Deadly Dreams *audiobook*
Mortal Flames
Twisted Prophecies
Box Set: Alien Mischief
An Icelius Reverse Harem
Her Alien Lovers
Her Alien Abductors
Her Alien Barbarians
Her Alien Mates
Collection: Her Alien Romance
Steamy Tales of Warriors and Rebels
Gladiators
The Dragon Shifters’ Last Hope
Stolen by Her Harem
Claimed by Her Harem
Treasured by Her Harem
Collection: Magic in her Harem
Harem of the Shifter Queen
Sultry Fire
Sinful Ice
Saucy Mist
Collection: Power in her Kiss
Standalones
Goddess of Love (Blood Moon Rising Shared World)
Worthy (A Villainously Romantic Retelling)
Beauty with a Bite
Shifters and Alphas
Collections
Monsters, Gods, Witches, Oh My!
Wings, Horns, and Shifters
Thieves of Fate
Ophelia Bell
About Thieves of Fate
Once an Ultiori Elite, Benedetta’s psyche crumbled under the corrupting mind control inflicted on her by her evil master. She begged for release by the immortal dragon who loved her, and her death in his cleansing fire severed their bond forever.
But a new force in the world has resurrected Benedetta’s essence from the ashes left behind. Life magic has blended with fire and reached back through the Bloodline, lighting a spark and calling to a soul that never really perished.
Alive once more and free from the bond to her old immortal lover, her lonely soul cries out for a mate, but who can fill the void left by the Void himself?
A trio of Shadow dragons, that’s who.
Benedetta
Being resurrected felt almost the same as dying. My death had begun with dragon fire, blooming with intense heat through my body, the flame blinding. The difference was that when I’d died, the sooty blackness of the aftermath dragged my soul under fast. This time, instead of being sucked into darkness, I hurtled toward the fire itself, yanked unwillingly into the core of its blaze and held there, suspended while the light sent searing pinpricks into extremities that I hadn’t felt in eons.
It hurt, but it wasn’t the same pain as dying. It was the pain of numbness dissipating as circulation returned to a limb. My body hadn’t existed for a very long time. I didn’t quite know how long it had been, but some core of my awareness told me long enough.
Long enough for the maddening sticky ichor that had once corrupted my mind to be no more than a niggling memory. Long enough that the overwhelming love and pain that had filled that deadly fire had long since faded to ash and blown away on the wind.
When the numbness finally cleared and the painful tingling stopped, I opened my eyes, unsurprised to find myself hunched naked amid a pile of pale-gray ashes. I stared down at my hands, splayed on the ground, and curled my fingers into the soft powdery substance. The scent of charred bones still lingered. My bones. But the heat of the fire that had done this was long gone, leaving nothing but cold, charred earth behind.
I expected a pang of grief, of loss and abandonment, of betrayal or hurt. Any number of feelings should have existed inside me. I had loved my murderer, and he had done this to me. Yet all I felt was emptiness.
A gritty, sardonic laugh erupted unexpectedly from my chest, sending a puff of ashes into the gray air. It was fitting, wasn’t it? I’d loved an immortal dragon everyone called “The Void,” and all that was left of that love was an empty void inside me.
“You saved me though, didn’t you?” I asked, tilting my head back and staring up at a colorless sky that seemed to arc above me like glass. Breathing deeply, I stood, surprised that my limbs and joints didn’t protest. I felt…disturbingly normal. The sensations and emotions of my being were just as gray and colorless as my surroundings.
The memories were far more interesting to dwell on, and with the clarifying filter of time, I could see the truth of that day. The day I’d died.
I’d become a monster. I was recruited into the rarified ranks of the Ultiori Elites by a powerful general who had once been beyond reproach and therefore had my trust.
That general, Nikhil, had been my closest friend since childhood, before joining the pharaoh’s army and working his way up to becoming her warlord. Then, through a tragic twist ending in the pharaoh’s death, he’d taken her throne for himself, swearing vengeance against the dragon race who had taken his wife and lover from him.
When he returned to our village and asked me to join him to avenge her death, he’d been different from the man I remembered. He was dark and brooding and set on a mission I was only too happy to take as my own. I knew he’d wedded the pharaoh herself—all of Egypt had celebrated the day—and that she’d been killed on their wedding night, so I was happy to lend my own sword to his cause. Anything for my best friend.
What I hadn’t realized was the depth of the darkness that corrupted his soul at the time. Not just the darkness of grief and rage, but something far more sinister. Something I was unprepared to fight when it ultimately infected me too.
I was just as unprepared to fight an unbearable attraction to the dead pharaoh’s dragon brother, the very target of Nikhil’s coldest rage. My enemy, and my eventual downfall.
Everyone else knew the immortal dragon as either Osiris or the Void, but in the heat of our affair he was only Ked. We’d been drawn to each other with the same strange pull, at first ignorant of my diminishing lack of control over my own mind. Ultimately, the darkness inside me warred with my love for the immortal Void.
The conflict drove me mad.
