RURIK CLASPED HIS hands under his head and stared at the shadows of the barn roof as night settled in. He’d dined with Freyja and her father, though Freyja barely looked at him. Every time she did, he could see thoughts racing through her eyes.

She’d let him touch her, please her... and now she was curious.

But the stubborn part of her nature had reared its head also. Freyja was not the sort to accept such a vital turning point in her seduction so sanguinely. She would turn herself in knots, no doubt all night, and in the morning their dance would begin again.

He could hardly wait.

Rurik could be patient, even as his body ached with the lack of release. Freyja was worth it, and today had been a concession he hadn’t expected her to make just yet.

Closing his eyes slowly, he let his spirit hover just inside his body. Tonight he had another debt to repay, and if he felt perhaps a little frustration, then this would assuage the hunter within him.

A long time since he’d walked the dreams of man. A long time since he’d wanted to.

Rurik let his spirit separate from his mortal flesh, and rose high above the world. The little barn lay beneath him, and lights flickered merrily from the main house. He drifted above its grassed roof, and then turned his sight upon the nearby village.

One thought and he was there, the world rushing past him. Dozens of spirits flickered below him as men and women moved through the village, banking the fires for the night.

Rurik sorted through them, his predatory senses touching and discarding several souls before finally alighting on the one he sought. He circled the fine manor house, sensing the snoring pig that awaited him.

“Benedikt,” Rurik whispered, feeling the other soul waken to his call, the man turning fitfully toward him in bed.

Not quite all the way awake, but not lost in sleep either.

Rurik formed within the room, staring balefully at his nemesis.

This man had hurt Freyja. Not physically, for she had her own defenses, but he’d struck at her where she was most vulnerable. Little whispers in the right ear, setting superstition against her, and threats to those villagers who might have helped her and bought her produce. Oh, yes. Rurik had offered good coin for that information, as he waited for Freyja to make her way home from Akureyri.

Benedikt wanted her weak, alienated and powerless. His intentions had never been about seduction, but ownership. He’d wanted her begging and on her knees, rather than meeting her on equal footing.

No man of honor would ever pursue such a course of action.

Crossing to the bed, Rurik looked down on his prey. Every inch of him wanted to spill blood, but that went against the code he lived by. No true dreki could ever commit murder, no matter the offence. You did not take human lives, unless they attacked you first. It was a treaty that went back hundreds of years to when the human Althing met with the dreki court and demanded a cease to hostilities between human and dreki.

He had never before felt the need to break one the dreki’s greatest laws, but he came close now.

Killing this coward, however, would be too easy.

Rurik reached out with his spirit hand and clasped Benedikt’s shoulder, plunging them both straight into the dream world.

Rurik manipulated the dream, twisting it to his liking. Taking his immortal form, he flapped high above the moors, where he set Benedikt to running. The man staggered and babbled with fright, finding himself in unfamiliar terrain. When Rurik’s shadow rippled over him, Benedikt looked up, his face whitening with fear.

“Run,” Rurik whispered.

Mist surrounded them, hot fumes bubbling from small crevices in the ground. Enjoying the mortal’s staggering plight, Rurik flapped lazily above him, then suddenly cut his wings flat against his sides and plunged into a dive.

Benedikt bleated in fear, and splashed through a hot spring, his voice turning to a scream as the acid water burned him.

Swooping just short of him, Rurik climbed again as the man scrambled across moss-slick rocks.

“It is not fun to be prey, is it?” he taunted, diving again.

A wave of incoherent fear swept from the man. He pissed himself, and Rurik chose that moment to lash out with his claws, catching the man by the shirt. He hauled him into the air, wings beating as he climbed. The shirt ripped, jerking Benedikt in his grasp, and Rurik shook him a little, just to frighten him.

“Please!” Benedikt screamed, as the tear in his shirt began to jerk wider. “Please! I have gold—”

The shirt finally gave and Benedikt tumbled end over end with a high-pitched squeal as he plummeted through the air. Rurik waited until the last moment before he caught his blubbering prey. His claw locked around the man’s ankle.

Now he had the peasant’s attention.

“I don’t want your gold. Nothing you say can or will sway me. This is a warning.”

Turning toward his dream-rendition of Krafla, he flapped lazily as Benedikt cried in his grasp.

“You have turned your village against Freyja Helgasdottir. You have threatened her, and threatened others so they may not provide her aide or trade coin with her. You’re not a man. You’re a sniveling coward, and you know not who you provoke.”

Circling the tip of the volcano, he pictured lava bubbling within the hollow of the caldera, flames licking up the sides as if they wanted to eat Benedikt alive.

