he answered Zoey's question about how nobody sensed his dragon had traveled to the future.

"I dreamt of Savannah often in my youth," he said. "Better still, my Múspellsheimr side, or more ruthless personality as you call it, dreamt of her. Saw her in our last life often. Taunting. Tempting. A beautiful, full-blooded dragon I could not have." He clenched his jaw, fighting the emotions churning inside him. "It was overwhelming. Unending." His gaze settled on Savannah. "You were everything to me yet forever elusive until a dream finally came that revealed you not as you were then, but as you are now."

"And you acted on it," Rafe deduced. "Yet I cannot help but wonder why you sought out Rune rather than your parents or any of our elders, given you must have figured out Savannah was from the twenty-first century."

"I did act on it and was going to talk to my parents." Zane shook his head. "Yet, somehow, Rune showed up before I could and warned me not to. She claimed the Age of Embers would soon be upon us, and I must let things unravel as they would if I wanted to find my way back to the woman in my dreams. Knowing how compelled I would be to seek Savannah out, she said I could watch her from afar but to be careful about getting too close." His gaze settled on Savannah. "Because she very much was my fated mate from another life."

While tempted to deny it, Savannah couldn't push the words past her lips if she tried. Her inner beast made it impossible, telling her he was right. They had been mates. Would always be mates. But then, she'd more than sensed that when his darker half surfaced, hadn't she? She had felt a strong recognition and a blinding need to make him whole again. Fix him because somehow, she'd broken him. Split him in two. And it was reflected in this life in his multiple personalities.

Was this why she loved psychology so much? Because she was preparing for him? This? Readying herself to make him whole again as only she could?

"Rune said all that, then?" Magnus questioned Zane, pulling Savannah from her thoughts. He looked from Rafe and their mates back to Zane incredulously. "She told you all this was coming, and you kept it from us?"

" Ja. " Zane poured himself another ale and poured more mead into Savannah's cup, his gaze lingering on her. "There was nothing I would not do to find my way back to her...you." Their gazes held before he looked at the others again. "As I'm sure you all understand."

"Mayhap them, but not me." ?se frowned and shook her head. "You had no right to keep any of this from us. Your kin . Those you never kept secrets from." She scowled fiercely and narrowed her eyes the more she thought about it. "How old were you when she told you this?"

"Young," he replied. "We were just beginning our transition from childhood into adulthood."

"Loki's cock," Rafe exclaimed, as surprised as the rest of them. " That young?"

When Zane nodded and downed half his ale in one long gulp, Savannah followed his thoughts. He reflected on how turbulent a time it was between the changes in his human and dragon bodies and being told he could not meet the girl from his dreams. That he must keep his distance for many more years.

"That's when you began changing," Magnus murmured, seeing things clearly enough as he eyed Zane. "Granted, we all did, but it was around that time your darker personality became less entertaining. Around that time, you started to grow more confrontational."

" Ja ," ?se agreed, her eyes still narrowed on Zane. "It was also around that time Rune became scarcer, and we saw less and less of her."

"Just as we started to see less and less of my brother, J?rn," Magnus noted, his gaze trained on Zane, too. "Should we assume you know something about that?"

"No more than you, other than to say there is great love betwixt the two." Zane sighed and looked from Magnus to Rafe. "Love, I warned you both about at one point or another." He shook his head. "Love, I warned you would impede any false feelings you might have had for her."

"I don't recall you being that direct." Rafe shook his head as well and frowned. "In fact, you were not."

"Agreed." Magnus frowned at Zane, too. "Do not lie to us, cousin. We have come too far toward reconciliation for that. It's bad enough you lied to us about having gone to the twenty-first century."

"Lied so you could make your way back to your mates," Zane countered, sounding deadly serious. "As to telling you both you would never have Rune's heart because it was already taken, I did." He looked from Rafe to Magnus. "Several times at that, but you clearly didn't listen, and with good reason, it seems, because it helped her steer you more efficiently back to where your hearts truly lay."

"He's telling the truth," Zoey said softly, slipping her hand into Magnus's. "I can feel it...know it."

"And how is that?" Savannah said, again fighting a foreign flare of jealousy. One she hated but couldn't stop feeling if she tried. On top of that, she didn't want to keep showing this kind of emotion, caring , in front of Zane. Yet her inner beast gave her no choice. "What happened between you and Zane in our last life, Zoey? I know you were promised to him. Tell me more. Why you were promised." She narrowed her eyes, making herself clear. "Because I need to understand why my inner beast feels like you took him from me."

