“Look buddy, you might be a giant Viking dude with tits, but you’re not going to stop me from seeing my friend. Hallucination or not, you aren’t going to stop me!” Holly’s voice penetrated the darkness of my sleep and I stirred in the softest bed I’ve ever laid on.

“Oh, come on, beautiful. My Giant Viking Ginger Dude tits slay the ladies. They love my sweet, sweet, Viking man boobs!” I recognized that voice, but knew the impossibly large man that had spoken them couldn’t be real.

“That might work here in fantasy land, Lothar, but not on me. Now let me through!” Ah, Holly was still certain she was hallucinating, right.

So was I. Maybe I’d had a stroke while I was sitting there being written up all those weeks ago. Maybe we’d been in a car accident, and we were both in some unknown version of Purgatory. Or maybe, just maybe, this was all real.

“Holly?” I called out, sitting up to push away the softest leather I’d ever felt that served as my blanket.

“You’re awake!” Holly finally pushed past the giant and came to settle on the bed with me.

“Yeah, what happened?” My head ached as I sat up and I put my hand to it, trying to find the source of the pain.

“You, uh, you kind of spontaneously combusted. I don’t know how else to say it.” Holly stared at me in awe.

“What?” I didn’t believe her, how was I still here if that happened?

“Well, you know that blue light that surrounded us while we were swimming? That was apparently from you. You started to glow just as your father was giving his “I’ll be back” speech and then, we were all just knocked over as the light just exploded out of you, slammed the door shut, and sealed it closed.”

“Ahha.” A simple answer, but I couldn’t think of what else to say. “So, I’m magic now?”

“Not magic, only half magic.” Wruin’s voice came from the darkness in a corner of the round room I’d slept in.

“Right, my father’s, what? A werewolf?”

“An Irish one, yes.” Wruin sat down next to my bed on the floor, pushing away a silky curtain that hung over the bed that was basically a pallet on the floor.

“Does that mean I’ll be...?” I don’t want to be a wolf!

“No, you won’t ever shift, but your powers are growing stronger. I used my own magic to protect you and your mother long before you were born. When she passed away, my connection to you remained, but my protection ended. That’s why your mother sent you to me. So that I could protect you. From your father and yourself. Your own magic will grow now, especially now that we’re back in Tirfothwin.”

“Ah. Right.” I looked down at my hands. Would a pill help bring my sanity back, I wondered.

“You aren’t crazy, Abigail, and this is all real. You and Holly both are as sane as you were a year ago. You’re just in a totally different world now. You’re in the world of legend.”

“I’ll be glad to finish my tour, if you ladies like.” Lothar broke in, joining us on the floor. “If you’re not also my King’s mate, you foxy little thing, I’ll give you a special tour.”

He only had eyes for Holly and her glare only made me want to laugh. I could tell she was interested in the Viking with the braided beard, definitely interested, but she wasn’t going to let him know that. Not yet, anyway.

“I don’t need a special tour from a man that can wiggle his eyebrows like that, or one that wears more jewelry than I do. Are those tiny skulls in your beard-braids?” She leaned over and inspected his beard in the white artificial light that glowed from sconces on the walls.

I fell back onto the comfortable bed and sighed as they continued to bicker. Wruin took my hand and I opened my eyes to gaze at him. He was just so incredibly handsome!

A hint of his scent trailed across my face, and my nostrils flared. His eyes went dark and he turned to the others at the bed.

“Why don’t you two go have a look around? I’ll keep an eye on Abigail.” From the way they shut up I knew his eyes must have told them to go away and leave me in peace.

“Sure, yeah. Hey, where can we get some food in this place, Lothar? Do you guys have Mexican food here?” Holly’s voice trailed off as they left the room, and Wruin turned to me.

“Are you hungry, Abigail? I can have something brought to us.” He started to move but I stopped him.

“No, I’m fine. I need answers more than food. Where are we? What are we?” I let my fingers linger on his skin where I’d reached out to stop him. Touching him felt so right.

