Chapter One
Winter Harbor, Maine
Present Day
–Katana–
“KATANA,” CAME A sharp feminine voice. “Snap out of it!”
The terrifying darkness I had been swallowed by moments before vanished, and Azura’s face snapped into focus on my cell phone.
“Are you with us now, Kat?” my best friend Taro wondered as he held my phone, concern knitting his ebony eyebrows, before he handed it to me.
“I am,” I managed, glad to see them both yet embarrassed to be caught so unaware. “I was just...” Blinking a few times, I tried to focus on the laptop I had been writing on at a small desk in front of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Frenchman Bay. “Lost in thought, I guess.”
“I’d say you were more than just lost in thought.” Azura narrowed her pale gray eyes at me through the phone. “And Taro agrees.”
A natural beauty with sun-kissed skin and longish ash-blonde hair streaked with white-blonde, Azura had her hair pulled back and covered with a shawl, telling me she was likely on assignment somewhere in the Middle East. Born with a live-on-the-edge mentality, she tended to go where the action was, always ending up in the most dangerous locations.
“What do you mean I was more than lost in thought?” I asked, still trying to get my bearings.
Taro’s smoky green gaze flickered from the laptop screen to my face in concern. “That’s what she means.”
Finally seeing straight, I flinched at the words I had typed over and over.
Send him to me. Send them. Him...and the crown. My crowned dragon myth. Yours is a wolven dragon tale...and mine is a crowned dragon myth.
And it wasn't the first time I’d written those words.
“Show me.” Azura gave me one of her you-better-listen looks, then glanced over her shoulder at something in what appeared to be a tent before looking at me again. “Go on, Kat. I don’t have much time.”
I knew better than to ask her where she was, so I turned the phone so she could see my computer screen, knowing full well she wouldn't be surprised by what she saw.
“I thought so,” she said.
I turned the phone back and frowned. “What do you mean, you thought so?”
“I mean, I had a feeling Marjorie was connecting with one of us, and now I know it’s you.
” Azura’s gaze softened on me. “Which means it’s time, but I suspect you already know that.
” Her dragon eyes flared ever so briefly as she felt me out in a way only she could, despite the distance between us.
“Whether you recall it or not, you were having a long-distance chat with Marjorie wherever she...”
When she trailed off, I knew she had figured it out. Her eyes rounded, and her pupils flared. “Ancient Norway? Vikings?”
“Viking dragons to be specific,” I confessed, knowing I should have reached out to her sooner, but the truth was, I hadn’t been myself since Marjorie vanished several days ago.
“I’m coming home,” Azura said. “I’ll be there as soon as—”
Before she could finish her sentence, the call cut off, but I knew she would get home as soon as she could.
Marjorie, Azura, Bronwyn, and I, now roommates, had met in an online writer’s group years ago, only to realize we had more in common than we could have ever imagined.
Not only did we share a love of the written word, but also some sort of great unknown destiny.
Or at least it had been mostly unknown until Marjorie traveled back in time.
While we didn’t entirely know what to expect, Azura and I knew our time had come, so I suspected Bronwyn did too.
We were being called toward something greater than us, involving fated mates, whether we bought into the concept of one guy for life or not.
That it might take place over a thousand years in our past, with possible barbarians, was more than any of us could have anticipated, but there was little we could do about it.
“The Norse?” Well aware of my possible fate, Taro shook his head and frowned. “Truly? You?”
“I know, right?” I said, then finally stood up, braced on my tiptoes to compensate for our height differences, and gave him a big hug. “I’ve missed you, my friend.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
He embraced me just as affectionately before I pulled back and grinned at him. “How was Japan? Did you get a chance to spend time with your mother’s family?”
Where both of my parents were from Japan before emigrating to the United States when I was a child, Taro was half Japanese and half American of unknown ancestry, as his father had died before he was born.
Tall with broad shoulders, Taro was highly sought after for his thick obsidian hair and chiseled features, coupled with grayish forest-green eyes he’d likely inherited from his father.
