He holds the black woman slightly behind him. Not scared, I sense, but vigilantly protective. And she kind of looks like she needs it. She’s much smaller, and a testament to “black don’t crack.” If not for her mostly grey hair, I wouldn’t have been able to tell she was probably around the same age as the man. But she’s not dressed nearly as tough. She wears what appears to be a fur coat made of foxtails over a dress that looks like it came straight out of a Laura Ingalls Wilder novel. If this was a movie, a costume designer would be screaming right now about how her outfit is all over the place historically speaking.
They’re one of the strangest sights I’ve ever seen.
Yet, somehow, I know in an instant exactly who they are.
Even before another woman’s voice yells out behind me, “Mama! Papa!”
Myrna bursts out of the woods, and forgets holding the second line, she runs to her parents and flings herself at them.
Again, Rafes curses over the biocomm, but this time his tirade is followed by a command to, “Hold your fire! Don’t shoot under any circumstance!”
“Oh, Myrna, I’m so happy to see you, baby!” the black woman cries. “I did not think I was ever going to see you again, and I was sorry about how I left it.”
“Do you think that matters at all, Mama?” Myrna cries back. “You’re here! That’s all that matters. I can’t believe you’re here!”
Myrna weeps and hugs the couple, but my dads remain beside me, their eyes wide and their swords still raised.
“Is that…is that your parents?” I ask them. “Like Viking Age Grandma and Grandpa?”
“Yea, I believe it is,” Papa Olafr answers in Old Norse, his voice barely a whisper.
“It most definitely is,” FJ adds in English.
Yet neither of them move. Warrior training has taken over I can tell and won’t let them abandon their post, no matter what miracle is taking place before their eyes.
But then the man…Grandpa Fenris…looks up and says in Old Norse, “FJ, Olafr, come to us.”
They say Damianos is a mind control whiz, but he has nothing on the power of this guy.
Both my dads immediately drop their swords. And though they’re both in their sixties, I can see the spirits of the little boys they used to be as they run and bound into his arms.
“So it’s true. All three of you landed in the same time period,” the woman I can now say for sure is Grandma Chloe says after they hug her too. “What a miracle! Isn’t the Lord good? And I hear all three of you have fated mates and grandbabies for me to meet!”
Rafes does not look happy as more introductions get made. But he dutifully walks forward when Myrna calls out to him to come meet her parents.
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me who you are. You look exactly the same as you did when you were a boy. So serious,” Grandma Chloe says when Rafes tries to introduce himself. “And now you’re married to my daughter? Won’t the Lord do it?”
Meanwhile, Grandpa Fenris assures him in Old Norse that he always knew he’d become a great fenrir.
Rafes is total grumpy face emoji that his confrontation has completely fallen apart. But he more than anyone should know: Time Travelling Vikings stay ruining the best laid plans.
“I give you welcome to our family,” Grandpa Fenris declares, clapping Rafes on the shoulder.
Then he looks at me and says, “I assume you to be our other twin granddaughter. Isn’t it strange that you look so little like your sister?”
No, I don’t look anything like Fensa. Other than our taller than average height and brickhouse dimensions, we don’t have much in common appearance-wise. But that’s not what has me confused about his question…
“How do you know what Fensa looks like?” I ask him.
And that’s when the second surprise of the century happens.
Fensa comes running out of the house with Xenon, Eos, and their twin daughters close behind her.
“Sorry,” she calls as she runs past Max. “I know Damianos wanted to do this in dramatic stages, but I couldn’t hold myself back.”
Okay, I was already on the verge of tears when my dads and aunt finally reunited with their parents.
But when I see Fensa. My one and only twin…
Did I say I wasn’t a crying-ass bitch?
Thug Queen down. My vision blurs as I run blindly toward my sister like we’re in a holo reboot of The Color Purple.
She’s crying, too. But somehow we find each other, crashing into each other’s arms.
I hug her and hug her and hug her some more. Then I hug the nieces and nephew I haven’t seen in far too long. (Seriously, Eos looks like a grown-ass man now). Then we all hug the grandparents we never thought we’d meet. Then we hug and pet Bazzi, who’s yipping excitedly and hovering in the air.
By the time we all disentangle, everybody’s crying. Even Knud’s hard ass.
But then the sounds of weapons powering up all over again kill all those warm feelings on the spot.
And we all look up from our extended group hug to find Damianos now standing at the top of the steps in a well-tailored suit.
“Damianos…” I step away from my people to look up at him.
“Ola…”
Ignoring all the little red dots reflecting off nearly every point of his body, including his head, the dragon comes down the stairs. His hands down and spread at his sides. His soft gaze holding mine.
His side of our mate bond fully open.
As he approaches me, I can feel all of his emotions. The pride, the anger, the bittersweet. And the love…so much love.
