Delilah walked over to the bed and stared down at it with unblinking eyes. Her mind was still focused on that kiss. She blinked when Barrack’s symbiot swiftly stood up and moved to the other side of the bed before lying down again.

She grabbed her pillow and hugged it against her chest as she twisted and fell across the bed. She lifted her hand when she felt something warm and soft under her head before it ever touched the mattress. Rolling onto her side, she saw that her head was cushioned on a golden pillow.

“I kissed him,” she informed the symbiot, turning to look into its golden eyes.

The symbiot shimmered and sent her an array of images of itself excitedly dancing around in a circle. She groaned and flung her arm over her eyes. It didn’t help – the image was still there. Dropping her arm, she leaned on her elbow and glared at the golden creature.

“Do you do this to them too?” she demanded.

The creature sniffed and grinned. If she didn’t know better, she would be terrified of that mouth full of sharp teeth. Fortunately for her, she did know, and the look came off as anything but scary.

“What was even worse was it turned me on that Barrack was watching – and that he liked watching us. I know they are twins, but come on! How can I be attracted to both of them? I mean – two guys at one time? How greedy is that?” she groaned, falling back against the pillow again and staring up at the ceiling.

Warmth spread around her wrists. Lifting her arms, she gasped when she saw the bracelets changing shape. Flipping onto her stomach, she pulled both of her sleeves up to watch the moving designs.

At first there was simply the form of a woman in gold. Delilah wondered who she was. All around the woman were stars and planets. The scene shifted, evolving until there was the woman with the stars, but the planet changed to a village scene.

Two images emerged out of the gold. She recognized Barrack and Brogan in their dragon form. Delilah could feel her heart skip when she saw Barrack’s tortured expression as he was held by a mob of angry men. Brogan was lying nearby. ‘Past’ was the mental impression she received. This had happened a long time ago.

“No!” she whispered, horrified when she saw Brogan’s lifeless body. “Please… It didn’t happen. Not really. They are here. There is no way he could have died.”

Her eyes moved to the woman. The golden figure waved her hand and the scene reversed itself. Delilah felt like she was seeing two different endings to the same movie – one that had happened and one that could happen.

One scene after another revealed itself to her on each of the bracelets. She saw the twin’s journey to her world, her home, and finally the figure of a woman that had to be herself. Fascinated, she reached down and traced each of the designs.

On her right wrist, she saw herself standing between the two brothers. They were both touching her. Barrack had his body pressed to her back and his hands on her hips while Brogan held her hand, his body turned into hers. It reminded her of what had happened downstairs. All around them there were glittering stars as if they were either in space or outside on a world where the stars were close.

She looked at her left wrist. A soft gasp slipped from her when she saw three dragons wrapped around each other. There was no doubt that the two on the outside were Barrack and Brogan. It was the delicate female dragon between them that left her stunned. The dragon wore a necklace with a bird of prey on it – just like hers. Delilah raised her hand and touched her golden necklace.

“When you lay it out like that, it seems like fate, the reason why I’m attracted to both of them. Y’all really think I’m supposed to be with both of them,” she said, her voice trembling as she looked at the symbiot watching her with wide, expressive eyes. “I’m not even sure I can handle one of them. How on Earth do they expect me to handle both?”

Dropping her head to the pillow, she shook her head back and forth. She wasn’t ready to deal with this. In less than twenty-four hours, she’d gone from not having a boyfriend to having two aliens who thought she was their mate. None of the books she’d ever read had prepared her for this situation.

“I’m in so much trouble,” she groaned, ignoring the snickering symbiot who was having way too much fun at her expense.

* * *

Two hours later, a soft knock on her bedroom door pulled her attention away from the book she was trying to read. Closing her book with a snap, she placed it on the bed next to her before she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her legs. She looked up when the door opened a crack.

“I brought some hot tea,” Barrack said, waiting at the door. “May I enter?”

Delilah reached up and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Of course,” she said with a shy smile. “What have you been doing down there? It sounded like you’ve both been pretty busy.”

“Yes, we cannot read your language yet, but the book you have has many good illustrations and the process is not difficult to understand,” he commented, placing the cup of hot tea on the nightstand.

He straightened and looked at the edge of the bed with hesitation. She patted the bed for him to sit down. It wasn’t like this was anything new – though if she remembered that she had only met them yesterday, it was, but it didn’t feel like it.

And this is why my head is screwed up, she thought with a groan.

“What is wrong?” he asked in a gentle voice, cupping her cheek with his hand.

Delilah looked at him with wide confused eyes. The vivid image of his tortured face still haunted her. She reached up and touched his cheek, tracing the line of his beard.

“I want you to kiss me,” she murmured, twisting so that she could lean closer to him. “I want to kiss you. Is that wrong?”

He frowned. “Why would it be wrong?” he asked, his voice deepening with emotion.

“I kissed Brogan,” she pointed out with a rueful grin. “Which I happened to like – a lot, by the way.”

