Fensa had a lot of explaining to do. Not just to her people, but also to herself.

However, the latter began to fall into place as soon as she stood up with Ola’s assistance and looked in the mirror.

There she found a fresh-faced woman, who looked neither like the wiry weather-beaten cavewoman she’d become, nor the oversized schizophrenic who’d accidentally landed herself in the Pleistocene Era. No, this woman looked more like Ola than like the helpless girl Fensa remembered. She was Detroit-thick, as her Great-Aunt Wilma liked to call her side of the family, with curves for days.

Yet, her face…it was 100% hers. As was her mind.

Well, at least partially. Ola was no longer a delusion, and Fensa seemed to have gained a second inner voice. One that wasn’t her wolf…

Are you real…? she asked it. Once again thinking of Xenon’s test.

A small silence. Then…I used to be. But now I’m you.

And you’re okay with that?

It doesn’t matter because soon we’ll be me. The universe is processing us. It won’t be long now…

Fensa had no idea what that meant, but she had a couple of newborns to visit, so she began the laborious process of getting out of bed. A catheter was removed by a dark-haired nurse who all but stared poison daggers at her as she did her job. So much fun. Thank goodness Knud dismissed her as soon as it was done with a, “We’ve got it from here, Gina.”

Painful didn’t even half describe what came next. More like face set to permanent wince as Ola and Knud helped her out of the hospital bed.

She’d done nothing but lie unconscious in a bed for three days, after Knud cut her open to get the babies out. Not one, but two babies.

“Two beautiful babies,” Ola said in a bright, careful tone that, according to Fensa’s delusional memory and the voice inside her head, didn’t remotely match her personality.

“Yeah, as beautiful as two lead weights can get,” Knud said with a lot more candor, as he tugged her arm into a robe. “Nearly dropped the first one when I went to pull it out. Turns out they each weighed over twenty pounds! You’re lucky you’re tall and strong and “Detroit-thick,” or you probably wouldn’t have survived the birth.”

“Strong? Fensa?” Ola said with a confused wrinkle of her nose. Then: “Oh, my gosh, Fenny! Did you finally start a strength training plan like I’ve been telling you to?” Ola asked.

No! Never! the voice inside her head answered.

“Sort of,” Fensa said out loud.

Tall and thick and strong…

But she’d only been two of those things back in prehistoric times. She’d become muscular with very little body fat thanks to her 100% paleo diet of the past four years.

The universe is processing us…

Apparently. Because shortly after getting put in the robe, she discovered she now had not only plenty of body fat, but enough core and glute strength to hold herself upright after a C-section.

“Wow,” Knud said, when she informed them she was sure she could walk to the en-suite bathroom by herself without assistance.

“Seriously, what workout plan have you been doing?” Ola demanded. “Cuz, girl, I’m about to get on it!”

The closer Fensa got to seeing her newborn babies, the more things fell into place both literally and figuratively. In the bathroom, the headache began to slowly recede as if whatever had melded her to the Fensa from this timeline was done syncing.

And shockingly, the new confusion of having two different timelines in her brain was what gave her the answers she was looking for. In this life, in this timeline, she was a theoretical physics grad student. In fact, she was just starting her doctorate paper about the Arizona time gate, partly based on her cousin Koko’s doctorate, which argued that the wolf tribe that had formed the original Arizona kingdom town in prehistoric times, might have also been the first native shifters to enter North America. Koko was not just her roommate in this timeline, but also an associate professor at the Arizona Mountains University. And even though Fensa hadn’t earned her Ph.D. yet, she was considered one of the foremost authorities on time gates, and had done a college thesis arguing that the gates might be an advanced fertility system, and not simply a magical portal, as had been surmised in a few romance novels set in the larger shifter community.

With both timelines now implanted in her brain, Fensa could see why the other Fensa wasn’t all that broken up at having her life suddenly turned upside down. A bright but lonely woman, Other Fensa had dedicated the past ten years of her life to satisfying her curiosity with the understanding she had limited time in which to do so. In only a few more years, she’d be expected to take over the Kingdom of Michigan per her birthright.

Which was a total “whoa” of a thing to find out for Original Fensa. A single woman taking over an alpha throne hadn’t ever been done in her timeline. But apparently, in this timeline, it was, if not commonplace, no longer unusual. And much of the credit could be given to Fensa and Ola’s mother, who—brace yourself—had not only not divorced Fensa’s papa, but was mated and married to him and his brother—the uncle Fenris she’d been named after. The uncle who had not, as it turns out, been killed by dragons. It made a weird kind of sense, Other Fensa assured her. Their parents’ wildly different personalities balanced each other out. And after getting off to a gnarly start, which included a five-year break while the two brothers went back in time to fight in what was now called the Viking-Dragon War, the threesome reconnected to make a parenting trio for Ola and Fensa.

Also in this timeline, not only had Olafr’s entire family and village not been slaughtered by three dragons, but both Fensa’s fathers and her grandfather led the Vikings to defeat what they still referred to in bedtime stories as the Serpent Horde.

And five years after that, her parents, all three of them, lived happily ever after with their very real twin daughters, Fensa and Ola.

Ola had been born into the role of queen and relished that she’d soon be taking over the throne of North Dakota where—yet another whoa—her Uncle Clyde, the King of Michigan in Fensa’s timeline, ruled with his husband, the King of North Dakota, in this one. Which probably explained a lot about the incredibly butch, but perpetually single king Original-Fensa remembered from her timeline.

