by Alyse Zaftig
“I’m ready for it.”
“Are you sure?” Olivier asked. “You can stay home if you want.”
“I’m more ready than I’ve ever been.”
Olivier was frowning at her.
She said it even more confidently, “I’m ready to help.”
She was sick of the secrets that swirled around her. She knew just a little bit about herself, but it just increased her appetite. She wanted to know everything about who and what she was. And she had a feeling that something would happen in a confrontation with Marc that would teach her something new.
Why had she been thrown aside, if she was the royal heir?
51
New Flowers
Phuong
The next morning, Phuong looked up as Xuan swept into the breakfast room. He looked straight at her, cool as a cucumber.
But she could see the tension in his shoulders. He had some kind of news.
“Do you want to go up to my room to see the new flowers that they gave me?”
Xuan nodded.
“Excuse us,” Phuong said to her mates, who were still stuffing their faces with food. “We’ll be down in a while.”
Phuong brought Xuan up to her room.
“What is it?” she asked him, knowing something must be troubling him.
“I’ve learned what we are.”
“Gahariet and Olivier know that I’m a royal, and so are you.”
“But they didn’t tell us that our father wasn’t just a king.”
Phuong stared at her brother. “What are you talking about?”
“Our father wasn’t a lesser king of the Yore. He was the emperor.”
Phuong felt her knees wobble. She leaned quickly against the wall. “What are you talking about?”
“The Kiyin stone that was found with us. Your stone spoke to me in my dreams last night. I spent yesterday asking around the Yore. The few who were brave enough to tell me told me that the Kiyin stone isn’t royal. It’s imperial.”
“Why didn’t Hoa tell me?”
“She probably didn’t want to overwhelm you. It was a shock to find out that you were a queen, let alone an empress.”
Phuong pinched the bridge of her nose.
“What does the Kiyin stone do?”
“It has the blood of emperors in its heart.”
“What does it do?” Phuong repeated.
“It can help you master your powers.”
“You brought it with you when you came to find me?”
“Yeah. That’s how it was able to reach me in my dreams. Let’s go to my room.”
Phuong followed her brother to his room. In his bag, he had the Kiyin stone that they’d been found with outside of Heritage House.
“How could nobody tell us about who we were?”
“It put us at risk,” Xuan said. “But watch.”
Xuan closed his eyes and spread his fingers out with his open palm facing his bag, the Kiyin stone grasped in his other hand.
Phuong gasped as she saw the bag levitate.
“You have telekinesis?”
“We have telekinesis.”
Phuong reached out her hand and tried to levitate the flower that was resting on Xuan’s dresser, but she couldn’t move it.
“You have to hold the Kiyin stone, Sister.”
Phuong held out her hand. Xuan gave her the stone. This time, when she willed the flower to rise, she was shocked to see it begin to float in the air. She was so surprised that she dropped it on the floor. She bent down to pick it up and put it back into the vase.
“I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of Yore magic. I learn new things about myself every day.”
“So am I,” Xuan said.
“This should help,” Phuong said. “Can I hold onto the stone?”
“It’s half yours, half mine. Of course you can hold onto it if you need it.”
Phuong hesitated before she told her brother what had been troubling her.
“I got in touch with the Yore ancestor spirits.”
“How?”
“I walked into the open ocean.”
“I’ve been in the open ocean hundreds of times. This planet is mostly ocean. I’ve never heard the Yore ancestors.”
“You don’t go into trances like I do.”
“True. So you heard them when you went into a trance in the ocean?”
“Yes.”
“Take someone with you next time. That could be dangerous.”
“I will. Do you want to know what they said?”
“What?”
“They said that I have to guard my throne.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but if I’m an empress, then...”
“We really need to get your blood back.”
52
Mission Planning
Gahariet
Gahariet and Olivier were with the small group that they were taking into the auction house. They had hired some Yore seers to navigate through the little-known underground tunnels, using some kind of Yore map that Hoa and Phuong had created that glowed in certain places.
