by Ophelia Bell
“She is in the Sanctuary now,” Cade said with a nod. “Or she was when I was sent to bring the news to you. They have only made the one allowance to let me leave the Sanctuary to carry the message to you. All the guardians were ordered to return … I do not have a way back in. Not until the conflict with the Haven is settled, or until the spring equinox, whichever comes first. The barrier is locked to preserve its power.”
“Power my siblings and I gave it,” Aurum snapped. “Does that count for nothing?”
“I’m sorry,” Cade said. “The clan leaders take threats to the Sanctuary seriously. They didn’t make the decision lightly. Your brothers and your sister are aware of the details, though. They have agreed to comply with Nyx’s demands—they just asked that you and your brother and sister be notified. As of tonight, both your brothers are being taken to the Haven. That was Nyx’s final demand—exchange them for the Source being restored to our home. I’ve got to head to the turul Enclave next to tell your brother and sister the same news.”
“No,” Aurum said with resignation, “we will go. I’d prefer to tell them myself. Please stay here if you have nowhere else to be. Someone needs to be here in case they return. You said it was just my brothers who were being taken to the Haven, right? So maybe there is still a chance for Numa to leave the Sanctuary.”
“I expect the Sundance clan leader will release her tomorrow. She won’t be allowed to leave the Sanctuary until spring, but I will stay and wait. And thank you for the offer. It’s very much appreciated.”
He glanced around the comfortable, high-ceilinged great room of the cabin. “That Eamon Stonetree and his brother certainly know their way around their tools,” he marveled. “It’s clear who built this place. For human men, they’ve done all right. I’ll take care of the place as if it were my own.”
Aurum thanked him and went to the kitchen to begin serving supper. She was anxious to get moving now, but knew better than to start a trip like the one ahead on an empty stomach. Nicholas and Calder might swear they could live on sex—it could certainly sustain all three of them for days at a time, and had since they’d arrived here—but a good, hearty meal could do every bit as much to sustain their morale.
Calder came up behind her and rested a hand at her waist. “Your brothers don’t know what they’re getting into,” he said. “You saw what my mother did—she was dead set on killing Nicholas and would have imprisoned you for mating me.”
Aurum set the roasting pan on top of the stove with a heavy thunk. “And what exactly are we supposed to do? We can’t fix this from out here. I hate that we’re so helpless. We should have stayed—”
“I know,” Calder said. “I also know Assana will do everything she can to fix this.”
Aurum chewed on her lip, recalling Calder’s fierce and beautiful sister and all she’d done to help them be together. It also hadn’t been lost on her that Gavra had come face to face with one of his fated mates, yet resisted the urge to be with her in favor of making sure Aurum and Calder reunited.
“She’s the one escorting my brothers to the Haven, isn’t she?” Aurum asked.
“If she still has Mother’s trust, she’s the only one who’d be allowed to.”
“Then I think they’ll be okay. If there’s one thing I’ve learned recently, it’s that my siblings and I are stronger when we’re with our mates. As long as Gavra and your sister are together, I have to believe they’ll win.”
“Your brother’s got both his mates now,” Nicholas said, ambling over to the kitchen island and snagging a hot dinner roll from the basket that rested there.
“What do you mean?” Aurum asked.
“He said the guardians were called home. That means Silas is back in the Sanctuary.”
“Who’s Silas?” Calder asked.
“He’s nobody,” Aurum said, confused by Nicholas’s mention of the handsome ursa who’d nearly blocked their way into the Sanctuary when they were on their quest to get to Calder.
Nicholas chuckled. “You thought he was your mate when we met him. Just because he had black hair.” He tugged at one of the black curls that jutted out on top of his messy head. “My hair hadn’t turned yet,” he said to Calder. “She was so desperate to find me she wasn’t even looking past the color of his hair. Well, it turns out Silas actually belonged to her brother.”
“How do you know?” Aurum asked, a stubborn blaze of defensiveness rising in her.