Barrack turned his head into her hand and pressed his lips to her thumb, which she was unconsciously rubbing near his mouth. She gasped with pleasure when he sucked her thumb into his mouth. Pulling her hand back, she twisted until she was on her knees.

“I know. I watched you. I found it very arousing,” he acknowledged. “You were destined to be our mate, Delilah. We have waited centuries to find you. Why would we come to you if that bothered me? You hold….”

His eyes flashed with grief, and she cupped his cheeks and gazed into his eyes, searching for what had caused it. Every time she was around these men, she discovered more layers. She had a feeling it would take a lifetime to peel each one away.

But, oh, what fun it would be, she thought as she slid her hands over his broad shoulders.

“You said you wished to kiss me,” he reminded her.

A shiver of awareness ran through her when he wrapped his warm hands around her waist and pulled her closer. Bending her head, she pressed her lips to his. They were as warm as the rest of him. Parting her lips, she touched the tip of her tongue to his upper lip before running it along the seam. His lips parted, and she deepened the kiss, wanting to taste him.

Threading her fingers through his hair, she clung to him when he lowered her back onto the bed. She felt the bed move when his symbiot jumped off, but even that slight distraction wasn’t enough to deter her from doing more exploring.

She whimpered in protest when he started to pull away. She tightened her hands on his shoulders and pressed a series of kisses along his jaw. It took her a second to realize that he was giving her a chance to straighten her legs so he could cover her body with his own.

“I have dreamed of this moment for centuries,” he told her in a voice filled with need and something she couldn’t yet identify.

Delilah relaxed against the bed and looked up at him. Barrack started to bend his head toward her, and she wanted this so badly, but her mind would just not shut up! She had spent the last two hours trying to read, but she just read the same page over and over again without comprehending a single word. Instead, the scenes from her bracelets had played through her mind like a broken record – especially the one where Brogan lay dead and Barrack was captured.

“I saw you,” she said, and Barrack paused. “Not in a dream, it was the symbiot who showed me. I saw Brogan, too. Why would a mob hurt you like that?” she quietly asked.

He looked down at her with a questioning expression. She could sense his withdrawal.

“What do you mean?” he cautiously asked.

She touched his cheek. “My bracelets – I saw things I didn’t understand. Brogan was dead and you…. Everyone was so afraid…of you. I know it can’t be real. I don’t understand what it meant,” she confessed.

She was shocked when he suddenly rolled off the bed and stood up. Sitting up, she watched him run his hands through his hair. She didn’t miss the heated look he shot his symbiot. The golden creature snorted and rose to its feet. With a toss of its massive head, it trotted out of the room.

Sliding off the bed, she walked over to stand next to him. His shoulders were stiff, and he appeared to be arguing with himself. She turned when she heard the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall. Puzzled, she looked toward the doorway and saw Brogan standing there.

“You two really can talk to each other,” she suddenly realized with a sense of awe. “Earlier I thought it was just like skipping through conversations you’d already had by reading body language, but you can talk to each other, like, telepathically.”

“Yes,” Barrack replied in a stiff tone.

“You communicate with the gold things like that as well. They showed me images in my head. I didn’t hear a voice, but I didn’t need to. They talk with pictures,” she murmured, trying to add this new information to the stuff they had already told her. “You didn’t tell me everything.”

Barrack turned from the window and waved his hand. “We told you enough,” he defended.

Delilah knew her eyes reflected her feelings of frustration. They’d told her enough? How much was enough?

“Enough as in not telling me that Brogan died?” she snapped, pointing her finger at Brogan. “How is it that he is alive when I saw him dead? I want to know everything, Barrack! I don’t want to know just ‘enough’. I want to know everything, so I can make an informed decision about the fact that you two seem to think I’m this mythical mate that you have been on a quest to find!”

“There is nothing mythical about it! You know that we are dragon-shifters and that we are aliens in your world. What does it matter other than we are your mate, and we have come to take you back with us? You will discover everything you need to know once we have claimed you,” Barrack snarled.

Delilah fell back a step, shocked at Barrack’s passionate response. The cool, calm brother was gone. In his place was a man with fire in his eyes and scales rippling across his skin.

He stood glaring at her for several seconds before he turned with a muttered curse and strode from the room, brushing off Brogan’s restraining hand as he passed. A few seconds later, she heard the front door open and slam shut. Shocked, she started forward to go after him. The storm was intensifying. He could get lost, or worse, die out there. She stopped when Brogan reached out and touched her arm.

“What doesn’t he want me to know? Why… Why do I feel like…?” her voice died as she tried to put her feelings into words.

“Like we are running out of time?” Brogan asked.

Delilah nodded and looked up at him. “I saw you….” Her eyes moved to his neck and a shudder ran through her.

“You saw me dead. Barrack would have died shortly thereafter,” Brogan quietly finished for her.

She nodded. “What happened? How can you be alive?” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion.

Brogan looked around the room and his gaze settled on the cup of tea that Barrack had brought up a short time ago. She watched as he picked it up. Reaching out, he tenderly grasped her hand with the other.

“You are right. You deserve to know everything,” he replied.

