“I need more fucking time,” I growled as I pushed my fingers through my hair. “She isn’t ready, and the only way that has ever worked to bring her back quickly is fucking brutal. If I have to do it, I will lose her, but it would protect her.”
“She carries your son in her womb, Mason. He is the hope for the people we have protected until she returned to her rightful place. It’s not ideal to bring her back by forcing her mind to recall the events of the past, but we’re running out of fucking time. You’ve brought her back like this before, and while it ended in her death, she came back. If they catch her, they could end her life for good. There’s also the curse that they placed that we will have to deal with. And here’s the thing, I’d rather have a pissed off pregnant Goddess who hates us, rather than a dead Goddess you can’t bring back. It’s her third life, Mason. You can’t bring her back again, and you know it.”
“I can’t lose her, not again.”
“So you kick-start her mind, what’s the worst that happens other than her leaving?” he asked as Uther watched us from the shadows of the room, silently.
“I lose Erie,” I admitted. “I hate to say it, but I’ve fallen in love with the shell that houses the Goddess. Erie has an innocent side to her that drives me wild, and while Mórrígan is lethal and beautiful chaos, Erie is shy glances and beauty incarnate, and when she learns what we have done, what she has done, I lose that side of her. Balor wants his wife back, but she’s in that room sleeping in the most perfect form that she has ever embodied. He never had to sit aside and watch Mórrígan fall in love with another as I did. She preferred him to me, and even though I have never wanted anything or anyone more than her, I prefer that broken form that looks at me as if I am the sun that lights her world on fire.”
“You can’t have both, and sooner or later, she will remember who and what she is. Already fights are breaking out around us. The Fae were going to fight us, and they’re unaware that her presence pushed them to act on her behalf. It didn’t matter that Synthia was a Goddess herself, she was driven by a need to wage war and fight us because Erie had stayed with them mere days, Mason. She is War, and wherever she is, it will follow her. The Gods will notice that she is back, and I, for one, would rather she face those twisted fucks as their equal. If you don’t, you chance them finding her as a broken, unhinged being that doesn’t stand a chance against them on her own,” Uther pointed out carefully, his tattooed eyes flashing, the design pulsing against the bronzed flesh of his arms. “She’s weaker this time, and she’s also been tortured, beaten, and abused on our watch. We did this to her, even if it was unknowingly, we failed her. That’s on us, not her. If she hates us, we deserve it.”
“My fear is not losing her completely, because I know she will always come back to me. It’s her being fully formed, seeking the revenge she craves. If Erie is the Mórrígan when she seeks that revenge, the entire world will suffer in her wake. She will set it on fire, and when she rises from the ashes, there may be nothing left of it. She doesn’t know that our people are hers, or that she is the one who cursed them, and us, to our fate. If I’m forced to bring her back with violence, she may damn well respond to us with the same.”
“Mason, we’ve followed you since you joined her army. We would follow you to the end of this world and into death if you asked it of us; you know that. We’re brothers in arms, and have been since the sun first rose in Ireland and bathed its beauty with its grace. Whatever you decide, we will stand beside your choice. Our only worry is that she cannot be reborn again. This is your last chance to get it right and to get her back. If we fuck this up, it’s not just the end for her; it’s the end of this world and everyone attached to it.” Uther shrugged. “Whatever happens, we’re with you.”
“I need one more night,” I muttered as I stared at the bedroom door, where the Goddess of War slumbered, oblivious to what she was about to be put through.
“Orders?” he asked, watching me with a sadness I loathed.
“Erase the marks around town, and buy me as much time as you can. Bringing her back like this was violent last time, and it will take time. Ward the compound against the Gods and anything else that may be coming for her. We brought back War, and doing so is going to create a war which this world has never known before. Now we have to save her by breaking her again,” I said softly, watching the door as the sun set, casting it into shadows.
