Chapter 15 #2
“We’re bonded.” Trace gestured between himself and Juice. “But from the display in the fairy ring last night, it seems Tír na nóg has chosen that you belong to this place. Both Fionn and Oisín think a door would recognize you as its own.”
“If Oisín has a woman who can open a door, why aren’t we asking this Niamh chick?” Viper asked.
“That ended badly.” Trace winced. “I wouldn’t be going to ask Oisín about her. She had him fall off her horse and age three hundred years because he wanted to move on.”
“I can see how that would cause a rift.”
“Wait.” Ward had a confused expression on his face. “If he aged three hundred years, then how does he still look like he’s our age?”
“I’m not sure.” Trace lifted one shoulder. “Something about when he crossed back to here with the Fianna, he reversed back to the age he should have been before he fell off the horse.”
“That’s not written in any of the books,” Ward muttered. “And it’s not in any of the oral histories I’ve heard.”
Trace waved him off and changed the subject back to the portal. “It would have to be one of us. Someone strong enough to hold both worlds in their blood. If we build it correctly, it can become a permanent door between the realms.”
He understood why that would be important for Trace and his wolfie side, Bran. Being able to spend time with the Fianna after so long apart would be high on his list of priorities. “Let me guess,” Viper drawled. “You’re volunteering.”
“Juice would kill me.” Trace’s lips twitched. “But yeah. If it comes down to it, I’ll try to open the door.”
“No,” Juice said, sharp and immediate. They turned to him. His hand had clenched around the hilt of the knife at his hip. “Not unless there’s no other way.”
Ward glanced at Viper. “Would you go through? If the door opened?”
Viper met his gaze evenly. “Not without you.” The bond flared between them, a silent vow thrumming in the space where decisions could one day split their reality into access to two separate worlds.
“But yeah, I made a vow to serve my country. Unless I’m dead and this is Valhalla, then I need to go back and figure out how to save all our careers. ”
“We thought you’d say that, Boss,” Juice said. “We have an idea.”
“Okay. Lay it out for me, bro.” He stayed quiet as Trace and Juice started sketching lines in the dirt—symbols that pulsed faintly once Ward stepped near them. It wasn’t anything overt, but the moment his mate crouched beside the firepit, the spirals began to glow.
That’s unsettling.
“Okay, that’s new,” Kaze muttered, cocking his head. “Is the dirt flirting with your mate, Viper?”
“Shut up,” Reaper hissed. “Let them work.”
Clearly exasperated by his men, Ward shot them both a scowl before turning to Viper. “Can you feel it too?”
He stepped up behind him. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Like the land's humming. It gets louder when you’re near.”
Trace looked up from where he’d traced a triskele into the soil. “It’s responding to his magic. Your bond activated it. I think we were right—Ward’s the anchor.”
“Anchor to what?” Viper asked, though he already suspected the answer.
“To the portal,” Trace said. “To the new Fianna Door. The ley lines here run straight through this spot in Dun Fianna and cross beneath a sacred spring about a hundred feet west. The old ones knew what they were doing when they built this place. This was a crossing once. It looks like your mate is our missing key.”
Juice pointed at the glowing lines now dancing up Ward’s arm. “That’s why the symbols are changing. They’re adapting to the door you’ll open.”
Ward stared at his hand in fascination. “So, I’m a key.”
“You’re more than that,” Fionn said, emerging from the treeline.
“You’re the bond we once forgot. A promise made by the land, returned in the blood of warriors who never knew their history.
The Fianna lost their ties to the human realm long ago…
but the door you open now will not be stolen or corrupted. It will be one of trust.”
“A thank you,” Oisín added quietly, stepping beside him. “For returning my father to us. For freeing our king.”
Viper’s throat went dry. This wasn’t an obligation being forced onto them—it was a gift. He was grateful that the Fianna or Tír na nóg didn’t want to keep them. They wanted to honor the bond they’d made by letting them choose to walk between the worlds.
Ward knelt and pressed both hands flat to the soil.
His tattoos flared, and runes shifted to align with the spiral carved in the dirt.
A wind kicked up, rushing toward the spring Trace had mentioned.
It howled for one long moment, then stilled.
