The wind stung my face slightly as I shot forward for the final lap around Berk. I had been training Toothless to get a lot faster, but someone had been catching up to us. This made no sense, as Toothless was a Night Fury, so I had to assert that he was the fastest dragon we had.

And to do that, we'd need to go just a little bit faster.

"Come on, bud." Toothless let out a roar and sped up, getting us back to the Dragon Academy where everyone as eagerly waiting for us to come back. Of course, no one was as eager as I was, hoping maybe for once, I could bring this friendly competition to an end.

"So, how'd we do?"

"Technically, you're still the fastest," Fishlegs informed me. "But someone- and I won't mention who- is gaining significant ground."

I sighed. Who could still be beating me? My eyes wandered around the group, trying to pick out a face that gave me a sign.

"Don't look at us," Tuffnut dismissed as he and his sister battered their helmets against the other's. On instinct, the next person I looked at what Reign, who offered me a telling smirk as she stroked her affectionate Thunderdrum.

"How can that be?" I asked aloud, completely confused and utterly dumbfounded. Shriek was a Thunderdrum, and they weren't known for being fast. Loud, yes, but fast? Never. "How can Toothless be getting slower?"

"He's not," Fishlegs stepped in. "Shriek's getting faster."

"Oh really?" I asked the redhead with the Thunderdrum teasingly. "Is that so? Anything you'd like to share, Reign?"

"Let's just say I'm experimenting with what she eats," Reign answered coyly. "Apparently, it's working... and making you mad." She rested her hands on her hips and glared at me, jade eyes sparkling with mischief. Shriek sniffled for a few seconds before letting out a burp that fired a blast, which dissipated right by Reign's feet.

"You can be so cocky sometimes."

From above us, there was loud, triumphant whooping as Hookfang turned circles in the air before flying through the gate of the Dragon Academy and landing on the rock. Snotlout seemed to be in some sort of cheery haze as he shouted at us from the back of his Monstrous Nightmare.

"You will not believe what I just found." Everyone looked at each other, not sure what to think. Sometimes, when Snotlout said he had found something, we would almost always get lit on fire or put into some sort of danger.

"Well, what is it?" Reign asked, clearly trying to feel out the waters before deciding to go with Snotlout.

"You just have to come with me. It's awesome!" Reign crossed her arms and leaned back slightly. "I promise you won't get almost killed this time, Reign." She shook her head.

"I'm always going to have that giant scar on my back now. I'm not risking getting another one."

"You have a scar on your back? Lucky!" Ruffnut whined.

"Don't worry, Reign," I assured her. "I'll be right next to you." She turned slightly red. "Uh, along with the rest of us, of course."

"Yeah. You know you can trust us to help you pound the snot out of anything that threatens you, no matter what." Astrid side-hugged her, which seemed to fully reassure the girl.

"All right, let's get a move on before it gets too dark." Everyone climbed on their dragons and followed Snotlout to wherever it was he wanted to take us. As we leveled out and started to just cruise, I got myself closer to Reign.

"So... pretty big day coming up soon, huh?" She scoffed and rolled her eyes, but she was terrible at fighting back a smile.

"You're so cheesy."

"I seem to recall you saying that to me not too long ago."

"If I'm saying it more than once, it must be true." She shook her head as she laughed at her own joke. "But yeah, it's a pretty important day."

"Don't worry, I've got some fun stuff planned." She looked at me and genuinely smiled.

"I'll be looking forward to it." We followed Snotlout down onto the shore of a beach, where he jumped off Hookfang and led us over to the wreck of a ship.

"Heh. A wrecked boat on Berk? There's something new," Tuffnut mocked.

"Just remember I saw it first, so it's mine." He crouched down and slipped his head under the boat, checking on whatever was hidden there before motioning for us to look. The rest of us crouched down, and I squinted against the darkness, until the shadows revealed themselves to be a girl, lying motionless in the sand, face down.

"Whoa. Now I like the boat."