He glanced down at where my fingers touched his skin and he paused. He’d changed clothes since we’d arrived. He was now dressed in some kind of black leather kilt made up of panels of leather, and his shirt was now the same soft black leather material of my blanket, laced at the throat. The loafers he’d worn were now black leather boots, laced tightly halfway up his calves. A man of stunning beauty showcasing just how powerful he was.

I think I might have drooled a little. Wiping at my mouth I sat up against the soft fur cushions that served as pillows. Pure sophistication and smoothness I was not.

“This is the land that is no more. What’s left of Tirfothwin. Many centuries ago, long before you were born, before even the Vikings were born, this land was above the sea. We had the best hunting in all of the known world, and people crossed from Tir Na Nog, to our land, and came and went to the lands far east of us. We were an advanced civilization, but not as modern as the current world. We didn’t have planes but we did have rudimentary ways of creating electricity.”

He paused to settle back on his hands, his legs stretched out before him. Very fine, muscular legs that the long panels of leather did little to hide. I eyed those beautiful legs as he started to speak again.

“I was the king of a disappearing world, a world that is now remembered only in the legends of the Vikings and the Danes. As the world warmed, our land became waves, and the people moved inland, until only the area now called Dogger Bank was still visible. We were at war with the Tuatha de Danan of Tir Na Nog by then, resources were scarce and they worried my people would overrun their lands. They closed our worlds off from the land of the humans so that our people could not get to them.”

“Sounds like the way people react to refugees now.” I observed, sliding down to lie on my side. I had a much better view of the tight muscles of his stomach and chest from there. I wanted to reach out and touch him, anywhere, but controlled myself.

“Yes, very much so. I went out on one final mission to try and convince the Tuatha de Danan not to cut off our worlds, to try to make them realize that my people were spreading out all over the globe, but they would not listen and they closed the portal before I could return to my kingdom.”

“Wait,” I interrupted as it finally sank in. “You’re a king?”

“I am indeed, Abigail. I’ve waited in that cave for thousands of years for the key to come and take me back to my people, if there were any left. You were that key.”

“But how?”

“You were the half-magical that could hold the sword the Tuatha de Danan made as the only key. Anyone else that held it without protection would be burned. Only a person of both worlds, a very special person, you, would be able to open the door.” He waited as I took that in.

“Why did my father want me then? He’s of that other world, right?” I was confused now.

“He refused to go Tir Na Nog because he is a traitor there. He has tried countless times to take over the realm, but he has always failed. He thought if he could control you he would be able to get into this realm and take over both from here. He didn’t even know if anyone was left here, the stupid man.” Wruin laughed a deep, warm rumble that did incredible things for all of my places that could tingle.

“How old are you?” The thought had suddenly hit me.

“I don’t know, I have watched thousands of years pass by, I slept for thousands more. I’d go out into the world occasionally, see what was happening, until I grew bored and went back to my cave. Your mother found me there when she was a small child and friendless. She saw me in both of my forms, she still believed in magic then. As she grew older her visits became less frequent, until that last time she came.”

He stopped and I knew the memories of that past were running through his mind. “She’d met your father, I could smell him on her, and knew the kind of man he was. I knew what his plans were when I sensed you growing in her womb.”

“Wow. You really are magical aren’t you?” I watched him in wonder, as he carried on.

“I am, yes. There are a few things I have to tell you now, Abigail, things you may not like, but cannot be changed.” He shifted restlessly before settling for sitting up so that he could look down at me.

I sat up too, his words made me nervous.

“I could sense you for one main reason.” He paused, his eyes now looking down at the smooth nails on his hand long fingers. “You are my mate.”

His eyes came up when I gasped, not sure what he meant, but getting the idea that it was important. “Mate?”

“Yes, our souls are tied together. We will be mates until the day we die.” He gulped as he watched me and waited.