“I did spend time with my mother’s family,” Taro replied, continuing to look at me with discontent as we headed into the open-concept kitchen off the spacious living room.
“And?” I prompted when he didn’t go on, pouring myself a glass of much-needed red wine.
“And it was pleasant enough,” he answered, shaking his head no when I offered him a glass.
“Yet you're having some because I know you’re not working today,” I countered, knowing he needed it if his troubled expression was any indication. Taro, a master of his craft, made a decent living teaching various forms of martial arts, especially to the wealthy.
His specialty lay in teaching the ancient techniques of the Sumerian warriors. It was how we had first met years ago, when I took lessons. Between our mutual interest in the ways of our ancestors and the fact we were both half dragon, we hit it off instantly and had been fast friends ever since.
“So only pleasant enough?” I perked an eyebrow at him. “Not what you expected then?”
“It was fine. I just kept getting the sense I needed to return to the States...that there was somewhere I needed to be.” He gave me a pointed look.
“And now I know why.” Before I could say he should have stayed and enjoyed his family, because I was okay, he shook his head.
“This is big, and you know it.” His eyes locked with mine.
“Life-changing big, and I can feel how damned unsettled both your human half and inner beast are about it.” His eyebrows shot up. “Vikings?”
“Technically speaking, Norse, as Viking is a verb rather than—”
“I know what it is,” he said, cutting me off, “and it’s irrelevant right now.
” He continued eyeing me with concern. “So what are you going to do? Are you traveling back in time? If so, how?” He shook his head again.
“You have a life here, Kat. A successful career as a journalist. You can’t mean to give all that up, not to mention modern amenities, for some unknown destiny? ”
“I don’t think I’m going to have much of a choice based on the visions I’ve been having, not to mention I’ve got a feeling Marjorie’s going to need me.
” I swallowed hard, barely believing I was actually considering this, but I was, and I had already taken measures.
“I took a few weeks off from work, so I have the time to do what I need to.”
“Just like that?” Taro muttered, sipping his wine. He eyed me dubiously. “Do you really think it will be that simple? In and out of a land full of barbarians that will take one look at you and who knows what.” He frowned. “Nothing good, I’d imagine.”
“You forget I can hold my own thanks to your training,” I reminded him, determined not to show him my fear. This was more than a little daunting, especially given my most recent vision. “So I’m not worried about it.”
“Liar,” he countered, his gaze narrowing on me as he picked up things I would rather he not. “You were in that gothic castle again, hearing some guy’s voice, weren’t you?”
When I sighed and sipped my wine, he had his answer.
“You think he’s your fated mate,” he stated bluntly, undoubtedly picking up the heat that flared through me at the mere mention of the voice before my inner beast made its feelings apparent enough with a flare of my dragon eyes.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” He cocked his head. “So if you think he’s your fated mate, what makes you so sure you’ll be able to leave him in the end? I’ve heard that’s a tough, if not impossible, thing to do.”
“I’ll worry about that if and when the time comes.” I frowned and tapped my fingernail on the counter methodically. “I can hardly imagine being attracted to someone like that. Not my type in the least.”
“Not that you know what he looks like,” Taro commented, homing in on my fingernail tapping.
“And I’d say you're lying through your teeth about being attracted to him, whether you’ve laid eyes on him or not.
” His gaze returned to my face. “Your dragon’s already locking onto him, isn't she? And your human half isn't far behind?”
Even though I’d never seen him in his entirety, I had seen parts of him in my dreams. A tall, broad silhouette. Pale brown eyes that blazed golden in the darkness. A masculine scent made of spicy heat that set me afire with a need that plagued me for days.
I stopped tapping my fingernail—a sure-fire giveaway that I was lying—and continued sipping my wine rather than answer, but I should have known better than to think Taro would let it go.
“I’m coming with you.” He slid his wine to the side rather than taking another sip so it wouldn’t keep him from being rational, and gave me a stubborn, resolute look I knew all too well. “If nothing else, you'll need my fighting abilities.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
While I probably should have set my wine aside as well and shown the same internal fortitude, I couldn’t quite seem to do it.