"Remember, I get to keep her."

"Snotlout, it's a person," Reign grunted.

"Right? How lucky is that?" I shook my head. He wasn't getting what Reign was trying to say.

Curious, I crawled further in and gently shook her stick-like arm, trying to wake her... or make sure she was even alive.

"Uh, hey. Hey, there." I backed away slightly in alarm as she slowly moved her arms and pushed herself up. As soon as she looked at us, she gasped and backed further against the back of the boat. "It's okay. We're friends," I assured her. I was able to take in her scared expression, and something about it seemed so... familiar.

The girl coughed into her hand before managing to croak out a sentence.

"D-Do you have any water?" Snotlout, Fishlegs, and Tuffnut shoved the rest of us out of the way to offer her their water.

"Allow me." Snotlout pushed away his friends and handed her his water for her to drink.

"Thank you." She took a large gulp from the jug before handing it back to its owner. "Where am I?"

"This is Berk." I was suddenly shoved away by my eager Night Fury, who began sniffing the new girl furiously. "Oh, d-don't be afraid. He won't hurt you." I moved Toothless out of the way so that she could get out. "Come out. It's okay." She stared at me for a few moments before feeling brave enough to slowly crawl her way out. "Easy, bud."

"How did you do that?" She seemed amazed at how I had been able to get Toothless to back off like that.

"That? That's nothing," Snotlout huffed. "Watch this. Hookfang, get your butt over here!" His Monstrous Nightmare looked up at him for a moment, before turning around and flying away, likely going back home so he didn't have to deal with Snotlout, unlike the rest of us. "Heh heh heh. He'll be back. Jokester." Reign shook her head. "Oh! Just so you know, I'm the one who rescued you." I quickly moved closer to Heather to introduce myself.

"And I would be Hiccup."

"Heather," she answered in a small voice.

"So, Heather." The girl diverted her attention to Reign and Astrid. "What happened to you?"

"My family and I were on our way home to our island, but our boat was attacked by pirates."

"I wanna be a pirate," Tuff interjected. Everyone turned to stare at him. "Or a fish cleaner. I'm still on the fence." Reign cleared her throat to draw attentions back to Heather.

"You were saying?" she urged the girl to continue.

"They attacked our boat and took us back to our island, laying siege to it. I was able to escape, but my mother and father... they weren't so lucky."

"Stupid pirates. I'm definitely gonna be a fish cleaner."

Heather's story struck a chord with me, but there was something about the feeling that was... familiar. I couldn't quite place my finger on it, but I had felt this sympathy before with someone I knew.

I reached out and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, everything's gonna be okay. My dad's the chief. We'll figure something out." I led her back to Toothless and helped her up. Luckily, I had left Reign's old saddle on, so she wouldn't have to attempt and ride bare back. After a few moments of curious lingering, Reign enthusiastically jumped onto Shriek.

"Don't forget, we're meeting tomorrow to work on our times. Unless you want Shriek to be the fastest one in the Book of Dragons," she teased.

"Yeah, that's definitely not going to happen. We will be there, okay?" She nodded and took off, leaving Heather and I to follow. "Hold on."

"Hey-whoa!" She seemed absolutely terrified when we first took off, gripping onto my shoulders for dear life, but as soon as Toothless had leveled out, she relaxed her grip.

Everything that had been happening since we met Heather had felt like deja vu. I couldn't fight the feeling that I had done all of this before, that it had happened almost to a tee. I just couldn't figure out where I had felt all of this before. It was so overwhelmingly familiar.

"Alright, just this way, watch your step. And, here we are." I held my arms out to present my small bedroom to Heather. She looked around with wide eyes, as though she had never seen a room this big, even though there really wasn't much space in it.

"It was nice of your father to let me stay here."

"Until we can find you a safe place to go, consider Berk your home." As soon as I finished that sentence, I shook my head. I had said that somewhere before.

"Wow." She moved over to my desk and stared at the blueprints I had pinned up there in fascination. "What are these? They're really cool."