Standing up, I moved through the room which had grown heavy in silence; I knew they wouldn’t speak again. I knew them as I knew the beast within me; their beasts were similar to what I held. We belonged to the sea, to a world where monsters could belong and not be hunted or trifled with. We were from a different time, and so was she. We were from a time when Gods warred against one another, testing each other and the races that they struggled to create. It was why Danu had built a new world, creating the Fae, abandoning an entire race as war had fallen onto the land, and my Goddess, the Goddess of War and Battle, had come to defend them.
Erie, however, would be lost to me when Mórrígan returned, and I loved her. I had fallen in love with who she was in this lifetime, the innocent smiles and the way she lit up as she took in some new marvelous thing that she’d never seen before. The way she’d responded to way too much sugar as her sweet tongue had licked and discovered cotton candy. The way she watched me with a longing, confusion marring her expressive eyes as she tried to place me from her past.
Erie was chaotic, beautiful, and yeah, fucking broken, but there was so much light inside of her that every fucking crack let a little more of it out. Synthia was wrong, and while she’d been underneath the enchantment of the Goddess of War unknowingly, she didn’t see her as I saw her. Erie was born to rule, to wage war against ancient races and bathe in their blood. I’d watched her do it a thousand times before and I knew I would again, even if she never returned to her Goddess form. Either way, I had to make a child with her to undo the curse she unleashed upon us.
Our people depended on it, and I’d made a promise to her, always to protect them. I’d done everything I could to help them live, to flourish in this strange new world and adapt as it changed. Now she was back, and I was going to lose her if I didn’t let her go. The problem was that I loved her enough to let her go, even if it cost me my fucking soul.
Inside the room, I watched her sleeping, oblivious to the horror that she was about to endure. Sitting beside her, I pushed her thick red hair away from her face. Her lips curved into a smile as she dreamt of a home she’d never seen or touched. Ireland, every dream she had was of Ireland and the way the waves crashed against the shore angrily. The thunder that rumbled as lightning sparked across the grey skies. Ireland was beautiful, terrifyingly so, and yet I’d had no problem leaving it when she had no longer been there. She craved it, the eerily beautiful and haunting landscape which was bathed in blood from one end of the island to the other.
“Little one, I need you to remember that I love you. I’ve always loved you from the first time I laid eyes upon you, until now. I wish there were another way. That I could spare you from this, from everything,” I uttered as I curled against the lithe frame of the body she’d been housed within.
The child had been born of magic, but it hadn’t been dead. Its soul had melded to hers the moment she took control of it, sharing its mind and soul until hers had been earned. Gods and Goddesses had to earn a soul, unlike mankind. Once they’d done enough good to offset the bad, they became immortal. Mórrígan hadn’t earned this soul, Erie had. Together, they melded into one being, and yet somehow I knew, once Mórrígan was free of the tethers we’d placed to conceal her until she was strong enough, Erie would cease to be a part of her.
I’d lose her. And the worst part was, I loved Erie more for her innocence, and those shy smiles she gave me. Mórrígan had only looked my way because of what I held, and yet Erie wanted me. She fucking wanted me, and she was perfect, and I was going to destroy it becaus
e, in order to save the woman I’ve loved for the last seventy-five years, I had to let her go.
“Mason,” she uttered sleepily as she turned, staring into my eyes as a shy smile lifted the corners of her lips. “I’m starving.”
“You want me to make you some food?” I asked, hiding the pain that smile caused me.
“I don’t want food; I want you.”
“Say it again,” I whispered.
“I want you, Mason. I want all of you.”
Chapter 39
Erie
I stared out the window absently, watching the sun as it rose over the rolling mountaintops that stretched out in the distance. The wheat fields below me swayed as the breeze caught them, bending the green shoots as it rolled off of the mountains. A few workers tilled the back fields, probably planting spring crops into the muddy rows of fertilizer. They looked like ants so far from the mansion from where I watched them working. It was a familiar sight, to see the workers out tilling the fields with horse-drawn plows. My gaze swung back to the sunrise, watching as it turned from orange to red.