“Do you promise?” she asked, resisting when he started to lead her out of the room.

He paused before he nodded. “Yes, everything – including our deaths,” he stated.

* * *

Barrack took a deep breath of the frigid air. Blinding snow and howling winds buffeted him despite the fact that he was under a bridge. His dragon impatiently snapped at the snow and shook his head in irritation. He had shifted by the time he reached the bottom of the front steps and took to the air.

His body had been hard with desire from Delilah’s kiss while his mind was overwhelmed with fear. His symbiot had tried to form around him, but he was still too furious with the creature for showing Delilah more than they were willing to share at this point and he had ordered it away from him. At the moment, it lay across from him, watching him with a combination of defiance and sadness.

We weren’t ready for her to know, he growled, turning to shoot his symbiot a fierce look.

His symbiot shimmered in response and sneezed before turning its head away from his sharp, reproving gaze. Barrack wanted to snap at the creature, but even his dragon was ignoring his frustration, siding with his symbiot. If it weren’t so dangerous, he would have shifted and shoved his dragon so deep inside him that his primitive side would need a month to figure out a way out of his subconscious, and then he would have left his symbiot under the bridge to pout.

She deserve to know. Goddess said she must make choice, his dragon defended, melting a flurry of snowflakes with an impatient ball of dragon fire.

I know what the Goddess said, Barrack growled in response.

Barrack was about to make another retort when his symbiot surged to its feet and his dragon stiffened. He could feel the air around them changing. The change was unnatural. Something far more powerful was at work.

Barrack’s dragon knelt and lowered his head in deference. He understood a fraction of a second later what was going on when the snowy scene in front of him faded, and he found himself staring into the vast, swirling blackness of space. Walking toward him was an ethereal figure of immense power.

“Aikaterina,” he murmured.

His dragon trembled when she reached out and ran a gentle hand over his snout. She turned her gaze to his symbiot and silently beckoned it to come to her. Barrack sensed something different about the Goddess as she tenderly stroked his symbiot. She felt – fragile.

Come forward, warrior, she murmured, speaking directly to him.

Barrack shifted back into his two-legged form and started to kneel. He felt her hand against his cheek and looked up. Her smile was serene and her eyes compassionate. The last time she had come to them in the form of a Valdier maiden. This time, she kept her ethereal form.

“We need longer,” he said, his gut twisting at the thought that she had come to take them back. “We have found our mate. She…. Please, we need more time.”

Aikaterina stepped by him. She looked curiously from under the other side of the bridge before turning to look at him again. His symbiot followed her, pressing against her side.

“Time…,” she murmured, looking back to the opening from which she had emerged. “A man from this world once said that time keeps us all a prisoner of the present, yet our life transitions from our past to an unknown future. This human sees what many don’t. As for you, Delilah, and Brogan, your lives were preordained long ago.”

“But you changed that when you stopped us from dying,” Barrack protested, stepping closer to her. “We did not die, so our present now is intertwined with Delilah’s, whose path in life was also changed.”

Aikaterina bowed her head in acknowledgment of his passionate words, but she did not agree with him. Fear rose inside him. What if she refused his request? How could he fight someone so powerful? She chuckled and looked at him with an amused expression.

“I did not come to battle with you, warrior. I came because I sensed your conflict. I merely thought you needed someone. Your brother is normally the one with the hot temper,” she stated.

Barrack could feel his cheeks heat at her reply. It had never dawned on him that Aikaterina could see his distress and would come to his aid. Dragon’s balls, he’d been upset enough times in the past and she’d never appeared.

“Your symbiot reached out to me. It worries about you,” she informed him, looking down at his symbiot with an affectionate smile. “Do not forget that I have a connection to them as well.”

“It showed Delilah what happened to us. We were not ready,” he defended.

Aikaterina turned to look at him. “There may never be a good time, warrior. She is stronger than you realize. If you have doubts, ask your brother,” she said, amusement shining from her golden eyes.

Barrack’s lips twitched at the subtle reminder of Brogan’s painful early encounters with Delilah. He released a deep sigh. He had overreacted.

“Yes. You also underestimate your true mate, warrior. Trust me when I say she is the perfect mate for you and your brother,” Aikaterina encouraged before her gaze ran over the underside of the bridge and back out into the blizzard. “This world is almost as interesting as yours, warrior. Perhaps….”

Barrack watched as Aikaterina’s expression changed from slightly pensive to serene again. She turned and slowly began to retrace her steps back through the dark portal. He took a step forward, then paused, his throat tight as he called after her.

“So, we have more time?” he asked.

“Watch your symbiot, warrior. When it fades, so too will the threads I have altered,” she softly replied as the portal closed behind her.

“But… how long?” Barrack’s throat tightened at the sadness in her voice.

He looked at his symbiot. He was shocked to see that it was in fact more transparent than it should be. He’d been so preoccupied that he had failed to notice.

“How long?” he demanded.

His soft hiss of dismay was lost in the howl of the wind. Calling forth his dragon, he shifted. He had to inform Brogan. More importantly, he needed to return to Delilah and reveal everything.