Xenon would wish afterward that he had not asked.

In halting breaths, she told him the story of her father’s Viking village. How one morning, thousands of years from now, when the sky had been lit purple by what the people in her time called The Northern Lights, three drakkon attacked her father’s village. Three “blue dragons—one with eyes of red, and two with eyes of gold.” Three drakkon so powerful, they slaughtered all but her father, who’d only escaped with his life because he was in wolf form and because his father had told him the spell needed to make use of the fated mate portal device. He’d escaped forward to her time, but the drakkon attack had its effect.

According to Fated Mate, her father had never fully recovered from his family’s death, and thus had become “a drunk.” He had what Fated Mate called “an undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder with a shitload of survivor’s guilt on top—which he treated with a fuck ton of drinking.”

Her father felt he should have been slaughtered with his family, and that it had been both wrong, and cowardly of him to use the fating portal to escape his true destiny. Eventually, her mother could not take it anymore and did something that had no translation in the drakkon language. Divorced—or left the mating—without permission from her mate. Two months later, while high on the liquid chemical called alcohol, her father had walked into a path of moving vehicles called traffic and had been struck dead, thus ending a life that had supposedly been saved by his escape through the fated matching portal.

By the time Fated Mate finished her tale, tears shown in her eyes. But not for the reason he thought.

“All this time, I told myself you were different. You had to be different. You couldn’t be like those dragons who attacked my father’s village. Maybe you were from a different group. But here’s what I know for sure. We do not have two moons in my time. And there were never two moons during my father’s time. In fact, there is zero evidence of two moons in my civilization’s recorded time. And…there really, really isn’t any life on the planet Mercury.”

Mercury. That is how she referred to Drakkon in her civil tongue.

Xenon stopped trying to “process”—as Fated Mate would say—all she had told him. Yes, he and his two relatives were the only blue drakkon on the trip. But… “Perhaps your civilization’s telescopes are not strong enough,” he proposed.

“No, that’s not it. We sent a probe to your planet. More than one, in fact, and from all the evidence we could gather, your planet is not only uninhabited, it’s virtually uninhabitable without space suits because it doesn’t have an atmosphere.”

Fated Mate tilted her head in a way that somehow conveyed sympathy even as her flame continued to burn with anger and sorrow. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Xenon? Something is going to happen. Something that makes it impossible for you to return to Mercury. Something that’s going to make you want to kill every man, woman, and child in my father’s village.”

She spoke in such riddles, and he could understand little of what she told him. However, one unspoken confession did come through. “You hate me. You have hated me from the beginning of this journey for this murder you think I will commit.”

“For the murders I know three blue dragons with eyes matching you and your family will commit.”

“But it could be anyone!” He scrambled for an alternative hypothesis. “Once every Drakkon millennium, we have a royal hunt. Mayhap it was my brother who did this to your father’s village. Perhaps he brought with him another red-eyed blue for the hunt.”

Fated Mate shook her head, folding her arms again over the nursing glands he so admired. “Everyone, including my papa, thought dragons were myths before they showed up in his village. In my civilized time, as you call it, they’re considered mythical creatures, something people made up long ago to explain dinosaur fossils. And we have only one moon. Also, Mercury had zero signs of life when we sent—eventually send that probe!”

She shook her head again, her chest flame sparking with pain. “As much as I want to believe those three blue dragons are your brother and his cronies, or three other blue assholes, I can’t shake this terrible feeling. I don’t…I don’t think you’re going home like you think you are. And judging by the lack of evidence that dragons even exist, I don’t think any more of you are coming back here. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the years between now and when you guys attack Papa’s village, but my gut tells me this: you will be one of the dragons who slaughter my Viking family.”

Xenon could see her logic. The combined evidence, if not damning, was suspect. And indeed, that explained her mood during this journey. Why she accepted, but no longer initiated congress with him. Why she seemed unable to so much as glance at him in drakkon form, without having to look away.

“Then why not kill me? If you have been dreading what I might do to your father’s people, why did you not kill me in my sleep while we traveled?”

Fated Mate stilled and without warning, her flame turned a bright yellow. Much like the happy yellow she burned upon seeing Eos first thing after a long hunt, only richer and more vibrant.

It was a beautiful color, unlike any he had ever beheld. Yet inside his head she said, “I should. As the daughter of a Viking you have wronged, I should kill you as you killed everyone my father held dear.”

She said this, yet her flame continued to burn a rich yellow.

“So why not kill me now? Perhaps stab a spear in my other eye the next time I am in drakkon form?”

She looked away from him. “I’m still Eos’s mother,” she answered. “I can’t hurt him by killing his father.”

A half-truth at best, he decided, studying her rich yellow burn. But he decided to accept it if only so he might gaze upon her flame a little longer. The color, so unlike any he had ever beheld, mesmerized him.

Do you want me to survive? Okay then… let’s go with that option,”

Remembering her promise to him, he cupped her face. “Fated Mate. You honor me with the decision to spare my life,” he informed her in a grave voice. “And for this, I will vow to never lay claw or fire upon you, or any other member of your family. You have my sworn oath.”

He thought the words would assuage her, but instead, her flame darkened back to orange, and she pulled his hand from her face. Flinging it like entrails from her body. What had he said to upset her? The answer came to him swiftly, obvious as a burn.

“Ah. You do not believe my words.”

Fated Mate’s flame darkened even further. “I can’t believe your words,” she answered. “I tried to forget. But that fight…this conversation…I can’t ignore it anymore! You’re a dragon. No matter how much I lo—” She broke off with a sharp shake of her head as if reprimanding herself for something she was about to say. “I can’t ignore it anymore. I can’t forget if anything happens between us, you stop being polite, and start making very real threats against my freedom, my motherhood, nearly everything I hold dear. I wonder what you’ll say to get me to talk the next time I make you mad? What will it take to turn your solemn vow into some sort of sick revenge against me when you attack my father’s village? His family? How can I believe you won’t try to finish the job this time and make sure my dad dies, too?”

Her words chilled him to the bone, and at the same time, he felt his flame spark with such rage he had to take a step back.

She did not know, he told himself. She could not know. About his family. Or its reputation for cruelty. That what she accused him of was exactly what his father or brother would have done if betrayed by their fated mates.

The Even-Flamed Prince. He pondered his title. He was not called this because he was especially temperate, but because he didn’t completely lack a moral compass like his brother and father, and many of the blue kings who came before them. And yet despite his even-flamed reputation, Xenon’s deepest and most secret fear was that his family’s cruel streak lurked deep inside him as well. Embedded in his genes, waiting for the right circumstance or opportunity to switch it on and unleash itself on him, like some lethal and irreversible poison.

“No, no. You will not turn the direction of this fire,” he said more to himself than her. “You started this. You pushed for me to bring you here. And then you did attempt to abscond with our son!”

“’Attempted’ being the main word,” she answered, her voice weary but unapologetic. “Tracking down the Arizona gate was a long shot at best. I always knew it, even if I let myself put too much faith in it. You might have lost the argument in Siberia, but you were always going to win this war.”

He did not answer her this time. Instead, he took another step back. And then without another word, he leaped from the cave’s ledge.

Xenon had won this war, had he not? But it was as if his three-chambered heart had turned to stone, the heavy weight dragging him down to the rocky outcrop below before he finally unshelled and his wings found good current.

He had won. And Fated Mate had lost. He was a practical drakkon, and he knew she would but occupy only a speck of his life. And likely the life of their only child, too. Fated Mate could rot in that cave for her crimes. He could lead the Far Travelers to a different mountain, and in a thousand years or so, Golden Son would have eventually forgotten she even existed.

So why did he not feel victorious?