Or at least that’s what his gut told him.
“That’s right,” she whispered, frowning as she focused on only a portion of what he had said. “Davyn wasn’t related to the twins, was he? Unlike Håkon, he wasn’t actually blood related to his enemies?”
“No,” he replied. “You’re starting to remember what Hel told you which means she is sensing your essence...she will be here soon.”
“That’s how I know everything worked out with Shea and Davyn, isn’t it?” she said. “Because Hel told me then I forgot.”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “She has a way of hazing a person’s memory when it suits her.”
Which was half the problem to begin with.
“We should go,” he pressed, well aware if he scooped her up this time he would have Leviathan to contend with, and they didn’t have time for that. “Please, Kenzie.” Then, because he knew by the hesitant look on her face it was the only way, he relented to her request. “Leviathan can come.”
In truth, taking into consideration their supposed friendship, it was probably for the best.
It might create yet another wall between Eirik and Kenzie.
Even as he thought it his inner dragon growled but he ignored it, repressing all emotion. It was crucial he remained detached and in control.
Kenzie’s pupils flared as though she sensed his inner turmoil. Yet the look in her eyes wasn’t so much distrust as...pity? “Okay.” She nodded. “As long as Leviathan can come.” Her eyes flickered between them. “Besides, I’ve got a funny feeling that you two have some unresolved issues that need to be addressed.”
Eirik nodded once before narrowing his eyes on Leviathan. “If you come, you must break off all telepathic communication with your tribe. The less our enemy knows about the Ancients, the better.”
Leviathan’s untrusting eyes lingered on Eirik’s a moment before they went to Kenzie’s and softened. “Do you wish the same, Kenzie?”
“It’s not up to me, sweetie.” She sounded so familiar with Leviathan that Eirik wanted to end his long lost friend right then and there. “You do what you’re comfortable with.”
“I am comfortable with you,” Leviathan replied. “So I will be comfortable with this.”
Though tempted to frown at them, Eirik kept his expression blank and wondered yet again how their friendship had evolved so quickly. He knew the sort of dragon Leviathan was. How ruthless and superior he could be. Especially when it came to women. So this made no sense.
“I am not the dragon you remember,” Leviathan growled into his mind, following his thoughts because he had long ago allowed him to. “But then how would you know that when you rarely come to Midgard? Rarer yet, to the Ancient’s Lair?”
“You say you’re not the dragon I remember,” Eirik rebuffed. “Yet mere days ago you broke your tribe’s laws and confronted my cousin, eager to take his destined mate as your own!”
“In his defense,” Kenzie said into their minds, following their telepathic conversation alarmingly fast in human form. “Shea’s a Cupid, so she puts off a certain draw that drives male dragons crazy.”
“It did not drive me crazy,” Eirik countered, enjoying the sound of her internal voice as much as her dragon’s. Comforted by it, actually.
“That makes you damn rare,” Kenzie replied aloud. “Because Shea is a dragon magnet.” She shrugged. “It’s just how she’s wired.”
Eirik tended to disagree. He hadn’t been attracted to Shea at all. He preferred a more grounded dragon. One who didn’t need to be the center of attention.
“Hey,” Kenzie exclaimed, frowning at him. “You want me to play nice with you? Then be careful how you think of my sisters.”
The moment she said it, she scowled and shook her head, realizing she had just caught his thoughts. “Damn.”
Damn was right. But not all that surprising considering how he had given in to holding her. Now their dragons were connecting which meant she was drawing closer to his secrets. Closer to truths he wasn’t nearly ready to share.
But he would have to in the end if everything happened as foretold.
He would have to give her up before he had a chance to love her.
“Come.” He gestured that they follow him before he headed down another tunnel, retrieved a wall torch and lit it. While he preferred the dark, he felt better putting Kenzie and Leviathan in the light, and he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps, because deep down he knew she preferred the dark too, so she wouldn’t be at her best with the Ancient. Which was a direct contradiction to what he knew he should want.
“Technically speaking, firelight doesn’t do jack to me,” she murmured into his mind. “Just sunlight...and Helheim apparently.”
He scowled and hoped the things he needed to keep from her remained hidden. He prayed that the long years he had distanced himself from others helped him through this. That his finely honed ability to keep himself detached and therefore others out of his mind held up.
Though Leviathan and Kenzie talked quietly as they traveled through the winding tunnel, he caught their every word. More than that, he caught their comradery. The easy manner in which they conversed. How comfortable they were with one another. And he didn’t understand it. Not of the Ancient anyway. He was a confrontational alpha who bedded every woman he could, dragon and human alike. Yet here he was getting along civilly with a twenty-first century female without wanting to take her. It made no sense.
Unless Leviathan really had changed.
“This way,” Eirik said, still scowling to himself as he glanced back to see the two walking close. Too close.
He ducked through a narrow archway into an even narrower tunnel until they reached one of only two places he had ever really considered home.
“Wow,” Kenzie whispered as she and Leviathan joined him in a circular cave with a towering cathedral ceiling. Though the temperature wasn’t all that cold snow fell from a small hole far above down onto a singular mighty pine.
