Tybalt abruptly found himself in a candlelit bedroom.

  There was a vanity with a mirror and a large armoire beside it, but a big canopy bed with a golden threaded quilt atop it dominated the room.

  The covers were already pulled back, though no one was in bed.

  “Damn it,” Tybalt said softly. “Another dream.”

  “That’s not so bad, is it Tybalt?” a familiar, sultry voice whispered in his ear. “You and I get to… connect again.”

  Tybalt turned and saw the fox beastwoman who had haunted his recent dreams—the pleasant ones, at least. Her full lips, delicate nose, the blonde waves of her hair, and large beige fox ears were unmistakable. She wore a gauzy silk negligee cut to just below her hips. It left little to the imagination, but somehow, Tybalt’s lust did not dominate him this time. Not fully, at least.

  Perhaps it was because, in his last dream involving her, they had actually completed the sex act. Or maybe it was because the last dream had been a future version of the fox girl—who had seemingly predicted his death!

  In the back of his mind, he was paying attention to details around him in a way he had not been able to do in their last, fuzzy encounter. This was definitely the younger, pre-maternal version of the fox girl… not the one who had probably borne him a child.

  Even as he wondered how to ask the questions he wanted answers to, he could not resist running his eyes up the woman’s long legs, rising along the gentle curve of her hips, her slender waist, and finishing the tour at her perky breasts with their engorged nipples.

  In her current attire, almost every inch of her long, slim figure was on display for him.

  But after a fraction of a second, he tore his eyes away to study her face instead. The pale oval of it was soft and kind, delicate features arranged into an unmistakable expression of innocent love—and slight self-consciousness. She had begun to redden under his piercing gaze. The girl was certainly at least a little younger than him—or else she had never been hurt by the world. That was the kind of face this beastwoman had.

  Her appearance, her body language, and her every expression spoke to him.

  They said, Protect me. Treat me gently. Love me.

  Tybalt tried to take a step back from the moment—to detach emotionally, to better understand what this was—what it might be. He examined the situation analytically.

  She’s not the same person as the woman I fucked in that dream. She’s just not. But she also… is? I mean, those eyes are so innocent, and she’s blushing from me looking at her in the lingerie she decided to wear for me. At the same time, she’s gazing at me as if she’s in love. The older version of her—assuming that interpretation is correct, and it’s not big sister and little sister—had a reason to be in love with me. She claimed to be from my future and to have loved me and had a kid with me. Which could be plausible, since the Tower of Death is a place outside time. Maybe I literally got a message from the future. But then why… why does this girl seem to already be in love with me? We’ve never met… Is this all some tactic to try to control me? Manipulate me into falling in love with a dream? To what purpose?

  And there was something else.

  This dream felt not just different from the others that night but also different from the other dreams he had encountered the beastwoman in. Somehow it seemed more tangible, more in focus. More real. He wouldn’t be surprised, if he was wounded in this dream, if he somehow acquired matching wounds in real life.

  That was impossible… maybe. Unless this woman had some class that allowed her to attack people in dreams. Or she was a demon. Or the puppet or manifestation of some god.

  Mudo’s angel had refused to answer his question about that.

  Tybalt felt in his bones that the fox girl was dangerous. Whether she would be a friend or an enemy, he couldn’t know yet, but she held power. Her appearance here, once again, apparently by choice, was proof enough of that. It was definitely magic of some sort.

  He wanted to look at her with suspicion, but he couldn’t form his lips into the scowl that the moment required. His eyes automatically viewed her with tenderness. The two of them had already made love in dreams more than once, shared deep emotional moments—and even if, in waking life, those feelings could be waved off as shadows or delusions, in here, it was all very real.

  The fox woman seemed to feel the same way as Tybalt. Her eyes dropped to his chest before darting back up to his face, her cheeks burning more fiercely than before. Tybalt realized as the beastwoman’s eyes shifted that he was not wearing a shirt—and that she had lost a sort of battle with herself when she looked.

  Wait, I was wearing a shirt before, wasn’t I? Is this my dream—or hers? And who’s in control?

