by Ophelia Bell
Nyx’s memories flashed by in a blur, all her desperate attempts to maintain the security of the Haven destroyed by a single red dragon’s tricks. But for the life of her, Meri couldn’t provoke Nyx into regretting her return to sanity. The only regret was for the nymphs she had betrayed, and for not having faith in her lover’s eventual return. That link with Nereus still remained, and Meri grasped hold of it with the elation of a prospector finding a vein of pure gold.
Nereus was here, his blood bond to Nyx so powerful as to be blinding. Meri grasped at it and tugged, gratified by the sensation of him drawing closer, answering her silent call.
She scented him before he appeared, the potent musk of this man imprinted on Nyx’s mind so strongly that Meri could feel her new immortal vessel responding instinctively. Meri stood up straight, giving in to the primal urge to shift into the shape the approaching satyr would respond to best.
The big hooved and horned outline of him appeared in the opening of the grotto, a silhouette against the hazy midday light that filtered in through the forests around them. He smelled of blood and lust, and had likely killed his way through the mob of Ultiori mercenaries just to get to her. Her heartbeat quickened at the realization that she was about to have this male who she had wanted from the start. Not even Neph or his accursed dragon lover had incited such desire in her as Nereus once had, and did again.
“Nyx,” he rumbled, glancing around at the cave she stood inside. “They said you locked yourself in with her …” He took a step down into the cave, the lanterns lighting the inside cast a warm glow on his exposed skin. As he approached, she realized the reddish hue on his skin was actually blood. He was coated in it, and the sight aroused her even further.
A few feet in, he stopped and frowned, his gaze falling on the twisted female body at her feet.
“They said she must not be killed. What have you done?”
“I have her under control. Let the others clean up the rest of her mess. Come to me.”
The blood bond between them tugged and Nereus responded instantly, his hooves reverberating with each step closer. His horns nearly grazed the ceiling of the grotto, and when he unbuckled his belt, the blood-soaked tatters of whatever clothing still remained on him slid to the floor. His enormous cock shone in the dim light, one of the few parts of his body not coated in grisly evidence of the battle he’d fought to get to her.
“To me, Meri, not to you. He is mine.”
She ignored the voice, pushing more of the Source’s power into the consciousness she’d appropriated in an attempt to silence her.
Nereus paused and cocked his head, regarding her uncertainly. “Is everything all right, my love?”
Sensing his wariness, Meri shifted the focus of her power back to him, reaching for that blood bond he had with Nyx and manipulating it again.
“Don’t make me wait. You always loved to tease, but I’ve waited far too long for that to work on me now. I need you.”
She’d barely finished speaking before he surged toward her, his goateed face wild with unchecked desire. He wrapped his arms around her, hauling her close to his chest and devouring her mouth with the hunger of a soldier too long away at war. Her heart soared at the desperate way he tore at the flimsy fabric of her gown, pushing her back toward the bed with each yank and rip, his mouth never relenting from the kisses he planted on her heated skin.
Her legs hit the bed, but before she could stumble, he hauled her bodily up against him, hooking his hands beneath her thighs. He tilted them both down to the bed in one smooth motion, ramming his cock inside her and fucking her in deep, brutal thrusts.
Meri lost herself to ecstasy, to the inundation of his potent scent blended with the blood of her own soldiers. She would have sacrificed them all again just to have this moment, to experience one time this man’s desperate need to possess her.
“It is my body he owns, and your ruse will not persist for long.”
She writhed against him, wrapping her long legs around his hips to pull him deeper, urging him to climax with the tightening of her muscles around his cock. All she needed was to trade a small taste of each other’s essence, and he would be hers as surely as if she really were the Dionarch herself.
His heavy grunts slowed against her neck, his thrusting easing into more gentle, twisting slides.
“Don’t stop!” She jerked her hips up harder, seeking to continue the violent, needful lovemaking he’d begun. Somehow despite his bond with Nyx, she lacked the connection she needed with her own spirit. She needed him to spill his seed, to taste his essence for a proper meld. Then she would be able to worm her way fully into his mind and control him from the inside.
But Nereus ignored her begging, chuckling softly as he rose up on both arms and gazed down at her. The adoration in his gaze was enough to drive a spike into Meri’s soul, because she couldn’t pretend that his look was truly meant for her.
When his brow creased and he pulled back farther, she knew she’d done something wrong, given something away.
“Do you not love me, Nyx? Have I been away so long that our bond has died? I can feel it still … our souls are one, but your eyes say different. You look … disgusted.”
Meri forced herself to school her features into something more pleasant, though the disappointment she felt at the depth of love he still held for Nyx made it difficult.
“Let’s see how you fare without my link to him,” Nyx taunted.
She felt the Dionarch’s spirit slipping deeper into some recess of her mind that Meri lost sight of, despite earlier wishing the woman away. When she searched, the Dionarch’s spirit was gone, the body she resided in completely hers now as though no spirit had existed to begin with. Her power spread through its limbs instantly, flooding her with a fresh sensation of control she hadn’t had before. Nyx had surrendered completely. Why would she give up?
Confused but excited, she smiled up at Nereus, hoping to renew his desire and get him to give in and release his essence into her.
