Oh, no go. No fucking go.
If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s to be held down and kept defenseless. I fought Zeniel like a hellcat the day he tied me up to bring me to Enzyria, and I didn’t give a rat’s ass that I broke my hand punching him, forcing him to have to heal me.
Instinct takes over and I tense, preparing to defend myself by aiming at the God of Existence first.
But my well-planned, perfectly executed kick never happens.
Three pairs of large masculine hands tighten down around my limbs, vice-like, as a silent scream tries to wrestle its way out of my throat.
Energy. Sheer fucking energy. The kind that can singe a human’s entire body if they get within twenty feet of it.
It slams into me with all the strength of meteorite—no mercy, no tact, and no freaking stopping. My hands shoot up, grabbing onto each of the hands holding my arms. My fingernails dig into whatever flesh I can find.
A grunt comes from my right. A hiss from my left. Good. Those SOBs deserve to feel something for what they’re doing to me. “I’m going to . . . kill . . . all of you. Hard. And painfully,” I manage to grit out as my muscles begin spasming out of control.
A chuckle comes from the vicinity of my legs, sending me into another round of “oh-hell-no.” I don’t give a damn that he’s Existence, that he might just be the ultimate god in charge of keeping the Universe together.
“You . . . first . . . ” I say, managing to open my eyes long enough to glare in his direction.
He gives me an apologetic grin, shrugging in a way I would have considered adorable had it not been for the next blast of power. It lifts me off the bed and slams me back down.
“Enough with . . . this . . . shit . . . ” I choke, eyes freezing wide open. Titanium claws, recently dipped in lava and dripping hot sludge, slam around my rib cage like a corset. “Please. Please stop.”
Fuck it all. I rather die. I’m damn close to begging them to just end my suffering so that I don’t have to go through one more second of what they’re doing to me.
“Gods damn it. She’s strong. They’re both fighting back,” Zexistr grunts, bearing down on my ankles.
Both of us? What the hell is he talking about?
“Evesse.” Vedlyl steps forward, his pupils switching back-and-forth from blue to yellow so rapidly that it distracts me. “You need to focus on controlling the R’mannev. If you don’t fight it, it’s not going to obey you.”
“I went through it. Not as much as you are right now because I was human, but I was still able to do it. Fight back, Eve,” Ismini says in a small voice.
Fight back. Right. I’m good at that. Barely know how to do anything else.
“Focus on how much you want to kill us once this is done,” Zexistr says with a good-natured smile framed by those damned dimples.
“Stop giving her ideas,” Cy grunts.
Too late. I’m already focused. Am already planning exactly how I’m going to rip off their eyebrows, then move onto their eyelashes.
“Anyone else getting a mental image of what’s going on in there?” Keiros asks, sounding strained.
Are they reading my mind?
“I told you not to give her ideas, she’s fucking vicious!” Cy cries above the roar of the next energy wave that hits me.
I can do this. I have to. I don’t know the meaning of giving up.
The moment I remember that, a surge of my own energy detonates from deep within, an epic-scale blast that rushes forth and goes on the offensive against the weakness in me.
Because that’s what the mating has officially become. A weakness. And there’s no way in hell I can let it overcome me.
“There we go. Now she’s fighting.”
I have no idea who mutters those pride-filled words. Can’t really see anymore, and my hearing is beginning to abandon me, too. All I know is my determination not to give in—along with my desperate need to hurt the three beings holding me down.
It all comes to a stop so suddenly, that I’m left jerking like an epileptic on the bed.
The pain tightens into a tiny ball inside my chest, and pure strength surges through every one of my cells, infusing them with the need for violence. An animalistic hiss leaves my mouth, like something straight out of the wild, as I jump onto the bed, balancing on the balls of my feet with my knees bent and claws ready to strike.
As one, everyone within three feet of me shoots back. The brothers, smart boys that they obviously are, begin inching their way towards the door.
Cy throws his hands up, speaking to me nice and slow, as if that will help shit. “We were just trying to help you. And obviously, we did. Leave my nuts alone.”
“It hurt,” I growl, not recognizing my voice, barely recognizing myself within the psychotic, out-of-control behavioral and mental patterns that are emerging.
“Evesse,” Vedlyl places his hands on the edge of the bed and leans in to nail me with his hypnotic stare. “Now that your strength is returning, your instincts are magnified. You need to breathe and relax.”
I almost tackle him; the urge to dig my nails into something, anything, is too great.
“Evesse, breathe.”
He’s my friend. They’re all trying to help me. With a gasp, I deflate, flopping down onto the bed and noticing for the first time that the covers reverted back from their ashen state.
“I’m going insane.”
“No, you’re becoming more powerful than anything I’ve seen in awhile.” Vedlyl’s still assessing me, his pupils doing that rapid change thing as he scans my molecules, or whatever the hell it is that he does.
“Ved, is that what Ismini went through?” Dyletri takes a step forward, his whole body lighting up with the white light of his powers. The way he’s staring at the God of Medicine’s back doesn’t bode well for anyone.
