Elesian Dragon Mates: Dragon Shifter Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Sammie Joyce

  There was a single beat of silence, and then they were all shouting at once. Rose could barely hear the others over the sounds of her own objections.

  Finally, Asher called a halt. “Everyone quiet! We won’t get anywhere if we keep talking over each other. Mace, explain exactly what it is you have planned.”

  “I don’t have a plan yet, just a concept—we need to destroy hell. That will surely destroy anything in it.”

  “Not necessarily. What if it does the opposite—what if it releases them into this world?” The last thing they needed was hundreds of Hellith-like monsters running around while they were trying to raise Hope. Rose shuddered at the thought.

  “Possibly, so we’ll need to make sure that doesn’t happen as part of the spell. Do something to bind the souls to the realm, and when the realm is extinguished, they die too.”

  “It’s not a bad theory, but I can’t see how it would be possible.” Asher looked to Rose. “Are there any spells that can do something like that?”

  “None that I know of, but I hardly know everything. And spells can be invented, you know.”

  “What about everyone else in hell, though? There must be millions of souls there. We can’t just destroy them all.”

  It wasn’t an objection Rose had expected to hear from Gavin, but it was a valid one.

  Asher didn’t seem to think so, though. “They’re in hell, Gavin. You do know what hell is, right? A place for the very worst souls in existence. They deserve to be destroyed.”

  “And who decides who is the worst? A year ago, the witches would have sent us all to hell without a second thought. No one thinks they’re evil. I can guarantee you that we fit someone’s description of evil. So which religion is right? Are any of them? We can’t know that, and we can’t know for sure that all souls in hell are guilty.”

  “Even more reason to destroy them.” Jagger got a number of raised eyebrows at that one, and went on to explain. “You all remember what it was like. That place… it’s called hell for a reason. Being stuck there, all alone in the cold and dark? I can’t think of anything worse. We’ll be doing those souls a favor by releasing them.”

  “That’s if there is only one hell.” Rose remembered wondering where everyone else was when they’d last been down there, as they had only found Hellith. “What if each person has their own individual hell? What if the real hell is being alone?”

  “Either way, it works.” Mace held up two hands like scales. “Option one: there is only one hell. We destroy it, killing Hellith and all the evil souls, and releasing all the good souls from their torment. Option two: there are multiple hells. We destroy Hellith’s hell only and don’t affect any of the others.”

  “I don’t know, Mace… I admit, it doesn’t seem as crazy as I first thought it was, but I’m still not sure if something like that is even possible. If it is, we’ll almost certainly have to create a new spell to do it.”

  “Then that’s what we do.”

  “It’s not that simple. Creating new spells is dangerous. That’s why the team working on Hope’s protection spells is in that secure room—the one that’s impervious to a nuclear explosion. The more complex the spell you’re creating, the greater the chance of something going badly wrong. The room protects everyone outside it, but if the spell goes bad, all of the witches in there will die. It’s not something to be done lightly.”

  That at least gave Mace pause. “What if you helped? I bet you can cast a shield spell as powerful as that secure room with your necklace. You could protect yourself and the coven members who are making the spell.”

  That was an idea, but Rose still couldn’t be certain. “My necklace’s power isn’t always reliable. I’m fairly certain it would work in that circumstance, but if it didn’t, we’d all be dead.”

  “Unacceptable. Rose will not be going near such dangerous experiments.”

  Rose rolled her eyes. Now she’d gone and triggered Asher’s protective instinct.

  “What if it wasn’t just on Rose? There are other witches here. They could all work to form a shield. I’m sure that together, they could make something strong enough.”

  Jagger had a point. It would be energy-intensive, but Rose thought it could be done.

  “Let’s discuss it with Maria. I’m still not saying we’ll do it, Mace, but you’re right, it is definitely something to consider.

  “Great!”

  “Oh no you don’t. Just because you came up with a good idea doesn’t change the fact that you’re lying to us. I said that you’re confined to your room until you decide to be honest, and I meant it. Get going. The rest of us can present the idea to Maria.”