“Because I was paying attention.” He shrugged. “And because he told me, otherwise I’d have ripped that fucker’s head off for capturing your attention. Silas, I mean.”
“Silas Rainsong?” Cade said, joining them at the edge of the kitchen. “He’s going with them. Does he mean something to the dragons? Because I hear he’s been chosen as Assana’s mate and she refuses to leave the Sanctuary without him. Lucky bastard—there isn’t a single male in the Sanctuary who hasn’t hoped to catch her eye. As for me, I’d rather have an ursa female, if I can ever find a partner to help me entice one. I’ve always fancied dragons too, but nymphs are too crazy for my blood. I guess now that we’re allowed to crossbreed I have more options … huh.” His bearded face took on a dreamy look that continued as he happily sat down to supper with them.
Aurum didn’t push the issue of Silas. As close as she was to her siblings, they all carried secrets from each other to some degree. It didn’t surprise her that Gavra might have kept that detail from her—she hadn’t exactly been in the most receptive frame of mind while they were in the Sanctuary.
She should be happy that he’d found them, though. And it did give her some comfort to know that he would be entering the Haven and the mad Nyx’s clutches with both Assana and Silas by his side. With Aodh there to help, there may yet be hope for the Haven itself.
“All the more reason for us to find my father,” Calder said. “If anyone can talk Mother off a ledge, it’s him. As much as I’ve loved these days pretending the world outside doesn’t exist, it’s time we got back on track. The turul Enclave isn’t my choice of places to start, but Nikhil still owes me. If Mother’s getting worse, we need to not waste time finding my Thiasoi brothers and restoring balance in the Haven.”
Aurum nodded. As loath as she was to barge in on her sister’s reunion with Nikhil, she missed her siblings ferociously, and Calder was right. The Ultiori had been underground for months since Nikhil’s defection. Calder and Nicholas were the last to come face to face with their leader herself, and none of the intelligence Nikhil had gathered gave them any clue where to find her again.
“Let’s hope Nikhil is ready to go when we get there,” Aurum said.
Chapter Twelve
Nikhil
Turul Enclave, Southeastern United States
Nikhil was ready. Tight knots secured the ropes in expert coils around wrists and ankles. He glanced up at his bindings, marveling at the artistry that bound him to the heavy steel bar bolted to the beam above his head. After this initiation, he looked forward to spending time with Iszak and learning the turul prince’s clever tricks to get the ropes to respond so beautifully.
Belah moved with graceful steps to stand in front of him, her beautiful smile making his heart stop. She’d changed out of her utilitarian winter clothes, the blue jeans and thick knit sweater replaced by a sheer gown of blue silk that clung to her curves.
Her smile widened at his open admiration, her long, dark lashes lowering as she raked her gaze down his body where it hung spread wide between the heavy log posts of the rustic apartment she shared with her mates in the turul Enclave.
“That should do it,” a deep voice said behind him. “What next?”
Iszak rounded the post and came to stand before Belah, rubbing his hands together eagerly.
“A little candle wax, maybe?” Lukas said, moving into view with a thick candle held in one hand that he placed on a nearby table and lit. The entire apartm
ent was lit entirely with candles now, the warm glow flickering over his lover’s cheeks. She was flushed with excitement, and he recognized the familiar need in her eyes—it wasn’t a need to dominate, but to be dominated, yet this was his day of atonement and she knew that.
“You’ll bind her first, like this,” Nikhil said, continuing the lesson that had begun not long after his arrival. “And when that’s finished, you tease, with hands and teeth, then tools … a whip, a cane, a flail.”
Belah’s lips parted and he could tell she pictured herself where he was hanging, experiencing all the things he was teaching her mates to do while using himself as the test subject. But she was scheming too, and he suddenly didn’t trust the mischievous glimmer in her eyes.
“But this is also about my pleasure, right?” she said. “I remember the first night I let you into my bed. The things I did to you, the things you endured so you would know that I am your mistress.”