His expression remained perfectly level, showing no signs of the distress I knew he was feeling because of the danger I would be putting myself in. “Why?”
“Because I can handle this on my own,” I lied, not so sure I could, but I wouldn’t dare put him at risk too. “I have to.”
“Because it’s your destiny,” he said, stating the obvious.
“That’s right.”
“And who says it isn’t my destiny too?” He gestured between us. “We met and became best friends, so who’s to say our destinies aren’t intertwined?”
“Nothing says they’re not,” I conceded, doing my best to remain calm when all I wanted to do was scream about how much danger he would be in if he tried to travel back in time with me. At least one of the men I'd be facing was a monster, and neither of them wanted him.
They wanted me.
“Yet you haven’t had any visions or dreams about traveling through time, have you?” I went on, already knowing the answer. “Which means this likely isn’t your path, Taro.”
“You know I hardly ever dream,” he returned.
“At least dreams I remember.” He gave me another pointed look.
“I did know I needed to come home from Japan earlier than expected, though.
If that isn't enough, there was that one dream I had years ago before we ever met. Remember me telling you all about it? How we would become longtime friends and grow old together.” He shrugged.
“How’s that supposed to happen now if you're in the past and I'm here?”
While some might think that was proof we were destined to be together, Taro and I had never felt that way about one another. The chemistry just wasn’t there.
“We’ll still grow old together,” I said, certainly not disputing that I wanted us to be longtime friends. “It’ll just have to wait until after I return.”
“You mean after we return because,” Taro began before trailing off and going still, as if sensing something. His dragon eyes flared at the same time mine did when I sensed something too.
“He’s here,” I whispered, my voice wobbly with emotion because somehow I knew without question it was him. “He’s here because I listened to him and stayed put. He didn’t want me coming to him because he was coming to me.”
“And he’s not alone,” Taro said, keeping his voice just as soft. He slowly unsheathed a small blade from his boot and scanned the back deck awash in a vivid deep violet sunset.
Even though I didn’t sense true danger, I wasn’t sure if I could trust my emotions or instincts when it came to the stranger who haunted my dreams or the monster who had been at my back, determined to take me.
So, following Taro’s lead, I pulled a butcher knife from the block on the counter and nodded at him when he gestured for me to stay close while we made our way toward the deck, ready to fight if we had to.
“Do you see anything?” I whispered when we were able to view the entire backyard, including the dock and the old ash tree by the shore. A tree, I somehow suspected, had everything to do with Marjorie’s disappearance. Possibly a portal of some sort.
“No.” Taro shook his head slowly. “Yet I still sense something’s there.” His eyes narrowed. “Something I’ve never quite felt before...or someone.”
Where it would probably be wiser to stay inside, whatever, or whoever was out there seemed to draw us both because neither of us hesitated and headed straight out the door.
“Someone is definitely here,” I murmured, my gaze fixed on the tree, swearing for a moment its leaves glittered with flecks of gold and its gnarly trunk and roots radiated with the mystic glow one might see in the moonlight.
Compelled, I drifted that way before Taro could stop me, as drawn to it as I was to the gothic castle of my dreams.
“Katana,” Taro hissed under his breath, meaning business when he used my full name. He remained by my side, scanning our surroundings. “Be careful.”
“I could not agree more,” came a low rumble of warning from behind us, catching us unaware.
When we spun around, someone was there, in all his intimidating masculine glory.
Armed with a sword at his side and several smaller blades sheathed here and there, he had a tall build and wore a dark brown leather tunic, trousers, and heavy boots, with a grayish-brown fur wrapped around a set of shoulders as broad as I knew they would be.
His face, however, was more than I had anticipated.
More than I possibly could have imagined. From his tan, chiseled features to familiar pale brown eyes that almost appeared golden, his hair was a thick, dirty blonde, and his five o’clock shadow only added to his masculine allure rather than distract from it.
Yet one thing, impossibly enough, caught my attention above all.
Something that put me on guard and made me do something I probably should not have.