In the end, the romance writer who vowed never to write about slavery ended up loving this couple most of all. Family is one of the most important themes in my work and my life, and these two had their families taken away by two of the vilest circumstances in American history: slavery and the forced removal of Native tribes from the South. However, they eventually triumphed and managed to carve out a unique family all their own. I’ve never been so happy to see a couple achieve a happy ending as I was this one!
Seriously, I could go on forever about the magical experience of writing this novel, but I’ll just say I love Maggie and Joseph, and I’m so glad their descendant, Halle, got a happy ending with her gummi bear, Nago. I hope you loved these couples, too. If so, please do them the boon of leaving a review for their super special story on Amazon.
Meanwhile, I look forward to delivering KNUD: Her Big Bad Wolf, later this summer. Until then, here’s the story that kept Nago waiting a little longer than expected, HER DRAGON EVERLASTING, after the jump.
So much love,
Theodora Taylor
HER DRAGON EVERLASTING
I
Where am I? When am I? What the…?
1
Her eyes opened to a river of blood.
She propped herself up on one aching arm, blinking the world back into focus. Gaining perspective. Enough to finally realize the river was more of a rivulet, oozing its way across a patch of snow. But it was definitely blood.
Your blood, the side of her head informed her, throbbing and burning hot with pain. She reached up. Felt something wet seeping from what could only be a large gash across her left temple. When she brought her hand back down to investigate, her fingertips were damp and bright red. And… hypothesis confirmed.
She would have cursed, but her teeth chose that moment to begin chattering. Ironically, her searing head wound was the only heat she could feel. Aside from that, she was cold. Deeply cold. The coldest she had ever been despite growing up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Strange. Not only because she should be more or less impervious to the cold after a childhood spent as close to Canada as you could get in the lower forty-eight, but because of what she was. A shifter. A werewolf to be exact. And thanks to her unique body chemistry, temperatures above twenty degrees Fahrenheit had little to no effect on her.
Which meant wherever she was, it was way the hell below twenty degrees Fahrenheit. And a long way from where she’d started out this morning: just a few miles from the facility, in Arizona. During one of the hottest summers on record.
You shouldn’t be doing this…
Ola, it will be alright.
Fenny, it won’t be alright! If I’m here, it’s not even remotely alright!
“WARNING! WARNING!” An urgent electronic voice shrilled in her head, shoving the memory away, and yanking Fensa back into the frigid present. Another point of warmth appeared on the back of her neck where her bio-ware bleated, “WARNING! OFFLINE! MANUFACTURER WARNING!”
Fensa fell back into the snow, her arm collapsing, and her head exploding in pain as the microchip embedded in her brain stem screeched straight into her cerebrum. Then came a second sharp bite of agony as her cheek sliced across something. She jerked up, scanning the ground nearby. A rock…dark and nasty beneath a formerly white blanket of snow. Probably the very same rock that gave her the gash on her head, if the blood splattered, winter-themed Jackson Pollock painting surrounding it was any indicator.
Meanwhile, her bio-ware continued to bleat its dire warnings. “Your GoGen is currently out of the GoGen service area. You have sustained injuries that may include the following: moderate to severe concussion, mild to moderately sprained ankle, severe contusions, and approximately two minutes of unconsciousness. Your GoGen bio-ware is unable to connect to the server for a full analysis. Please report immediately to a medical service bot or facility staff to receive a comprehensive analysis.”
Fensa couldn’t agree more. She needed to find a doctor. Stop the bleeding. Warm up. Because, as her papa used to say, by the Fenrir wolf, it is cold!
Wandering around in sub-zero temperatures in nothing but a pair of black Lycra fitness shorts, and one of the five thin gray t-shirts issued to her by the facility was definitely not going to work for long out here. The ensemble was perfectly suited for her allotted twice-daily walks around the facility grounds in the often blistering Arizona heat. But this was not a blistering Arizona day, and the facility was nowhere in sight. Fensa felt sure if she didn’t solve the clothing situation soon, she’d probably lose a few toes and fingers to frostbite, like you hear about in those human “lost in the frozen wilderness” movies. So after she finally managed to pull herself up from the permafrost, her very next priority would be to track down a decent change of clothes. And then, like, full body hug a space heater.
Fensa tried to sit up—but nearly blacked out again from the effort. A sharp, piercing pain stabbed through her head, and her stomach lurched, threatening to expel the oatmeal she’d been issued earlier that day for breakfast.
She stopped, waiting for her body to catch up with her will as she took in the scene in front of her. A mountain. She was on a snow-covered mountain—which made sense. Nearly all time gates were located in “kingdoms,” small mountain towns or villages with a local wolf population to monitor them, and perhaps more importantly, keep the gates completely hidden from humans.
The last thing she remembered was standing on a mountain… one made of red sandstone that probably hadn’t seen snow in over a millennium. But now she was on another mountain. Apparently in the middle of a Game of Thrones level winter.
Brace yourself, girl, winter is already freaking here.