"I have no idea because, as far as I recall, we shared nothing more than a mutual desire to keep peace in a time when full-blooded dragons, shifters, and humans were at odds." She glanced at Magnus with unmistakable love and squeezed his hand before looking at Savannah again. "All I know is that in the end, to save Magnus from disrupting that peace, I went to Zane to fulfill my obligation before fleeing him again." She shook her head. "There was no love. No jealousy. Only a need to keep peace on several fronts."

"Yet there has to be more," Savannah murmured. Believing her friend, she stared into the flames, wishing she could better understand the fluctuating emotions swamping her. "Because despite being best friends in this life, my inner beast grows more angry at you and jealous by the moment. That's just not who I am, and you know it."

"I do." Zoey crouched in front of her, so Savannah had no choice but to look at her. "So try to keep that in mind, okay?" Her skin shimmered gold with her inner Valkyrie, and she offered a gentle smile. "Because whatever happens, whatever you learn, I'll still be your best friend." She shook her head. " Always your best friend no matter what happened in our last life."

"I know," she managed, trying to fight the way her inner beast grew testy at that. She always told her patients to try to work through their emotional responses and focus on what was real and in front of them at the moment, but now she realized how hard that actually was. "We've got to figure this out. Get to the bottom of whatever happened in our last life." Even though her inner beast pushed back against it, she squeezed Zoey's hand in reassurance. "And we will."

Zoey seemed to understand her inner struggle because she nodded reassuringly and squeezed her hand in return before returning to Magnus's side.

"Recent revelations aside, we're starting to get a much better picture of everything," Rafe said. "We all played an important role in the life we once shared. One in which, ultimately, we strove for peace every bit as much as we do now. A life in which we were all intricately connected whether as friends, relatives, or mates." He looked at Zoey and Zane. "You two, above all, were no doubt intent to see that happen. Where that's in Zoey's nature, it's clear Zane's reasoning came of being from a world that's notoriously dangerous. Not just a place of brimstone and fire, with ruthlessly warring male tribes determined to be the mightiest but a truly terrible place for female dragons."

"To say the least," Zane said darkly. "There's a reason so many dragons fled from there at one time. Why females fled if they had half a chance."

"Because they were brutalized," Savannah murmured, either picking up on what Zane knew about Múspellsheimr or recalling her own repressed memories. Based on the chill that slithered down her spine, she guessed the latter. "It was a world where male dragons ruled, and females were enslaved and abused. Their... our only purpose was breeding until we could breed no more then..."

She fought a sharp wave of nausea when the terror her little dragon had felt in that sulfuric wind crashed over her. A terror she suddenly felt wasn't fleeting. Not at all. In fact, it slammed into her so hard that she raced for the shadows, fell to her knees, and vomited.

"I can't do this," she gasped, hanging her head. Between just killing so many dragons and whatever she'd lived through in her last life, she just couldn't. It felt like her strength was draining, and her willpower was nowhere to be found. "I can't face this. I just can't..."

"But you can ." Quinn crouched beside Savannah and rested a hand on her shoulder. "And you will, my friend. You'll face it and overcome it."

How many times had Savannah told her patients that? How many times had she assured them they just needed to work through their emotions to find a solution? Work through their emotions until they figured out what was at the heart of their behavior, whether it be self-destructive or overcompensating for something. Guilt-ridden or avoidance?

"And this isn't much different," Quinn said gently, following her thoughts. "Not really."

"No," she whispered, understanding where Quinn was going with this. "But it's certainly more up your alley than mine falling into the holistic side of things." She inhaled deeply and tried to fight back another wave of nausea. "More like something better solved by past-life regression via hypnotism, I believe you'd call it."

"I would call it that," Quinn conceded. "Which still involves a need for psychology, as far as I'm concerned. Especially when it comes to unpacking as much emotional trauma as you are. All the same rules apply even if they land in the fantastical realm. You're still half human. Still face the same emotional hurdles any human would."

"I suppose so," she said softly, grateful for Quinn's soothing touch. How it seemed to settle her stomach. She looked at her friend...and she was a friend, it seemed, despite the distance Savannah had put between them. "Thanks for this. For being so..." How to phrase it? "Helpful despite our past strife."

"No need to thank me." Quinn offered a warm, comforting smile that only made her skin glow that much more peacefully. "You did what you thought you needed to so you wouldn't lose us."

She arched her brows. "So you're all right with me having lied to you?"

"Yeah, I suppose so." Quinn's eyes grew especially wise. "If it led to this moment, right where we're all supposed to be, then yes, I'm glad you lied." She shrugged. "Otherwise, who knows? The five of us might have gone our own way years ago and never made it back to our mates. May never have had the opportunity to save so many people. To help find peace and possibly keep dragonkind from going extinct."