"A new saddle for Toothless," I explained. "We're trying to get some extra speed so we can stay on top of Reign and Shriek. She's not that competitive, but she seems to enjoy friendly competition with me." Heather's finger landed on the drawing of Reign and I on Toothless.

"This doesn't look like a saddle," she taunted.

"No, that- Reign drew that one. That was, uh... from the first time she rode on Toothless. That day was, um..." I got a little lost in what I was saying as I admired the drawing. "It's one of my favorite things in this room." I managed to look back over to Heather, whose expression had almost changed to one of... disappointment? "Uhh... Do you need anything? Some warm yak milk, a nice fish stew...?"

"No," she chuckled. "Thank you, Hiccup. I'm- I'm really tired. It's been a long day."

"Right." I stood there awkwardly for a moment, not quite sure what to do. "Okay, come on, Toothless. We're sleeping downstairs." I had started to make my way down, when Heather called out to me.

"Hey, Hiccup?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks." I smiled, feeling a tiny blush rising.

"Sleep well, Heather." As soon as I got downstairs, I sat at the table and opened my journal, unfolding a large paper I had kept in there. Toothless nudged me as I pulled out the charcoal wrapped around a stick. "I have to finish this before the end of the week, bud." I etched the outline of the pond in the cove we'd spent a lot of time in. So I was going to give her a drawing of us in there with Toothless and Shriek for the day that marked we'd been together for a year. "This is the big finale of things for her." I, of course, had everything planned out pretty far in advance. Our anniversary wasn't for a couple of weeks, but I just wanted to be ready.

"Don't stay up too late, Hiccup," my dad cautioned as he made his way into his room to retire for the night.

The next morning, I got up early to finish up the new saddle for Toothless. I didn't have to meet Reign for a few hours, which gave me just enough time to get it done. I was hammering the hot end of connecting rod to mold it into place when Heather approached.

"You're up early." I put the mallet down and turned to face her with a big smile.

"Yeah, just wanted to get the jump on this." She placed her hands on the saddle and looked at it curiously.

"You know, with a shorter connecting rod, it'll push you back in the saddle and make you more streamlined."

I was impressed. The only other person who would know something like that was Reign, and that was because she'd been around Toothless for a while. The fact that Heather had picked up on these things so quickly was almost awe inspiring. I grabbed the large claw and pulled another connecting rod out of the fire it was smoldering in.

"...which will increase our speed! Yeah!" I laughed. "You hear that, bud? Oh, Shriek's gonna be seeing a lot more of your tail."

"So, when can we test it out?" Heather giggled.

"How about right now?" Somehow, in that instant, I had completely forgotten about my plans with Reign, instead opting to show Heather around Berk, in case she would be staying here a while.

Quickly, I dipped the rod into the bucket of freezing water and latched it onto the saddle, before securing it on Toothless. I climbed on, but Heather stared, as though suddenly hesitating.

"Aren't you coming?" After a few more minutes of giving me blank eyes, she smiled and got on behind me, holding tight as I walked Toothless out and patted him to get him to fly into the air. The wind constantly slapped our faces with how fast we were going, but the adrenaline made that all irrelevant.

"Whoo! Yeah!" We shot laps around the island until the sun was all the way up in the sky, hanging high above our heads.

"We should get to the academy! I have training today." We did one more lap, then looped around and flew through the gates into the academy. "Top of the morning, class," I greeted as I got off Toothless. "How's everyone doing today?"

"Oh, nice of you to show up," Reign snapped. I shifted my gaze over to her to see that her arms were crossed, usually lively eyes looking dark with anger. I had never seen her like this.

"What?" That's when I remembered what she and I were supposed to do. "Oh! We were supposed to meet up. I'm so sorry." She remained unchanged by my apology.

"Awkward," Snotout sang.

"Oh! Reign is jealous of the pretty one, right? Why talk about hens and roosters?" I raised an eyebrow. Reign was jealous?

