Chapter Nineteen

ALMOST THE MOMENT Zoey sensed Ulrik and Keira shut themselves off to their kin, and Magnus healed himself and Zane, she knew something remarkable was going to happen. Little did she expect it to come in the way of the tunnel they stood in morphing into the exit of a slightly different tunnel. Nor what they witnessed beneath a big, beautiful oak in the lush green forest beyond.

"It cannot be," Magnus said hoarsely when they spied a little girl with dark blonde curls and turquoise eyes sitting with a young copper-colored female dragon beneath the tree, deep in conversation until they sensed them approaching and looked their way.

"Father,"the little dragon exclaimed, her lovely internal voice coming through to them all as she raced into Zane's waiting arms when he crouched. "How I've missed you!"

Meanwhile, stunned, Magnus dropped to his knees, shook his head, and held out his arms to the other human little girl. "My daughter..."

Clearly recognizing him despite how young she'd been when he lost her, her eyes widened. "Athair? Father?"

Magnus nodded, and a tear rolled down his cheek. "Ja, is mise, a iníon. D"athair. It's me, your father, my sweet Aada."

"Athair,"she exclaimed when she realized it truly was him and raced into his waiting arms, only to wrap her arms around him tightly. "M"athair."

Zoey bit back tears as she watched the emotional reunion between Magnus and his daughter, made more poignant the closer she looked at both Magnus's and Zane's daughters. After all, she wasn't just growing emotional over Magnus's daughter being alive but because she knew her somehow.

Knew both daughters.

No sooner did she think it than they peered her way in wonder.

"It's really you this time, isn't it?" Magnus's daughter said in Norse, yet Zoey understood her clearly. "You came with father just like you said you would."

"I think maybe I did," she whispered, wiping away a tear as Zane's daughter, who she somehow knew preferred to remain in dragon form, walked toward her tentatively. Zoey looked from Magnus's daughter to Zane's. "You're Freya, aren't you?"

That was clearly all the little dragon needed to hear because her eyes lit up, and she came at Zoey so hard she landed on her backside with the dragon on her lap, nuzzling her affectionately. Seconds later, Magnus's daughter was there, too, wrapping her arms around Zoey's neck, exclaiming over and over, "You are real! You are finally real!"

"I am," she choked out when fresh emotion overcame her, and memories of visiting with them started flickering through her mind. "I'm real," she gasped hoarsely, holding them close like they were the long-lost children she'd never had. "I'm here, and I'm real. You're real."

"We are, Beireoir na Síochána," Aada confirmed, calling her the same thing Tréan had. She held onto Zoey's neck a moment longer before pulling back and touching her cheek tentatively as if she wanted to make sure. "We could never touch you before, yet you were still our very best friend."

"You are," Freya confirmed, rubbing her neck affectionately against Zoey's before she cocked her little dragon head at her. "You have found your fated mate, then?" She seemed to smile from Magnus to Zoey. "You found him in Aada's father just as you thought you might?"

She looked from Magnus, who watched the three of them with as much wonder, awe, and pleasure as Keira and Ulrik, back to the girls. "I did." She focused on Aada because it would impact her more. "I hope you are all right with that."

"Of course I am," the little girl exclaimed, clasping her hands together in unabashed excitement. "Now you get to be my best friend and my second mother." She grew quite serious. "Even though, as you once said, you would never, ever replace my real mother as she always watches over me."

Zoey swallowed hard, remembering those words despite being caught in dreams. One of many, many dreams that were drifting to the surface the longer she held the girls. She knew Aada had been too young to remember the events of the awful day she'd lost her mother and, unfortunately, too young and human to remember much about her. As memories came tumbling back, she also recalled just how much she'd fallen in love with the little girl in her dreams. Both of them, for that matter.

"I will leave you be now," Tréan rumbled, clearly fighting back emotion of his own as he sank to a knee and lowered his head to Zoey one more time before looking at Aada and Freya sternly. "Once you have bonded as you should, your pack will be awaiting you."

Only then did Zoey realize how many wolf eyes glittered back from the shadows around them. More than that, she spied two incredibly large males standing at attention, their eyes trained on the girls in such a way there could be no doubt they protected them. Would kill for them. Die for them.

Tréan stood, gave Ulrik and Zane a nod that all was well, and then headed for the forest, but not before he shifted into a gorgeous white wolf that was, unbelievably enough, even bigger than the other two males. He glanced back once, his golden eyes trained on the girls in a way Zoey sensed they understood before he vanished into the forest.

"A forest in ancient Ireland," she murmured as the endless wolf eyes watching them vanished along with Tréan. Yet she got the sense, knew, they didn't stray far. They truly did consider the little girls, despite one being half dragon, part of their pack.