A song slipped from my lips as I watched it, craving another land so far away from this one with everything inside of me. A land of green rolling hills and magical sunsets that bathed the soul as it crested below the rocky shorelines. I sang the Song of Exiles. It was a song I’d learned and listened to many times before, until it was engraved in my mind, my soul. I didn’t sing loudly since I knew Mason slept in the other room just beside me. I’d slipped from his embrace, moving into this room to think without his touch removing rational thought from my mind.
I could feel his men being drawn to the song, knowing they watched me from afar as it slid from my tongue, filling the room in the sad notes. I craved the lands we’d left so long ago, the land of my birth, and where so many turbulent things had befallen me, and yet so many good things had happened there as well. It terrified me, knowing that Callaghan spoke truthfully, and I felt it within me, the words he spoke. I was sure a lot of what he said was his version, and mine was still buried inside of me. He’d told me how he’d taken care of my body, treasuring it as I healed from being reborn. Somehow, I knew our past was a lot more twisted than what he’d told the Fae.
Turning, I paused, looking at Callaghan, who watched me with something glowing in his stare that terrified me. Love flared in his eyes as I watched him taking me in, his heavy stare landing on where my hand rested on my stomach. This man terrified me more than an army of demons that had stormed into this world. It was mostly because I felt connected to him. I felt him within me, listening to my every uttered thought or plan. He was somehow a part of me, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t eradicate him from my soul.
Swallowing hard, I took him in slowly, drinking in the sight of him as my heart began to roar deafeningly in my ears. As if the mere sight of this man, this creature, sent my blood boiling to a roiling need. I marveled at his perfection, the sculpted pecs that were covered in tattoos, and the abs that pulsed with every breath he took, reveling at his strength. Dipping my eyes lower, I took in the V of his hips, knowing just where it led and how massive that cock could grow as he fed me pleasure that was so wild, so wicked, that it beckoned to my blackened soul. He didn’t move, didn’t inch forward as he watched me eating up the sight of him in nothing more than a pair of faded sweatpants. He looked as if he was created for pleasure, carved of marble to represent masculinity in its purest, rawest form.
“Am I your prisoner now, Callaghan?” I asked as I watched him carefully.
Callaghan’s eyes cut to his men as he lifted his chin in their direction. One by one, they left the room until only he, and I remained. Pushing from the wall, his magic wrapped around me, slithering over my flesh with a comforting touch that pulled a whimper from my lungs. His heavy gaze locked with mine as he slowly walked to me. Turning me around in his arms, he pressed a kiss against my ear. His lips skimmed over my neck, kissing my pulse as it kicked into gear, unable to ignore the way he made my body ignite with need.
“What do you see?” he asked, letting his hands moved to cradle my flat stomach. “What did you see outside that made you wish for our home, Erie?”
“The men who tilled the fields, and the rising fire that bathed the land in its heated embrace,” I admitted, albeit hesitantly.
“And when you longed for it, was I there with you?” he whispered.
“You were right beside me on the Cliffs of Moher. We watched the sun rise and then set as the men behind us tilled the fields, even though they were barren.”
“And did you see the Aran Islands?” he asked huskily as his hands lifted, spreading over my waist as he placed another kiss against the flesh below my ear.
“No, we couldn’t see beyond the glowing sun. We just stood there, watching it rise together. As if nothing could touch us there. I think you were angry and yet it didn’t matter right then. It was strange but insignificant.” I rested my head against him as I closed my eyes, inhaling his scent as I fought to calm the wild beat of my heart. “Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“You left my bed,” he growled as he pulled me closer, if at all possible, as we watched the sun rising in the sky. “I don’t remember giving you permission to leave it. I missed waking to see you curled against me, little one.”
“I didn’t ask permission. I needed to think without you touching me.”
“Thinking is overrated,” he murmured as he pulled me with him to the couch, sitting down as he placed me onto his lap, still within view of the rising sun. “We used to sit like this and watch the sun rising in Ireland.”