Ked had saved me by killing me. He had recognized the corruption tainting my mind, turning me into a monster like the thing Nikhil had become. Ked had made the impossible choice to turn his fire on me, a choice made out of love.
Only now, I believed that thanks to that love, I hadn’t truly been allowed to die.
So even though my bond with Ked had been severed, and I felt less than nothing about what we once were to each other, I still had a soul. I still had consciousness.
I just wish I knew where it was I’d been resurrected to. This gray wasteland couldn’t be the remains of my world, could it? Had Nikhil’s thirst for vengeance gone that far?
Staring down at my hands, all I saw was translucent gray, the remnants of ash coating my darker-hued skin. Skin that still wasn’t quite here even though it felt sensation. Light still passed through when I held my hands up, as if I was an empty shell of glass, waiting to be filled with light. Like a ghost, trapped halfway between purgatory and true resurrection. How do I complete the journey back to the world of the living?
I turned to survey every direction. The horizon stretched in an even line of pale, powdery ash for as far as I could see, except to the east I saw a shape. It was no more than a shadow against the drab background, but its disruption of the sameness in this world was enough to make me take the first step toward it.
Whatever a tree was doing in this stark landscape, I would find out.
Razik
Chilly October wind carried sea spray into my face as I stared over the rail of the ferry to Bear Island. The island itself was a dark shape in the distance, shrouded in an eerie fog. The cool air felt good on my skin, cleansing some of the heaviness from my soul, but I’d have rather flown and let the icy air high above strip away whatever mundane baggage lingered after shifting into dragon form.
Flying wasn’t an option to this place, sadly. But that didn’t ruin the anticipation and hope hanging on the new job I’d accepted.
A throat clearing beside me took me out of my reverie. I turned an irritated glare to the unwanted companion who’d interrupted my brooding. “What?”
The largest Shadow I’d ever seen besides the Void himsel
f stood a few paces away. He was familiar, though I couldn’t say from where, with telltale black eyes and neatly trimmed black hair swept back from his forehead in a wave. A dark eyebrow lifted at my terse question, and the man let out a deep, reverberating chuckle. “I’d heard you’d turned into a bitter asshole after the war. I didn’t want to believe it, but I guess they were right.”
“Who the fuck are ‘they’?”
He shrugged. “Other Shadows I know. Other Guardians. Word travels. I figure it doesn’t make you less of a hero though. You’re entitled to feel however you feel.”
“I’m not a goddamn hero. I wish people would quit calling me that.”
He moved to lean against the rail beside me, his bulky shoulders blotting out what little sun was to be had today. I gritted my teeth, shooting him another glare, which he ignored.
“We’d have never had the advantage we did without the intel you recovered and brought to Nikhil. You saved your squad in the process.”
My throat tightened, and I swallowed hard to dislodge the knot. Voice strained, I said, “I couldn’t save them in the end though.”
He sighed and shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. And I didn’t mean to come dredge up old memories. I just wanted to meet you since we’ll be partners for this gig.” He tilted his head in the direction of the dark, looming shape the ferry slipped ever closer to. We’d be docking within the hour.
I gave him a wary, sidelong glance. “Yeah? What’s your name?”
He stuck out a hand. “Errol. Former Shadow to Belah Blue.”
It was my turn to lift an eyebrow as I took his hand and shook. That was where I knew him from. He was one of the Shadows who used to guard one of our immortal leaders before and during the war. “I’m Razik. But I guess you knew that already.” He shot me a crooked smile that made his face look less stern and his dark eyes look more hopeful. I eyed him closely for a moment before turning back to the rail. “That had to have been some job, shadowing an immortal. Were you with her from the start?”
By “start,” I meant from the moment the ancient immortal dragon stepped foot outside the cloister of the Glade and into the world to seek out her mate. As dragons, we’d all been hunted then, and Belah Blue more than others, so she required an entire team of Shadows to serve as a security detail. That was pretty much our lot in life: to be the secret protectors of those more important than us. We were the spies, the infiltrators, the covert operatives of the dragon race, thanks to our unique power of manifesting our breath as shadows and projecting our awareness into the world. Some of us, descendants of the Void, could even dematerialize at will and become the shadows. The skill hadn’t made me any safer from the Ultiori during the war though.
Errol’s expression shuttered, and he pressed his lips together before nodding. The shift spoke of regret, but the tightness eased with a smile. “She was worth the trouble. I admit, I spent a lot of time beating myself up when things got out of control, but it all worked out in the end. I guess Fate doesn’t take into account the collateral damage that can happen when the immortals are making their way to their mates though.”
Both my eyebrows shot up, my own dark mood disappearing in favor of curiosity. “So you were there? When the old Nikhil found her, before he reclaimed his mind? When she met the North brothers? How in the hell did you not wind up hating her and the Void after how cavalier they were with your lives? They sent you straight into Ultiori territory to help them get laid.”
His eyes flashed from Shadow-black to ultraviolet as if I’d just insulted him, not his former employer and her brother. I knew the pair personally, so they’d have just laughed at the insubordination, but it had always amazed me how divided opinions of them could be. Like before, he managed to control the reaction.