Although they had much to talk about with Zane, he made clear they would enjoy the girls first. He also was adamant to Magnus that his daughter would be staying right where she was for now, so he best enjoy her company.

In return, Magnus disagreed but left it be for the moment as he pulled his daughter into his arms again and enjoyed her company as well as Freya's. In fact, for a few sweet hours, the dissent between Zane and Magnus fell away as everyone sat beneath the tree and spent time with the girls.

Freya seemed more withdrawn, but Zoey was good at pulling her out of her shell and getting her to talk. Eventually, her little dragon grew animated, revealing how much she loved adventure, sharing those she'd already been on with her pack. Aada, in turn, was open and enthusiastic yet liked sticking close to her pack in quiet, less adventurous settings. She preferred tales told by the campfire, tradition, and the old ways instead of trying too many new things at once.

"They're precious,"she said into Magnus's mind at one point. "So incredibly precious."

"They are,"he'd agreed roughly, glancing at Zane every so often, seeing a side of him they never would have expected as he played with his daughter and didn't just smile but laughed.

At least until the sun sat low in the sky and several female wolves hovered nearby in the woodland, letting them know it was almost time for the girls to go with them.

"I will not leave my daughter with wolves,"Magnus growled into everyone's minds. "She will come home with me. Be among her own kind again."

"These are her kind right now,"Zoey said gently, understanding the more she felt out Zane and flickers of newborn memories about the girls. "And they need to stay here until all of this is over because they're safe here." She looked from Zane back to Magnus, certain of it. "Otherwise, they wouldn't be here now because your cousin wouldn't allow his precious offspring to be with anyone he didn't trust."

"She's right,"Ulrik said, backing her up. "Not only that but Tréan is to be trusted, seen clearly in Aada's good health and happiness, as well as what you surely see in his wolves when they look at her."

She didn't blame Magnus for being hesitant. This was a huge leap of faith. One he addressed in a way any good father would when he embraced Aada yet again, cupped her cheek, and looked at her most seriously. "Are you happy here, daughter? Do they treat you well?"

She tilted her head and looked at him in confusion. "Ja, Athair. They are my family."

Magnus clearly bit back emotion before he nodded. "Good, mo iníon milis. My sweet daughter." He glanced from the wolves, who never took their eyes off Aada and Freya, back to his daughter and asked something that made clear he was relenting. "I know they are your family, but would you like to come home to Zoey and me someday soon?" He looked from Zoey to her. "Home to me and your Beireoir na Síochána?"

"Ja, Athair," she exclaimed, wrapping her arms around them both. "Because you are my family too." She pulled back and looked at them wide-eyed. "Will I still be able to visit my pack, though?"

"You will," Zane answered for them, smiling reassuringly at her. "Any time you like."

It seemed that's all she needed to hear because their reunion ended well, if not a little sadly, as Magnus and Zane said goodbye to their daughters and sent them off with the Wolves of Ossary.

The rest of them remained where they were at Zane"s insistence, and drinks were manifested as they sat beneath the tree. That's when Zane came clean about many things, beginning with Magnus's daughter.

"I cannot tell you what it was to know my dragons not only attacked your women but that you had a wife and child among them." Zane looked at Magnus gravely. "To that end, though I imagine the words ring hollow to a father, you have my deepest apologies. The moment I realized Aada still had life in her, I took her because I knew the illness would not only grow worse, but something was coming. Something, or someone, I feared might target her as much as it could have my daughter because they are our offspring."

"But Aada was dead," Magnus ground out, shaking his head. "I saw it in the Forest of Memories. Know it to be true."

"Yet here she is," Zane countered. "Healed by a wolf shifter, no less because there was still a nugget of life in her. Enough to pull her back from the brink of death."

"Yet you kept her from Magnus," Ulrik said. "Kept her from growing three years older with her father. That is no small thing, cousin."

"No," Zane said on a heavy sigh, downing half his ale in one gulp. "But it was the only way I knew she would be safe until whatever lives among us is brought to light." His dark gaze settled on Ulrik, and he made clear he'd followed a great deal more than they realized. "Because there is an unseen enemy among us. One I fear is targeting our females no matter their age."

"So you are trying to draw him out," Keira deduced, considering him. "That's why you behave one way one moment and another the next, leading us to question your loyalties."

"It is," he confirmed, leveling a gaze at Ulrik and Magnus. "Because, as all of you so recently decided at Rafe's Stronghold, it is best to keep the enemy guessing, is it not? Best to let him think you are divided rather than united?"