With it came a sound, like stone sliding into place.
Tír na nóg had accepted Ward’s offer, and the Fianna Door began to form.
Viper exhaled hard. “Well, shit.”
Ward looked over his shoulder. “That felt… permanent.”
“It is.” Fionn’s smile transformed his face from ‘stoic warrior king’ to ‘delighted little boy.’ “But it is also freely given. You have done what no druid or warrior has in many thousands of years, Ward. You gave us all a reason to trust again.”
Viper stepped forward, dropping his hand to Ward’s shoulder. “And now we build the bridge home.”
The word ‘home’ echoed in Viper’s chest like a beat of distant thunder.
It used to be a location—coordinates in a file, a barracks, a safehouse, a team stacked in formation.
Now it was a man with a mouth that kissed like his life depended on it.
Now it was Ward, the man kneeling before him with his palms on the ground like some half-wild, half-holy thing that had always belonged here and didn’t know it until now.
Ward looked up at him, eyes dark with too many truths. “You think it’ll hold?”
“It has to,” Viper said, voice low. “Because we’re not losing anyone. Not now.” He’d rather stay here for all eternity than lose one of the men he was honored to call brother.
Reaper moved closer, rubbing at his jaw. “So what happens next? We dig a hole and hope the ley lines don’t fry us into fairy bacon?”
“It’s more like weaving a tether,” Trace explained. “The old ones tied portals to living things. Sacred trees. Stones that are etched with ancient stories. Bones that were buried with honor. It’s not about digging—it’s about offering.”
Juice nodded slowly. “We’ve already given blood. Magic. Vows. What else is there?”
“Sex,” Kaze added helpfully. “Although I’m pretty sure there was some A-grade cosmic sex magic offered to multiple gods last night.”
Ward groaned without looking up. “Please tell me that’s not something this realm of yours paid attention to.”
“It did.” Oisín was perfectly solemn. “But it is pleased.”
Kaze snorted. “Well, shit. I hope it bought you dinner first.”
Zero didn’t lift his eyes from the carving in his lap. “The trees were whispering. I think they enjoyed the show.”
Viper shot them all a warning glance. “Enough.”
But Ward surprised him by laughing softly. He sat back on his heels and dragged a hand through his hair as the wind caught the ends. “It’s fine. If the price of getting home is that I accidentally turned on the local forest, I’ll take the hit.”
“You’ve done more than that,” Fionn stepped fully into the circle of standing. “You’ve given us a chance to reclaim what we lost. A path between realms that was once carved in honor and offered to our greatest allies.”
“Does that mean we can go back without risking the veil collapsing again?” Juice asked.
Oisín exchanged a glance with Fionn before answering. “Not yet. The doorway must stabilize. Three anchors—land, blood, and memory—must align.”
“We have land,” Trace said. “And blood.”
Viper felt the weight of the next answer before anyone spoke. He turned to Ward. “What about memory?”
Ward didn’t flinch. “We’ll need a place to anchor the other side. A tether to something sacred that still remembers us. Something rooted in the human world.”
Trace straightened. “The Dolmen in my forest.”
Viper’s excitement grew. “Then that’s our memory anchor. That’s where we’ll open the other half.”
Fionn inclined his head. “Begin the tethering. We will lend the land’s strength. But from here on, the door answers to you.”
Ward rose beside him, quiet and resolute. “Then let’s finish what we started.”
They gathered in the inner ring of stones where the ground hummed low with an old and slumbering power.
Trace knelt at one point of the triangle with Juice behind him, their joined hands glowing faintly with their gold glittered bond-light.
Across from them, Viper stood with Ward, his palm clasped tight over his mate’s, their marks flaring brighter as the pulse of the land answered.
At the third point stood Fionn, his blade buried tip-down in the earth, ancient Irish etched along the flat of the steel like veins of light.
“Begin when you’re ready.” Oisín’s tone was almost reverent.
Viper nodded once and turned toward Ward. “You’ve got this. But if you think it’s going to cause you pain, or if it feels like it’s going to hurt you, promise me that you will stop.”
Ward tilted his chin in a calm and composed way Viper didn’t think he could ever manage—not with the weight of two worlds stretching thin between them. “I’m not going to let you down.” He looked toward the horizon. “I’ll get you home.”