"Yet they don't." She nodded thanks when Quinn handed her a cup of some sort of mild concoction that soothed her raw throat. "Albeit hidden from mankind, dragonkind is doing just fine in our century, so we've got to assume whatever we do here will be successful."

"We can only hope," Quinn said softly, not sounding nearly as confident as she had moments before.

"What is it?" She frowned at her friend. "Why the hesitation?"

"I don't know." As if struggling with something, Quinn's voice grew softer still. "It just feels...out of reach right now, I guess." She gave Savannah a reassuring look despite her less-than-reassuring words. "But you're absolutely right. If dragonkind is flourishing discreetly in our era, how could it have been extinguished a thousand years earlier?"

"There are several possibilities," Athena said matter-of-factly into their minds as if she weren't under the immense strain of slowing down time. "Sometimes in life, as you know, Quinn, being a nature lover, seedlings get encased in ice, then when it thaws a century later, it finds a way of sprouting, hence making an extinct plant non-extinct. The same has happened in wildlife, often without any explanation. We've found several species we'd long thought extinct thriving in newly discovered locations. So it can happen."

"It can." Clearly warring between whatever she felt plagued them and hope, Quinn narrowed her eyes. "But dragons? Shifters? That would be something else."

"It would." Savannah frowned. "Yet if it did, you'd think there would be some record of it."

"Agreed." Athena paused, seeming to ponder it. "If I could only travel to another time between now and our century, I'd likely be able to figure it out in no time. Dragons have a way of leaving archeological imprints much like dinosaurs, so even if they're hiding, I could at least track them from that."

"Yet we both know that can't happen." Quinn urged Savannah to drink more of the soothing liquid in her cup. "Dragons here have tried to travel to other centuries with no luck. The Yggdrasils won't let them, and it makes sense, I suppose. Things have to happen the way they're supposed to. Have to evolve properly. You, as a scientist, know that, Athena."

"I do." Athena released an internal sigh. "I just wish I could make sense of it."

Translation? She didn't want dragonkind suffering some sort of lapse any more than they did. Nor, as Savannah sensed off her, did Athena want history to be altered somehow in a way they had yet to understand, extinguishing them from it altogether. That would be something along the lines of quantum physics, Savannah caught in Athena's thoughts but didn't follow it all that well. Not when it came to time travel, and the magic the gods and the universe were capable of. She dealt more with what the human and dragon mind was capable of.

"How are you doing, Athena?" Savannah asked. She might be pleasantly soothed by Quinn's drink, but she still worried about how much her friend could withstand. "Are you holding up okay? Should we come back soon? Because I won't have you getting hurt when I'm the one who should be punished. I'm the one who—"

"I'm perfectly fine," Athena assured, cutting her off. "Actually, I'm doing really well. Stronger by the moment, if I'm not mistaken."

When Savannah narrowed her eyes at Quinn, wondering if Athena's assurance could be trusted, Quinn nodded. Athena wasn't just saying what they wanted to hear. She meant it.

"What does that mean exactly?" Quinn asked before Savannah had a chance to. "Explain the feeling. Is it your inner goddess? Your dragon?"

"A bit of both, I think," Athena replied . "Definitely my Valkyrie, but more so..." She paused as if trying to pinpoint the feeling. "More, my dragon. Or should I say the bond it has with Tyr. The feeling of being fated mates and the power behind it. Maybe even the history behind it." She paused again before she sounded surer. "Better still, our past life being strengthened somehow by your past lives. All the bonds we found."

"Which means we're heading in the right direction," Zane said, joining the telepathic conversation or perhaps speaking up because he'd been there all along. He crouched on the other side of Savannah and eyed her, not with concern because she'd been sick but with certainty. "She is strengthened because we are growing stronger as we edge closer to our truth."

"Or so you hope," she replied, frowning when her words didn't fit together quite like they should. Had she slurred ? Surely not. She'd barely had any mead.

Yet when she tried to speak again, nothing made sense.

That's when it occurred to her what was going on. She frowned from her cup to Quinn in astonishment, speaking telepathically because her vocal cords were failing her. "What did you do? What is this?"

"Something that will help you to sleep at last, my friend," Quinn said, slurred , because Savannah couldn't quite hear clearly anymore either. She could feel though, and she was pissed off.

"How dare you?" she railed into Quinn's mind, growing angrier by the moment. "Just when we were starting to connect and..."

She said more, she was certain of it, yet there was no way of knowing as the room spun, and she fell backward. Or had she fallen into Zane? Because the next thing she knew, she was floating in strong arms, engulfed in a spicy scent that seemed designed especially for her. Then she was somewhere else.

Somewhere, yet again, made of pure hell.