  Mace looked like he might be going to argue, but after a look at Asher’s face, he wisely decided to save it for another time.

  Rose, Jagger, Asher, and Gavin went together to Maria’s office. Rose was still holding Hope. She’d meant it when she said she wasn’t having Mace around her until he decided to be honest.

  Maria was at her desk, looking exhausted, but she still pulled out a smile. “Hey. Is everything alright?”

  “We think so.” Rose took a seat, and her dragons did the same. “Mace had an idea, which might take away a lot of the risk in the whole killing Hellith mission.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We need to find a way to destroy hell. That way, we’ll never need to risk Hellith getting loose from her cage. We just need to make sure to bind her to the realm somehow, so that when it is destroyed, she goes down with it.”

  Maria had many of the same objections Rose and the others had had at first. They talked for almost half an hour before Maria was finally convinced.

  “I suppose it makes the most sense. Getting the rest of the coven to see that might be difficult, but we can do it.”

  Rose was fairly confident on that front.

  What she wasn’t too confident about was whether or not Mace would ever speak to her again.

  Chapter Six

  Jagger dashed back to the basement to grab a jacket. Winter was closing in, and he’d seen Rose shivering. He didn’t want her to sit through yet another coven meeting cold.

  They’d left Hope in the basement after Mace swore he wouldn’t go near her and that he’d call if she needed something.

  As he ran down the stairs, Jagger realized that they never should have trusted that promise. To be fair, if someone banned him from spending time with his daughter, he would probably also lie to overturn the sentence.

  Hope was screaming her head off, and Mace was rocking her frantically. Jagger didn’t understand why his brother looked so scared. What was the worst that could happen? Hope certainly had a set of lungs on her, but Jagger doubted she’d be able to pop eardrums, no matter how loudly she screamed.

  Jagger jumped at a shattering sound. He was still frozen on the stairs, watching Mace. Mace turned his back to the noise, shielding Hope with his body.

  He placed her in her crib and started cleaning up the glass.

  The whole thing looked too practiced for Jagger’s liking. He looked around for anything that could have made the glass shatter, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  Hope gave a particularly loud scream, and a patch of carpet caught on fire. Mace hurried to stamp it out. “Come on, baby girl, work with me here. One thing at a time, hm?”

  Jagger felt his jaw drop as he watched Mace move the furniture around so that it covered the burned spot, and pulled out some kind of spell that erased the smell of smoke. He went back to cleaning up the glass, then took Hope from her crib, singing softly to her. He finally managed to get her calmed down. Mace put her back to sleep and slumped onto the couch, sighing in relief.

  “So this is why you’ve been keeping Hope away from us.”

  Mace leapt about a foot into the air. “Jagger! What are you doing here?”

  “Finding the truth, apparently.” Jagger didn’t want to wake Hope, so he put a valiant effort into not shouting. “I must admit, I never would
have expected this of you. I knew you were lying about something, but I never thought you would deliberately hide information about Hope’s health and safety from her parents. I’ve never been more ashamed to be your brother.”

  Mace flinched, but Jagger was too angry to care. His hands were clenched into fists, fists that he would love to use to pummel Mace’s stupid face. “How could you, Mace?”

  “I did it for Rose.”

  “YOU THINK ROSE WANTED THIS!”

  Crap, he’d shouted. Jagger took deep breaths, trying to get himself under control. Hope stirred, but Mace managed to get her settled again by tucking her blankets more firmly around her and stroking her little head.

  “You know how stressed Rose is about the whole Hellith situation. Why would I want to add another worry on top of everything? Especially since this worry is probably bigger than any of the others, at least to us.”

  Some of Jagger’s anger ebbed. “You were trying to protect her.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said, Mace, and I’ve heard you say some pretty stupid stuff. Protecting Rose is paramount, but your idiotic attempt to do that is so misguided that you’ve done the exact opposite! How did you ever think this would help her? She was bound to notice something, and not knowing just stresses her more.”