“Okay. That explains that pattern on the sword then. You’re the dragon and I’m the woman he’s tangled in?”

“Yes, it was as the Tuatha de Danan planned. A woman whose soul was tied to the dragon shifter king would be the only one that could open the door. We only have one mate in our lives. You are mine.” His eyes drilled into mine as he waited for my response.

“Oh.” Simple was best when you were left speechless, I’d always said.

“Unless you had other plans.” His right eyebrow rose, the exact opposite of mine.

“Well, no, but we’ve only just met…” I paused and looked at my own nails. “I’ve, well, I’ve never been anyone’s mate. There wasn’t anyone that interested me enough.”

“Oh.” His own simple answer now.

“Have you, been with others that is?”

“Yes, but long ago. Women that I wanted to be my mate, but never were.” His nostrils flared as he leaned towards me. “They never smelled as beguiling as you.”

“I have a smell?” I couldn’t help the grin that spread over my face.

“You do, yes. I imagine it’s much the same as I smell to you.”

“I don’t know but it nearly drives me mad, the way you smell.” I gave him another smile, but felt my cheeks burn as I blushed at the admission.

He pulled back then, and cleared his throat. “Right. There’s more to come.”

“Okay?”

“You can’t go back home. We can travel between the magical worlds, but your world? It’s closed to us all again.” He wouldn’t look at me this time.

“Never? I can never go back?” I didn’t like that! I didn’t like that a bit! “But I can’t stay here forever, I have…well…” I stopped to try to think of what I’d left behind.

“When you spontaneously combusted, as Holly put it, you sealed the door closed and fused the sword inside of the lock. I have no idea how to open it again. Maybe one day we’ll find a way, but for now, you’re stuck here, with me.”

“Holly’s here at least. I guess, I guess there’s not really much to go back for is there? Other than the money, of course.” I didn’t like being penniless again.

“Money is not something you need worry about. I’m the king after all. I can magic up whatever we need. And you always have a home here. When my people were left with no other choice but to dig down, the dwarven clans got together with the dragon clans, my people, and they created this world while I was gone. They’ve modeled it on our old world, but it’s entirely new. Even I haven’t explored it yet.”

“Wait, if the Tuatha de Danan sealed your land and their land off how can we travel between other worlds?” My brain was slow to catch up.

“We can travel to other lands, the submerged lands of the ancestors of those you call the Maya and the Aztec, the lands of the snowbound in the Antarctic, anywhere but between our land and Tir Na Nog. It’s more complicated, though. I could not get back, because I was not in the land of your myths when the Tuatha de Danan sealed it off. If we go out, we cannot get back in. We can only travel between magical worlds and never to Tir Na Nog.”

“Wow.” I felt my heart race as my brain jolted at the knowledge that so many other worlds existed. “That’s why you couldn’t get back in then? You were in the human world, not the magical world?”

“Exactly. There are many more worlds, they’ve just all hidden from the human world as time has passed. Your world is just not ready for these people anymore. You’ve built legends and myths around beings that you once interacted with but reject us now as fairy tales.” He paused and sighed, his face sad again. “You’ve lost the ability to believe in magic and have lost so much without even knowing it.”

“I can see you…oh!” Right, I’m half magical so I can see the magical world. “Where does that leave me then, Wruin? Where does it leave, Holly for that matter?” Would she ever be able to take off the boots?

“She’s seen it now, and been in the magical world. She will adapt to it, and thrive. Especially if Lothar has any say in it.” He chuckled then and I couldn’t help but smile in return.

“I think that’s a sealed deal, there.” I was still smiling, but Wruin was serious once more.

“You can always refuse me. We can live apart and I will ensure you have everything you ever want. No strings attached.” He looked away and I wondered what he wasn’t telling me.

“Will I,” I paused, wondering how to say it. “Will I be immortal too?”