“You understand loyalty better than anyone. But they were guided by Fate so could not have changed things even if they wanted to. Besides, I could never hate any of them. We are blood, after all. You know that’s why we were chosen, right? Us two and one other. I think I caught sight of his Shadow lurking around somewhere near.” He shifted his eyes without turning and cocked one eyebrow.
I’d felt the presence of our third partner already. He was a clever one but not quite clever enough for either of us. Knowing Errol sensed him too made me relax a little. Our skill levels were well matched, but I was irritated that I felt myself longing for that kind of connection again. I’d been close to my team before they were killed, and it felt like a betrayal to them to let myself trust anyone that deeply again.
I set my jaw and nodded, still not sure how I felt about any of this. I was still reeling over having my longest suspicions confirmed a mere week ago that I was one of a handful of direct descendants of the Void. I considered Ked a friend. He and the entire Dragon Council had taken turns expressing gratitude for my part in ending the war, so I considered them all friends now. Despite my talents as a Shadow eclipsing the others I’d trained with, it had never occurred to me that we were that closely related, that he and I were only a few generations removed despite how ancient he was.
This new job evidently required Shadow dragons with our specific lineage because of the security measures in place on the island. The source of power was somehow linked to the Void’s bloodline and could be manipulated only by individuals with that genetic fingerprint.
I was still fuzzy on the details, but in the three years since the war, I’d been aimless, working one security gig after another for dragons more important than me. Being friends with the Immortals didn’t imbue my life with any sort of blessing. On the contrary, my prospective employers were even more prone to skepticism about my abilities. As if all the fame had somehow dulled my talents as a Shadow, or they believed I only received the recommendations by association, not due to actual skill.
Hopefully, this one would stick. I’d be answering to three Guardians and a former Ultiori Elite, after all—four individuals who would have normally deferred to me under other circumstances. To say it would be an adjustment was an understatement. Not to mention having to acclimate to partnering up with new Shadows when I’d worked alone for the past three years.
“Don’t start thinking that makes us brothers,” I groused. “Trust that deep is earned.”
“I get it.” His sympathetic look made me itch, and I clenched my teeth, fixing my gaze on the island once again.
“Pity won’t get you anywhere either.”
He made a disconcerted noise, shifting his gaze away and facing Puget Sound again. In his profile, I could see his resemblance to Ked and imagined if strangers met us together, they’d assume we were brothers.
“I’m not your enemy, Razik. I lost people in the war too. I just wanted to introduce myself, not insinuate myself into your life or anything. I don’t expect to live up to any of your squadmates—they were all heroes—but I wouldn’t mind a chance to earn your trust.”
I almost snapped that I didn’t exactly have a choice but suddenly grew too weary of the fight to keep everyone at arm’s length. He was reaching out as a fellow Shadow who’d seen his share of death already. Which was more than I could say for our other teammate, who remained in the shadows nearby.
With a sigh, I nodded. “Fair enough. So, since you seem like someone in the know, why not start by telling me what you know about this gig? Cassandra’s interview was light on details about the island.”
Errol turned and propped his butt on the rail, crossing his thick arms and looking at me again. I leaned against my hip, facing him.
“She didn’t tell me much either, but I’ve learned over the years never to go into a situation blind if I can help it. I did some digging. Turns out the island is an art school for Bloodline humans, and the woman who owns it is Bloodline herself—a chimera, if you can believe that.”
“Like Deva Rainsong?” I asked, eyes widening.
“Not exactly, but strong enough to manifest strong dragon and ursa power, and to have a harem of mates from both races.”
I let o
ut a low whistle. Gone were the days when it was forbidden for a human to take more than one dragon for a mate. Usually, it was the other way around. Even as recently as my own childhood, five centuries ago, dragons kept harems of human mates for sex and breeding. They were never members of harems themselves. How the tables had turned.
“Stands to reason three Guardians would start an art school.”
Errol nodded. “April—the chimera—is a glassblower, so it was her brainchild. Naturally, all six of her mates help run it, teach most of the classes too. They also handled security on the island, but after enough disruptions from curious dragons and turul, they realized they needed a formal security team so they could focus on the school and not worry about uninvited guests, especially since both Fate and Chaos still seem dead set on fucking with the Bloodline. I think the security is as much to keep them out as any of the others.”
“If the focus of those two is off the higher races, that’s fine by me, but how does the school manage to keep people out? Does the fact that we’re on a goddamn ferry instead of flying in have something to do with it?”
He turned and tilted his chin toward the island. “Take a real look. You should be able to see it now.”
I did as he suggested, shifting to my dragon sight when I looked at the island. What I saw stunned me. The misty cloak around the island was no longer an amorphous cloud, but a perfect dome reminiscent of the barrier that protected the ursa Sanctuary from unwanted visitors.
“Sweet Mother. How do they generate enough power for a barrier like that? Does it cover the whole island?”
“That’s the secret that made me decide to take the job. I have to find out. It takes pure Source magic to power something that strong. But the bigger question is, why are we—members of Ked’s bloodline—such ideal candidates to maintain it?”
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 20