“That bitch is lying! I never touched her. I never threatened her—”

“If you die here, then you’ll never wake.” Rurik bared his teeth as he circled above the volcano. “If you so much as look in her direction ever again, I shall roast you alive,” he snapped, and then finally let go. “I know who the liar is.”

* * *

Benedikt slammed his hands out in front of him as the lava rushed up to meet him, only to realize there was something wrong, something.... He jerked awake from the dream and plunged upright in his bed, his skin clammy with sweat as his familiar room formed around him. The fire in the grate had died down, but lit enough of the furniture for him to grasp hold of his sheets in relief.

Not real. Just a nightmare. His lungs sucked in air and his heart raced as he groaned and sank his head into his hands. His nightshirt was wet with piss. The image of the caldera rushing up to meet him sprang sharply to mind, then he was crying and snot was bubbling out of his nose, and damn him, he was a man, not a child. Benedikt wiped the tears from his eyes furiously, sucking in enough oxygen to stem the flow of tears.

“Just a dream,” he told himself hoarsely, even though it felt real.

Pain speared through his ankle as he twisted to right his sheets, and he dragged them up to see what the problem was—

There, against his skin, were the reddened claw marks of the dragon.

“Not a dream,” something whispered in his head.

Benedikt’s back hit the headboard as he scrambled up the bed, staring at his reddened skin. “Blessed father, watch over me,” he whispered, his heart thumping like a rabbit’s.

He scrambled for the chamber pot as his stomach suddenly heaved, too overwhelmed by the thought of what had happened. Real. Far too real. Benedikt vomited into the pot, piss splashing against his face. He was held captive by his stomach, however, until the wave of fear wrung everything from him.

Ripping his nightshirt off, he wiped his face and collapsed in a heap against the wall, shivering.

That bitch must have set the dragon upon him.

There was more than one way to answer that insult. He shoved to his feet, and reached for his clothes. He was halfway into them when the dream returned.

“If you so much as look in her direction, I shall roast you alive,” the dragon had hissed.

Benedikt swallowed, then he slowly dragged his trousers up his legs. It wasn’t as though he was going to do anything. Not overtly. That was what he was paying others for.

He considered the thought for a long moment, turning it over in his mind to find the flaw in his argument.

There was none. He couldn’t just accept this threat.

And he had a dragon hunter up his sleeve.

The dragon had to be dealt with. And Benedikt knew just the way to do it.

* * *

The fire crackled as Haakon nursed his horn of ale in the village taproom. Another long, seemingly pointless day stretched behind him. The frustration ached, but he knew to be patient. Today they’d mapped Krafla, finding no sign of the dreki itself, but plotting where the best place to set the ballista lay.

Turning the silver pendant his wife had given him over in his fingers, Haakon rubbed the embossed metal. A hawk in full flight gleamed, its wings flared and its eyes seeming to stare right through him.

“A hawk for a hunter,” Arja had teased as she lay beneath him the night of their wedding, and looped the chain around his neck.

He hated the fact the memory had grown ragged around the edges. He knew her face, but when he pictured her, somehow the image wasn’t quite fully formed, as if he was forgetting parts of her. Hair the color of spun gold crowned her face, and eyes like polished amber stared up at him.

Six years of misery. Six years since the dreki stole her from him.

Haakon’s fist closed over the pendant. He could wait another night or two, so long as his patience gained him what he desired.

“Who are you looking at?” Rollo demanded with sneer, his loud voice cutting through the taproom laughter. “Don’t think I won’t ruin that pretty face of yours!”

The enormous man shoved to his feet, fist drawn back as he launched himself toward the youngest of their company, but before Haakon could move to restrain him, another was there.

One of his newest recruits, Magnus, caught the man’s wrist and shoved Rollo against the wall as if he didn’t weigh the same as a bear. His lips curled back from his teeth as Rollo’s attention turned from the young hunter to this newest threat.

“Keep your hands off my brother,” Magnus warned, and that voice sent a chill through Haakon.

He pushed to his feet, recognizing the danger signs. His men were hungry for a kill, and the careful planning and days of unsuccessful hunting were wearing at them all. If he didn’t stop them, blood would be spilled. “That’s enough.”

Both Magnus and Rollo looked at him, though Magnus’s expression didn’t change. He and his brother, Andri, had joined Haakon’s party in Akureyri, lured by the sound of plentiful coin. Though he had enough men, he’d taken one look at their hardened eyes and battle-ready frames and known warriors when he saw them.

Which was precisely what he’d need, where he was going.

“Focus on the dreki,” he told the room of watchful men. “You’ll get your blood soon enough.”

“When?” Gunnar demanded.

“Aye,” Jon snarled. “When do we take the dragon’s lair?”

