by I. T. Lucas
Dark Prince’s Enigma
The Children of the Gods Book 29
I. T. Lucas
DARK PRINCES’S ENIGMA
Copyright © 2019 by I. T. Lucas
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
Dark Prince’s Enigma is a work of fiction!
Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations and/or events is purely coincidental.
Also by I. T. Lucas
THE CHILDREN OF THE GODS ORIGINS
1: Goddess’s Choice
2: Goddess’s Hope
THE CHILDREN OF THE GODS
Dark Stranger
1: Dark Stranger The Dream
2: Dark Stranger Revealed
3: Dark Stranger Immortal
Dark Enemy
4: Dark Enemy Taken
5: Dark Enemy Captive
6: Dark Enemy Redeemed
Kri & Michael’s Story
6.5: My Dark Amazon
Dark Warrior
7: Dark Warrior Mine
8: Dark Warrior’s Promise
9: Dark Warrior’s Destiny
10: Dark Warrior’s Legacy
Dark Guardian
11: Dark Guardian Found
12: Dark Guardian Craved
13: Dark Guardian’s Mate
Dark Angel
14: Dark Angel's Obsession
15: Dark Angel's Seduction
16: Dark Angel's Surrender
Dark Operative
17: Dark Operative: A Shadow of Death
18: Dark Operative: A Glimmer of Hope
19: Dark Operative: The Dawn of Love
Dark Survivor
20: Dark Survivor Awakened
21: Dark Survivor Echoes of Love
22: Dark Survivor Reunited
Dark Widow
23: Dark Widow’s Secret
24: Dark Widow’s Curse
25: Dark Widow’s Blessing
Dark Dream
26: Dark Dream’s Temptation
27: Dark Dream’s Unraveling
28: Dark Dream’s Trap
Dark Prince
29: Dark Prince’s Enigma
30: Dark Prince’s Dilemma
PERFECT MATCH
Perfect Match 1: Vampire’s Consort
Perfect Match 2: King’s Chosen
Perfect Match 3: Captain’s Conquest
TRY THE CHILDREN OF THE GODS SERIES ON
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Contents
1. Lokan
2. Carol
3. Kian
4. Lokan
5. Magnus
6. Kian
7. Lokan
8. Kian
9. Lokan
10. Vivian
11. Carol
12. Syssi
13. Carol
14. Annani
15. Lokan
16. Carol
17. Turner
18. Carol
19. Vivian
20. Carol
21. Lokan
22. Carol
23. Lokan
24. Carol
25. Lokan
26. Ella
27. Carol
28. Lokan
29. Carol
30. Lokan
31. Carol
32. Lokan
33. Carol
34. Lokan
35. Carol
36. Lokan
37. Carol
38. Lokan
39. Carol
40. Kian
41. Lokan
42. Carol
43. Lokan
44. Carol
45. Lokan
46. Carol
47. Lokan
48. Carol
49. Kian
50. Lokan
51. Annani
52. Lokan
53. Kian
54. Lokan
55. Kian
56. Magnus
57. Vivian
58. Carol
59. Lokan
Series reading order
Excerpt: Perfect Match 3
FOR EXCLUSIVE PEEKS
1
Lokan
As Lokan’s awareness returned, it was accompanied by a throbbing headache, nausea, and disorientation.
Drugs.
He must’ve been pumped with shitloads of them. Other than a severe injury, drugs were the only thing he could think of that could cause an immortal to experience such symptoms.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, Lokan couldn’t open his eyes more than a crack without it feeling as if someone was sticking needles in them.
With a groan, he let his lids drop. The room was steeped in such complete darkness that there was no point in forcing it. He couldn’t see anything anyway.
If Lokan had ever wondered what being drunk and drugged felt like, he knew now and was doubly glad for never allowing himself to drink excessively or touch drugs.
Why people would want to deliberately impair their faculties baffled him. Getting shit-faced was the prerogative of plebs, not leaders. Lokan couldn’t allow himself to partake in excess even if he was ever tempted to. His very survival depended on him always being sharp and alert.
The ever-present competition for positions of power and influence in the Brotherhood was demanding and subject to the whims of a despot. The fact that his competitors were his half-brothers and the despot was his father only raised the stakes and made the game more dangerous.
Was one of his brothers responsible for this?
And what exactly was ‘this’?
