Page 39 of The Dragon’s Captive

“I saw them first,” Kate said. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t know where you were and I made sure not to open the portal anywhere near the first one in case I woke the big one up again, so it’s been a bit of a mission to find you. They brought Mika and me here.”

“Gamma! Gamma Dino!”

Mika ran toward Aria, clearly already comfortable with her grandmother. Vilka could not help but smile as he watched his mother embrace the small child. He had slept in hell, but he had woken in heaven. It would take some time to adjust to it, but he was eager to do so.

“I have big teeth and I can roar so loud everybody is afraid,” Mika informed Aria.

“My mother was part dinosaur, I think,” Aria mused as she took Mika by the hand. “She probably gets it from my side—I won’t interrupt again,” she added. “You two have much to discuss.”

The moment she closed the door, they fell upon one another with a hunger that was not made of lust, but of pure relief and love. Vilka could taste Kate’s tears of joy as they embraced and kissed and pressed their bodies so tightly together that they were almost one entity.

It was a long time before they spoke, because it was a long time before words could do justice to their feelings. Vilka ran his lips and fingers over as much of Kate’s body as he could reach, remembering every little bit of her as her clothes evaporated underneath his touch. He wanted her nude, not to ravish her, but to revel in her.

The passing of time had matured Kate a little, he could see that in her eyes. She was the same woman, of course, but he could see what she had been through written in her face. Motherhood had made its mark on her. He could see it in the little lines about her mouth from smiling, and the little crevices above her brows from worry.

“You are as beautiful as I remember,” he said reverently.

“You look like hell,” Kate replied.

“What?” He laughed at her bluntness. Clearly that had not changed.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean that. You’re handsome. You’re hot. You’ll always be those things, but your eyes are so sad,” she said, pressing kisses to his lips and his cheeks. “It must have been a very long time for you, not knowing if I was returning. Three years was almost too much for me to bear. I do not know how you have managed thirty…”

“With the memory of you,” he said gruffly. “It sustained me through my battle, it helped heal my wounds, and it kept my heart from crumbling away.”

“You know there’s a statue of you in the center of the town up there,” she said. “You’re a hero, Vilka. Heroes have options. I’m sort of surprised you didn’t… take one of the options…”

“You mean you’re surprised I didn’t take another mate in the last thirty years,” he said. “I did not want any other woman.”

“But… thirty years…”

“Don’t forget, Kate. I age much more slowly than you, and though thirty years is a long time, it is a fraction of my lifespan.”

“But your mother and father are both aging at the same rate, it seems…”

“Dragons who enter the human realm seem to sacrifice their lifespan,” he said. “He has foregone hundreds of years, but I do not think he regrets it. They would not live one without the other—just like I would not truly live without you.”

“So that’s why you look like a rough thirty-five or so, and I look a solid twenty-eight. Are you telling me you’re going to stay hot and young forever while I age like a prune? Wait… you were in the human realm, for a little while at least… how come it didn’t change how you’re aging?”

Vilka shook his head and drew her close. “I do not know about that. I do not know entirely how I will age. I have a mixed genome. It may be I do not have as long as I think.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Kate said, her face falling. “I just got you back; I can’t stand the thought of losing you again.”

Vilka pressed a hundred more kisses to her lips and her face and her hair and her shoulders until she forgot about the weight of death and snuggled against him.

“Mika must have been a surprise for you,” he mused.

“I closed that portal and I got interrogated and I figured I was just sick with nerves or a cold or something. I didn’t even realize I was late,” Kate said. She looked up at him, her expression earnest. “I had her alone, but there wasn’t a minute I didn’t think about you. I’ve been telling her about you from the day she was born. I was always coming back, Vilka, and I was always going to bring her here. I just didn’t know if I was coming back for her to meet her father, or to see his grave.”

He saw the emotion and the strain in her face and felt a huge wave of pity for her and grief for what had not been.

“I am so sorry you did all this alone.”

“I wasn’t alone,” she said. “Not really. I had Mika, and she is so like you in so many ways, Vilka. She is a bossy, determined little thing. She knows what she wants, and she gets it. Every time I looked into her eyes, I knew we were connected. Forever. And I knew I had to be patient—and that I could be patient and careful, and not just build a damn portal and throw myself through it. It’s not what either of us would have wanted, but there was no other choice. It had to be this way.”

“You’re right,” Vilka nodded, holding her close. “It was necessary, but I wish I had been there to take care of you.”

“You can take care of both of us now,” Kate said. “For the rest of our lives. Deal?”