  “Are you—are you real?” he asked. He tried to speak the words smoothly, but the breath caught in his throat. That wasn’t the question he had meant to ask, and a part of him felt foolish saying it out loud. Hadn’t the previous dream experience with her confirmed that she had to be some kind of real? And her shouting at him in the Tower of Death when he was on the verge of dying? There was obviously some powerful magic at play, and that couldn’t be just his imagination.

  It was either a real girl with a class that gave her powers or the manipulation of some god or goddess.

  “You figured out that we were in a dream,” she murmured in a pleased voice.

  The beastwoman stepped closer to Tybalt, and he felt a strange, conflicting mix of desires—to keep his distance and to embrace her. To touch her, smell her, taste her, to know her again as he had known her before.

  There was already some heady aroma in the air—feminine musk?—that put him more and more on edge with each passing moment.

  As the beastwoman drew close enough for him to kiss, Tybalt found himself breathing heavily. He clenched his fist and dug his nails into his palm, trying to control himself. The fox woman simply stared up into his eyes, her expression inscrutable—her eyes were glowing a gentle blue color, he saw now. She must be using some magic.

  You just slept with her last night, calm the fuck down! Tybalt tried to tell himself. Is she a demon, to have this effect on me? What is this power?

  “You and I are the only real things here,” she continued. “That is, this is a dream, but both of us exist outside of it.” She reached out and slowly ran a hand over his chest, and Tybalt felt her trembling through her palm. There was a deep desire within her, too—or an imitation of it.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “What have you done to me?” Tybalt asked. He felt such intense desire that it was difficult for him to focus on the conversation, but with the pain of his fingernails digging into his flesh—he felt a trickle of blood into his left palm—he managed to hold on.

  “I’m s-sorry,” she said, her voice shuddering. “I don’t completely control it. Even if it is my dream. I—I’ll try to turn it down a little.” She took a step back from him, and he felt the scent in the air fade slightly—and he could think.

  “Thank you,” he managed.

  She simply nodded, though he detected a flash of disappointment in her expression before it returned to a small smile. Both of them paused, collecting their thoughts.

  “You know me,” he said. “Somehow.”

  “We’re both lucid tonight,” she replied. “That’s special. You usually aren’t.” She took a step closer and smiled enticingly. “I love it that I can—” She shook her head, reddened a little more—“no, no, I need to stay focused. We need to use this chance to talk. Really talk. We have some important choices ahead of us. You do.”

  “This is at least better than my last dream,” Tybalt said, managing a small smile.

  “Your last dream?” the fox woman asked.

  “A nightmare,” Tybalt said.

  “That sounds unpleasant,” she murmured. She looked into Tybalt’s eyes, her eyes glowing gently with that blue energy he had seen before. “My man should never have to suffer nightmares. Usually I’m good about making sure I’m the star of your dreams when you’re nearby. From now on—” She placed a hand on his bare chest, and a fresh wave of desire rolled over Tybalt—“I’ll protect your dreams.” She lowered her voice in an attempt to be sultry, but a little tremor of nervousness ran through it and altered the effect. “If you want me to.”

  “What I want is to ask you about the dream I had before that,” Tybalt said slowly. He grabbed her wrist and gently pulled her hand from over his heart, and the temperature of the air between them seemed to cool slightly.

  “The one where we were kissing?” the fox girl asked in a tone of slight confusion and slight disappointment. “I thought that kind of spoke for itself. You were having a hard day, you said?”

  “Not that dream. I had another. You were older, and you said you were mourning me.”

  “What?” The mood around them shifted again. Suddenly, the revealing negligee the fox woman wore had transformed to a sackcloth dress—typical attire for the poor beastfolk who lived in these parts—and the scent in the air, that had driven Tybalt wild, seemed to disappear.

  “You don’t remember it, then?” Tybalt asked.

  “Tell me everything,” the beastwoman replied in a serious tone.

  He gave it to her as best he could remember.

  “Shit,” the fox girl swore. “Fuck. Damn it! Does that mean…?”

  “Finish that fucking sentence,” Tybalt said sharply. “Does it mean what? I’ve been trying to figure it out, and I don’t know for the life of me. When I look back over all our dream encounters, one fact stands out: you’re always so damn mysterious. Give me some straight answers for a change.”

  The fox girl looked chastened. “I don’t mean to be difficult, you know. Most of the time, I go into these dreams just thinking about bonding with you. That’s why I act the way I do.”