“No, you will age, but more slowly now. Our timelines will match up once we mate, and we will spend the rest of our lives together. I don’t know how long that will be, I can’t promise forever, but we’ll have at least a hundred years to learn about one another. Probably many more. As your aging slows, mine will speed up; until we match a normal human’s lifespan. I don’t know how long that will take.”

“That’s a long time.” I was excited, but also afraid. That really was a long time.

“I know better than most.” His voice was quiet and drew my attention. “It’s been lonely without you, Abigail.”

“I didn’t realize it, but I’ve been lonely too, Wruin. You feel like home, do you know that?”

“Would you like to see your new home?” He asked, his eyebrow rising over his forehead once more. His eyes gleamed and he smiled a smile that made me want to tell him I wanted to explore something else. Him.

“Yeah, sure. That would be great.” I didn’t want to seem desperate so I took the coward’s way out. “Let’s explore.”

His smile became a grin as he stood up and offered me his hand. “Follow me.”

We went out onto a wide veranda that ran the length of the structure we were in, the highest building around, as far as I could see. Hundreds of feet in the air, I could see out over a world that was dimly lit.

“The drwarvens have managed to create the illusion of day and night with their magical little inventions. A lot of what you humans consider magic is only dwarven science and engineering, you know? We can conjure, but we can also create wonderful inventions.” Wruin led me up a staircase to a platform.

I saw the city laid out before me, tall tree-like structures with wide canopies supported a multitude of levels connected by bridges. I could barely take it all in.

“How have they managed to get food down here? How are the plants growing without sunlight?” I looked at Wruin, so many questions unanswered, some I didn’t even know how to ask because it was all so very complicated.

“There are ways, magical ways and science ways. When our world started to become inundated by the waves, and our people started to flee, we made tunnels down into the ground. Some of those are still used to fish, the plants you see are grown with the special lamps used to create the illusion of daylight. They nourish us all.”

“Wruin. May I ask something?” I wasn’t sure if my next question was insulting or not.

“Yes, Abigail?” He turned to me, his eyes as serious as mine.

“If you have all of this special magic and science, why didn’t you just keep the water from flooding your lands? Why not just make it go away now?” It seemed like a simple solution and I didn’t understand why they hadn’t done that before.

“We tried to use a dyke system for a long time, like the ones used in the Netherlands, but when the glaciers began to melt, there was just too much water. Lakes formed by the glaciers gradual melt off suddenly flooded, and broke their banks, which also added to global sea levels. We couldn’t science that away. We also couldn’t magic it away, we tried.” He looked away, his golden eyes sad.

“What happened?” I asked quietly, sensing a story.

“The water left us for a while, and it drowned a nation to the south of us. Millions died.”

“Oh no!” I looked at him in horror, seeing the burden he carried.

“Magic is a wonderful thing, but it can be cruel. We have to use it wisely. That is your first lesson.” He breathed deeply and I noticed the lights were growing brighter, a glow was on the horizon now. It went on for miles this place! An entire world beneath the ocean floor!

“Now, are you ready for that tour?” He gave me a cheeky but sly grin.

“Sure.” I smiled back, but the smile faded as Wruin disappeared. Before I could even blink a dragon had taken his place. His dragon.

“Oh my!” I whispered as the dragon, at least 12 foot tall, leaned its head down to the ground. I’d noticed he tended to change sizes, depending on where we were. Out here in the open he could have shifted into a massive shape, but I knew he’d chosen a smaller form so he wouldn’t be so overwhelming.

I stood my ground for a moment and then moved to him. His head lifted and those dragon eyes, with irises in the shape of diamonds, stared back at me. Wruin was in there, my Wruin.

I cupped my hand around his outer jaw, studying his shape, the look of him. “My very own dragon.”

Wruin’s head nudged me to the place between his massive wings, now tucked into his sides. I gingerly climbed onto his back and moved up to the place between his shoulders. Further down, his spine was a bony ridge of points but here there was almost a natural saddle between the ridges and I knew I’d be safe.

