by I. T. Lucas
The long hours without Lokan were starting to be intolerable, the invisible tether connecting them feeling more like a multi-tentacled appendage than a string. One tentacle was wrapped around her throat, constricting her air supply, another was squeezing her stomach, and a third one was tugging at her heart.
It was unbearable.
How did the other couples manage to function? Go to work? Leave on missions?
As much as she was giddy with happiness for having Lokan as her mate, Carol wasn’t ready to be attached to him at the hip. Even if he weren’t a prisoner and could join her in her activities, she’d been alone for far too long and doing her own thing to suddenly make a shift and do everything as a couple.
Maybe it was like that only in the beginning, and it got easier with time.
The worst part was that she didn’t know how to interpret it. It wasn’t lust because Lokan had satisfied her and then some, sating her voracious appetite, and it wasn’t love because they hadn't been together long enough for the seeds to sprout. Love, as opposed to lust, took time to grow.
Except, maybe she was wrong. After all, she hadn’t been in love before, so perhaps that nearly painful need to be with Lokan was love?
Or was it part of the craziness of fated mates?
After taking off her bridesmaid’s dress and the high-heeled shoes, she put on a loose blouse, a pair of leggings, and flip-flops. Too impatient to wash off the heavy makeup, she rushed out, hoping not to bump into anyone in the elevators leading down to the parking lot.
Thankfully, everyone was still partying, and she made it to her car without having to explain why she was leaving the wedding so early.
When she arrived at the keep, she texted Arwel to meet her in front of Lokan’s cell.
“I didn’t expect to see you back so early,” he said as he punched the numbers on the keypad.
She waved a dismissive hand. “After the ceremony, there was really no point in me staying. I can do without the food and the booze.”
Casting her a knowing glance, Arwel took a step back as the door started to open. “I told him that you were coming. He sounded just as anxious to see you as you are to see him. This matehood thing is too intense for my taste.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Wait until you find your one and only. This is impossible to explain until you experience it yourself.”
“Oy vey. I’m not looking forward to it.”
With a little wave of her hand, she headed inside. “I’m staying the night.”
“I didn’t expect anything else,” he said to her back.
Leaning against the wall by the entry, Lokan pulled her into his arms as soon as she walked in. He didn’t wait for the door to close behind her, crushing her against his chest. “This is terrible. I can’t live without you.” He sucked in a breath. “I felt like I didn’t have enough air to breathe.”
“Same here, but I still can’t.” She pushed on his chest.
“Sorry about that.” He let her out of the embrace.
Taking her hand, he pulled her behind him to the bedroom. “I need to be skin to skin with you. Let's get out of these clothes.”
He yanked his own T-shirt off.
Yum. Lokan’s chest was a work of art, and his ferocity was a major turn on. Any other time, she would have been fully on board with jumping into bed right away and getting her hands on all those gorgeous muscles, but at the moment she was more curious than horny.
“Can you talk while I’m naked? Because I can’t concentrate with you flexing your pecs at me, and I want to hear all about Annani’s visit.”
He looked conflicted. “Can’t it wait for later?”
“No, because I’ll be thinking about it and speculating, and it’s going to take away from my enjoyment.” She winked. “I’m not good at multitasking, and I don’t want to think about anything else while we are making love.”
“As you wish.” Looking disappointed, Lokan pulled his shirt back on. “Let’s go back to the living room. You will need a drink for this.”
Her gut clenched. “Why? What happened?”
“It’s nothing bad. Come on.” He took her hand and led her to the couch. “Arwel is getting me a new supply of that fabulous beer. I should ask him to buy some good wine for you.” He pulled out two beers from the fridge, popped the lids off, and handed her one. “Is there any specific brand you like?”
“I don’t want to talk about wine. Tell me about the visit.”
He sat next to her on the couch, took a long swig from his beer, and then cradled the bottle in his palms. “Annani thinks that my mother is her half-sister, Areana.”
Carol had heard the story about Annani’s sister who had taken her place as Mortdh’s intended, traveling north with Wonder’s little sister as her maid. Except, from what she had heard, the goddess didn’t know whether Areana had even survived the nuclear catastrophe, and now she believed that her sister was Lokan’s mother?
That was a strange leap of logic.
“Why? Do you look like Areana?”
“I don’t. But I told your Clan Mother that as a young boy I had dreams of a blue-eyed, fair-skinned woman gazing at me lovingly. At that time, Navuh’s camp was still in Mortdh’s old stronghold, and everyone looked more or less like the local human population. Most of the immortal children born to the gods had olive-toned skin and dark hair. It wasn’t until much later that other ethnicities were introduced into the gene pool.”
