The Fury Queen’s Harem: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Cursed Dragon Queen and Her Mates Book 1)

by Meg Xuemei X

  But I had never promised any of them anything. All I wanted was a kiss. Well, maybe more.

  “What do we do now that we’ve discovered her true identity?” Blaze asked.

  If Elvey hadn’t meddled, the dragon princes wouldn’t have discovered my secret. But Elvey had said I needed to work this out with them, which left another puzzle for me.

  “Three Furies, one woman,” Rai said thoughtfully. “That’s probably her curse.”

  “The old bastard King Daghda lied about who she was before he sent us here,” Blaze said. “He promised whoever takes the Furies’ heads will inherit Danaenyth dynasty. If we had known—”

  “We know now,” Rai said. “She’s one of us, a dragon, and we’ll never slay our kin.”

  Blaze scanned three of me and sighed. “Three Furies, one woman, as you said. I’d have hoped that there are three women instead, but there aren’t. I intend to court Daisy. If you two back down right now, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Unfortunately, I won’t, brother,” Rai said. “When I first scented her, I already marked her as mine. She smelled like my mate as she smells now, and she’ll be my mate.”

  “You smelled her wrong, Rai,” Blaze said fiercely. “She should be mine. When I first kissed her, my dragon recognized her as my mate.”

  “Maybe the curse confused your sense of smell,” Rai retorted.

  “You have the same curse, Rai,” Blaze barked back. “Maybe your nose misguided you.”

  How long were they going to talk like this as if I weren’t even present? But since I needed to gather more information from them, I kept quiet. I could picture how they’d rivaled each other since they were children.

  Both Rai and Blaze turned to Iokul now, waiting for him to announce he would bow out. One less competitor is better than nothing.

  “Not a chance,” Iokul said, staying where he was to guard the door. “I might be ice-cold, but not with her. She made my blood run hotter than any fire, and no other woman could even stir anything in me before.”

  His brothers gave him a scathing look.

  I was dazed. They were fighting over me. A few days ago, they’d been competing to get to me to take off my heads.

  “How did we even come to this?” Rai shook his head, his voice spitting disgust. “When did we become so pathetic? We’re brothers. We should have bonded with each other, but all we’ve done for nearly a century is to try to pull the rug out from under each other to gain more political power. We almost killed each other on several occasions. And now we’re going to fight over the same woman on a hostile planet, with an army of monsters, ruthless hunters, and demons breathing down our necks. We’ll finish ourselves soon before our enemies do it for us.”

  A shamed looked flitted by Blaze’s golden eyes, but Iokul remained icy, untouched.

  The benefit of having three forms and three pairs of eyes was that I didn’t miss any details.

  “Then why don’t you set a good example and back off, Rai?” Blaze said. “Feel free to leave Iokul and me in the game. And I believe I’ll beat him this time. Fire burns ice. It’s not the other way around. Fire gets a woman hot, and ice will only turn her off.”

  Iokul sneered with enough disdain, but he did not comment. Likely, the ice prince was more of a strategist than the red-blooded fire dragon.

  “I’ll leave the ring if it were any other woman,” Rai said, “but not with Daisy, not after I got her scent in my blood. And as the oldest among you, I’m entitled to the first pick.”

  Thank you all for treating me like a lovely bone! One of my Furies snickered.

  “You’re only older by a minute and a half,” Blaze said. “That doesn’t count for much. Even our father refused to name which one of us should be the heir, since we were all born on the same day.”

  “The old argument bores me,” Iokul chimed in. “That’s the exact thing that has pitted us against each other for a century.”

  They were indeed younger for me. Nine hundred years old wasn’t really old, but one hundred was young for a dragon. I wondered how old Elvey was—he scented both ancient and young. Everything about him was a puzzle. And he knew more about me than I did. I bet he knew everything about my curse.

  I needed to get hold of him, the sooner the better, once these three were done with their debate.

  “I’m tired of this argument as well,” Rai said.

  “You brought it up,” Blaze said.