Vedlyl tenses, but doesn’t turn away from his scan of me. “You weren’t meant to know at the time. She didn’t want you to know.”
Ismini steps around Dyletri, her brown hair whirling due to how fast she moves. She places her hand on Dy’s chest and looks up at him. “Baby. He’s right—”
“I don’t care. You went through that by yourself. I don’t care what was happening at the time, someone should have fucking told me.” He lifts her into his arms with a fierce expression. It’s clear that he’s still guilt-ridden over what Ismini went through before he found out she’s mated to him and he to her.
Dyletri growls at no one in particular, looking tormented, and storms out of the room with his mate in his arms. All the hard lines on his body make his intention loud and clear. He plans to love Ismini with every inch of him, to make it up to her in the only way he can.
Yearning hits me. My insides scream for the male that owns me, even as my mind chastises me for being such a fool.
Zeniel doesn’t feel that way about me. If he did, he would have been here by now.
Suddenly, I want nothing more than to be left alone. “Guys, I’m sorry I almost attacked you. Thank you for everything.”
The triplets nod, Cy still inching towards the door like he doesn’t trust me. Hell, he shouldn’t.
Soleria, on the other hand, steps forward to cup my shoulder. “Man, you’re badass. I can’t wait. If I fling myself off the balcony, do you think that’ll speed up the process of becoming whatever the hell I’m going to become?”
At the mention of her throwing herself off the balcony, a worried, stricken look crosses Ian’s face. It’s gone too fast for Sol to see it, but I do.
Again with the yearning. Again with the reminder that Zen doesn’t feel that way for me. “I . . . I need to be alone.”
I don’t care that the words wobbled when I spoke. Nor that I can’t tear my eyes away from the covers as I do. Usually, any show of weakness goes against every basic principle I have in my damned body.
You don’t grow up in foster care and survive a broken, pathetic system by being a weakling.
Left alone, I’m faced with
a reality that they all know, even if not one of my friends is brutal enough to voice it.
I might have been brought back. Sure, I might still be alive. But I’m mated to a male that isn’t mated to me. Kind of ridiculous actually. I was resurrected and shoved back into a living form, only to have to go through death all over again.
This time, however, it won’t be quick like when I was thrown into the vortex with Ismini.
No, this time, I’m going to experience every aspect of my death in slow motion.
Fucking yippee.
CHAPTER 12
CYAKE
“B ro! Wait!”
Ahead of us, Zexistr is rushing down the hall, his body already starting to phase.
He’s about to dematerialize.
“Brother!” Keiros calls next to me, and at the same time, we appear on either side of Zex.
The only reason he stops is because we each grabbed an arm.
That look’s on his face again. That deep, maddening despair that dragged him under the last time.
It happens every time he’s once again reminded of her—
The human girl he left to die.
He cannot come close to any female showing signs of a Fieren without being pulled back into that dark pit.
“You’re waiting for her,” I remind him calmly, hoping my sensible tone will get through to him. “That chain,” I nod towards the dark necklace around his neck, “Is all because one day she’ll be back. Remember what the oracle said—”
He jerks out of mine and Keiros’ hold. “I’ve been waiting almost three-thousand years for that prophecy to come true,” is all he says before he disappears.
Keiros’ shining, light-green eyes focus on mine, full of worry.
Shit. I don’t blame him. We’ve been watching our brother ride that spiral of self-destruction for almost three millennia now.
“You know where he’s going.”
I nod at Keiros. “He’s heading to see Mom. Probably to fight with her again because he says it’s all her fault.” We all adore our mother. No seriously, we fucking adore her.
But her relationship with Zex was never the same again after the girl.
“It is her fault. As much as it is his.”
That right there is one of the biggest truths of my fucked-up family.
Keiros exhales slowly. “He isn’t just going for that. We both know why else he’s going.”
Yup. Like the junkie that he is, my brother is returning to his favorite poison.
His number one obsession.
The memories do nothing but chip away at his sanity a bit more, but he doesn’t care. He’d rather die basking in them then live a moment longer not having her.
I remember those early days when my brother had first broken free. When his full cognizance returned and he came face-to-face with the reality of what he’d done while under Maivera’s influence.
He left the woman he loved to die in the worst way possible—he left a human to die trapped in a brutal Fieren.
Most of all, I remember being by his side the first five-hundred-years. Holding him as he literally shook from all the agony inside him. The guilt. He went mute. Was in so much pain he couldn’t even voice it.
“Man,” I say in a low voice. “This right here is why I’m happy I’ve never fallen in love.”
– Eighth dimension, Kremia
Calyptsia’s Realm
ZEXISTR
The sand beneath my boots is white. Pearl white. I fixate on it, try to commit every detail to memory.
The number one trick of mindfulness: be obsessively present in the moment.
But it never works. Not here. Everything about this entire realm reminds me of her. The sand. The clear blue skies overhead. The marble steps in front of me, massive in width, but short in height.
Once upon a long time ago, all this had been on Earth. And back then, a young, painfully gorgeous girl existed here.
“Zexistr.”
Mother.
