Chapter Twenty-Five
“NO.” TOR SHOOK hishead. “Your plan’s far too dangerous.”
Raven would have said the same if she were in his position, but there was no helping it. She had powers nobody else did. Powers that could be used against Mórrígan. Ones she now remembered she fully intended to use after luring the beast to her door.
From start to finish, it had been her against the goddess.
She had been a pawn in Mórrígan’s game even before she was born. A chess piece that might have very well gotten the goddess what she wanted had she not underestimated the lengths Cian and Revna would go to help her nor how strongly dragons felt for their offspring. Because the moment Raven knew she was pregnant, she only had one priority, and they were made clear in the intricate lengths her inner dragon had gone to get this far.
“I meant to bring us to this juncture all along, and you know it,” she said in response to Tor thinking her plan was too dangerous. She rested her hand on his chest and kept her eyes with his. “As we all know, since her protégé fought Destiny, Mórrígan’s been hanging back. Gathering her strength.” She shook her head. “We can only be grateful she didn't get Loki’s Dagger then, because it would have put her on the fast track to finding our son.”
She shivered at the thought before continuing. “Either way, when she comes, she’s coming hard. And she’s coming for the baby we hid from her.” She hadn't had to think long on this to know she was making the right choice. “And the only way to slow her,defeather, is to separate her spirit from her body.”
Despite all her certainties about how things had to go, Raven was still trying to come to terms with finding out she had a child. The lengths to which she and everyone else had gone to keep him safe. To give him a chance. In return, not just for their efforts but because she loved her son, she damn well meant to win this war by any means necessary.
Since failing to win Destiny over to her side at the very beginning of all this, Mórrígan had been biding her time. Playing the long game. After all, the goddess had to have realized that the lengths Raven ended up going to evade her gave her away. Raven had pledged her fealty in exchange for everyone’s safety. ForTor’ssafety. For her to simply vanish to the future and leave Tor clueless about her existence told the goddess everything she needed to know.
Raven was on the run.
That meant Mórrígan had accomplished her goal.
Because the only way Raven would ever walk away from Tor was if she were protecting something as important as a baby. And she didn’t doubt for a moment that Mórrígan had been searching for it all this time. As Raven had planned, the goddess realized that destroying Tor, Revna, Cian, and her sisters in the meantime would end Raven ever finding her way back to Tor.
Which made him the key.
A key whose memories had been sealed up tight by Cian, a Keeper of Memories. A unique and ancient wizard magic she couldn't tap into if she tried. So Mórrígan had no choice but to wait patiently. Wait with frustration as Raven’s sisters Forged with their mates because things needed to go in order.
If her sisters never Forged, neither would Raven.
That meant their son’s location would never be revealed.
Because if Raven knew nothing else, she and Tor couldn’t become fated mates until all their truths were revealed. Their biggest truth.
The most important thing in their lives.
In the end, for all the risk Raven took sleeping with Tor when she was in heat, Mórrígan took an even bigger risk allowing it to happen to begin with.
But the draw of what Raven and Tor could produce together was too strong.
A dragon above all dragons with enough Celtic godliness for the goddess to steal it away. Raise it as hers. Turn it against the Norse. Turn it against all creatures on all nine worlds. Then let it rise up and take over. Let it become a god above all gods, more worshiped than Odin himself. Who knows what she might have accomplished after that? One thing was for certain. Tor and his people, hell,humanity,would have never stood a chance.
