“Wake, female. It is time to wake now.”

Fensa blinked her eyes open only to find herself in yet another dream. Standing over her was an incredibly handsome man. Neat dark hair with a jaw so strong, it couldn’t be obscured by the dark beard that clung to it. He had almond-shaped eyes that put her in mind of the Inuit people in her cousin’s Alaska kingdom. But he stopped short of being pretty, thanks to a painful looking scar that ran in a jagged line down his right eye. Wow…

Her sex dreams had become a lot more…ahem, explicit as she got older without any prospect of a mate to be seen. But this was the most specific composite she’d ever come up with, and way more piratey. Not bad. Not bad at all for a 23-year old virgin.

And if this was a dream, that meant she was free to do what she did in all her sex dreams. She reached out and tugged the sexy dream man down for a hot kiss, going in tongue first.

To her surprise, though, the man didn’t kiss her back or unlock his teeth to receive her tongue.

Just stood there, bent over her body, stiff inside her arms.

Wait a minute…

She pulled back, confused.

Only to find the man staring back at her with similar confusion. Except, unlike her, he only had one eye to look confused with. And it was glowing red.

Just like that, it all came flooding back. Going through the time gate. Ending up in some kind of weird, post-apocalyptic future. With a dragon man.

And, oh, god…oh, god. She’d mated him. Twice. Even though they were of two different species. And even though his species was her papa’s worst enemy.

She looked around her. Apparently, she was back on her old friend, the exam table. However, when she woke this time, she hadn’t experienced the tug of tubes removing themselves.

As if reading her mind, a voice suddenly explained, “You have been unconscious for nearly three rotations. I decided to take a chance and remove the tubes, in the hopes the lack of food, and bladder evacuation, would wake you. I would have used drugs, but I did not wish to harm the fetus.”

“Okay, what?” Fensa immediately shot into a sitting position on the table. “Did you say fetus? Does that mean I’m pregnant?”

“Yes, the lab has confirmed early gestation.”

She couldn’t believe it. “I’m pregnant. Like, with your baby? You didn’t have me gang bred or something while I was asleep?”

He regarded her for a long moment with that eerie, one-eyed unblinking stare, before saying, “Even with the translator, I understand very little of what you say, Female 7-133. But yes, the fetus has half my DNA. I was surprised to find you had gestated as well. In truth, I was not sure such would be possible between our species. Moreover, I considered terminating your life as a mercy while you slept, knowing as I did what would happen if you continue to go into mating fevers without a resulting pregnancy. But then, in the course of making my decision about whether to extinguish your flame, the wall alerted me you had gestated.”

Her brow furrowed because it sure sounded like… “Wait, are you saying you were all set to kill me because you thought I’d keep fucking you until I died, and you didn’t want me to go out that way?”

“Again, Female 7-133, I understand little of—”

“Okay, thank you for not killing me, I guess. And I’m pregnant, so I guess that means our two species can cross breed.”

“Well, yes. It would seem this is a special case. I ran several analyses while you slept, and it appears you put in a DNA request code that led you not to one of the Far Traveler Wolves, as I first assumed, but to me. This was a shocking discovery, to say the least.”

“For both of us,” she assured him. “I’m sorry, but my father fought you guys during the Viking age. It never even occurred to me I’d get matched with a dragon.”

“Once again, the translator fails me. Of what fight and age do you speak of?”

Fensa started. But then realized, “You probably weren’t around for either of them. It happened a long time ago. How old are you anyway?”

“Very young. Still in the building embers of my life.”

Okay. Hoping to the Fenrir Wolf she hadn’t just cougared a sixteen-year-old, she asked, “And, uh, exactly how old is that?”

“Two-thousand and twelve.”

Whoa.

So then …? “You said you can’t tell me where you come from, but can you at least tell me what happened? How we ended up in this situation in the first place…I mean, humanity? Did you guys come back and somehow decimate us into the Stone Age with your superior technology?”

“I do not know the Stone Age to which you refer, but currently your planet’s land masses are half-covered in ice sheets. It is an epoch of cold. Several of your planet’s species have disappeared during this period. But my species had nothing to do with their extinction or your planet’s lack of civilization.”

“Oh, Fenrir Wolf, we’re in another ice age? But that doesn’t make any sense! I thought the planet was getting warmer.”