  Mace didn’t appear to be listening. “What will you do, Jagger?”

  “What will I do? What do you think I’ll do, Mace? I’m going to report this to Rose and Asher the moment they’re out of that meeting.” Jagger was keeping his mind closed for now, as he knew Rose would come running the moment she heard his thoughts. He wanted her to at least get through the meeting so that she wouldn’t have to reschedule.

  “You have a choice, you know. You could help me protect her. She and Asher will probably punish you too if you keep shielding your thoughts, but wouldn’t you rather suffer than see Rose suffer?”

  “Did you not hear a word I just said? This isn’t helping Rose!”

  “I know she’s upset about all this, but just think how terrified she’ll be when she realizes Hope’s magic is running wild.”

  To his utmost dismay, Jagger realized that Mace actually had a point. He didn’t want to acknowledge it, but Mace was right about one thing. Rose would be terrified for Hope when she found out. That terror would certainly be worse than the current frustration she was feeling at Mace.

  “No. I’m not hiding this from Rose. It’s wrong. We’ve all seen how badly keeping secrets goes. I will give you one chance, though. It will be better if this comes from you. You need to tell her. If you don’t, I will.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can. She’s going to find out one way or the other. Either you tell her, or I do. I advise you take the former option, but if you don’t, I won’t hesitate to tell. You have one week.”

  Jagger turned on his heel and stalked out of the basement. Mace could handle Hope—he’d been doing it in secret with no problem up until now.

  He realized as he stepped into the meeting that he’d forgotten to bring Rose a jacket. He sat down next to her and put his arm around her to make up for it, rubbing her skin to warm her up a bit.

  Rose gave him a quizzical look, but didn’t speak. Maria was busy explaining the finer points of the plan to destroy hell to the rest of the coven.

  “Regardless of what we decide, we’ll still have to send someone into hell.” Dane glanced up and down the table. “We’ll need to figure out how to destroy it, and I doubt we can do that from here. A group of us will have to do some kind of reconnaissance and report back.”

  Jagger hadn’t thought of that, but Dane was probably right.

  Maria must have agreed as well, because she nodded. “We can start planning that right away. I say we keep the group small. Rose?”

  “Agreed. I’d say no more than six people. Hell doesn’t exactly seem busy, but if they do somehow get to a populated area, they’ll need to be able to hide or blend in.”

  “I can go.” Jagger saw Rose wince at Annabelle’s suggestion, but it was Maria who shot it down.

  “No. You’re too inexperienced.”

  “You do remember that I was the one down in hell with Rose and the others when she couldn’t trust any of you?”

  “I do, but the circumstances are different now. You didn’t have a lot of options then. We have options now.”

  “I have a bond with Dane that can pull the team back. How many of you have a bond like that?”

  “We do.” Asher took Rose’s hand under the table. “I can go, and Rose can pull me back.”

  “That would work. Any of you would do, actually. It may be smarter for you to stay here, Asher, in case anything happens. But you could send Jagger, Gavin, or Mace.” Maria glanced at Rose for confirmation.

  Jagger could see that Rose wasn’t exactly happy about Maria’s support of the idea but she knew it made sense.

  Asher, Gavin, Mace, and he were some of the strongest in the clan. Asher was probably the most powerful, but his leadership was needed, and if someone died down there, it couldn’t be him.

  “I’ll go.” Jagger saw Rose wince, but that couldn’t be helped.

  “We will discuss it,” Asher said before Rose could object. “Rose and I will select either Jagger, Gavin, or Mace to go. In the meantime, you should select some witches to go with the group. Say three witches and three dragons? And at least one healer in the group.”

  “Agreed. I will start the selections at once.” Maria stood up. “If no one has anything else, then I say we should get to it.”

  The meeting dispersed quickly after that. Jagger didn’t speak as he followed Rose, Asher, and Gavin back to the basement. Before they went in, Rose stopped and turned to him.