“You are my goddess,” Nikhil corrected. “You proved it that day, and now I must prove to you again that I am your servant. That even when you are the one bound here in my place, what I do to you is to serve you.”
“Ready him the way we discussed,” Belah said. The two shirtless men beside her looked at him. Lukas’s cock was hard beneath his jeans, his gaze filled with lust and longing Nikhil didn’t quite understand. Iszak seemed more reticent. Despite the care he’d taken to bind Nikhil so perfectly, he wasn’t aroused like his brother, and avoided looking directly at the naked man he’d just spent the last hour trussing up in the middle of his living room.
One thing Iszak couldn’t hide was that, just like Lukas, he saw in Nikhil a piece of his mate, through his blood tie to Belah. The turul were strange creatures who knew their mates on sight, and apparently the fact that Nikhil had been on a steady, though minuscule, diet of Belah’s blood for almost three thousand years made him irresistible to these two men.
It would be tricky to get used to, but they were a part of her now as much as he was, so he would adapt.
Lukas moved first, more eager than his brother. He produced a small object and held it up in front of Nikhil’s face. Nikhil grimaced at the sight of the familiar circle of leather. Likely not the exact same cock ring she’d used on him so long ago, but it was definitely a well-known contraption.
“Better get this on before you get excited,” Lukas said. Nikhil felt a hand drift to his dick, cup his balls, and caress in a not unpleasant stroke. He kept his eyes on Belah, though, still absorbing the crazy idea that to prove his loyalty and love to her, he would have to submit to her new pets.
Not pets. They’re her mates. They bear her mark and you do not, and they are both adept at dominance, even if they’re not as skilled as you are at inflicting pain.
“Lukas, stop,” Belah said softly, seeming to read the lack of readiness in Nikhil’s eyes.
The longer-haired brother released him. Iszak hadn’t yet begun his part of the preparations, for which Nikhil was grateful, because he’d caught a glimpse of the shining, oblong shape Iszak had taken from Belah’s treasure chest of toys.
“The man has the most spectacular cock,” Lukas murmured, stepping back. “I definitely see the allure in being topped by him.”
“Our bond was deeper than physical—our relationship more complex than who dominated and who submitted,” Belah said. “I needed something then that only Nikhil could give me. He’s here to teach you two to give me those things too, but I need to set some boundaries first. Nikhil, are you sure you don’t want a safe word?”
He chuckled and raised a brow at the two men. “With these two? I doubt they can do anything I can’t handle. I am at your mercy, ‘Iilahatan, remember? It would take your fire to hurt me, but even that I would accept with relish because I know you do it with love. The only hard limit I have is that you promise I am yours always after this. That you mark me to make it so.”
“Remember my vow,” she said softly.
Nikhil nodded. “I know you can’t take pleasure from me until they allow you to, but once they see what pleasure I can give without even touching you, surely they would release you from that promise.”
“That’s the idea,” Iszak said. “We’re doing this for her, and for our child. She needs you, but we still need to make things square. You were our enemy. You were her enemy, until very recently. Even though my heart says otherwise now, you must make amends.”
Nikhil met the man’s gaze and saw an even deeper struggle than he had inside himself. He was mercenary enough to enjoy what they did to him for Belah’s sake, because he knew it would only happen once. Iszak, however, could not fight his nature. Nikhil pitied him for that. In Iszak’s eyes he saw the same deep, driving need he felt himself when he looked at Belah, but Iszak wasn’t accustomed to feeling that way for another man.
They were kindred spirits, he and Iszak—they craved dominance and harbored a darkness in them that would frighten the weak-minded who discovered it.
Lukas, on the other hand, was beside himself with eagerness to move things along. He was like Nikhil in the way he enjoyed the spectacle of an undertaking like Nikhil enjoyed giving commands on the battlefield, witnessing the glorious destruction that ensued when a carefully crafted plan was carried out.