“I would need more data to verify that hypothesis, but many of your planet’s native species have come and gone over the course of this “ice age” as you call it. In fact, when our team returned here, we found your species’ numbers much reduced from our previous accounting, through no fault of our own.”

Okay, okay… Fensa dropped her head into her hands, trying to process all this new information. So she’d landed in a post-apocalyptic period. And now the dragons…aliens…whatever this thing that impregnated her was—well, they were back. But why, exactly? To take over the earth for good?

She raised her head to ask the dragon one of the many questions now swarming around in her head. But his eyes were on the wall above her. “Your head is burning red and black, and your cortisol levels have risen to undesirable levels. We will speak of something else.”

“Something else?! How could I possibly want to speak of something else when I have no fucking clue where or when I am???” she demanded.

To her surprise, the dragon simply stepped back and…bowed. Which was not at all the response she’d been expecting. Also, it seemed weirdly formal, given what had gone down between them the last two times she was awake for more than five minutes.

“Forgive me, Female 7-133,” came his voice inside her head. “On my planet of origin, it is customary to refuse to speak of any subject that might upset a pregnant female. And though you are not of my species, you are in fact, pregnant. With my offspring. So until you lay the youngling in three moons, I will not speak of upsetting matters with you.”

Fensa’s mind just about shorted out with competing questions. Questions like, it was the custom in his culture for males to refuse to talk to pregnant females about upsetting topics? And he really thought he could pull the same shit with her?

But in the end, one question won out. A clear winner in the battle of Things Fensa Needed Clarified Right Fucking Now. “What do you mean, lay???”

A long pause. And then his eyes flicked back up to the wall. “You have need to relieve your bladder. I will provide you escort outside.”

“Oh, for Fenrir’s sake! Will you turn that thing off?” she demanded.

He started, his eyes slicing back to her face. “That name you just employed? How did you come upon it?”

Very confused, she attempted to answer the question she thought he might be trying to ask her. “I’m sorry for getting so angry. I just don’t need you monitoring every aspect of my body.”

His expression didn’t change. And of course, he didn’t blink. Yet, somehow the room felt ten times colder as he answered inside her head, “Then you fail to understand our circumstance, Female 7-133. You are gestating my first child. Drakkon births are very rare. Near impossible between our own kind in these times. Yet, you of all would-be mates have managed to take my seed.”

He came in closer, his voice hissing inside her head, “Ssssso no, there issss no quesssstion of whether or not you’ll be monitored. While the pregnanccccy is viable, your every need will be met, your every heartbeat registered. There will be no turning off thissss lab—hold, Female 7-133, where do you go? What are you doing?”

Fensa didn’t bother to look back as she replied, “I am Fensa-motherfucking-Greenwolf, granddaughter of the Fenris, Princess of the Viking wolves. And I am done with being told what to do, by you or anyone else!”

Then, with a swift palm of the door, she stormed out of the room.

“Female 7-133? Female 7-133?!” Both his voice and body followed her out of the lab…bedroom—whatever it was. “Where are you going?”

“To relieve my bladder! And then to find someplace to live where I won’t constantly be monitored or spoken to like I’m a child!”

“That makes no sense. Children cannot lay children.”

This time she didn’t answer, only hopped over the small stream and bee-lined toward the glacier’s exit. And her brain formulated furious plans as she stormed out of the smart glacier. At least she didn’t need his eyes to light her way this time. It must be a full moon because the tunnel was soaked in bright, opalescent light. Too bad she was pregnant. If she hadn’t gone into heat as soon as her control shot wore off, she could have shifted and spent the rest of her time in this icy wasteland as a wolf.

“Come back here, Female 7-133! It is not good or proper for you to exert yourself in this manner. I would carry you rather than risk your over-taxation.”

“Do. Not. Touch. Me,” she answered with all the menace she could muster, given that they both knew he could easily overpower her with his superior strength.

But it must have been “against custom” to lay hands on a pregnant female because she managed to get all the way to the mouth of the tunnel without him forcing the issue.

However, her triumph was short-lived. As soon as she got outside, she stopped cold. Because she’d just stumbled across her second “two-where-there-should-be-one” surprises of the week.

Hanging low in the night sky were not one, but two moons.