  “Let’s quit fighting each other for once,” Rai said in exasperation. “It hasn’t worked in the past. It’s only wounded us all. This time we’ll win the most-desired woman in a civilized way. We protect her. We take out the hunters. And then, we’ll revisit winning her heart, and may the best man win.”

  “No cheating in the process,” Blaze said.

  “Agreed,” Rai said.

  When they didn’t hear from the ice dragon on the collective decision, Rai raised both eyebrows. “Iokul? You’re more than welcome to withdraw.”

  “Hell no!” Iokul said. “But in the end, it’s not up to us. Daisy has to choose.”

  That was the first sensible thing they’d said since they’d entered my chamber.

  The three dragons turned to gaze at me intently, as if expecting I would—even in my beastly form—give them my judgment or cede to their plan.

  But I’d finally had enough. I wasn’t a prize for anyone to win.

  It was time to put these young, alpha dragons in their places.

  “Thank you for treating me like a bone a horde of dogs are fighting over, boys,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse even in my ear, but I didn’t see any of the princes frown at me, though they did look a bit taken aback at my sudden verbal opinion.

  Clearly, they’d thought I wouldn’t be able to talk in my beastly form.

  “I didn’t mean that, Daisy,” Rai said.

  “I would never disrespect you, Princess Daisy Danaenyth,” Blaze said, his voice overlapping his brothers.

  I didn’t want to get into another debate, so I said it sharply, “I won’t choose.”

  “What do you mean you won’t choose?” All three voices demanded at the same time, and three pairs of eager eyes all focused on me. Iokul had left his post and joined his brothers, as if everyone’s life was at stake.

  Rai’s sapphire eyes caressed me without touch, intending to make me change my mind and pick him.

  Blaze narrowed his fiery eyes, not in a threatening way, but in curiosity.

  Iokul had the fire burning equally hot behind his glacial wall.

  All of them were staggering-hot with powerful bodies.

  Their masks, infused to cover half of their faces because of the hex, made my heart ache for their suffering.

  I had never known I had such strong protective traits until I met them.

  “I’ve been cursed with my beastly forms as Akem’s slave for nine centuries,” I said.

  “Where’s this Akem?” Blaze snarled, looking around to seek him, as did the other enraged princes, who drew their swords.

  “We’ll finish him,” Iokul said with steel and ice in his voice. “No one enslaves you.”

  “The elemental entity was gone before you arrived. The Wickedest Witch in the universe trapped him,” I said with a sigh. Must they always interrupt me? They seemed to have a habit of disrupting each other.

  “Lucky he got away,” Rai said, pulling his sensual lips back in a half snarl.

  “You all got lucky,” I said matter-of-factly. “If he were still around, your ship wouldn’t have landed. It would have crashed. And none of your advanced weaponry would have worked. Akem didn’t just absorb spaceships’ energy. He fed on all aliens. We were all his prey when he was here. He owned this planet.”

  I’d thought I’d have all the freedom by sending the elemental away, only to find that anyone with a big gun could come hunt me now.

  “It doesn’t matter that he’s gone,” I said sadly. “I didn’t gain my freedom. I’m still trapped here and will forever be shackle
d until my curse is lifted. My dragon is caged. I have an hour every day in my Fae form. The rest of the day I have to stay in my mutant Fury forms. That’s about it.”

  “Then let’s get rid of this curse of yours,” Rai said.

  Blaze gave his brother an annoyed look, as if blaming him for stealing his line.

  “How can we remove the nasty curse, Daisy?” Blaze asked softly, my name sounding like a caress from his lips.

  I shivered in pleasure. And I was grateful to them all that my hideous form didn’t make them cringe. They still wanted to help me.

  “I’ll walk over a sea of burning coals for you,” Blaze continued.

  “Really?” Rai sneered. He was usually the gentlest and level-headed. “You’re a fire dragon. Fire won’t touch you. You do know how to pick the easiest task.”

  “It’s a figure of speech!” Blaze said.

  “The first words coming out always speak the volume,” Iokul said.

  Blaze glared at his two half-brothers with dark suspicion in his molten-gold eyes, as if he believed the two were joining forces to take him out.

