Chapter Twelve
IT TOOK EVERYTHINGin Tor not to bring Raven against the nearest wall and take her. To rip away her clothes and show her just how good a dragon could make her feel. How goodhecould make her feel.
If the damn wizard wanted to watch, even better.
He had never been so aroused as he was when he inhaled the scent of her soft, sweet skin. Never wanted to lick a woman’s neck as much as he did hers, be damned the latest memory that manifested in front of them. He wanted to set it all aside and have Raven to himself. Find their truth later so he could eat her alive in the best way possible right now.
“And pretty soon I will what, Tor?”young Raven asked, drawing his attention to the memory if for no other reason than it was her talking. It didn’t matter her age or form, whether she was solid or ethereal, it was her.Raven.
And that made him pay attention.
Made him care.
“Pretty soon, you will leave, Raven,” his younger self grumbled. They were in dragon form again and slightly older now. He slumped against a tree and tossed a pebble haphazardly between his wingtips. “You always do.” He huffed and sighed. “Not that you’ve ever really been here, to begin with.”
“How is this here?” Raven murmured.
Though she moved away from him, he knew it hadn’t been easy. She was in heat, and her dragon wanted his. Craved it like he craved her. And it was a red-hot sensation. An addictive one that made it impossible for him to leave things alone. To have her far from his side.
So, against his better judgment, he had stomped back up the waterfall path earlier to get her. Then followed her back down the path just as swiftly. Nothing had made his blood boil more than seeing her and Cian holding hands. Seeing the wizard touch her face. Cup her cheek. Show such tender affection to a woman who wasn’t his. It had taken everything in him not to cut the Irishman down where he stood. Everything not to shift and tear his head from his torso.
“How is our Vanaheim grove here in a deep mountain cave?” Raven continued, drawing him back to the memory. “There shouldn’t be any exit here, should there?”
“No,” Vicar replied. His cousin crossed his arms over his chest and considered the grove beyond the cave. It looked just as it had before. A host of ancient trees steeped in glittering dark mist. “Despite going down a path beside the waterfall, we’re still making our way up. Have been for some time.” He shook his head. “We’re far above ground level now, so this shouldn’t exist.”
“Yet it does,” Tor murmured, sensing something in it. An illusion. He took Raven’s hand and pulled her after him, eager to keep her with him yet at the same time desperate to be closer to her younger self. To never let her go.
“How did you know?” Trinity asked when he led Raven into the Vanaheim grove. It wasn’t at ground level but on a cliff high above the ground. Like a private haven of memories they had accrued over the years. A luscious island made of everything best about him and Raven caught in the middle of nowhere. Caught where they could always find each other.
“Because it follows us everywhere,” Raven whispered, echoing his thoughts. “Where the first grove was partly created by Níðhöggr and something else, this grove is entirely created by that something else.”
“Whatsomething else?”
“Vanaheim.” Tor had no doubt he was right. “This is a piece of that world.” He shook his head. “A piece I guarantee wasn’t here until you arrived.”
“Untilwearrived,” Raven corrected, her attention on the memory again. “Because you were the one who led me to it the first time.”
“I’ve tried to be really here,” young Raven replied to his complaint. She pouted and hung her head. “You know how much I have. Over and over. But it just won’t work. I can only come when I’m sleeping.”
“Yet you control where you go in your sleep,” he reminded. “So there must be a way for you to actually travel back in time.”
He was about to say more but hesitated when the darkness came again. It seemed less like a shadow this time and more like an eerie slithering.
“How does it always find us?” he growled. “How—”
That’s all he got out before the memory and Vanaheim grove faded but not before Tor spied something in one of trees.
“It was a bird,” Raven murmured before he had a chance to point it out. “A raven.”
“The same one that flew into the chalet when we first arrived in Maine.”Maya’s telepathic voice sounded distant because of the mountain’s magic and the godly storms.“It looks exactly the same!”