“How beautiful,” she said softly, staring up before her eyes swept around the cave. “It feels...enchanted here.”
“Because it is,” Leviathan said, his eyes going from the tree to Eirik. “It has been a long time...”
Eirik said nothing to that because truly, what was there to say? He had left this place behind long ago because there was nothing here for him anymore. His last real friendship on Midgard had ended.
“That being Leviathan,” Kenzie murmured. Her eyes drifted from Eirik to Leviathan as she caught too much too fast. “Because you shunned him.”
“Because I misunderstood.” Leviathan’s steady gaze went from the tree to Eirik. “Because my dragon was young.”
“Yet you’re an Ancient,” she stated, likely aware that Ancients aged differently than Sigdir dragons.
“I am the first born son of an Ancient,” Leviathan clarified, which meant he aged somewhat faster. At least until now. Adulthood. Henceforth, he would age slower than those outside his tribe.
“Eirik and I were boys together,” Leviathan continued. “Until I shunned him because I thought he had turned on me.”
Eirik kept his eyes on the tree rather than his former friend. While he’d forgiven Leviathan long ago for falling victim to his curse like everyone else, he remained miffed at him for being close with Kenzie despite it being a good thing. A needed thing.
“Did you turn on him, Eirik?” Kenzie asked, as her green eyes met his. Curious eyes that sparked a memory just out of reach. What was that? For a flicker of a moment, he felt as though those very eyes had met his before in question. That he had stared into their emerald depths and longed to say what she wanted to hear.
“Though it took longer than everyone else, Leviathan eventually started to sicken around me,” he said. “His young dragon did not understand his reaction despite his human half being forewarned. So we battled...then I left.”
“To Helheim,” she murmured. “To Hel.”
“She was all I had left,” he said softly.
/> “She was, but not anymore,” Leviathan said just as softly, far more changed than he anticipated as his eyes met Eirik’s. “Because I am no longer sick around you, old friend.”
Chapter Five
KENZIE SAT ON a rock next to the mighty snow covered pine and took a hearty swig from the skin of mead Eirik had handed her. It was strong, but that was okay. She needed it. Because though fairly certain she hid it well, she was still recovering from the encounter between her and Eirik’s dragons.
It had been one of the most powerful and touching experiences of her life, and she was still trying to process it. She had been close to male dragons before but not like that. Not immersed in so much emotion. So much genuine affection.
So much well-disguised need for closeness.
Yet it didn’t last long. She felt his internal withdrawal like a punch to the gut the second he pulled away from her. The sensation was strong, affecting her not just emotionally but physically before she shifted back. And while she would like to say he was deeply disturbed mentally, because it certainly felt like that, she realized he wasn’t.
Not to the common way of thinking anyway.
No, based on Leviathan and Eirik’s current conversation, she was getting an even better idea of what Eirik’s life had been like. Bit by bit, family member by family member, he’d had to take a step back and put distance between them. His mother, father, brother, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, all of them. It didn’t matter that his mother and sister were medium’s like him, they weren’t as intricately connected to Helheim.
Leviathan was not only the last to suffer sickness around Eirik, but he had been his closest friend. Like a brother by the sounds of it. Yet sadly, as they eventually discovered, with Ancients and their offspring, the sort of sickening effect Eirik had on them was not good. Ancients tended to act more instinctually than their Sigdir descendants. More primal. So, though Leviathan knew what might happen, his dragon responded in anger when Eirik made it ill.
Since then it had all gone downhill.
But now they were talking, albeit stunted.
They stood side by side with their arms crossed over their chests, scowling madly as they looked anywhere but at each other. But at least they were talking. Exchanging actual words rather than clawing and biting at one another.
“I warned you my dragon might respond as it did back then,” Leviathan argued. “So how can you fault me?”
Like Eirik, Leviathan was around six foot eight with broad shoulders and a killer body but like most Ancients and their offspring he had a far wilder look about him. His long black hair had several skinny braids weaved into it, and he had not only enough tats to rival Eirik but numerous piercings. Several slashes cut through his left eyebrow signifying his rank within the tribe.
“I do not fault you,” Eirik replied to Leviathan’s question. “Not anymore.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.” His eyes cut to Leviathan’s. “We were fifteen winters old. I thought you would be strong enough.”
“Nobody was strong enough under the weight of Helheim,” Leviathan started before he ground his jaw, and shook his head. “You were very hard to be around, friend. The affect you had on us Ancients...on me, was profound. I could not see reason once it began. I could not see all the conversations we’d had about it. And I couldn’t see your warnings anymore, only sickness, then fear, then rage because you had changed.” A vein ticked in his neck as his eyes stayed with Eirik’s. “And when you did, not even your closest friend could see you as you truly were anymore.”
As they continued talking, she considered Leviathan. Her first experience with the tribal dragon wasn’t what he would have preferred, but it had sparked an instant friendship. After all, his pride had been ripped away from the start, and that was no small thing for an arch-alpha as they called him. Apparently, that meant he was highest on the rung when it came to first generation Ancients.