“Promise me,” Viper growled.
“Okay, okay, I promise.”
They dropped to their knees, palms pressed to the soil, and Viper felt it again—the way the energy curled around Ward first before touching him.. Heat surged up his spine, hot and bright and almost painful.
But Ward didn’t flinch; he leaned into the energy and spoke in an ancient cadence as he read from the scroll Oisín held under his nose. The veil answered, and the ground vibrated beneath their knees, sending a wave of pressure out in all directions.
“Is that Irish?” Juice whispered.
“It’s way older than Irish,” Trace replied, awestruck. “That’s the First Tongue of the fairies, never mind of man.”
The standing stones flared to life, their runes burning blue, then gold, then white-hot.
Light arced between the three points of the triangle like lightning, crackling in the air and sinking into the ground in streams of living fire.
Viper’s mark burned as it reacted to the pulsing in rhythm in Ward’s.
Then the light shot straight up, a pillar of magic exploding into the sky—and somewhere far, far away, Viper felt the Dolmen in Trace’s forest answer the call.
The magic threaded out like a spiderweb, one strand anchored here to their location, and another reaching toward the mortal realm, linking what had been torn apart.
Ward gasped, his fingers tightening in Viper’s. “I can feel it. I can feel the Dolmen. It remembers Trace and Bran. It remembers all of you.”
“The tether’s locked,” Fionn said, his voice filled with reverence. “You’ve done what no Fianna has managed in centuries. You’ve opened a Fianna door and anchored it with the love and honor in your soul.”
Viper was still staring at Ward—at the way his eyes glowed silver-blue, at the trails of magic still dancing along his skin, and at the ancient script that hadn’t existed an hour ago now etched into the lines of his arm on the opposite side to his mating mark. “You’re a miracle,” he murmured.
Ward smiled faintly. “No. I’m yours.”
The light faded slowly, drawn back into the standing stones as if something sucked it in.
The ground steadied beneath them and no longer trembled with raw power, but the connection lingered as a low thrum in Viper’s chest. It sang of magic and blood, of oaths made and kept. It urged him to bring his mate home.
Ward still knelt beside him, eyes closed and face tilted toward the sky like he could still feel the whisper of magic beneath his skin.
Viper reached over, sliding his hand against the back of his neck, grounding them both. “You back with me?”
Ward opened his eyes slowly, and the look he gave him was something wild and wonderstruck. “I think I heard it speak,” he said quietly. “The magic of this place remembers everything. Every promise. Every betrayal. Every sacrifice.”
“Did it say anything about letting us go?” Viper asked, half-joking, half-hopeful.
Ward smiled, tired and full of some deep truth Viper couldn’t name. “It didn’t want to let go. Not at first. But I think it saw what we gave, what we built, and now it wants us to carry that home. As a bridge between two warrior clans born of the sea, the air, and the land.”
Trace approached them with his hand still curled around Juice’s. “It worked,” he confirmed. “The anchor’s holding. The door’s real now.”
“A path between worlds,” Juice added. “Ours to close or open as we need.”
Kaze let out a low whistle from the sidelines. “So… we made a magic backdoor between Earth and Narnia. Anyone else think that’s insane as hell?”
“For us,” Zero didn’t look up from his carving, “I think it’s par for the course.”
Reaper crossed his arms, staring at the center of the stones. “What happens now?”
Viper stood slowly, drawing Ward up with him. “Now? We prepare. We decide who goes home. Who stays?” He looked at Trace. “You and Juice—this was always part of your path. Bran’s path.”
Trace nodded. “Yeah. But with the door, I don’t have to choose between brotherhoods. I can cross and serve both.”
Thank fuck.
He was more than a little relieved not to be losing his second in command. Because with whatever hope he had of persuading the US Navy that they’d survived that volcano, there wasn’t a hope in hell that he was telling them Juice hadn’t.
“Tonight,” Fionn decreed, “we feast. We celebrate. Tomorrow is time enough for goodbyes to be heard on the breeze.”
“Perfect.” He was more than a little relieved that they weren’t being thrown out of Tír na nóg immediately. “A feast sounds awesome. I’m starving.”