"So, Heather, sleep well?" Her voice was snide and sarcastic.

"Very well. Thank you, Reign." Astrid and Reign glanced at each other, as though they knew something. What was happening? Everyone was completely off from their normal selves. "So, this is it? Your dragon training academy?"

"No, our dragon training academy," Tuffnut corrected. "Remember, I called you the pretty one." I stared at Tuff in a dumbfounded stupor for a moment before moving on.

"We've been training the dragons to become part of our everyday lives."

"And it all goes right in here." Fishlegs held up the Book of Dragons in front of Heather, trying to show it off.

"Really? Everything?"

"Mmm, yep. I'm kind of the Log Keeper. Log Master, really."

"He writes down what Hiccup tells them, too," Snotlout interjected.

"I add my own spin, thank you."

"Can I see it?" Before Fishlegs could hand the book over to Heather, Reign furiously snatched it from his hands.

"I'll take that, thank you. Excuse us." She roughly grabbed the back of my vest and shoved me into the large cage where we had once kept Shriek and pushed me to stand across from her. "Hiccup, I don't think we should be showing her all our dragon secrets." Was she serious? I had never seen Reign this paranoid before.

"Reign, it's fine," I assured her.

"I just don't trust her. You shouldn't, either." I was starting to grow impatient.

"Well, I do. And you should trust me." I looked her right in her green eyes before walking away rejoining the others while Reign sulked in the cage. "Sorry about that, Heather. Reign's not from around here, either, so she can be... protective of her new home." That seemed to spark a different interest in Heather.

"Not from here?"

"Yeah. She just kind of showed up on the shore one day," Tuffnut informed her. "Turns out a dragon dropped her here."

"Well, where did she come from?" I shrugged.

"No one knows, not even her. She's trying her best to remember, but nothing's changed. I know it's been bothering her a lot lately, even if she won't admit it." I shook the thoughts from my head and decided to focus on training.

"H-Hey, Hiccup." I looked up from adjusting Toothless' saddle to see Reign approaching me, playing with her hair- something she did when she was nervous.

"Oh, hi, Reign." I moved around the other side of my dragon to stand face-to-face with her.

"I, uh... I'm sorry about my outburst earlier." I could tell she wanted to say more than that, but I decided to let it go, because there was clearly a lot on her mind at the moment.

"It's okay, Reign." I reached out and took one of her hands. "Really, it's okay."

"Thanks, Hiccup." She leaned over and rested her head against my chest, sighing as I looked over at the sunset.

"Do you wanna go inside?" She smiled up at me.

"Yeah, sure." We opened the door and started to go upstairs, when we overheard a voice coming from my room.

"Here we go. The Thunderdrum: sonic-boom roar, loyal, powerful-" Reign shook her head before letting go of my hand and storming the rest of the way up.

"-intelligent, and of course, deadly. What do you think you're doing?" I quickly followed her up to see Heather sitting on the other side of my bed with the Book of Dragons in her lap, eyes wide in alarm. Quickly, Reign snatched the book from Heather's hands and yanked her up before handing it over to me. "Well, are you gonna say something?" she pressed. I couldn't help but feel almost disappointed. For a moment, Reign was her old self, but now, she'd reverted back to that angry and paranoid state.

"I am so, so sorry, Hiccup. I was cleaning up your room, and I found the book. I couldn't help myself." I offered her a smile to assure her everything was all good.

"It's okay, Heather."

"It's okay?" Reign snapped. "What do you mean, 'okay'? She's reading the Book of Dragons!"

"Reign, come on, lighten up."

"Me?" The fire returned to her eyes. "She's the one sneaking around, looking at our stuff." I was a little shocked. Heather had been sneaking around? But... how did Reign know that?

"Really? Sneaking around?" The question was more for Reign than Heather. "What-what are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about last night, near my house."

"That was me," Heather admitted. "I couldn't sleep, so I went for a walk. I've been having terrible nightmares." I felt that 'pang' in my heart.