Fensa dragged herself forward through the snow, scraping her pain-wracked body over the cold, unforgiving ground until she reached an overhang. She propped herself up just high enough to peer down the mountain’s steep slopes and was greeted by a seemingly endless expanse of…well, white. A valley of snow, snow, and nothing but snow as far as the eye could see. No, not just snow. Some of it seemed far too smooth, too solid. To her untrained eyes, it resembled a vast plane of ice. Like those massive ice sheets Greenland used to have before they all melted. And…there was something else, farther off in the distance.
Fensa narrowed her eyes to squint at a collection of…tents? Igloos? A combination of both, maybe? Round, brownish dwellings with tiny people gathered in small clusters in front of them. They seemed to be staring up her, just as she was staring down at them.
A kingdom village, she suspected. Based on the relative proximity of the gate she’d just come through. But that made her stomach lurch again, this time for a very different reason.
A kingdom village made up of circular huts rather than modern structures? This wasn’t good. Not at all. Fensa was forced to change her line of questioning. Now she was way less concerned with where she was and way more concerned with when she was.
Damn time gate…
What are you going to do when you get there, Fenny? You know the gate won’t bring Papa back. Nothing’s going to bring him back. He’s gone! Let’s go back, Fenny. Please!
Fensa glanced around for her twin sister, Ola, but there was no sign of her. She was no longer begging Fensa to return to the facility before it was too late.
Where was Ola? One more mystery to be solved. A steady trickle of blood dripped from her head down the side of her face. Like blood-tinged sweat produced from the sheer effort she was putting into trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Aunt Alisha’s story about how she’d “damn near” broke her arm when she’d gone through the Viking time gate didn’t seem quite as funny as it had when she’d told it at the last Thanksgiving dinner Fensa had been allowed to attend.
She had to get up. Find help. Find Ola…and given the lack of a medbot, find bandages for her head. She was pretty sure bandages were what people used to stop the bleeding back in the days before medbots. Pretty sure…
Fensa diverted al
l her mental and physical efforts towards pushing herself up to a stand, despite her throbbing head, lurching stomach, and—what had the GoGen chip said? —severe contusions. Oh yeah, she thought on a wince when she finally made it to her feet, the GoGen called that one right. She felt like she’d been hit by a Zamboni, then rolled back and forth over rocks for extra kicks and giggles.
Or spit through a time tunnel into an eff-ton of icy tundra.
One of those...
Shift! her wolf howled at her, wanting to escape its human’s pain. For a reason shifter scientists still couldn’t quite explain, changing into wolf form healed most non-mortal injuries.
Believe me…I would if I could, Fensa answered. But that option isn’t available to me nowadays.
The facility had put Fensa on the heat control shot, the shifter equivalent of human birth control, less than twenty-four hours after she’d been escorted through its doors. And much like how human women used to gain weight while taking birth control (the result of their bodies being tricked into believing they were pregnant), Fensa could no longer shift into her wolf form at will because her body was pretty damn sure it was pregnant, and pregnant she-wolves didn’t shift. Nature’s way of protecting the future mother (and child) from their inner beasts during gestation.
Now, normally this no-shifting thing wasn’t a big deal if you were stuck in a facility, and didn’t want to risk adding more years to your sentence by wolfing out every time a Ph.D. doctor-splained why you had to let your beloved twin sister go. But heat control had its drawbacks when you were trying not to lose your extremities to frost bite.
And to think just a few hours ago, Fensa had been rebelling against her miserable existence at the facility. Ha! It turned out the joke was on her because this cold wasteland was giving that place a huge run for its money. She’d never been so miserable in her life. Not even that summer before she was due to head to college when Papa shipped her off to her Uncle Grady and Aunt Tu’s Oklahoma summer camp for teen wolves. She’d not only been forced to give up her video games for a whole two weeks, but she ended up getting sent to the facility halfway through her stay. Fensa had thought the worst moment of her life was when she walked through the facility doors with her disappointed parents on one side, and Aunt Tu on the other. But no, the bone-shattering cold of this place was way worse than that, for su—
Fensa stopped, freezing in place…and not because of the cold. A sudden upshift in the wind’s direction carried a new scent to her nose, something other than blood and snow. She was being watched. She could smell them behind a nearby pile of large rocks. Male shifters. At least three or four. Lying in wait.
Fensa cursed inwardly, wishing she’d paid more attention to Uncle Grady’s instructions in those hand-to-hand combat classes he’d insisted she take during that failed summer camp experience.
“Hi!” she called out, striving to keep her voice light as if she’d just happened by on a carefree stroll…through the tundra. In her fitness shorts and facility t-shirt. As you do.
“I’m Fensa Greenwolf, Princess of Michigan, and cousin to President Nightwolf. I, uh…I come in peace.”
Typically, Fensa went out of her way to avoid name dropping her lineage. Royal ties only brought shifters the kind of attention they didn’t need or want at the facility. Ask her cousin Knud about that. It had been almost daily fights for him until he finally left in a body bag.
But under the current circumstances, Fensa decided to quickly reverse her “keep yourself to yourself” policy of the last five years. If name dropping convinced whoever waited for her behind those rocks to stand down, she was more than happy to give them a long list of her royal connections.