The bed he was lying on was superbly comfortable, like what he would expect to find in a luxury hotel, and the sheets smelled freshly laundered.
Was he in a hotel room?
Why couldn’t he remember what had happened to him, or how he’d gotten there?
Was he suffering from drug-induced amnesia?
Fighting the mental fog, Lokan went back to the last thing he remembered, which had been calling his pilot and telling him to have the jet ready for takeoff.
Why had he done that, though?
He had just returned to Washington from his mandatory visit to the island, and his next scheduled report wasn’t until next month. He had work to do, meetings with politicians and lobbyists to attend, and a couple of powerful telepaths to snatch from their government’s clutches…
Fuck! Suddenly it all came rushing back.
He’d failed.
The mighty son of Navuh had been outmaneuvered by fucking humans. For that failure alone, his father was likely to execute him. And if Navuh was merciful enough to spare his life, he would definitely demote him like he’d demoted Losham.
Except, whatever his brother had done to prompt his fall from grace couldn’t have been nearly as bad as what Lokan had gotten himself into.
Which meant that Navuh could never find out about this fiasco.
And that wasn’t even the main reason why his father could never know about this. It would be difficult to explain why Lokan had invested so much effort and had taken such unreasonable risks to capture two telepaths who could only communicate with each other.
No one was supposed to find out about this personal acquisition of his.
First of all, because the mission he needed them for was top secret, and if discovered would cost him his head fo
r sure. And secondly, because the dream-sharing ability that had allowed him to set the trap for the telepaths needed to stay forever hidden from the Brotherhood and especially from his father.
Navuh wouldn’t tolerate anyone in his organization having an advantage over him, not even his own son, and not even if the talent was pretty useless.
Until meeting Ella, Lokan hadn’t found any practical purpose for the dream-sharing. Provided that it was used wisely, however, it was an asset nonetheless, and as far as Lokan knew, he was the only one on the entire planet who possessed it.
Much good it had done him, though.
Where had he gone wrong?
After weeks of dream-sharing with Ella and charming her into trusting him, he had realized that she’d been attempting to use her meager feminine wiles to lure him into a trap of her own. But since the girl was too young and inexperienced to devise a plan like this, and he didn’t think she had any real motive for trying to entrap him, he had concluded that she’d been doing it on behalf of the agency holding her and her mother captive.
Most likely under duress.
Lokan still believed that his plan to snatch both telepaths from under their handlers’ noses had been ingenious. He was sure that it had failed not because of any mistake on his part, but because of the unprecedented level of military support the agency responsible for collecting paranormal talents evidently had access to.
He hadn’t expected such an obscure and highly classified department to get Special Forces backup.
It had been clear to him that Ella’s rescue from the Russian mafioso and the faking of her death had been orchestrated and executed by highly trained professionals, but what he knew about government agencies and how they operated had led him to believe that it had been a one-time collaboration.
Lokan thought it probable that Vivian had revealed the truth about her and Ella’s telepathic connection in a desperate attempt to get the government to rescue her daughter.
It seemed that she had succeeded in that, but the price was her and Ella’s freedom, as well as that of Ella’s younger brother. As far as Lokan was concerned, Vivian might have saved her daughter from sexual slavery, but to do so, she’d sold her soul and the souls of her children to the devil.
Evidently, the agency had been willing to put just as much effort into getting their hands on a dream walker as they had into securing the telepaths. After all, his talent was just as rare as the mother and daughter’s ability to talk to each other in their heads.
That agency must have other exceptional talents as well.
As more and more details of what had happened were coming back to him, Lokan remembered that the guy who’d shot him knew his real name.
“Game over, Lokan,” he’d said.
Ella had only known him as Logan, and so had all of his Washington contacts. The only way the guy could’ve known Lokan’s real name was by entering his mind, and that was the most alarming development of all.
Because he could've learned much more than Lokan’s name.
Humans were not supposed to know about the existence of immortals or the secret island that served as their base. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. It was basic information that could’ve been obtained from any captured member of the Brotherhood.
What they could learn from Navuh’s son, however, was much more damming than that.
Humans possessing such strong paranormal abilities was something neither Lokan nor his father had anticipated.
Nor had he expected to ever get caught by them.
The plan he’d constructed had seemed foolproof. No one born in this century knew about the secret tunnels running under the university and, given the wild goose chase he’d sent Ella and Vivian’s handlers on, there should have been no way for them to stop him.
