Norway, 1872

She came to him on a spring storm, one wicked night.

Haakon Haraldsson strode across the mountainous countryside, slinging his bow over his shoulder. Night was falling, and there'd be no game in this brewing gale. Time to return home before he was caught out. The storm kissed the coastline to the east and blustered inland, bringing with it lashings of lightning. Thick, fat raindrops began to spatter down.

Perfect. Just perfect.

Haakon cursed, dragging the hood of his cloak over his head as he soldiered on. He'd spent most of the day out in the mountains, trying to linger as far from home as possible. At twenty, with his older sisters married off, his mother had turned her sights upon him, and he hadn't missed the insinuation when she'd invited her friend, Helga, and her daughter, Maria, to eat with them that night.

But it was one thing to avoid a mother's matrimonial intentions—quite another to freeze his balls off.

A jagged spear of lightning lit the world around him as he loped down the craggy mountainside. He thought he heard a roar, but perhaps it was only thunder, quick on the lightning's heels. Not far to go now. He could almost feel the heat of the fire in his mother's hearth, and smell the rich, gamey scent of the stew she'd been making. Something to warm him from the inside out in this wretched cold. Maria's attentions notwithstanding.

He was so caught up in imagining it that when he took a twist in the path, he almost plowed directly into a naked young woman.

A flash of golden skin seared his eyeballs.

And then somehow he managed not to brace his hands against a part of her anatomy she'd surely slap him for touching. A violent lurch to avoid slamming into her sent him sprawling, and his hands bit the gravel of the path as he tumbled head over heels into the soft leaf mulch.

Haakon froze, pushing himself off the loam and brushing off his hands. He slowly rolled over.

He was not imagining anything.

There was a naked woman.

A very wet, completely unclothed woman glaring down at him, gowned only in her hair. It clung in wet, serpentine streaks to her breasts, and though it appeared brown in that moment he had the feeling sunlight would paint it pure gold. His gaze followed the lengths of it, reaching her naval, and then—

He squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn't entirely innocent. There'd been kisses, and heated touches, and the press of a woman's mouth, but Viksholm was distant enough from civilization and his mother watchful enough that he'd not yet had a woman of his own.

Some stray thought tickled at his mind at the thought, but it wasn't working very swiftly in that moment. All he could picture was rosy nipples, and lips flushed pink, and curse him, but his cock was swelling in adamant need.

What the hell?

"Are you insane?" he demanded, trying to avoid looking at her as he pushed himself to his feet. "What are you doing out here?"

The woman scrambled away from him, crouching against a rock, one hand splayed over the granite and her expression feral.

Haakon stopped abruptly, and tried to make himself look less intimidating. Think, you fool. Any woman out here on a stormy night—wearing no clothes—was likely in some sort of danger.

Her long blonde hair tangled over her breasts, thankfully shielding them from view. She bared her teeth at him.

"I mean you no harm."

Swinging his sodden fur cloak off his shoulders, he wrapped it around her bare body, trying to ease her raking nails away from his face. She hissed at him, but subsided when he drew the cloak around her nakedness and held his hands up in surrender, as if to say, "See?"

And then she looked up, a distant flash of lightning illuminating her amber-colored eyes.

For Haakon, it was like an arrow to the chest. He felt breathless; lost. His entire destiny unfolded before him with a single glance and he knew, knew it revolved around this mysterious stranger.

Fate had clearly contrived to keep him chaste for her, because the very idea of knowing another woman would have felt wrong.

Hell. He felt as though the lightning must have hit him.

"Harm?" she whispered, in a voice that sounded like a velvet-wrapped purr. "You would not wish to have harm in your heart, or I'd kill you myself."

At any other time he might have snorted—he was a hunter, and a large man—but he was still feeling rattled.

He could barely look away from her, as he tried to loop the clasp on his cloak closed, so she would feel less naked. Every inch of her was perfect, though he was trying like hell not to stare. "Who are you?"

"A traveler."

"Do you have a name?"

She cocked her head on the side. "You may call me Árja."

Árja. It had the ringing tones of destiny written all over it.

"My name is Haakon."

Thunder rumbled, as if the gods themselves heard his name—and accepted it as a pledge.

The storm faded into the distance, the cold and the wetness evaporating from his awareness. She had a heart-shaped face, her wet hair clinging to a smooth throat, and those stormy eyes full of a thousand mysteries as she considered him.

"Are you hurt?" he whispered, suddenly aware his knuckles brushed each other just below her chin, where he held his cloak firmly around her.

The beautiful stranger eyed him as thoroughly as he'd done to her. The storm began to blow out. "No."

"What are you doing out here?"

"I was hunting these cows," Árja said, and tipped her chin up as if to defy him. "I'm hungry and there are many cows in this valley."

Cows? He shook his head. "If you poach one of my father's cows, he won't take kindly to it."

"These cows belong to him?"

"Most of them." Haakon cleared his throat. He couldn't quite place her accent. "Where are your clothes? Do you have a bow? Any weapons?"

She curled her fingers into claws and smiled a vicious little smile. "I am the weapon."

Maybe she'd hit her head. Or maybe she was mad.

His heart began to beat again, and suddenly he was freezing, and she was naked and probably even colder and—

"Come," Haakon whispered, swinging her up into his arms, where she eyed him with dark suspicion. Mad or not, she was his. And it was a freezing cold night, with both of them wet to the skin. "Let me take you to the healer to examine you, then I'll take you home. My mother has stew on the stove."

"I want cow."

"It's beef," he said dryly. "Beef stew."

And he couldn't let her out of his sight. Not now, when he'd only just found his future wife.

For him, this chance meeting meant his future was carved in stone.

It would take him many years before he discovered that for her, it was nothing more than a safe haven for a year or two... before she suddenly vanished as swiftly as she'd come, in the heart of another raging storm.

And the only clue to her disappearance was the flapping wings of a golden dragon.