More even than the other timeline Damianos.
And you know what? I.D.G.A.F.
I repeat: I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck.
I slap him. So hard, the loud smack reverberates across the happy family reunion. So hard, his face actually moves a centimeter or two.
“What the hell, Triple D?” I yell at him.
“Ola…” Damianos starts to say. His voice has a placating tone, probably because he can feel all the anger emanating from my side of our mate bond.
My family murmurs behind me and I can hear the soldiers requesting orders from Rafes over the biocomm, but I don’t care.
I slap the hell out of him again. Then I demand, “Why did you disappear on me? Why did you leave me that damn note, instead of telling me what you were trying to do?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” he answers with a Eurodragon shrug. “A pleasant one.”
I jut out my chin. “You broke my heart and made me believe you deserted me to surprise me?”
Then I raise my hand to slap his overly chiseled face again.
But this time he catches the wrist of my slapping hand. “No, Reverence,” he answers, his voice harsh. “I broke your heart and made you believe I had deserted you, just in case my plan did not work.”
The arm muscles I was planning to use to slap him even harder than the first two times soften instead. “What?”
“Perhapsss, I can exxxplain,” Xenon says, coming to stand next to Damianos.
“I too want to help tell story,” Grandpa Fenris says in halting English.
Okay, storytime. Everyone gathers around, as Damianos with a few assists from Xenon and Grandpa Fenris explain why Damianos did things the way he did.
He hadn’t known for certain that he would be able to return to the Viking Age, using one of the artifacts he’d been able to acquire back when his original plan had been to slaughter our entire family…in this time period and now.
Get this, that ultimate revenge plan had been so thorough, Grandpa Fenris was the very last name on the big dragon’s list. Damianos had even managed to hunt down the tooth of the polar bear that had been found dead next to Grandpa Fenris in the woods. But instead of using the artifact to go back in time and kill Grandpa Fenris before the bear could, he’d gone back in time and prevented Grandpa’s last fight with the bear from ever happening.
“So you see. He saved me,” Grandpa Fenris expl
ained, patting the dragon king’s shoulder like he was a good boy. Not a seven-foot-plus monster whose original plan had been petty enough to include going back in time to slaughter the father of his father’s killer as soon as he was done with his present time revenge.
“And even if we’d known that particular artifact code would work for ccccertain,” Xenon had gone on to explain, “We could not be certain the fated mate spell to return Damianossss would alsssso be able to work. You sssseee there wassss a chancccce it had only worked for the other alternate timeline Damianossss becausssse he wassss in the full throessss of Widower’sssss Madnesssss…”
“What do you mean by the alternate timeline Damianos,” Nago asks Xenon.
But, I think I understand the most important part. The rest of Nago’s and Xenon’s conversation fades away as I raise my head to look back up at Damianos. “You didn’t want me to miss you if you couldn’t make it back to me,” I translate. “So you made it so I’d just be pissed off for the rest of my life instead.”
“I thought it a better alternative to the deep grief of knowing I’d been lost to time in the effort to pay you ultimate Reverence,” Damianos answers. “Forgive me if I was wrong.”
“I guess we’ll never know who was right and who wrong,” I answer, my heart brimming with love. “And I cannot thank you enough for creating all this drama.”
“It is not your thanks I want.” He bends his great head to kiss the hand he previously captured to stop me from slapping him a third time. “The danger, forgiving your fathers, it will all have been worth it, if we can finally be together in the way both of us want.”
“I get it, Reverence,” I answer, finally understanding the why of all the crazy romances in my family history. “Sometimes you gotta crack a few drama eggs to make a happy ending. That’s for real reverence.”
Confusion peppers all the good feelings flowing over our mate bond before Damianos apparently decides to stop trying to understand me and just sweep me up into his arms.
Our argument ends with him kissing me like the happy ending to a very epic novel.
But is it a happy ending?
As great as our kiss is, I pull back to face the rest of my family. I guess most of us are asking the same question. When I turn around, I find them all already looking at my dads who are standing at the front of the pack.
“So what do you say, Dads?” I ask the only two men standing between me and this totally unexpected, completely outrageous happy ending. “Is this enough to end your beef?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Damianos and me marry the very next night under a three-quarter moon. The ceremony takes place in the meadow behind the gatehouse, in front of his dragons and my wolves. Just like Other Damianos promised.
Saving for everyone turning into wolves and going on a hunt after the main ceremony, we have a traditional Viking wedding. Grandpa Fenris provides the vows and Grandma Chloe provides the soundtrack, crying loudly in the background. Alisha, the triplet’s mom, and her two sisters, Tu and Janelle, also cry, but not nearly as loudly as Grandma.
I think we’re all just glad the long cold war is over.
“It’s funny because this is what marriage used to be all about,” my anthropologist cousin Koko tells me afterward as we watch my dads, Grandpa Fenris, and Myrna dance a Viking reel with Xenon and Damianos.