When their eyes met, his head jerked back in shock and he lurched off the bed, stumbling back and away from her.
“Meri, you fucking monster! What have you done with Nyx?”
Fuck. The bitch had known he’d see the ruse without the spirit of his true mate holding court inside her somewhere. Where the fuck had she gone?
“She’s gone, you bastard,” she sneered. “And you will never get her back if you don’t finish what you fucking started.”
His face transformed into a mask of pure loathing and he leapt at her. His hands went to her neck and squeezed.
“I will fucking kill you!”
“Not if you love her, you won’t. She’s still in here somewhere,” she choked. “You want her back, you had better give me what I want!”
His eyes narrowed and he eased off. “What do you want? I spent two thousand years waiting to see her again, thanks to you. Now that I have her, you’ve taken even that from me. Tell me what to do and I will do it.”
He sounded sincere enough, but his eyes betrayed the lie. The Haven was everything to Nyx, and he knew she would rather go mad than give it up. He was trying to play her.
Meri rose up above him and with a roar of rage pushed the power of the Source through her palms directly at his chest. The wave of power propelled him backward until he smacked hard against the wall and fell limp, his big horns scraping grooves into the floor where he landed.
She didn’t need him. Not as long as she had this body. They would either bow to her, or she would kill them all.
Chapter 25
Nikhil
Nikhil’s entry into the Haven at long last was far from ideal. He preferred having clearer foreknowledge of a battle before diving into the fray, but there had been no opportunity to take stock, and there was no time to waste.
The water of Gaia’s Falls sent them rushing forth for several dizzying seconds before they emerged from a river somewhere in the middle of a dense forest. The sounds of fighting were dis
tant, but unmistakable, and the second Lukas and Iszak appeared, he sent them to scout. The dense flora in this realm made it clear dragon flight would be a challenge, but a turul’s true form was smaller and more agile.
By the time his lieutenants returned with whispered reports of the status at the Source, more of his army had arrived and were forming up, with Calder and the other Thiasoi satyrs in their full primal shift and ready for blood.
But one of the satyrs was missing.
“Where is your father?!” Nikhil snapped, scanning the army for sight of the satyr who led this particular squad, and whose influence he needed most to rally whatever nymphaea still survived to fight.
Calder’s jaw clenched, his lips pressing into a hard line. “He followed the River farther downstream. Mother needs him now more than we do. His presence will restore her to full sanity so she can aid the fight.”
“And has he reached her?”
The satyr’s eyes narrowed. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not eavesdrop on my parents’ reunion. Trust that they will join us when they’re ready.”
Nikhil ground his teeth. Now was not the time for heartfelt reunions. But then he remembered Nereus had been held Meri’s prisoner, tortured for nearly as long as Nikhil had been under her spell, taken from the woman he loved and forced to believe she was dead. He didn’t begrudge the pair their moment, and if Nyx’s recent behavior was any indication, the Dionarch wouldn’t waste time with sentimental dawdling while there was a war to be won and a Source to reclaim.
His tension eased and he laughed softly. “Fair enough. We won’t need their help until it’s time to deal with Meri. Our first task here is to neutralize Meri’s army. Kill or capture.” He turned to look at Iszak, Lukas, and the other squad leaders and lifted his voice to be heard above the noise.
“Evie has taught you the song she sang that chased the darkness out of my mind. We hope it will have a similar effect on the soldiers Meri controls. If they surrender after hearing the song, take them prisoner. If they still show signs of corruption and control, kill them.
“Her army is concentrated around the Source, and they are ripe for an ambush. Turul squads from the air, dragons from the ground, we will fan out and overtake them. It should not take long with our numbers.”
Turning to Calder again, he added, “The very second we’ve retaken the Source, find your parents. Meri’s body is with them. Once her army is neutralized, I intend to be the one to bury my blade in her heart and end this once and for all.”
Calder swallowed, his face contorting in a grimace. “Understood, but we need to be prepared for anything. We don’t know how long she’s had control of the Source or what she may have done with that power. Numa reported an unusual resilience in the Ultiori soldiers who attacked them in the Sanctuary. Nothing short of dismemberment or being charred to ash by dragon fire will take them down.”
Nikhil nodded, Calder’s concerns validating his own. The turul song was their hidden weapon, though untested in this battle he recalled with perfect clarity the moment when Evie had used her angelic voice to push the black corruption out of his mind. Meri’s hold over him had ended that day for good, but the brutal destruction he’d wrought had still tainted his soul. For that he still must atone, and to complete his redemption that required he finally face the woman who had used him as her puppet for so long.
“Kill them, if we must. Use dragon fire if necessary. The men she commands are as much her puppets as I was once. I would have them freed before harming them, if at all possible. We cannot take the time to discover which are truly loyal to her and which are merely under her control, but the turul song will make it clear enough in the thick of things.”
He cast his gaze around at the army filling the forest and the clearing near the shores of the river, extending all the way to a sandy inlet flanked by vine-covered cliffs. The majesty of this place had been corrupted, and even though it was not his home, he recognized Calder’s fierce, protective urge to get on with the business of ejecting the enemy once and for all.
