He tipped his head and cracked his neck. The place she’d stabbed him with her talon was healed but still scarred pink. She must have driven it deep.
He stared, unfocused, at the wall as he spoke. “There’s this place I remember from before where creatures chased us. Hunters. They’re monsters—all bones and sinew, teeth and talons. I can’t shift in that place, and in that world, it’s always dark and the creatures never sleep. In my dreams, we have to make it to the temple. The temple is the only way out. So we run and we fight. I… I thought you were one of them.”
She studied him and was surprised to find emotions radiating down their bond. She’d never known this connection with another dragon. Everything he felt, she was experiencing it with him. “This was more than a dream. It was a memory. You go back there in your mind, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Mountain, I’m lucky you didn’t take my head off.”
He slumped in on himself, and Harlow thought she’d never seen a dragon look so distraught. This had destroyed him. It was a gaping wound he’d never intended to let her see, let alone experience. Harlow refused to lose him to shame or anything else. But somehow they needed to fix this.
“When you were choking me, this symbol on your chest was moving.” She pressed her fingers to a U-shaped symbol bisected by a squiggle. “What does it mean?”
He sighed heavily and brought her hand to his lips. “I don’t know for sure, but Raven believes each of these symbols represents a level of the underworld.”
Her breath hitched. “Each one is a place you’ve been?”
He nodded. She clutched his hand, and silence stretched between them. Finally, when she couldn’t bear the tension in the room a moment longer, she asked, “Where does that leave us? How do we get beyond this?”
Pain clouded his eyes as he said, “Until I figure this out, you need to sleep away from me. If I hurt you again, it would destroy me, Harlow. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “You need time.”
He squeezed her hand and kissed her on the forehead. “I need time.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Try to relax, Marius,” Queen Raven said. “Your energy is throwing me off.”
Marius sank back in his chair and crossed his arms. No one disrespected the queen, but fuck if it was possible for him to relax. It just wasn’t going to happen. “I could have killed her, Raven.”
The dark-haired witch paced around the symbol at the center of her white ritual room, analyzing the thirteen dimensions of the underworld floating before her. “But you didn’t,” she said absently. “And frankly, I doubt Harlow would have let you. She’s not exactly a fragile flower. Maiara told me the wound she inflicted on your shoulder went clear to the bone.”
He grunted. He’d never expected to take Harlow as his mate. Finding a mate was the last thing on his to-do list. What had happened between them was all instinct. It was dragon nature. He couldn’t have stopped it if he tried, and now he’d have to live with the consequences. “How do we stop the nightmares from happening again?”
Raven paused before one of the levels in her multidimensional model of Hades. “This is the dimension that correlates to the symbol Harlow said lit up on your chest when you were choking her. I’m going to open a window to it, but I won’t be able to hold it for long. This dimension is the furthest from us.”
He nodded. If it was the place he’d seen in his dreams, he’d know.
She moved her arms as she had before, whispered the incantation, and pulled her fingers apart. His nightmare opened before him. Dark jungle. Clawed beasts. Sky raining fire. She released, and the window closed with a snap.
“That was it.” He nodded.
“Are you sure?”
He shot her a look. “You don’t forget a place like that.”
Raven paced the length of the room, rubbing her palms together in slow circles. “The thirteen symbols on your torso represent the thirteen dimensions of the underworld. We know that for sure. We even know which symbol represents which dimension.”
He grunted. A lot of good that did him. What did the dimension matter when he was at risk of strangling his new mate?
The queen flung her arms down at her sides. “We know what, but we don’t know why. I think the why of it is the key to making it stop.”
“Seems reasonable.” He rubbed his forehead. It was midmorning, and he already needed a drink or a fight. “Any idea how we figure that one out?”
“Tell me again about what happens in these dreams.” She took a seat in a white leather chair beside him. He knew she had more important things to do. She was the queen after all. But as long as she was here, he was going to accept her help. He needed it.
“It’s always the same.” He rubbed his palms on his thighs. He hated words. How could he accurately describe what he was experiencing? Words didn’t do it justice. “We have to get to the temple, and I have to lead them. And those things, the hunters, they’re trying to kill us.”