"I can imagine."

"Is this really happening?" I had reached my boiling point with Reign. She was taking all of this too far.

"Okay, Reign, that's enough," I snapped.

"You're right, Hiccup, it is." She shot me an intense glare before storming out of my room.

"I'm sorry about that." The door slammed downstairs.

"No, I'm sorry. I was wrong to look at your book."

"It's no big deal." I moved to slide it back under my bed, where I kept it. "I trust you." She awkwardly looked around the room for a few minutes before heading toward the doorway.

"I'm... going to take another walk." I sighed and shook my head as she made her way out of my hut. Reign was never like this without good reason, but at the same time, Heather was innocent. Thinking about all of it... it made my head spin.

"Hiccup! Come get dinner! I sulked my way downstairs and plopped myself down at the table, where my dad set down a plate of fish in front of me. "What's wrong, son?" he asked, sitting down.

"Reign's been acting really strange since Heather showed up, and it's getting out of hand."

"I heard her yelling. Heather's really getting under her skin." Toothless nudged my side. "She could be jealous of how much time you're spending with Heather." I looked at my dad curiously.

"What... do you mean?"

"Well, you've been spending much more time with Heather than Reign, and as your... whatever she is to you, she's probably feeling neglected." My eyes went wide as I realized he was right. I buried my head in my hands.

"What do I do?"

"Just be patient with her, but remember to spend time with her. You've known each other longer, after all."

I was suddenly jarred from my slumber by sudden pain hitting my back. My eyes shot open in alarm, and I quickly whipped around to see Reign looming above me.

"Wake up, Hiccup."

"Ow! What- Why would you do that? What are you doing?"

"Saving our butts. I just saw Heather talking to Savage. She's working with the Outcasts." I sighed. I knew what my dad had said, but it was the middle of the night, and I didn't have the patience for this now.

"What? She's upstairs sleeping."

"Oh, yeah? Let's go find out." I groaned, but followed Reign up the steps and into my room, where we found Heather lying in my bed. At the sound of people entering, she rolled over and yawned.

"Oh, hey, guys. Is everything okay?"

"Yes, Heather," I answered quickly. "Everything's fine." Reign grumbled before turning on her heels and marching out. "Reign, don't you think it's possible you saw something else?" She turned to me in defiance. "I mean, it's pretty dark out there."

"I know what I saw. The girl is not who you think she is." My frustration began to boil. Why couldn't she just trust Heather?

"Then who is she?"

"I-I don't know! Nobody knows. She just mysteriously washed up on our beach. You don't find that strange?"

That's when it clicked. Washed up on the shore? A girl from somewhere far away, separated from her family? Afraid upon first waking up, asking for water and where she was?

Heather reminded me of Reign.

"No, because her ship was taken over by pirates. Her whole island is under siege."

"The only thing under siege is your brain. You're not thinking clearly."

"Oh really? Me?"

"The Outcasts could be attacking any minute."

"Reign, i-if there's one thing I know, it's this. Heather is not working for the Outcasts. Why can't you just trust her?"

"We know nothing about her! Except that she is working for the Outcasts," she insisted. "I know it."

"We knew nothing about you, and last I recall, I trust you just as much as I do Heather." As soon as that came out of my mouth, I regretted it. A hurt look crossed her face as she turned slightly away.

"I didn't realize you just doled out unconditional trust to whoever washes up here." She turned around to leave. "Guess I was stupid for thinking I was special to you."

"Reign, wait." She ran away before I could try and talk to her.

"Uh, Dad? Have you seen the book?"

I was starting to panic. The Book of Dragons had gone missing not long after Heather had said she was going for a walk I hated to believe what Reign had said, but it was starting to look a lot more likely than it did last night.

"You'll have to be more specific, son."

"The-The Book of Dragons. I can't find it anywhere."

"She's gone!" Reign threw the door open.

"Heather?"

"No, Shriek! Little Miss Innocent stole my dragon!"