  “What is it, Jagger?”

  Jagger knew what she was talking about. She sensed that his thoughts were closed to her. He was briefly tempted to lie, to shield her from more worry, but he knew by now that it would have the opposite effect.

  “I found out Mace’s secret.”

  “Excellent! What is it?”

  “I can’t tell you. I promised I’d give him a week to come clean himself. If he doesn’t do it by then, I will tell, but until then, I need to keep my mind closed.”

  Rose and Asher exchanged a look. Jagger could tell that they were communicating mentally in a private channel. After a minute or so, Asher nodded.

  “You have a week, but no more than that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jagger had a week. He wasn’t sure if Rose would ever trust Mace again if he didn’t tell her everything himself. Jagger knew how much Rose loved him, and it would hurt her to lose her trust in Mace. He needed to make sure Mace told the truth himself.

  Jagger consequently spent most of the week shut up in Mace’s room with him, shielded by a silencing spell so that none of the others could hear them.

  “What’s the problem, Mace? You know Rose is going to find out. Why shouldn’t it be you who tells her? I know you’re not a coward; I doubt you’re hesitating because you’re afraid of her being angry with the one who tells her.”

  “I’m not going to tell her because it’s wrong. I can’t stop you from telling her, but I’m not going to be responsible for adding that kind of fear and stress to Rose’s life.”

  It was like talking to a brick wall. Nothing he said or did seemed to get through to Mace. Rose and Asher were both furious with him, because he was constantly disobeying their orders so he could get Hope out of the way before she caused an accident when crying.

  Jagger refused to help, not wanting to participate in Mace’s stupid course of action. He supposed that was exactly how Mace felt about him telling Rose and Asher. The thought didn’t do anything to improve his mood.

  The coven kept discussing the best ways to make the expedition to hell productive so that they hopefully wouldn’t need to go more than once. Jagger came to the meetings, but he was preoccupied with thoughts of Mace and Hope. He
was also struggling without the mental bond. He had to keep his thoughts shielded, and he’d never done that for such an extended period of time.

  All in all, Jagger was glad when Mace’s week was up. He went to Mace’s room once more. “It’s time, Mace. Come on. I’ll stand with you while you tell Asher and Rose.”

  “I’ve told you, I’m not doing it.”

  Jagger was done arguing. He left, slamming the door behind him. Asher, Rose, and Gavin were waiting. Jagger fell into a chair, already exhausted, and he hadn’t even started yet.

  He told them everything.

  Jagger was fairly certain Asher would explode in anger, and he was right. “HOW COULD YOU NOT TELL US THIS? You should have informed us the moment you found out!”

  Gavin looked like he agreed with Asher, but Rose wasn’t paying attention to them. She was gasping for breath as though she was sprinting up a hill.

  “Rose?” Jagger took her hands, looking into her face, which was filled with panic.

  Mace’s door burst open. His and Jagger’s thought barriers were down now, which meant they could feel everything Rose was.

  Jagger didn’t know what to do, but fortunately, Asher remained calm. “Just breathe, Rose. Gavin, run to Elaine and ask for a sedative potion.”

  Gavin sprinted out. Asher led Rose to the couch and laid her down. “It’s okay, Rose. You’re just having a panic attack.” He gave Jagger and Mace a filthy look. “Try to breathe slowly. Help is on the way.”

  Gavin returned with the potion a few minutes later, and Asher wasted no time in helping Rose swallow it down.

  It worked almost instantly. Rose’s breathing normalized and her tense muscles relaxed. She wrapped her arms around Asher’s waist. Gavin stroked her hair, but when Jagger and Mace tried to move forward to comfort her, Asher snarled in their heads.

  Stay away from her! Haven’t you done enough damage already?

  “What are we going to do?” Rose whispered. “We’ve wasted so much time—weeks. What if it’s too late to stop her powers running away with her? What if they kill her?”