The rest of the men echoed him, thumping fists on table, and clapping their tankards on the trestle tables. Haakon held his hands up, the pendant chain curled around two fingers. “Tomorrow!”

A chorus of cheers went up.

But Haakon felt eyes on him, and noticed Andri was staring at the pendant in his hand. Slowly the boy’s eyes locked on his, a shock of black hair falling over the youth’s forehead and highlighting those dangerous blue eyes.

Just a lad, barely past the threshold of youth. But Haakon felt something shift inside him as their eyes met.

Even a boy could be dangerous, and he almost wanted to demand to know what put that look in Andri’s eyes—as if the sight of the pendant stirred something heated in the lad’s chest.

A foolish thought, for the boy had no connection to Arja. He would have been in short pants when she first swept into Haakon’s life and turned his world upside down.

“Tomorrow,” Magnus echoed, slowly sinking onto the bench beside his brother, his hawk-like features sharp with some unfettered bloodlust. He had no love of dragons, or dreki, or whatever they bloody well were.

“I want to mount that dreki’s head on a spike,” the man had said the first time they met.

Andri’s lips thinned, and then the boy looked away from the pendant that had held him captive for long moments.

Haakon curled his fist shut over it and sank onto his chair, just as the boy’s head tilted toward the door. Sliding the pendant into his pocket, he picked up the sword he’d been polishing earlier.

The door to the tavern banged open and Benedikt appeared in the doorway, his plump cheeks full and his mouth turned upside down. He spilled inside from the night, as if Hel’s three-legged horse, Helhest, were on his trail.

Something had upset the little farmer, Haakon thought, sliding an oiled rag along the length of his sword.

Conversations lagged as the mercenaries all noticed the pampered brat. Gunnar locked eyes with Haakon, and then spat in the reeds. He’d already voiced his thoughts on their benefactor and the way Benedikt seemed to think he’d bought them.

“I don’t care what the little lordling thinks,” Haakon had replied coldly. “He’s paying for the men and the ballista, and I need them to get my wife back.”

Looking the worse for wear, Benedikt slammed a pouchful of coin on the table in front of him. Haakon’s gaze locked on it, then slowly lifted to the would-be lordling.

“I’m not paying you to sit on your ass and polish your sword,” Benedikt snapped. “You’ve been here four days, and you’ve barely done a thing.”

Gunnar lowered his tankard as Haakon shifted forward in his seat, putting both feet on the ground. Standing up, he loomed over the petulant man-child, then slid his sword into its sheath at his hip with a steely rasp. Conversation died. His men shifted in their chairs as they craned their necks to watch.

They weren’t the only ones who were hungry for blood.

And Benedikt might be paying them, but there were certain insolences Haakon wouldn’t tolerate.

Haakon rested his knuckles on the table and loomed forward, so they were of a height. “You know nothing of hunting dragons,” he said quietly. “And this is no ordinary dragon.”

He’d seen it circling Krafla two days ago, sunlight gilding its golden hide.

His heart had caught in his throat at the sight, and every instinct within him urged him to scale the mount and launch a full-scale assault upon the dreki’s lair. He’d thought of Arja in that moment, begging any god who listened for her to still be alive.

“The volcano seems empty and the entrance is barricaded by an invisible door, or perhaps magic,” Haakon continued. “To scale the mountain, we must take a narrow route, which leaves us vulnerable. I’m not throwing men at the dreki needlessly until I can figure out how to get it to meet me on my terms.”

“You want the dragon?” Benedikt snapped. “I know how you can lure it out.”

Stillness slid through him, and his knuckles ached as he clenched his fist. “How?”

Benedikt stomped his boot on the trestle seat, then reached down to peel up his trousers. “It visited me in a dream.” There, around his leg, were the unmistakable red marks of a set of claws.

No wonder the little bitch was bleating so hard.

“What did it want?” Haakon demanded. Here was his chance, he just knew it. He’d stared past that invisible barrier to the dreki’s lair and called his wife’s name in desperation, hoping she was inside.

If he could just break the spell on the door, or bring the dreki to him.... Maybe it was madness, but he needed to discover if Krafla’s wyrm had stolen his wife. Being here, so close to the shadow of the mountain was sending him mad with pure want. Arja haunted his dreams all night, pleading for him to rescue her, until he didn’t dare sleep.

Patience be damned, there was a feeling tingling through his veins as if fate rushed to meet him. This was it. This was the dragon who’d taken her. He knew it.

“It wanted to warn me,” Benedikt said, smiling a little, as if he could see Haakon’s need on his face. “It wanted me to stay away from Freyja Helgasdottir, or it would kill me.”

The blood rushed from Haakon’s face, leaving his cheeks cold. “Then Freyja is the key to luring it out.”