“Turning enemies into allies and healing wounds. It was only in the 18th century that certain societies started making it about love. But you and Damianos…your marriage is about both.”
She’s right. There’s never been a love like mine and Damianos before, yet our wedding feels like the most ancient of solutions. A practical healing for all wounds.
And the stars seem to be aligned for our impromptu wedding date. Family members I haven’t seen in ages, like Great Aunt Wilma, Aunt Tu’s husband, Grady, and Aunt Janelle’s husband, Mag, all drone in at a moment’s notice. As do dragons from all over the world. Even Thalia and Agda showed up with a few of the Lukos wolves…and the dress I wore to the coronation.
“Did you really think my grandma was going to miss this?” Thalia asked with a laugh, as she and the little old Greek she-wolf stepped off the dragon king’s private drone.
“Also, I never got to see you wear this strange dress of yours at your wedding, Queen Drákon,” Agda clucked, pinching my cheek.
I get so many compliments on the dress at the reception. Even Aunt Tu, who is, of course, wearing her IDGAF tracksuit, is impressed. “Dark Wolf MC on top, Viking on the bottom. You’re going to have to tell me where to get one of these dresses—wait is that Joey’s and Lauren’s daughter, Little Dy?”
Aunt Tu just about loses her mind when she finds out Max’s fiancée, Dyana, is the daughter of the most popular couple from Love, Essex, one of her favorite British reality shows from back in the day.
“But I guess this means you and Brandon are never going to ship though,” she laments in a classic case of Aunt Tu saying what she wants and not caring who it offends.
“No, ‘fraid not,” Dyana answers with a toothy smile. “But I’m more than happy to make a life with my Maxie.”
Yeah, I bet. If you ever wondered if reparations work, let’s just say Max was able to forgive Damianos a whole lot on behalf of himself and his paternal line after my dragon offered him a nine-figure Executive Assistant job and the guarantee that he’d never enthrall another member of the Kreft family again.
The wedding is beautiful, and the reception is a huge success for more reasons than one.
After some pretty graphic threats from Damianos about what would happen should his small drakki cousins be mistreated in any way, dragons and wolves alike play with our family’s first hybrid species kids in whatever form they choose to take.
Koko and Amaru, the dragon I’m still thinking might be a former Incan king, have been talking for hours on the couch in the living room. And her older sister, Sarah—the same cousin who’d bitterly warned me about how hard it would be to meet guys on my level if I didn’t lock one down before I took my throne—has like a line of dragons, waiting to talk to her. Hwedo is fuming. But I have a feeling he’ll be Sarah’s pick by the time this is all done.
She might be flirting with other dragons, but she keeps on glancing over at Hwedo to make sure he’s watching.
At one point during the reception, Rafes and Damianos disappear into a room at the back of the house. They’re there for so long, I go looking for them, afraid they’ve gotten into another fight. It’s the exact opposite.
When I open the door, I find the two mortal enemies shaking hands on a deal that will end all god speaking of North American wolves. It also gives dragons the same protections wolves receive under the North American Lupus Pact with the human governments of Canada, Mexico, and the USA. And to think, they’d never actually met before the day Rafes planned to give a shoot to kill order. Now they seemed like best friends.
“Cool!” I say after they break down the deal. “Maybe we can work on something similar with the European Federation.”
Rafes frowns at me.
“What? You don’t like the idea?” I ask him, bracing for another one of our fights.
“No, I’m just trying to get over the surreal feeling of actually agreeing with you for the very first time ever,” he answers. “Seriously, I’m dizzy. I think I’m about to faint.”
Unamused face emoji. Rafes doesn’t faint.
Instead, he, Damianos, and me end up dancing, drinking, laughing, and catching up with all the other wedding guests for hours and hours.
It’s one of those nights that refuses to stop until the morning comes. The kids never get tucked in they just fall out on the floor in a pup heap. Three of which have wings. The adults don’t fare much better, most of them ending up nodding off where they sit, instead of formally ending their conversation with long-lost, long-unseen, and newly-discovered acquaintances.
As rays of morning sun flow in through the window, I watch Damianos lay blanket
s on top of Grandpa Fenris and Grandma Chloe who are sleeping leaned up against each other on the never-so-appropriately dubbed loveseat. Wolves and dragons have higher body temperatures. None of us really need blankets. But they are one of those creature-comforts both of our species appreciate, like herbal teas and warm meals. But my dragon king’s care of my long-lost grandparents goes even further than that. I can sense over our mate bond that Damianos considers the two older people his responsibility now that he’s brought them back from the past.
He’s taking care of them, I realize. Satisfying a need to care for an elder that he’ll never have again with his own father.
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?”
Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet Book 2): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 2 Page 21