Page 95 of Wretched Wrath

“The dragon can’t fly,” the female, Ailia, tells me with a nod toward Ruxi. “Stay with them until they heal—until you all heal,” she adds with a glance at my leg—"and then find your dragon. You need to go to her before you come to us.”

“I don’t understand.” My voice is a whisper, barely loud enough to reach my own ears.

“I don’t either,” Ailia says with a sad smile. “The Norns are as elusive as ever. Will saw your role in the battles to come, and he knows you have to talk to your dragon first. Everything else is as much a mystery to us as it is to you.”

I nod once, and then again. “You’ll save him?” I murmur, my gaze fixed on this female who’s promising me the impossible.

“He has a role to play,” she tells me. “We made it in time. He’ll be alivewhen you reach us.”

“Weasel,” Wregen mutters, and my eyes snap to him. But he’s not looking at me. “Tell her what I did,” he orders in a low tone, gasping as the words spill out. “She needs to know.”

And then his lips lift in that half-smile I love as much as I hate, and he turns his attention to me. “You’ll want to kill me yourself,” he says, coughing with the last word. “And I’ll give you my life if you demand it. But forgive Svend. He had no choice. I’m the only one to blame.”

Lifting his hand, his thumb tugs my bottom lip for a moment as his gaze rests there. “I wish I’d had another chance to fuck you,” he mutters, “before you realized what a cunt I am. How badly I treated you.”

And then he’s gone again, alive but unconscious. His hand falls to the ground as the males drop from their beasts. They stride over and lift Wregen, cradling him between them. “We’ll see you in Asgard,” the male with darker skin promises—Ailia called him Will, I think. And then they turn their backs and hoist him toward Ailia’s dragon, who plasters herself to the ground, shifts to one side, and lifts her wing as soon as they’ve climbed on to give them a nearly flat platform.

Within a few seconds, they’re all back on their dragons and lifting into the sky.

I can only watch as they soar off, leaving more questions behind than they answered. Carrying away the male I crave as much as I hate, and the life I can’t ever let myself embrace.

Panta

Epilogue

Mybreathwhispersout,the days in purgatory endless as they stretch behind and in front of me.

My rider and draikani are coming, but they’ll leave me behind as they chase the Norns’ whims. The male who is not part of us—and may never be—is waiting for them. The fates have given them no choice but to follow. I’ll remain trapped. It must be. None of us would want to live in the worlds that will survive if they fail.

But that doesn’t ease the pain. My life was desolate before, even with my draikani by my side. It will be bleak and cold and empty when they leave these caves, taking even the sense of their presence with them.

I don’t know if they’ll survive long enough to return. I’ll know if they don’t, though. I can’t be killed, but I can experience their death when they do. And if they don’t make it back, I’ll live, even if I want nothing more than to die by their sides.

The End,

For Now …