"You know much, yet do not reveal your sources." Magnus narrowed his eyes. "You could be just as guilty as I thought you mere hours ago." He gestured at their surroundings. "It could very well be you play some long strategy we have yet to understand. One designed to make us trust you."

"What a strategy that would be, and me a monster indeed," Zane said darkly, narrowing his eyes at Magnus in return, "if I used our daughters to achieve such goals?"

"We sensed this unknown presence in the dragon you once were," Magnus countered. "When you thought to make my mate your own."

Zane frowned. "I know not what you speak of."

"And I believe you," Zoey said because she felt it. He wasn't lying. She looked at Magnus. "Rafe and Quinn might have sensed an unknown presence, but that doesn't mean it was Zane. It could have been any of the dragons flying with him that day because they were all relatively close to your ship. For all we know, it could have even been one of your own shipmates."

"Yet Zane was closest by far," Magnus ground out, his gaze still narrowed on his cousin.

"Even so." Zoey looked at Zane and redirected the conversation before they threw medieval punches again. Which meant understanding where Zane was coming from. The reasons behind his actions. "Why did you bring the children here? And how do you know me? Because you clearly do, or I wouldn't have found the Keep so familiar." She arched her eyebrows, certain he knew a great deal indeed. "Then tell me what happened to you in our last life after I went up in flames, and you threatened Magnus to marry Quinn and keep the peace."

"I brought the children here because you haunted me." Zane downed the rest of his ale in a long swig and manifested another. "You were a ghostly figure who all but forced me to seek out Tréan." He shrugged a shoulder. "It just so happened Tréan was already seeking me out, too, and we ended up talking about his time with Ulrik in ancient Ireland. That is when we realized you haunted us both." He tilted his head in resignation. "And ja, I knew you were my destined mate in our last life, so I listened. Then listened more. Then, eventually, agreed my daughter and Aada were safest here."

"How often did I haunt you, Tréan, and the girls?" she wondered, amazed she had done so much in her sleep.

"Often enough that I knew you were Magnus's fated mate in this life, and Tréan enough he felt certain he should aid the MacLomain's Viking Ancestors as they had once aided him." A surprisingly whimsical smile curled his mouth, considering it was Zane. "As to the girls, you haunted them often, too, from the sounds of it. You manifested as a spirit, for lack of a better way to put it, and paved a path to this moment. Regailed Aada with stories of her father in another life and Freya with tales of what it was like to be a powerful shieldmaiden."

"What about your last life, Zane?" Keira prompted. "What became of you after Zoey died? Did you find love? Because your cousins all did, so it stands to reason you did as well." She cocked her head in curiosity. "Perhaps you sought out that long-lost love while you visited the twenty-first-century?"

Zane shook his head and frowned, seeming oblivious. "I have not been to the future, nor do I recall loving anyone in another life." His eyes narrowed. "Why would you think I'd been to the future?"

"I sensed it in the Forest of Memories after I witnessed a memory of you and Magnus fighting as teenagers," Zoey said, blunt because she knew what she had felt. "Could it be you weren"t entirely yourself at some point and traveled to the future without remembering it? Because I know your personalities can fluctuate."

He didn"t seem put off by the question, but then she imagined he was used to dealing with it.

"While ja, my personalities can fluctuate," he replied, "my dragon would not have been able to keep that truth from my kin or their Valkyrie mates." His gaze swept over the lot of them, and his eyebrows shot up. "So you tell me. Has my dragon been to the future?"

"It doesn"t appear so," Ulrik answered after a small stretch as their dragons felt out Zane"s and realized he was right. His inner beast had not been to the twenty-first-century, and his human half, or halves in his case, couldn"t go anywhere without his dragon. Zoey found his revelation more than a little baffling, though, because she"d been so certain.

Either way, Ulrik, above all, would know so she let it rest for now.

"And again, what became of you in your last life after losing Zoey?" Keira repeated.

"I wish I could say other than it was fraught with strife." Zane clenched his jaw, and his dragon eyes flared as he seemed to battle emotions. "Fraught with sadness from what I can sense of it."

"And what of Freya's mother?" Magnus wondered. "Where is she now? Why is she not with her? Because it"s safe to assume based on your daughter"s age, she wasn"t the mate Knud"s commander ended."

"She did not survive childbirth." This time, Zane downed his entire mug in three long swallows before he stood, seeming to switch personas in a split second. "I grow tired of this conversation. It is time to return home and take part in our battle."

Ulrik frowned. "What battle?"

Zane clasped Ulrik's shoulder and shrugged as if he wasn't about to drop a bombshell. "The one that is going to rip our alliance apart for good."