They had outmaneuvered him with the airport shutdown, something only a powerful government agency could have pulled off.
There was no point in dwelling on his failure, though. What he needed to focus on was devising a new plan of action before they came in to question him, especially if they brought the mind reader along.
He decided he would have to kill that human first and then deal with the others.
The problem was that they seemed to be aware of his ability to compel and would no doubt bring in immunes to deal with him, which meant that thralling was out as well.
Those who couldn't be compelled couldn’t be thralled.
Lokan would have to rely on his basic immortal super traits of strength and speed, which the humans wouldn't be expecting.
First, though, he should try to dream-share with Ella and find out as much as he could from her. After more than a month in the place, she should be familiar with its personnel and safety procedures.
Ella might be still angry at him, but there was no reason for her to hide what was going on and what he was up against, and perhaps she would even use the opportunity to gloat.
It was most likely that she was somewhere nearby, perhaps even in the same facility. Not that distance played a factor in his ability to dream-share with her.
He had done it from the other side of the world.
It had been early afternoon when he’d been captured, and unless the room was devoid of light because the shutters were closed, Lokan assumed it was night, so she should be sleeping.
Drifting into dreamland while his head was throbbing was a challenge, but he’d practiced doing so at will. Taking a deep breath, he imagined what he wanted to dream about and then counted back from ten.
2
Carol
“You’re bouncier than usual.” Wonder handed Carol a plate of sandwiches. “These are for table six. What’s going on?”
“I’m excited.”
“About what?”
“Let me finish with that order first.”
Lifting the tray with the cappuccinos and sandwiches Wonder had made, Carol headed toward her waiting customers with a spring in her step and a big smile on her face.
Navuh’s son had been captured, and she couldn’t wait to talk about it with someone. Was she allowed, though? Or was it a secret?
Wonder probably knew because Anandur had told her, and the same was true for the other Guardians’ mates.
Thank the merciful Fates for the earpiece Brundar had given her and had never asked her to return. That little device was keeping her in the loop. Listening to the communications between the Guardians, Carol was getting the latest news before everyone else.
She wasn’t supposed to share what she’d learned, but this was big news, and Carol was sure it was going to spread throughout the village like wildfire. After all, there was no point in keeping it a secret. It wasn’t as if the information could be shared with outsiders.
Humans didn’t know immortals existed, and keeping it that way meant that none could be told about the capture of one of the most prominent figures of the Devout Order of Mortdh Brotherhood, the son of their evil leader no less, or how incredible it was for the clan.
Bottom line, even if everyone in the village knew about Lokan’s capture, there was no way the news could get back to his father.
From what she’d heard over the earpiece, the idea was to make it look as if Lokan had deserted. If Navuh discovered that the clan had his son, the consequences would be disastrous.
Unable to retaliate against them directly, he would strike at humans, knowing how much it would hurt the clan.
It would be a matter of ego for the despot.
She wouldn’t be surprised if Navuh tried to blackmail the clan into releasing his son by threatening to nuke a large city. Not because he loved Lokan, but because his son probably knew things about the Brotherhood that Navuh couldn’t afford his enemy to discover.
It was better to let him think that Lokan had deserted, or even gotten killed by having his private jet explode in the middle of the ocean.
In her opinion, the second option was better. With no one searching for Lokan, they would have all the time
they needed to milk him for information. Finally, they were going to learn the location of that freaking island the Doomers called home, which meant that Kian could finally approve her mission.
Well, there was one small detail that might still prevent it, but she planned on taking care of it as soon as possible.
Returning with the empty tray, Carol put it on the counter and wiped it with a rag. “Is Anandur going to stop by this morning?”
From her spot next to the cappuccino machine, Wonder glanced at Carol over her shoulder. “Maybe in the afternoon. Kian is on his way to pay a visit to you-know-who, and he took Anandur and Brundar with him.”
Carol leaned closer and whispered, “Is the one you’re referring to supposed to stay a secret?”
“I’m not sure. Until I’m told it’s okay to talk about it in public, I’m going to assume that it should.”
Tucking a curl behind her ear, Carol leaned against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. “A spy in our midst would be the only reason to keep it a secret. But if there was one, discussing you-know-who would be the least of our worries. Our location would’ve been compromised, and we would have been attacked by Doomers a long time ago.”