Lukas was the one who loved to watch his partner’s reactions to little tortures he inflicted on them, both pain and pleasure combined in one delicious mixture. He would be the one to tease Belah with the surface tortures, things that never went beneath the skin. These were the things that primed her for deeper hurt—the things Nikhil was best at, and things he suspected Iszak was too.
Iszak was the sadist of the pair, the one who got off on simply inflicting pain. He needed to express his dark cravings the way Belah needed to find oblivion.
Nikhil both needed and enjoyed it all in equal measure. The trick today was to get Iszak to enjoy it more than he needed it.
Nikhil ignored Lukas and focused on Iszak. “What does your heart tell you?”
“That I must make you mine. That my domination of her is incomplete until you cry in both pain and pleasure beneath my hand, and until you take my breath and give me yours.”
“I am Belah, Iszak. We are one flesh. Belah and I were wed more than three thousand years ago. We were bound together by magic in all but one way. I don’t bear her mark on my skin the way you do. You are also one with her … that mark makes it so, and if I were the one in command of the ropes and whips today, I would own your body the way I have owned hers so many times.”
Iszak licked his lips and stared down at the floor, then looked at the oblong shape in his hand. He tossed the shining dildo aside and it clattered into the open chest nearby.
Nikhil’s ass relaxed until Iszak unfastened his jeans and slipped them down his thighs, bending to step out of them. When he stood again, his cock hung thick, but flaccid.
“I don’t need toys to own you,” Iszak said.
The look in Iszak’s eyes made Nikhil feel like he was looking in the mirror the day of a battle. Nikhil would have kept his sword sheathed too, not brandishing it the way Lukas casually flaunted his own hard-on by occasionally stroking it through his jeans. That cocky display didn’t scare Nikhil nearly as much as the utter disinterest Iszak seemed to show by standing naked in front of him with a potentially lethal weapon that was nowhere close to ready to fight with—as though he knew he’d be ready the very second he needed to.
Nikhil pulled at his bindings, pulse racing. Then he realized his mistake, but it was too late. Iszak’s gaze shot to his struggling limbs and he smiled.
The one thing you didn’t do when faced with an opponent as sadistic as a man like Nikhil was show fear. Iszak’s honest response to Nikhil’s question had abolished whatever hesitance the man had left in him, and Nikhil hadn’t been prepared for how quickly Iszak would recover.
The heady scent of virile male hit his nostr
ils when Iszak moved close. Heat radiated off his naked body, Nikhil’s own limp cock a sure sign of how little he was looking forward to what must happen next. He squeezed his eyes shut, aware that somehow he had failed Belah in this weakness.
There was a time when he could only become aroused if he were able to arouse another. A curse that had lasted for ages, but had only mattered recently when he’d been reunited with Belah. Now the curse was gone, but he’d yet to test his body’s functions in earnest. Seeing Belah would normally be enough, but being bound and manhandled hadn’t done him any favors in the hard-on department.
Iszak’s skin was flushed when he stepped close enough for Nikhil to see the smoky magic emanating from the glowing blue dragon mark on his neck. The other man gripped his hips and brushed his mouth at Nikhil’s ear.
“If you are her flesh, then what would turn you on the most right now?”
Nikhil’s hair stood on end when Iszak’s breath tickled his neck. He looked over Iszak’s shoulder, his eyes meeting Belah’s. She had her hand on Lukas’s arm, holding him back while his brother broke the ice.
“Tell him, Nikhil,” she said softly. “You know what you would do to me if I were in your place and you had no toys at your disposal.”
This wasn’t working.
The act of being tied would turn her on enough to start with, and Nikhil definitely wasn’t responding to the ropes. But he had once. The first time they’d been together, she’d had him bound and left to hang for an hour in her room before coming to him, tormenting him with her toys, then fucking him.
She’d been so perfect that night—proving to him how easily she could overpower him if she chose, yet she was willing to submit to him in the end. The perfect woman was the one who offered him that challenge, who was a beast worth taming. Would Iszak offer him a challenge too? Would Lukas? Could he see the pair of them as extensions of her, worth subduing the way they viewed him?
