Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet 2)

So instead of pointing out that they don’t really need blankets, us being wolves and all, I wait for him to finish. Then we both go over to the puppy pile to stroke our son’s furry head. He’s gone from not having not even one other kid he could play with, to a whole gang of small cousins to sleep with tonight.

Lucky boy, I think to myself. Then, Lucky us.

At this time yesterday morning, reconciliation seemed like an impossible dream. But as Damianos and I walk up the stairs hand and hand, the new alliance doesn’t seem tentative at all. More like a chain forged.

One that will never be broken now that the couple who set off my family’s multi-generational adventure saga is finally back within our fold.

Yet, after we lie down, I can’t settle into sleep. With all the excitement, Damianos and I haven’t really gotten the chance to talk about the revelation at the bottom of the slap fest that turned into a happily ever after kiss.

Damianos loves me now. True and yellow and without any reservations whatsoever. I can feel that over our mate bond. But there are so many questions swirling around my head. And one of them is so big, I have to ask it before I can allow myself to fall asleep in his arms.

“Reverence?”

“Hmm?”

He sounds sleepy, too. Time travel jet lag I imagine is some kind of bitch. “I understood why you did things the way you did them, but I don’t understand why you did it?”

He turns his huge body over to face me. “I know you cannot see how yellow my flame burns for you, but isn’t it obvious, Reverence?”

“No, it’s obvious, you love me. Believe me, I get that after the whole time-traveling grandpa reveal. And I love you, too. But what made you decide to give in to that love so fully? I mean, it took me weeks just to get you to open up your side of the mate bond. And suddenly you were all in, to the point of possibly getting stuck in the past? What made you risk everything to keep a promise you yourself said another dragon made?”

He stills. But he doesn’t close the bond. So I can feel the secret he’s keeping from me, even if he doesn’t speak it out loud.

“Let’s not do that,” I whisper across the pillow. “Let’s not start off our marriage this way. No more secrets.”

He considers my words. And after a long moment, he says, “The me from the alternative timeline left me a message on my voicemail. And that message made it easy to choose our love over my revenge.”

“Wow, that must’ve been some message…” I sit up in bed and regard him with a scrunched-up face. “Can I hear it?”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Damianos vowed at our ceremony to grant my every wish, even the ones I hadn’t made yet. But now he hesitates.

“My ceremony vows were true,” he tells me. “Never again will I deny you. However, I fear you will think less of me if I allow you to listen to what Other Me, as you call him, said.”

Fear is an understatement. I can feel his terror at the prospect over our mate bond, full-on palpitating like a heartbeat.

“Oh, baby…” I take his hand, surer than I’ve ever been of anything, “It’s you and me for as long as I live. Nothing’s ever going to change that.”

Damianos looks at me, his golden eyes glowing a little brighter in the dim morning light. Then he climbs out of bed and comes back with an old-timey smart phone.

“He speaks to me in the old language, so I will translate what he says for you,” Damianos tells me after settling back down into bed with me. Then he pushes play on the only message listed in the voicemail section.

A bunch of screeches and hisses emit from the phone. Jarring at first, but over the course of the message they begin to take on an almost musical undertone as Damianos translates.

“If you are listening to this, my worst fear has come true. I am gone, and she has found you in the basement. If this is the case, there are things you must know…

“But there is something you must know. As you most likely have guessed by now, I am a version of you from a future that has not yet happened…from a future I hope will never happen. I am the version of you who god spoke the former Beta King of North Dakota to the gatehouse, then had him kill himself in front of Ola so that she would understand what would and could happen to any of her family members if she displeased me, even the ones who weren’t on my ultimate revenge list. To my relief, the tactic worked. Our mate went quiet and no longer offered angry retorts or challenged me in anyway. Indeed, after a few weeks spent shackled in her room, she became so docile, I was able to unchain her from the bed.