“Did you really?” Eirik murmured, their conversation having progressed as she pondered. A discussion that bespoke how embarrassed for his fellow dragon he was as he glanced at Kenzie then arched a brow at Leviathan. “You caught your talon between rocks when the tide was coming in?” He seemed truly baffled. “How? That is not a mistake even a dragon shifting as a child would make.”
“Because he was trying to impress the wrong girl at the wrong time,” she spoke up, winking at Leviathan. “Thankfully, there weren’t any other dragons around to witness it.”
Eirik continued contemplating Leviathan with a baffled expression before a small grin crawled onto his face. “Tell me you were not trying to impress her with one of your sea stunts.”
“My dragon usually excels in the sea,” Leviathan grumbled. “But the current was stronger than I anticipated.” He glanced at Kenzie. “Her beauty distracted me from good judgment.” He nodded. “But I would do it again if it meant knowing her better.”
Kenzie nodded graciously. “Thank you.” Then she set things straight and backed up Eirik’s speculations. “He was showing off and got his foot caught between some huge boulders. No biggie.”
“She saved me,” Leviathan revealed. “I was caught under them at such an angle I could not free myself, and the water’s current was so strong it was skewing my magic. So she dove underwater, and unjammed my foot from the other side before I drowned.” His fond eyes remained with hers before he looked at Eirik again. “Then she spent the eve soothing my wounded pride.”
Though a small smile remained on Eirik’s face, the mirth had left his eyes, and she knew why. He wasn’t sure what Leviathan had meant when he said she spent the evening soothing his wounded pride. Had they lain together even though she denied it? And though she should probably let him keep wondering she found herself about to share the numerous times she had saved animals back home. How it was second nature. But it seemed Leviathan was on the same page when he spoke before she had a chance to.
“She spent the eve telling me of other,” his tone sounded vaguely disgusted, “animals she had saved over the years.” He sighed. “Then she sent me on my way.” His eyes slid to hers before returning to Eirik’s. “Not to say I wish she hadn’t...hope she does not in the future.”
As quickly as Leviathan had brought a twinkle to Eirik’s eyes, he dashed it for good with that final statement and the subject changed.
“So you do not feel ill around me anymore,” Eirik murmured as his eyes went between them. “Neither of you.”
She shook her head, not sure what to make of that turn of events other than it was a good thing.
“Could it be because you found your supposed mate?” Leviathan asked, evidently torn between wanting her for himself and Eirik having her. “Because did it not start with Kenzie?”
“It did,” Eirik said softly, his words at odds with the sudden flare of his pupils when his eyes returned to the Ancient. “There are many obstacles between us becoming mates though. Things I will have to consider as we continue on.”
Now it was her turn to cross her arms over her chest as she contemplated him. “One minute you tell us we are definitely mates, now it sounds like you’re having doubts.”
“No doubts just obstacles.” Eirik’s eyes returned to the tree as though he didn’t trust himself to look at her. “Growing closer draws the enemy and those that...are also a part of this.”
“You mean like Hel and Leviathan,” Kenzie stated, finding his behavior more curious by the moment. “I don’t think they’re really obstacles as long as we agree to an open ‘mating’ arrangement.”
Surprise flickered in Leviathan’s eyes as he looked at Eirik. “You would share Kenzie then? With me?”
Though Eirik’s jaw tightened and his body tensed she was fairly shocked when he nodded. It was more than she expected from him. Based on Leviathan’s expression, he felt the same.
“Somehow I don’t believe you will do that, friend,” Leviathan said softly, still eying Eirik before his gaze went to her. “But if you are allowing her
freedom, I will take her.”
“Take me?” Kenzie snorted. “I’d like to see you try buddy.”
Truth be told, the premise worked for her at the moment not so much because she intended to hop in the sack with Leviathan right away, but because she liked to see Eirik’s reaction to the idea.
A reaction that made no sense if he was truly in love with Hel.
Which brought her back to square one.
“So you’re hiding me from your girlfriend so we can successfully mate and defeat the enemy,” she said, truly curious and more than a little incredulous. “Then she welcomes you back with open arms?”
“She will welcome me back because what you and I create together will help save not just Midgard but Helheim,” he revealed.
“What we create together,” she murmured, trying to focus on the power of mating but instead thinking about what it would actually take to mate. Moments later, much to her mortification, a telling ache blossomed between her thighs at the thought of it.
Not just thought but downright envisioned.
Vivid images of them together flashed in her mind. Erotic, mouth-watering images.
“Jesus,” she muttered trying to stop the visualizations as both men inhaled and tensed.
“Sorry,” she said through clenched teeth, pissed off that she couldn’t control her arousal because, like all females, her inner beast put off a scent that spoke directly to male dragons.
“Stop,” Eirik growled, bringing his dagger to Leviathan’s throat in the blink of an eye when the Ancient started in her direction. “Take another step, and our long lost friendship will end along with your life.”
Kenzie swallowed hard, unfamiliar with the particular look in the Ancient’s eyes. Raging fire and blatant lust. Far more than she had seen in his eyes when he pursued Shea which said something.
A moment later, she understood why.
“She is in heat,” Leviathan ground out, visibly trembling.
Viking's Ransom (Viking Ancestors: Rise of the Dragon, #4) Page 4