Normally, seeing her while I’m like this fills me with fury.
Right now, I’m grateful for some sort of distraction. Any kind. Lifting my eyes, I find her standing on the stairs before me. Long, wavy auburn hair. Eyes the color of mine—silver, gold, with light-green-and-light-blue mixed together.
In a white, laced dress, standing there so calmly, my mother looks more like a fragile doll than what she actually is.
The primal Goddess of Rage.
“My boy,” she says, eyes shining with all the love in the Universe.
My physical form is over sixteen-thousand-years-old. Before then, I existed in the cosmos since the beginning of time itself.
And yet my mother still calls me her “boy”.
The stab of love I feel in my heart does nothing to ease my turmoil.
“Ma, I can’t be near you right now. I’m just going inside.” To the grounds I once walked in, with my little human by my side. To the very halls I cornered her in, flirting with her, fighting with myself and my urges to take her.
Mom steps closer, her hand outstretched, that ever-present yearning in her eyes. I haven’t let her touch me since the day I realized what she’d done; what we’d both done. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself, me’ren,” she whispers, using the ancient word for “my son”.
“If the Fates were to give me back what’s mine, I wouldn’t have to,” I growl under my breath, my skin tight all over. My blood pounds in my veins. In my cock. Even standing here before my mother of all people, the ache in my groin is unbearable.
The chain around my neck functions to keep me one step away from going rabid.
A single step.
Still, I exist, a beast trapped inside its own flesh, desperate for the one thing I refuse to have.
I will not have sex until my woman is returned to me. Screw the fact that I’m a Ja’mogen. In other words, although my main form is that of a werewolf, I also rotate between different species.
Since I’m Existence, I’m the primal of each one.
Fuck the fact that if I go rabid, I become Zerxis—The apocalypse itself.
An entire Universe worth of energy trapped in a cycling bio-form and I’ve set myself up to one day pop. Even worse? Only a select few know that this Universe has been living on borrowed time for three-millennia. I’ve waited three-thousand years for my human to reincarnate, as I was promised, and I will not touch another female again.
Her. It’ll only be her for me.
“You have punished yourself long enough, Zexistr.”
As disturbing as it is, my descent into madness from lack of sex has been a very public affair. Everyone close to me knows why my powers have dimmed and become darker.
Why I constantly seem one step away from death.
I have done to myself what my brother Crius has done, yet I am the most powerful being in the entire Universe, cursed with the need for constant sex. He may be suffering, but I am beyond critical.
Many would tell me to fuck just to keep myself from destroying the Universe. My woman is long dead and I can just get it out of my system while I wait for her to reincarnate.
When I think of all those times I slept with Maivera right after leaving the human behind, mated to me . . . the thirteen-thousand years after my human’s death that I was under Maivera’s power and continued to fuck her . . .
“How long did she survive again?” I ask my mother, my tone shaking.
A question I’ve asked her a million times. Each time I get the same answer.
“Longer than she should have, my boy.”
My mother’s tone shakes with the same megalithic guilt that eats at me.
I turn from her and flash inside, heading straight towards the back of my mother’s temple. Right before my mother’s chambers is a small alcove.
One of my favorite places to corner the human woman I came to love.
As I step inside and slide down to the floor, desperately reaching sixteen millennia into the past for a presence long g
one, I laugh at myself.
The God of Existence, and yet here I am.
Broken.
Mutated.
Hollowed.
For a human female whose name I never even got.
It wasn’t allowed back then. She was a priestess of my mother, one of only four selected—honored—humans.
A sensual specimen of a female born into prehistoric times.
And because she was selected into my mother’s service, I was banned from touching her. From knowing her. She would have lost her chance at immortality if I had laid hand on her.
Five summers. Five summers serving my mother and she would have earned her immortality.
She was supposed to remain faithful to my mother. I had planned on taking her then. When her little human body was no longer so fragile and could handle me. I planned to betray my mother and run off with her precious priestess.
I should’ve trusted my mother. Told her what I wanted. It never even occurred to me that she would be okay with it.
“I was just waiting for her to become immortal,” I mumble to myself, pressing my closed fists against my eyes. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve repeated it, it doesn’t change the facts.
I waited too long to claim my woman.
I should’ve found another way to gift her with immortality.
Instead, my daughter was born, I had a single moment of doubt, and Maivera got her hooks in me again.
Then my mother did the unthinkable. To try to get me away from Maivera once and for all, she created a new force, one utterly new in the Universe.
Turns out, Mom knew about my obsession with her priestess. She found a way to create the R’mannev and used my human, her priestess, as her prototype. All in the hopes that if she offered her up to me as a gift, I’d finally let go of Maivera.
“But did you, you asshole?” I’m so angry with myself that it takes everything I am not to manifest a knife. To not revert to my old habits and slice open my skin wherever I can reach.
Everyone tells me to forgive myself. That Maivera proved more powerful than any of us had ever known. So powerful that very few beings know that she actually was capable of ensnaring me, Existence, with her illusions.
Ryze Series: Books 1 & 2 Page 33