I heard and felt a rumble beneath me, and Wruin’s dragon head turned to look at me. Then he winked and I couldn’t help but laugh!

“You feel good on my back, Abigail.” I heard him say.

“You can speak?” I didn’t think he could.

“Of course I can. Quite a few things are possible in this world. Even this.”

The last part I heard only in me head and my eyes went wide. Then I screamed as he gave a mighty push and we took flight. I clutched at the ridge in front of me as his wings unfurled, and we shot across the city below.

Wind rushed at my face, my hair streamed out behind me, and I looked down at the biggest example of the will to live that I’ve ever seen. Below me were miles and miles of trees, real and manmade, some with flat canopies that were used for farming, others had houses and stores.

“Wruin,” I thought to him, hoping that was how this worked.

“Yes, my mate?” I heard inside my skull.

“Why can’t you just conjure food?” I responded.

“I told you, magic can be very bad. Jewels, money, these are things that we can take from the earth, or from bad people, but food is one thing we cannot take. When we take it, we take it from someone else. We might take it from a bad person or from a child, we never know, so we produce our own food. None of us want to be responsible for a child going hungry.”

“That makes sense.” I had started to realize this magic stuff was far more complicated than I’d imagined.

The lights grew brighter and became centralized, mimicking the sun rising in the sky. I saw the light reflected on rivers and lakes, and valleys and mountains appeared. What I saw reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Norway. Wruin carried me further, to an area of flat land, with a shoreline and waves, and then to an area of gentle hills, like the ones we’d left behind in Dorset. They had recreated the world they had known, only this land was thousands of feet beneath the ocean. Incredible.

Wruin turned back towards the land and took us back to his home. As I climbed down from his back, he spoke again.

“My people have waited a long time for my return. I must go to them soon, learn what has happened since I left.” He shifted into his human form once more and I couldn’t help but admire that kilt again.

He didn’t look silly at all with those long panels of leather that went down to his knees. He looked like he needed to be straddled and oh…

He’d pulled me into his arms as my thoughts began to wander and his lips came down to crush mine.

“Yes, I do need to be straddled and fucked to within an inch of my life, Abigail.” I heard him in my head once more.

I gasped against his lips as he revealed he could share my thoughts. “One day, I might teach you to control it, my mate. For now, I’m enjoying it too much.”

He picked me up then and carried me down the stairs, to the soft pallet of furs. The room was still dark, curtain over the windows blocked out the light, but a soft candle-like glow filled the room as we walked in. I knew Wruin had created it, but didn’t care because he’d placed me on the pallet and was now between my thighs, rocking into the thick material of my jeans.

“Wruin,” I pulled away from him as his scent filled my nostrils and hunger flared deep in my stomach. Hunger for him. “Was that you in my dreams? Was that...real?”

“Almost real, my mate, but not real enough. Now stop talking with your mouth, there are better things to do with it.” He captured my mouth once more, and I gave myself up to the unimaginable, a dragon shifter making love to me.

My craving for him grew as he bared my chest to the air and his hot lips encircled my nipple. I cried out a sound, I couldn’t make words, as a new sensation shot through me. Pleasure that went straight down, down between my thighs and pooled into liquid heat.

“That’s it, Abigail, give it all to me.” I heard him in my head as my back arched, pressing the dark pebble of my nipple into his sucking mouth.

Wet, hot, pleasure coursed through me as he sucked harder, letting his teeth graze the sensitive peak. His hand dove down, beneath my jeans, beneath my panties, and straight to the spot that ached the most. The spot that had been pressing into him as he rocked his hips into me.

My stomach went tight and my throat ached as a groan of pleasure tore from my chest, from somewhere deep as I felt electric buzzing start to course over my skin.

“Sh, it’s only me, my love.” He soothed as his hand began to dance inside of my panties. “I can’t help control it, it just feels so fucking good to touch you.”