"Okay, okay, Reign. Let's get the others and go after her." She stuck out her arm to cut me off from leaving.

"So now do you believe me?"

"Not the time!"

"Right, right." We gathered up the gang and gathered them outside of the academy, explaining the situation before unanimously deciding we needed to leave ASAP.

"Oh, this is bad," Fishlegs panicked. "This is bad, this is bad, this is catastrophic! I-If Alvin gets that book-"

"He won't." Reality was still setting in. I couldn't believe Heather was actually working for the Outcasts. "Heather... I can't believe it."

"Me, either. How could she walk away from this?" Snotlout gestured to all of himself in vain.

"How could I have not seen it?"

"Because your brain was 'under siege.'" I turned to the twins.

"Do you even know what that means?"

"Yes... No... It's not good, right?"

"No, it's not good," Reign snapped, climbing onto her saddle.

"Reign, look- "

"Save it. You can apologize when you get me my dragon back."

"All right, let's go." I mounted Toothless. "We can't let Heather reach Outcast Island.

The sun was setting, and we still hadn't found Heather.

"We're never going to catch them!" Reign yelled, starting to lose hope. "Shriek is too fast!"

"When you're riding her, definitely. Not with a stranger."

"What's that, up ahead?" I looked forward again to see a bright purple Thunderdrum tossing around a skinny girl.

"That's Heather. And boy, is she gonna be sorry she helped me with Toothless' speed." I shifted my leg to open Toothless' artificial tail fin, and after a large flap of his wings, Toothless shot forward, leaving the others in the dust. Reign gripped my waist even tighter, for dear life, and we managed to catch up with Heather. She looked at us with alarmed, green eyes, as though she had never expected us to catch her. "I'll get you in close." I steered Toothless to my left, bringing him almost right up against Shriek, when Heather pulled out a leg of chicken and tossed it into Shriek's mouth, making the Thunderdrum speed up. "Is that chicken? Is that what you've been-"

"Really? You wanna talk about that now?" Heather dipped Shriek down closer to the water, thinking that if she went below the cloud cover, we wouldn't be able to catch her.

"I'm gonna pull right above her!" I made Toothless climb as high as he could, then as soon as we spotted Heather, he dove to hover right above her head.

"Okay, okay. Hold him steady!" Reign used my shoulders to steady herself as she stood, and before she had time to think of the bad things that could come from this, she jumped down and landed right on Shriek's back. As soon as Heather noticed her, she bumped her toward the back, causing Reign to grip onto Shriek's tail. I nervously watched Reign as her dragon whipped her tail to launch her onto Heather's back.

"This is gonna be awesome!" Tuffnut cried. Reign wrapped her arm around Heather's neck and pulled up one of the girl's arms.

"Uh, Hiccup, I really hate to be the voice of doom, but we just crossed into Outcast waters!" I looked down over the rock formations- dragon nests- and started to panic slightly.

"Hey, Reign! You might wanna move this along!"

"Give me a minute! She's stronger than she looks!" Reign managed to pin Heather under her as fiery boulders were suddenly launched at all of us.

"Uh, Reign?" Heather flipped the redhead over to try and subdue her, but Reign managed to shoot herself up and grab onto Heather, pushing away both of her arms before shoving her off. However, as Heather began to fall- along with the Book of Dragons- Reign realized what she had just done, she reached out to try and grab her hand. "I've got the book!" Snotlout dove to catch Heather, while I followed the book. "Come on, bud. We need to get that book." The amount of flaming boulders increased as I got within arms' reach. "Come on, come on, come on. Come on, bud."

I was just about to grasp it and take it home, when a boulder came right at us, and I had to steer Toothless out of the way in order to avoid getting hit. I tried to dive down again, but as fire singed my shoulder, I knew we had lost. As I returned to the others holding my arm, Reign dove Shriek closer to get a better look.

"Please tell me you got the book."

"I was too late. Alvin has the Book of Dragons."