Nikhil had once felt the same about Belah’s kingdom along the Nile. He would have given anything to protect that place, but had trouble seeing it now, knowing that he’d contributed to the corruption in the end. He could save the Haven and the Sanctuary, and preserve the two realms from further corruption.
“We are ready,” Iszak said. The wind swirled in his eyes and sparks crackled across his skin. Beside him, his brother Lukas stretched his wings, already half-shifted and ready to fight. The pair of brothers embodied the kind of loyalty Nikhil valued most in his soldiers, but his instincts warred with his aptitude for war. They had become as dear to him as Belah, who moved up to Nikhil’s side and clasped his hand in hers.
He had just as little inclination to see the two brothers fly into battle as he had for Belah to fight, yet he knew better than to deny them the chance. They were his family, his blood, and so recently discovered that he had the strongest urge to protect them lest he lose them too soon.
After millennia of a blood tie with a creature he now reviled, he cherished the purity of the love he had found—first his reunion with Belah, then discovering that her two new mates were not his adversaries, but viewed Nikhil as merely an extension of the woman they loved. And finally … perhaps the most potent tie of them all … discovering that the daughter he had always longed for had been within his reach all along.
“We are with you, my love,” Belah said. “Together, we will win.”
Taking a deep breath, he turned to face her. “Yes, ‘Iilahatan. Together, we will. And when this place is purged of Meri’s evil, I plan to spend some serious time teaching your other mates how best to satisfy you.”
“I, for one, am ready to work up an appetite,” Lukas said. “There’s something in the air here that makes me horny as fuck. Not sure I like mixing that feeling with the need to make some heads roll.”
“Channel the lust into the battle,” Nikhil said. “If you are as skilled with a blade as you are with your cock, this will be a quick fight.”
Lukas frowned, opened his mouth to retort, then closed it again. “I think that was an insult, but I’m not really sure. Watch out, or I might need to prove myself to your ass again.”
Iszak bumped his brother’s shoulder with a fist. “Don’t forget who’s boss here, brother.”
With a chuckle, Lukas gave Nikhil one last look of wicked promise. “Oh, I know who’s in charge of us, Iszak. All three of us belong to her, and he’d better not forget it.”
Then the pair launched into the air with eager calls to the wind. Thousands of other turul followed, shifting and rising above the rest. They took to the air in a tight formation, leaving scant room between their wings as they soared upriver and into the fight.
“To me!” Nikhil roared to the remaining throngs of dragons and the handful of humans who had joined their mates. They remained only partly shifted, the five huge satyrs dwarfing the smaller human shapes the dragons remained in for now.
At Calder’s command, the satyrs broke into a dead run, drawing swords crafted of gleaming translucent material that looked like ice. The turul’s song began ahead of them, filling the entire Haven and the satyrs’ battle cries rose in haunting harmony.
When his vanguard attacked, Nikhil followed, reaching the line of battle swiftly and diving in, his blood hot with elation over finally being on the right side of a war for the first time in an eternity. The difference this time was that the woman whose honor he fought for stood at his side, resplendent in her conjured armor of deep blue leather, her talons and horns shining with the blood of their enemies. This was a side of his little beast he’d never seen, and was further proof of how much he had underestimated her all along.
One by one, the Ultiori soldiers fell, many simply collapsing to their knees and repenting as the turul song affected them. Others fought on, their bloodthirsty rage unaffected by the purging music that surrounded them. The dragons made quick work of them with t
alons and fire, until nothing was left but the charred remains and rows upon rows of Ultiori prisoners bound and kneeling to await their final fates.
The battle was coming to an end. With a nod of acknowledgment from Nikhil, Calder met Assana and the pair of them peeled off and left to find their parents. Gavra and Aurum and their other mates followed close behind.
Chapter 26
Meri
The bitch had sabotaged her body somehow. Even though Meri’s spirit flowed into it like she belonged there, there was a wrongness that kept her from finding complete comfort in this shell. She stared down in detachment at the smears of blood Nereus had left on Nyx’s body, then over at where he lay slumped against the grotto wall.
Grief and shame overwhelmed her and she shook her head vigorously to clear it. Those were Nyx’s emotions, not hers.
“No. He is not my lover. Fuck him.”
But the cold detachment Meri relied on to do her work escaped her. Raw, wild emotion flooded her instead. A desperate need to protect all she held dear. The Haven. Her home. She had to expel the invaders at all costs.
No. She was the invader. She and her army of Ultiori soldiers. She had come to conquer, to possess, and she had achieved her goal. All except for the final step of securing an immortal shell she could use to begin the next phase with—that of producing an entire army of immortals who would bend to her will. With her new power, she needed only the blood of the other immortals here to do what had taken her centuries to complete outside the Haven.
She pushed the power of the Source through her body, becoming dissolute as a fine mist, leaving the grotto and Nereus behind.
Her warriors were scattered, the ones that had survived no longer compliant to her will. Pity that Nereus was no use to her now. He’d have made the ideal stud for her plan. But he was not durable enough, despite his virile beauty and the cock she’d always imagined would pleasure her the way he nearly had before the fucking Dionarch’s betrayal.