  If I let their jealousy and possessiveness keep getting the better of them, we’d never get anything done. “No more such banter,” I said. “Whoever stays petty and catty will be out of my favor.”

  All three of them quieted immediately.

  “The reason I can’t choose any one of you is that I’ll need a kiss from all three true loves to lift the curse,” I said.

  Their jaws all dropped. Their eyes darkened.

  I sighed. I knew it.

  Love was difficult. True love? It was like myth. Who knew if it even existed.

  However, the princes’ dismayed look disheartened me to no measure.

  Was I deemed to be doomed?

  Nine centuries of misery and dim hope. And then it came to this. I wanted to bury my face in my hands and weep a little, but I couldn’t do that in my Fury forms. All I had were fangs and claws and scales.

  I composed myself.

  “The term of true love is probably a metaphor,” I said, adding a bit steel to my voice, “or a children’s bedtime story. The point is three is the required number. So, you see, I can’t choose.”

  The three brothers traded a look.

  Rai blew out a breath. “We have to be completely honest with you, Daisy. I think your curse is connected to ours. We were cursed in our young twenties. We don’t know by whom, how, or why.”

  “We have powerful enemies,” Blaze said.

  Rai grunted. “Overnight, we were unable to shift to dragons, and it affected all the dragons, except the oldest Dragon King, Daghda Danaenyth, your grandfather.”

  I narrowed my eyes in rage. “You think Daghda had something to do with the curse?”

  It could be. I’d come of age and become the threat to his throne, so he’d whisked me away with a curse. Without knowing that, when I’d finally had means sending him a message calling for help through an Archangel, he immediately sent three spaceships of bounty hunters after my ass.

  What a nasty old bastard! He would pay if I ever got out of this.

  “We investigated,” Iokul said, watching me carefully. “He has nothing to do with our curse. I don’t think he hexed you either. My intelligence says it might be the dark Fae, but we can’t find any proof.”

  My enemy could be Fae since I was half-Fae. Dragons and Fae had been at war with each other for a long time.

  Rai nodded. “Fae is malicious.” He gave me a look. “Especially dark Fae.”

  Was I on the dark side?

  “I don’t know any more about my Fae heritage than you do,” I said. “Fae was a forbidden topic in the dragon realm where I grew up.”

  “That’s fine, Daisy,” Blaze said, giving me a small smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “The three of us have been burdened with a second curse as well,” Rai said. “We’ve been wearing this mask for close to a century.”

  “When the curse first hit us,” Blaze said, “we all heard a menacing voice in our heads: ‘Only when you cut the three heads of the Fury beasts will your curse fall off.’ And we’ve been searching for the Furies in all the realms ever since. It was fruitless, even though we collected a lot of beast heads. And when we heard King Daghda’s announcement, we came here right away. He specifically pronounced the name Furies, and we thought that our misery would finally come to an end.”

  The fire prince gazed at me apologetically. “I didn’t know you were cursed to be Furies. I almost killed you.”

  “You’re the one who shot down the rockets that almost got me,” I said softly, yet my voice still sounding grumpy and croaky. “Iokul ordered the men not to fire upon me. And Rai disabled the drones, healed me, and saved me.”

  “You called my name,” Rai whispered. “I thought I was mistaken.”

  I smiled at him. If I were in my Fae form, my grin would look better.

  Blaze coughed. “Let’s stay on topic, shall we?”

  “We have a conflict of interest,” I said, giving all three of them an equal measure of look. “I need a kiss from three loves to get rid of my curse, and I’m not sure if the three of you are the ones I’ve been looking for. And you’ll have to cut the three heads of the Furies—my heads—to remove your curses.”

  “Our interest actually merges,” Rai said. “I haven’t finished the tale of the second part. The first voice demanded we claim your heads, but then a second, different voice followed the first vicious one.”

  “And it said, ‘Or make the Fury Queen fall in love with all three of you,’” Iokul chimed in, icy silver eyes sparking with fire, even at the sight of my hideous beast form. I remembered how his icy fire had burned for me when we’d first met. Like his brothers, my Furies didn’t turn him off.