  “Why?” Tybalt asked bluntly.

  The beastwoman reddened again, cast her eyes downward, and swallowed. “Because we’re meant to be together…”

  She looked so naive and innocent in that moment. Tybalt resisted the urge to pull her into his arms.

  “You’ve never met me,” he said. “Not once. You’re very good-looking. I would remember you, unless you were someone I’d killed.”

  She giggled. “Darling, that’s terrible. You can say that kind of thing to me, but make sure you never say something like that to anyone else unless you don’t care how they feel about you. If my sister heard you say that, she’d probably think you were a monster.”

  “She wouldn’t be wrong, exactly,” Tybalt replied. He sighed. “I’ve killed a lot of people.”

  “I know.” The fox woman’s tone was one of nonchalant acceptance.

  Fuck.

  He nodded. “Sure you do. You know a lot about me, through means I don’t understand, and I know almost nothing about you. I know I enjoy being around you, but that’s not really enough. Not anymore. My life has become very interesting recently. Too interesting. Would it be terrible if—could I start out by asking you your name? It feels like I should know it, after all the stuff in the other dreams.”

  All the sexual stuff.

  The fox woman shook her head, smiled, and managed to make eye contact again. “You should finally remember it this time. Not only are you lucid, but I’m close enough to you to have a strong connection to your dream self. Closer than I think we’ve ever been. I live in the mountains nearby. I’m Vidalia Twinleaf. ”

  “Oh.” Tybalt was reminded again that he had come here as a member of a squad assigned to slaughter her kind—men, women, and children—and that he had already helped massacre an entire village of ibex beastfolk. The large fox ears on her head told Tybalt that Vidalia was no close kin of theirs, but she would likely still take that very personally.

  I have to just confess everything, he thought. Even if I wanted to lie to her, this woman will see right through me with her powers. If I try to hide anything, she’ll probably dance around the rest of my questions. And this connection I feel—I don’t want to sully it with lies. He was surprised at himself for a moment, surprised that he still felt something was pure enough to handle delicately. After all that he had planned to do—and done—already.

  No, no, I’m just into her, and I don’t want to fuck it up, he told himself. She’s hot, and she’s clearly very attracted to me—maybe attracted to danger, from what she’s said already. She knows I’m a killer, and she still thinks we’re meant to be together. If she’s going to keep appearing in my dreams, or even in real life, best if I don’t start out on a foundation of false assumptions.

  “Can I tell you some things about myself and my situation?” he asked. “I feel like you need to know, the Army is close—”

  “I already know about that. We already know. I know a lot more, but the whole beastfolk community across the mountains knows about the Army. I raised the alarm myself, weeks before you arrived. They don’t always listen to me, but once one of our scouts spotted you in our valley, word spread fast. Now there’s not a corner of my tribe’s mountain where we’re not on guard.”

  Well, that makes sense, Tybalt thought. He and Baldwin had seen signs of a beastfolk observer back in the valley they had scouted after Tybalt returned from the Tower of Death. It was this detail that Tybalt had seized upon in deciding what sort of story to tell the Commander—because he knew that he could point them toward what might be actual signs of beastfolk, who could conceivably have attacked him. Hopefully that trail doesn’t lead back to Vidalia.

  “Wait, what do you mean you know a lot more? Are you a scout or a spy or something?”

  “My class is dream seer. I’m almost the only one in my community who has a class. We have an alchemist, too, but nothing combat useful. But my class is good for getting me—or us—advance information.”

  She’s suddenly a lot more forthcoming.

  “You can see the future?” Tybalt could not keep the skepticism out of his voice. He had never heard of a class that could do something like that—or time travel of any sort—and he considered himself well versed in legends around classes and magic.

  Remember the Tower, though. That had seemed like a future version of this girl. Maybe…

  If she could really do that at will, it would make her an incredible asset to any powerful person whose service she entered.

  “Sometimes. I don’t really control it most of the time. I also have occasional dreams like this, about you or my sister. Mainly you.” She blushed again.

  “What makes me so special?” Tybalt asked, deliberately making his voice harder, trying to keep from being pulled in by her moony eyes—trying to maintain skepticism that he did not feel, did not want to feel.

  “You’re my destiny,” Vidalia said simply, in a tone of absolute conviction.