This timeline’s Fensa also loved video games and theoretical physics, but she’d be leaving the Arizona grad program at the end of the year to take over the Michigan throne—mostly out of duty. Unlike Ola, she had little interest in the role that would stop her from seeking out the answers to her most burning questions.

For this reason, getting blended with a Fensa from another timeline was like a dream come true. The lonely grad student now had the answers to all the questions her thesis and doctorate investigation had put forth, with twin babies to boot!

I’ll take it, the voice told her as they smiled at each other in the bathroom mirror. In this timeline, this room and ensuite bathroom still belonged to the Arizona kingdom town’s clinic—not the hastily rebranded Wulfkonig Facility of Mental Health.

Yeah, I’ll take it, too, Original-Fensa replied to the voice inside her head.

Less than an hour after waking, Knud and Ola escorted Fensa through a door flanked by two large wolves in sunglasses and suits.

They offered no identification, but Other Fensa recognized them as the bodyguards the council had forced Rafes—oh sorry, President Nightwolf—to take after he’d announced his plan to seal off all the time gates with black boxes on the wolfnet. There’d been so many protests, many of them spearheaded by his outraged historian mother, Alisha Ataneq-Nightwolf, that the council had forced the guards on Rafes, ignoring his protests that he could take care of himself.

Apparently, he still felt that way. Rafes was nowhere to be seen after Knud pulled rank and kicked him out of the town clinic altogether. And he’d left his guards behind. To protect the babies? Or to keep them hidden?

Fensa guessed the latter, as she shuffled into the room with both Ola and Knud’s hands under her elbows. As not fun as her first vaginal birth had been, shuffling around after a C-section and a freshly removed catheter wasn’t a barrel of laughs either.

“Knew we shouldn’t have let you go to the bathroom alone,” Knud said. “You totally overdid it.”

“Yeah, maybe we should wait until tomorrow to see the twins...” Ola suggested.

As if. Fensa shook their hands off and surged forward when she spotted the two clear plastic bassinets. And all thoughts of overstepping presidents and residual C-section pain disappeared when she set eyes on her two babies, sleeping on their stomachs inside.

Twins, she vaguely recalled from Other Fensa’s memories of her and Ola, were often placed in the same bassinet. But these golden-brown babies each had a tub of their own.

Most likely because of the large pair of dragon wings that lay folded on top of their backs. The wings were golden and almost ten times bigger than the babies themselves. It would take at least six months until the twins would be able to fold them into their scaled backs as their father and Eos often did.

“See, I told you they were beautiful,” Ola breathed beside her as if giving voice to her own thoughts. She wrapped an arm around her sister’s shoulders, pulling her in close, and placing her head on hers. A familiar affection Other Fensa remembered well. Ola was technically younger, but she’d gotten those couple of minutes back with a couple of inches. They’d stood this way many times before. At funerals, weddings, and everything in-between.

They were sisters. Real sisters. On one another’s sides. No matter what. And apparently, not even a separate timeline in which Ola had never been born could break that bond. But Fensa could feel their bond stronger than ever now as they stood looking at the little hybrid miracles her union with Xenon had produced.

“I know everyone else is upset about them,” Ola whispered into the awed silence. “But seriously, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful as these babies in my life.”

“Me neither,” Fensa said out loud. Me neither, Other Fensa agreed inside her head.

“They’re in perfect health. Thriving even,” Knud informed her, coming to stand on the other side of the bassinets. “But ah…when will they start shifting into wolves like the rest of us?”

“They don’t shift until they can retract their wings,” Fensa answered.

“And how long does that take?” Knud asked, typing the new information into his notes.

“Around six months,” Fensa answered, her tone carefully neutral.

But as if picking up on her vibe, her twin demanded, “Why are you asking her this?”

“Because with those scaled stomachs of theirs, I’m having a hell of a time figuring out if they’re boys or girls,” Knud replied, still frank as hell despite being a lot less bat-shit crazy in this timeline.

And that’s when Fensa burst out laughing.

Because when she thought about it, really thought about it, this whole situation was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Here she was, over 15,000 years from where she’d been three days ago. She’d combined consciousness and bodies with an alternate version of herself. She had two living fathers, instead of one dead one. And her parents were still married. Oh, and she’d just given birth to two babies, who, due to their dragon-wolf hybrid nature, they wouldn’t be able to sex for at least another six months.

Fensa was no longer crazy. At least not in this timeline. But this situation…it was…

“This is insane!” she said, laughing hysterically. “Yesterday, I was climbing a prehistoric mountain and today…I’m the single mother of three wolf-dragons—two of which are still gender undetermined!”

She laughed and laughed, but Ola and Knud didn’t laugh with her.

“What?” she asked, her laughter ending abruptly when she noticed their stricken looks.

“Um, what do you mean by three wolf-dragons, Fenny?” Ola asked.

“My son,” Fensa answered. “He came through the gate with me? He’s about five-feet tall. Has a huge pair of dragon wings. And is probably freaking out—”

She stopped abruptly when she saw the looks Ola and Knud exchanged across the bassinets.

“Oh, my God, where is my son? Tell me! Tell me right now!”