compared to actually seeing it with your own eyes. Jeremy’s hands moved in quick sweeping motions, and he moved back and forth and side to side as if doing some kind of weird dance steps, but he did them with such confidence and grace that I sat back in utter awe of him. Slowly the Gate appeared before us, much like I’d seen in my visions, it looked as if a piece of sky had been ripped into the side of the forest. Different shades of purple and blue with flecks of night shown in a pulsating, changing state. I gasped at its beauty, unable to put into words the true nature of what I was seeing.
Jeremy stepped aside and Khol tugged me forward, and I pulled Bryn with me. I had an errant thought about why the Queen would require us to make this kind of travel when Khol couldn’t open the Gate. In fact, as far as I knew, no dragon could travel the way we were about to, so how could it be tradition? Fear spiked through me. What if we were making a huge mistake? But I had no time to follow my thought thread any farther before I found myself stepping into the Gate and a feeling of ice raced along my skin. I inhaled the cold crisp air sharply and tried to focus my eyes on what I was seeing . . . or rather not seeing. The colors from the outside of the Gate had given way to complete and utter darkness. If not for still being able to feel Khol and Bryn’s hands clutched in each of mine, I would have panicked.
“Keep going,” Khol’s voice sounded in my head. “Let her guide us to where we need to be.”
So I did the only thing I could think of to do . . . I focused my thoughts on the image of the dragon Queen and began repeating her name in my head over and over again.
The last thing I remembered was . . . “Damn it!” I sat up with a start. “Why do I keep passing out, or getting knocked out or whatever? I swear I’ve spent more time unconscious in the last year than not!”
“Where are we?” I heard Bryn’s groggy voice rumble in response to my rant.
I blinked the fuzz from my eyes and focused in on Bryn’s prone figure lying next to me in an unfamiliar bed. I won’t lie . . . It kind of made me feel slightly better to know that I wasn’t the only one who’d been knocked out this round. “We’re in the Smokey Mountains,” Khol said, sounding not at all like he’d lost the battle with consciousness anytime recently, much to my dismay.
I turned toward his voice and saw that his massive back was angled toward us as he stared out a ginormous window that took up almost the whole wall of the room we were in. “How do you know?” I asked.
“I, as I’m sure you’ve already figured out, did not succumb to the magic inside the Gates and remained awake where as the two of you didn’t.”
I glared at his back, which seemed to mock me, I swear, or maybe that was just Khol’s tone. “How long have we been out?” I asked choosing to ignore my feelings of annoyance.
“Just a few hours.” He finally turned so that I could see his face and he regarded me as if his mind was still partially somewhere else. I was just about to ask him if he’d seen the Queen or knew where we needed to go when he dipped down on one knee beside the bed and offered me a letter. “This is for you.”
I suspiciously regarded the letter resting in his outstretched palm for a moment before taking it. The plain white envelope with my entire name printed on it in elegant script was kind of giving me the creeps for some reason. After a few more seconds of staring at it, I finally decided I was being ridiculous and I just needed to open it. With short jerky motions I tore into the envelope to produce a single piece of white paper about the size of an index card. In the same handwriting as was found on the front of the envelope were two lines of text . . .
“What does it say?” Khol asked. Like he couldn’t just pull it out of my mind somehow, or at least get the gist of it. He was so patronizing sometimes.
I responded while still staring at the note. “Where did you get this?”
“So, I’m guessing you saved her . . . again.” Bryn’s irritated voice caused me to whip around just in time to see him pull himself out of bed and stagger a bit before righting himself.
“I’m stronger than you are . . . older,” Khol stated with irritation of his own. And I guess I couldn’t really blame him, we’d been down this road one too many times lately.
Bryn’s face darkened as he gazed at me. “Maybe we should skip this whole waiting to see who the father is and you should just go ahead and mate with him.” He punched the wall in frustration. “Who was I kidding, anyways? He’d keep the both of you safer even if it is mine.”
“Bryn—” I started, but he was already stalking toward the door. His moodiness and childishness directed at Khol had gone way beyond ridiculous. I was tired of having to worry about how he would react to everything. Anger short-circuited my brain and I yelled at him without thinking. “Fine, just walk away! If you were half as good at the dragon stuff as you are at doing that then you’d be the most powerful dragon of all time!” Bryn stopped where he was without turning toward me and I could see that every muscle in his body had gone rigid. I should have stopped there, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. “I hope it’s not yours!” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished that I could stuff them back in somehow. I didn’t mean it; in fact, I wanted nothing more than for Bryn to be the father of my child. Having a child with Khol and therefore being mated to him would seem just too wrong for words. No matter how upset at Bryn I got, I knew he was truly the only one for me. He was my home, and I wanted my baby to belong there too.
Bryn made some kind of indecipherable noise that didn’t even sound human before continuing on his way. I jumped to my feet to give him chase, but then Khol grabbed my arm, stopping me short. “Let him go.”
I tried frantically to free myself from Khol’s iron grip but to no avail. “You have no right to tell me what to do,” I snarled at him.
“Not me, it’s what the note told you to do.”
I dropped my tear filled eyes down to the tiny piece of white paper that I was still clutching in my hand and sucked in a shaky breath. “That’s not possible.” How the hell had someone known to leave a note for me about something that hadn’t even happened yet?
“You’re not thinking clearly. You of all people know how possible such a thing is . . . you being a Seer.” Khol dropped his voice to a low cajoling tone as if not to spook me.
“No. I won’t—” he started, already knowing what I was going to ask.
“Please.” I whispered as I let my tears finally spill down my cheeks, leaving salty trails in their wake. “Please go talk to him.”
Khol reached out to cup my face tenderly, even as he gritted his teeth in aggravation. “Your tears are my biggest weakness.” He said gruffly before he turned to seek out Bryn.
Satisfied in knowing that Khol would bring Bryn back to me, in a manner of speaking, I sunk back down on the bed and studied the note that had to be from the dragon Queen. The first part of
And what about the whole Bryn and Khol situation? By letting fate decide the outcome of who I would mate with, was I really being cruel to both of them? I was determined not to need either one of them, but I was kidding myself if I thought I wouldn’t
I sat on the bed and stared out the window until the sun dipped below the horizon and the stars crested the night sky. Where the hell were Bryn and Khol?
6
“Paige Joplin Stone, awake now . . . for we have much to talk about and a very short time to do it in.”
“Huh?” I mumbled as I reached up to groggily rub my eyes with the backs of my hands. Then realization hit me. “The Queen!” I blurted as I tumbled out of bed focusing in on her. But there was something not quite right. She stood before me, exactly as she had looked in my visions, except she seemed almost transparent.
“Be careful. You wouldn’t want to injure the little one growing inside of you,” she said with tenderness in her