The buzzing didn’t hurt, it only made me more aware of him as we moved together. I gave myself up to him, to be his plaything, but I wanted to touch, I wanted to make him cry out my name.

I wanted...oh God, I wanted to explode! I wanted that feeling he’d given me in my dreams! I’d heard all my life that reality didn’t live up to the fantasy but as his tongue slicked over my other nipple and his fingers feathered over my clit, I knew that reality was not only going to live up to the fantasy, it might just surpass it.

I felt my hips begin to roll, my body doing as it pleased as Wruin totally wrecked my self-control. “Wruin...”

I panted his name, not sure what I was asking for, just knowing that I needed it. More. Him.

“We’ll get there, Abi, don’t worry baby. Just let me consume you, let me have all of you.”

I couldn’t do anything else but what he asked.

Every one of my senses belonged to him, because all I could taste was him on my tongue, all I could smell was his scent in my nose. I could only hear the soft sounds of his lips suckling my flesh, the way his fingers made slick noises in my pants. I could see only him, his mouth on me, his eyes boring into mine.

I was him and he was me.

He tilted his head, and his mouth pulled on my nipple as his fingers pressed deeper into my clit, the pattern so quick, so good that I became focused on little more but the twin spots of pleasure he gave me. A tingle started deep inside of my walls, a tingle that became a pulse and my hips rocked up into him with force as my head went back on the furs beneath us.

“There you go, my love. Now you’re mine.” I heard it as a growl in my head, a voice that made the pulsing stronger, that sent me higher as I forgot how to breath, how to voice my release, how to be anything but a pulse of ecstasy and light.

I started to writhe beneath him, almost dislodging his fingers, until he pinned me to the bed with his hips, a growl of warning coming from deep in his throat. I couldn’t stop though, his teeth were now clamped around my nipple, a pleasurable pain that only sent me higher.

I rode that pulse of light, totally unaware that my pants were gone and I was completely bare beneath him, until he was inside of me, deep, hard, and full of him. He turned then, flipping us so that I was riding him, and in control. I looked down and saw his eyes were glazed with his desire, his body was mine to do with as I pleased.

I could still feel pulses of delighted pleasure, pulses that only grew as I moved, twitched on his hips.

“Abigail,” he gasped, his hands clenching on my hips to hold me still.

“Oh no, dragon, you wanted this, now you’ve got it. And I’ll give it to you how I good and well please!” His eyes were startled now, but pleased, and I knew he wanted more.

I placed a hand on his chest for balance, and began to dance on his hips. He was deep inside of me, my slick walls sucked at him, and I saw a fire begin to burn in his eyes. His dragon was there, and it was happy. The lights in the room dimmed as the fire grew in his eyes, as his panting sighs turned to gasps, and then groans. His hips began to move with mine, and I knew he was just on the edge, just on the edge of joining me in nirvana.

My hand on his chest clenched as I felt the pulses begin to turn to deep throbs of warning, and I heard him moan. I looked down to see I’d trapped his nipple between my fingers, that he’d thrown his head back. My fingers twitched with the knowledge that he’d like that, and he hissed a breath between clinched teeth.

“Abigail, if you don’t stop that, I will come.”

I bent over and licked the nipple with my tongue and he twisted us again, until I was flat on my back and he was driving into me. The world spun away as Wruin drove into me, over and over, his breath little more than a sob now as he sought out that final release, that final moment.

With a groan that shook the walls, I felt him pulse within me,and the world exploded around me. A roaring sound filled my head and I felt the world rush away as Wruin drug me into the heavens at a speed that was only colors. Then I was him, and he was me, and I knew we were more than just lovers, we were one.

Our lives together had only just begun but now, we had each other. He wouldn’t be my protector, we would protect each other. He would not just provide for me, we would provide together. We would love and be loved, and the world could not change that. We were more than soulmates, we were more than partners, we were one.

“I’ve always loved you, Abigail,” I heard in my mind. “Welcome home.”