  All three of them had seen me beyond the forms I took.

  “But we, the shallow, arrogant dragon royals laughed at the concept of gaining the heart of the beast queen,” Iokul said.

  “We aren’t laughing now,” Blaze said. “At least I’m not laughing. I’m only happy we haven’t hurt Daisy.”

  All cards were on the table now.

  “So, our curses have to be connected to yours,” Rai said.

  “All we need is to gain Daisy’s heart instead of cutting off her heads,” Blaze said cheerfully.

  “And you think that’s easier?” Iokul retorted.

  They flicked their gazes between the three of my beast forms, evidently pondering how to gain my heart when every day I had only an hour as a Fae, and there were three of them.

  “Daisy has refused to choose between us,” Rai said. “She can’t. She needs three mates, and all of us need to win her heart, which means we’ll have to share her love. If we prove ourselves worthy, then she’ll have all three of us.”

  Blaze sighed, not too happily. “Maybe this is meant to be. Maybe the curses happened for a good reason. To chide us for our pettiness, arrogance, and menace.”

  Rai clasped Blaze’s shoulder, then Iokul’s. “We’re brothers, flesh and blood, but we’ve fought each other for nearly a century. If we all agree to forge our bond and give our devotion to the same mate, we’ll never be divided by anyone or any force again.”

  “And we’ll rule the same kingdom by our mate’s side,” Iokul whispered.

  Rai pulled out his sword from the sheath in his shoulder. I stepped back involuntarily. He gave me an assured, gentle look. “Never harm you, Daisy,” he said fiercely. “Don’t be afraid of us.” He turned the blade toward his palm and sliced across it.

  Blaze and Iokul immediately followed suit and cut their palms.

  Three palms joined, and their brotherly blood meshed. Following that, three swords dripping with red blood crossed against each other in unison to declare they were one.

  I was touched by their pledge to me, though not comforted much by their rush to action. What if they weren’t my true loves? Elvey’s image popped into my head. I’d felt strongly toward him just as I had toward
the princes. So, who knew who my true loves were? And what if I gave the three dragons my love and their curses got lifted, yet mine remained since one of them, or all of them, were the false suitors?

  When my future and freedom were at stake, how could I throw my lot in with them and make such a big commitment?

  As a rule, I had to look after my own interest first, just as everyone did on Pandemonium.

  “Well,” I said. “This is a good development. However, I reserve the right to kiss other men if you aren’t the ones I’m looking for.”

  “Are you using the excuse so you can kiss the warlock when you have the chance to do so again?” Blaze demanded.

  “She won’t get another chance,” Iokul said frostily. “We’ll take care of Elvey first.”

  I hissed a stream of black fire, and the princes leaped back, not expecting that I also had a temper.

  “You see what you’re doing?” Rai, the nicest dragon, snarled at them. “You aren’t helping to win Daisy over. You’re alienating her. Why should she tie to us before we prove ourselves to be worthy of her love?”

  Blaze and Iokul dropped their gazes for a second and glared at each other.

  “From this day forward, we need to think before we open our mouths,” Rai continued, his voice soft and lethal. “If we sabotage our relationship with Daisy, we’ll never get rid of our curses.”

  Unless they reversed to slaying me, but I wouldn’t plant the ideas in their heads.

  Blaze eyed me warily. “Relationships are hard. I know how to charge into battle and how to protect a lady, but this slow burn and sharing will take a lot out of me. I’ve never done this before. What if I screw up?”

  “Then don’t screw up,” Rai said.

  “Easy for you to say,” Blaze grunted, giving Rai a rueful glance. “Besides, I’ll have to work cordially with you and Iokul. I can stomach you once in a while, but Iokul and I are ice and fire.”

  Iokul shrugged.

  Rai ignored them and fixed his sole attention on me as if I was the only one that ever mattered, even though he’d just sworn a blood oath with his brothers. “Have you kissed all of my brothers, Daisy?”