And maybe it worked because four figures slowly rose from behind the rocks. They all wore similar outfits: smock-like garments made up of brown animal hide, with fur-lined hoods. The wind shifted again, and she caught an unfamiliar scent along with their wolf pheromones. The hides they wore smelled like…elephant? But somehow different. Which once more begged the question, where the hell was she???
And when? her overwrought brain added. Because her current problems extended way beyond head wounds and extreme cold if she, like her Grandma Chloe, had landed in the Viking Era.
But no, these guys weren’t Vikings. They were relatively squat and small in stature, somewhere in the region of four-foot-four. Which was odd because most male shifters Fensa knew stood above six feet or so. These guys were like the mini-versions of just about every male shifter she’d ever encountered. They had weathered faces, and thin, dark almond shaped eyes, which reminded Fensa of her great-uncle-in-law, the dearly departed Inuit Alpha King of Alaska.
And speaking of…
“The former King of Alaska was my great-uncle. In fact, his granddaughter, Koko, is my cousin...and close friend. We were even making plans to move in together next school year...”
Given the snow and the Inuit-like features of these shifters, Fensa was beginning to wonder if maybe she’d arrived somewhere in present day Alaska, since a few of the Alaska wolf tribes were, as her Aunt Tu once put it, ”keepin’ it traditional on three-fucking-hundred.” They not only continued to dress and live like their ancestors, but they also had special permission to catch one whale per year to feed their people and provide villagers with blubber for their oil lamps. Though that still wouldn’t explain the strange elephant smell…
Please God, let this place be part of some remote village in Alaska, Fensa prayed. With a zoo…please…
But then the four shifters raised their right arms. And Fensa immediately lost hope.
Each male held a weapon. Not guns, knives, or bows and arrows. Because any of those would have been acceptable, if equally unwelcome. Instead, these weapons consisted of long, slender sticks that ended in very sharp looking, elongated off-white triangles. Fensa’s gaze narrowed and then widened in surprise. Bone. The triangles were made of animal bone. Expertly carved and sharpened to jagged but deadly points, then attached with thin strips of hide to tree branches stripped bare of their bark to reveal the pale, smooth wood beneath.
Spears.
These people were aiming spears at her. Spears made of wood and bone.
While there was the slightest chance she’d stumbled upon some sort of off-the-grid, traditional Inuit hunting group, Fensa knew even the most hardcore Inuit preferred modern weaponry like harpoon guns and rifles. And given the lack of any modern trappings on these shifters…Fensa figured now was as good a time as any to go into full-on panic mode.
Oh, Fenrir Wolf! Oh, God!
Fensa prayed to both her mother and father’s gods as the four male shifters began to advance on her with their spears raised high.
2
“You shouldn’t be doing this!”
Fensa kept walking. Doggedly moving forward. Trying to ignore the one person she never could: Ola, her twin sister. But her hiking boots were becoming heavier and heavier. Filling with sand, thanks to their lack of shoestrings. The sun beat down on her, relentless and unmerciful. Punishing her. Cursing her stupidity with its heat.
The only thing worse than the sun… effing Ola.
Her sister matched her stride for stride. The desert trek was super easy for her. She wasn’t even winded. Which was too bad, because she was using her every effortless breath to second guess Fensa.
“Girl, you are going to DIE out here!”
Fensa didn’t answer. Just kept moving forward.
“You’re going to get caught, and all those plans you made with Koko to move in with her and finally start college? Poof! Gone like a damn magic show—right before they send you someplace even worse. Why did you bring me back here? You were almost free!” Ola’s voice, usually so Detroit cool, grew more frantic by the minute.
Fensa couldn’t reply for all the sandpaper in her throat. She should have brought water with her. But she’d honestly thought she could make it, since the North American time gate was only about four or five miles away from the facility. But as it
turned out, four or five miles was a damn long way to trek in sand-filled hiking boots, and nothing to protect her from the vicious sun but a thin gray t-shirt, and a pair of flimsy shorts.
She should have left at night instead of the middle of the day when the sun was at its highest and strongest. But it wasn’t like she’d had much choice. No…Fensa had seen an opportunity, and she’d taken it.
“You’re going to break Mama’s heart with this, Fenny! Again. Doesn’t she deserve some peace after the divorce and Papa’s funeral?”
Fensa hated that she and Ola were divided on this. Before Papa’s death, her twin had been her most loyal supporter, defending even her craziest actions. But not today, which admittedly gave Fensa pause.
But then, like a wish granted, the bottom of the mountain range appeared. Red and stubby and dotted below with ancient sandstone cave dwellings cobbled together by a shifter tribe from long ago. Fensa glanced farther up the mountain to the natural caves above. They were scattered across the mountainside like moles on an otherwise dusty red face.
She couldn’t see the time gate at all. But then no one could actually see the gate. However, her wolf could sense it. And it was her wolf that propelled her forward, quickening Fensa’s previously leaden steps with the need to get to the portal on the red mountain’s highest, sun-facing steppe.
“What are you going to do when you get there, Fenny?” Ola demanded, striding right beside her on the mountain path.
Look at it. She only wanted to look at it. The gate had been calling to her with its siren song ever since her parents and Aunt Tu dropped her off at the facility four years ago.
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 17