“It’s a huge leap of faith from dreams of blue eyes and fair skin to Areana being your mother. It sounds like a bit of wishful thinking on Annani’s part.”
“There is more.” He took another long swig from his beer. “My father treated me differently, making sure that I spent most of my time studying instead of playing with the other boys. As far as I know, he didn’t do it with his other sons. And then he moved my transition ceremony a year earlier.”
“Maybe he just thought you were smarter and more mature than your other brothers.”
“Or he was trying to hide the fact that I was born immortal and didn’t need to transition.”
“Because you are the son of a goddess.”
“Right.”
“Oh, wow. This is major.”
“Annani asked the lie detector guy to bring in an artist who can draw Areana from my description, but I don’t remember much besides those blue eyes.”
“Eyes are the most important part. Maybe Annani can recognize her sister just from that.”
“Even if she does, it’s not going to be enough to convince Kian. Or me for that matter. I still can’t wrap my head around this. If I’m the son of a goddess, shouldn’t I be more powerful?”
“But you are.”
“Not really. I have two special talents, one that works only on humans, and another that is useless for anything other than fooling around in dreamland.”
A seed of an idea started forming in Carol’s head. Perhaps sneaking a telepath into the harem was not the only way to transmit information out of there.
“Maybe it’s not as useless as you think.”
59
Lokan
“I already explained why I can’t dream-share with any other immortal but you. I would be signing my death warrant. Or semi-death in stasis.” He glanced at the camera, remembering too late that their conversation wasn’t private. “I’m such an idiot.”
“No, that’s okay.” Carol patted his knee. “Don’t worry about it. Once I present my idea to Kian, he is going to be very happy about your ability to dream-share with me.”
“What idea?”
“If you can get me into the harem, I can tell you what’s going on in there by dream-sharing with you. You and I can do exactly the same thing that Ella and Vivian would have done, but by using a different talent.”
“That’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard. How am I going to get you in there?”
She shrugged. “The same way you planned on getting Vivian or Ella in.”
“
You are an immortal.”
“So what? You said that only humans work in the harem. They wouldn’t know the difference, and neither would the immortal females Navuh keeps in there. I don’t trigger an alarm like the males do.”
He shook his head. “Even if that was possible, which I’m not sure about at all, Kian would never let me take you to the island.”
“What if he does? Annani is dying to find out if Navuh has her sister, and when Annani wants something, nothing stands in her way. Not even Kian. She can order him to let you go.”
“I don’t think she would. As much as she wants to find out if her sister is still alive, Annani is not going to risk the safety of her clan for that.”
“She is not going to. The only one who will be taking a risk is me. You don’t know where you are or where our base is. In fact, you don’t know now any more than you did before.”
“What if I betray you to my father? He can compel you to reveal that information.”
“I trust you.”
“I know, and I would never do that, but Kian and Annani are not going to trust me. Hell, if I were in their position, I would not trust me either.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “I can persuade Kian. But to do so, I need to know how you planned on sneaking Ella and Vivian onto the island, and then getting one of them into the harem.”
“That’s the easy part. Since I am the one compelling the human pilots, I would have had no trouble getting someone on the transport plane. And since I’m my father’s son, I don’t go through the same checks as everyone else does upon entering the island.”
“Okay. So, you can get me on the island. How are you going to get me into the harem?”
“I befriended the guy in charge of supplying the harem with new servants and made sure that he owes me some favors. I can ask him to help hide a girl I want to save from the brothel. He knows that I don’t like what’s going on in there.”
Carol nodded. “That seems doable. The only problem I see is getting me out. When they attempt to thrall the memory of the harem away, they won’t be able to enter my mind and will assume that I’m immune to thralling. They won’t let me go, and you can’t compel them to do so because this will be done by immortals.”
Lokan rubbed a hand over the back of his head. It was time to fess up. “I didn’t tell you the entire truth before. The only way to leave the harem is in a coffin. Once a human gets in, she or he never leaves.”
“So how did you plan on getting Ella or Vivian out?”
“By faking her death. But I didn’t figure out how to do that yet.”
The truth was that it hadn’t been an overriding factor. If he hadn’t found a way to get the telepath out, he was going to leave her there. At that time, he had had no qualms about sacrificing one or both of them.
“Well, I can enter stasis somehow. I need to ask our doctor’s advice on how that can be done. So, after they take me out of the harem in a casket, what happens next?”
“I sneak the casket on board a transport plane and whisk you away. That’s also not difficult. As I said, I can compel the pilots to do anything I want.”
“So, the only difficult part is going to be faking my death?”
“And getting you into the island without anyone noticing that you are not like the other girls.”