“I don’t remember that,” I said as I turned, staring into his glowing eyes which alerted me that it was no longer Callaghan who held me in his arms. As I stared at him, he changed, mutating into the beast, and my breathing hitched, unable to stop it as I watched him turn from man to monster.
“I’m going to help you remember who you are,” he uttered as he watched me crawling off him to sit on my hindquarters on the couch, just out of his reach. “Scared of me, Erie? When I first met you, I wanted to rip that pretty fucking head of yours off. You called me a Heathen King, and maybe I was. I had invaded your lands with the sole intent to remove you from power. You were the Goddess of War, and if I could bring you to heel, no one else would have ever tried to move against my people or me. You use to bathe in the blood of your enemies upon the battlefield, this fiery queen that left death and destruction in her wake. I’ve watched you do it a thousand times before from the shadows, and I’ve never craved anything as much as I craved you. I craved to dethrone you, to have you kneel at my feet in submission, but without waging war against you, you’d never come out of that perfect fucking palace that caged you beyond my reach. So I flooded your shores with my men, and I sent you my demands. I wanted your throne so that I could force the right to make you kneel at my feet. It enraged you that a Heathen King like me would dare demand someone as powerful as you kneel before me at my feet like some weakling. I’d known that the moment you received my demands, war would be unavoidable. I craved it against you until you answered with your demands. My throne and my entire kingdom destroyed by your hand. You didn’t offer anything, only what you knew, which was war.
“You see, war back then had no code of conduct. There were no rules that we played by or followed. That was why, when I stormed the shores of your pretty little island and watched as you waged battle against men twice your size with no fear, no hesitation, I knew I had to fight you. I should have known by the way you held your own against men that it would be a fatal mistake to bring my armies against you, but something in those pretty blue eyes made everything else irrelevant. You feared nothing, no one. This tiny wisp of a battle queen who met my armies on the open field with her pretty tits on display, painted in the woad of the Celtic warriors. The skirt you had worn barely covered your legs, hanging between those pretty, sculptured thighs. I didn’t know
what I craved more, your throne or just to fucking touch you once.
“I watched my men rush towards you, and you didn’t even flinch as you dismounted from your great warhorse and smiled while you withdrew your blades, quickly showing that you were not one to trifle with. Instead, I stared at you, watching your swift, well-placed blows that you landed as you cleared the field of men effortlessly. They fell to your blades, one after the other, until you stood on a pile of corpses beneath your tiny bare feet. It was then that you looked over the dead, and those full, sensual lips curved into a smile as you caught sight of me, watching you slaughter my men. I was oblivious to the war that raged around me, unable to take my eyes from your perfection. You were so fucking beautiful and wild, my perfect vision of what a woman should be. I remember being lost in those blue eyes, drowning in them as I watched you from afar while you slowly moved towards me. You were so otherworldly, a vision of grace. Your blood-red hair caught the wind at the same moment your skirt did, and fuck, I wanted to sink my cock into your sweet, naked flesh more than I wanted to take your head.
“That was how you brought me down, woman. You knew why I’d come, and what I craved from you, and you wielded it like a blade held against my throat. You promised men the pleasure of watching you fight, only to remove their heads before any could ever tempt you to sin with them. The virgin battle queen who had never been touched by man or beast,” he chuckled huskily as his eyes grew heavy with lust and memories. “I was so enthralled by you as you stared me down fearlessly that I didn’t even hear the men beside me fall to your army as the battle continued all around me. It wasn’t until my legs were kicked from beneath me, forcing me to kneel as you leisurely made your way to where I had been brought down before you, that I understood how so many men had died at your feet. I expected death, to have my head removed the moment you reached me. Instead, you slowly knelt in front of me as I was placed into chains by Lugh. He was your second in command, remember him? He was the only man to live that had ever touched you. Not sexually, no, because you weren’t created to fuck, you were created for war.
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