Carol waved a dismissive hand. “Not a problem. As long as I don’t get horny, I’ll be fine.” She waggled her brows. “Which means that you’ll have to make sure I’m well satisfied before we land on the island.”
She made it sound so doable, but he knew better. It was risky as hell and could get them both executed, or worse. His father might throw Carol into the brothel and sentence her to an eternity of suffering. He was willing to risk his own life, but not hers.
“It doesn't have to be you. I can do this with any immortal female because dream-sharing is not required. After she is revived from stasis, she can report what she’s seen.”
“Not really. There is no substitute for two-way communication. I can tell you in the dream what I see, and you can ask me questions or give me suggestions. What if Areana is indeed in the harem and we want to rescue her? If I am on the inside and communicating with you, we can organize it. Once I’m out of there, that door is closed.”
“I don’t want you to do it. It’s too risky.”
The hard look in Carol’s eyes was chilling. It was the one that he’d seen only when she’d talked about the sadist, and it made it clear that his woman wasn’t the soft angel she appeared to be. There was a core of steel inside her.
“It is not. If things go wrong, we won’t be on our own. The clan will find a way to get us out. Don’t you want to find out who your mother is? And whether she is Areana or not? Don’t you want to get her out of there?”
Reaching for her hand, he cupped it between his own. “I do. More than you can imagine. But I’m not willing to sacrifice you to achieve that. There must be another way.”
“There isn't.”
“Kian will never agree. You won’t be able to persuade him. Besides, pretty soon my father is going to realize that I’m missing and assume that I defected. I won’t be able to go back to the island.”
“How soon is soon?”
“I’m expected to report in person to him in twenty-five days. If he or anyone else from the Brotherhood doesn’t try to contact me before that, this is our window of opportunity.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How likely is it for someone to try contacting you?”
“Not very likely.”
“Then this is how long I have to convince Kian to let us go and to formulate a plan. That’s plenty of time.”
“Is there any way I can persuade you to abandon this crazy plan?”
She smiled sweetly. “Nope. You’d better focus that smart brain of yours on planning how to get us in, and then out, together with your mother.”
His thoughts running a thousand miles per second, Lokan went over his options.
If Carol succeeded in persuading Kian to send them to the island, which he very much doubted, and they actually made it there, and Carol infiltrated the harem, and they somehow managed to get his mother out, what was he going to do next?
Come back to the clan and risk getting locked up again?
Would they do that after he helped Annani get her sister back?
Or would they welcome him with gratitude and open arms and give him a prominent leadership position?
Not likely.
If he was indeed Areana’s son, Kian would feel threatened by him. After all, his cousin was the son of a human father, while Lokan was the son of the most powerful immortal in the world.
Blood-wise, Lokan outranked him.
In fact, Lokan outranked Navuh as well. His father was the son of a human female and a god.
Not that it mattered. Navuh was more powerful than him, and it wasn’t as if he could march into his father’s reception hall and announce himself King.
Lokan chuckled. He would lose his head before he finished his proclamation.
“What’s so funny?” Carol asked.
“This whole idea. Kian is never going to agree. But it was fun indulging in make-believe for a few moments.”
Reaching for his hand, Carol looked into his eyes. “We can do this, Lokan. That’s why the Fates have brought us together, so we can rescue your mother.”
“We don’t even know if Areana is indeed my mother. This entire thing is based on dreams and speculations as to Navuh’s motives.”
Carol’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “If the portrait the forensic artist draws of your dream mom matches Areana, we will know for sure.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Then we will have to find another way to prove it or disprove it.”
“How? There is no other way.”
Carol shrugged. “I don’t know, but I bet the Fates will come up with something.”
To be continued…
COMING UP NEXT
&nbs
p; The Children of the Gods Book 30
Dark Prince’s Dilemma
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Recommended reading before book 2 & 3 in
The Dark Prince Trilogy
1:Annani & Khiann’s story
Goddess’s Choice
2: Areana & Navuh’s story
Goddess’s Hope
Don’t miss out on
THE PERFECT MATCH SERIES
Perfect Match 1: Vampire’s Consort
Perfect Match 2: King’s Chosen
Perfect Match 3: Captain’s Conquest
(Read the enclosed excerpt)
Series reading order
THE CHILDREN OF THE GODS ORIGINS
1
Goddess’s Choice
When gods and immortals still ruled the ancient world, one young goddess risked everything for love.
2
Goddess’s Hope
Hungry for power and infatuated with the beautiful Areana, Navuh plots his father's demise. After all, by getting rid of the insane god he would be doing the world a favor. Except, when gods and immortals conspire against each other, humanity pays the price.
But things are not what they seem, and prophecies should not to be trusted...