Gahariet hoped that by putting Phuong in the leading position, she’d be pleased, but she was still closed off from them. Her dragon blood made her more temperamental, and he didn’t like the way that she had closed herself off from the two of them.
“The east tunnel is guarded by beasts that none of us are prepared for,” the Yore seer warned. “Even Marc and his brood avoid them. They are wild guard dogs.”
“Just dogs? We can subdue them.”
“You don’t understand. These are genetically modified dogs. They are several times larger than the creatures that you think of when you think of dogs. They’ve been bred to attack first. Marc stays far away from them.”
The Yore seer’s eyes grew even brighter as she intone, “But the west tunnel can be navigated if you have a Yore seer with you. It’s a labyrinth, but it’s not impossible to get through.”
“We could just walk in through the front door,” Xuan commented. “It would be easier.”
Gahariet turned and looked at his brother-in-law.
“That might be a good idea.”
53
Passion
Olivier
The second that they were done with their strategy meeting, Phuong ran upstairs to her room. Gahariet and Olivier walked in to find their mate totally naked.
Her temper was in full blaze, and she jumped into Olivier’s arms before thrusting her tongue into his mouth.
He was initially surprised, but he held her close as she explored his mouth thoroughly. Olivier could hear the clunk of Gahariet’s belt hitting the floor.
Then his brother was pulling Phuong out of his arms to put her down. Olivier got naked, the last one to make it onto the bed.
This time, his brother pulled Phuong onto her side. He was higher up on the bed withOlivier behind their mate.
Olivier felt the soft seam between her legs, pushing them apart. His fingers carefully probed the wetness there before finding her clit and rubbing it.
He could hear her enthusiastically blowing his brother. He was getting plenty hot and bothered, remembering what it felt like to feel her mouth envelop him.
Then he went down to the bottom of the bed to eat her out from behind, separating her thighs and pushing his tongue inside of her. He could hear a muffled yelp, which told him that he was doing his job right.
She shook in front of him, and he knew that she had come all over his tongue, her juices flowing freely. She had seemed innocent when they started, but she had picked up bedroom skills very quickly.
Olivier slid up, replacing his tongue with the head of his cock, pushing inside of her body. He licked the salt of her dark skin. She tasted absolutely delicious. He loved the smooth texture of her skin.
He pushed his cock all the way in and he heard her choke on his brother’s cock. She released it and said, “I almost just bit it.”
Olivier
smiled. “Maybe it’s time for us to do something else.”
He withdrew from his mate’s body, making his erection feel cold.
“Brother, why don’t you take her sweet lips? Both of them.”
“With pleasure.” Gahariet began to kiss Phuong while pushing his own cock, wet with her saliva, inside of her juicy body.
Oliver was covered in her juices. He took the wetness and spread it in and around her ass.
This time, she wasn’t nervous and took it like a champ. She was very relaxed and he was able to get into her without any trouble at all.
“That’s so good,” Gahariet moaned. “Mmm.”
Olivier took Phuong’s hip in his hand and began to rock inside of her body, alternating with his brother. When one went in, the other went out. The rhythm was endless, eternal, and primal. It felt like the beat of their hearts. There was something different about Phuong tonight. There was something vulnerable inside of her. Olivier tried to reach into her with his mind. For a while now, she’d distanced herself from her mates.
But tonight the walls were down. Olivier felt her mind right there in the bed. Their mating bond was all the way open. She’d kept them shut out for a long time, but Olivier immediately opened himself to her so that he could merge with her fully.
Olivier didn’t mind that she’d shut them out. She was entitled to privacy if she wanted it. So long as she was there with them, open or not, and willing to love them, they’d be fine.
He knew that the distance had bothered Gahariet, but not in the same way that it had worried Olivier.
For years, they’d dated many of the eligible females in the sector. Sometimes, Olivier felt like he had tried each of the noble and royal females on Vestra.
But Phuong was something even better than any other woman. Any fool could see that she had a great destiny, but her path wouldn’t be smooth.
54
Bad Dreams
Phuong
Phuong twisted in her bed. She was having another dream from the Yore ancestors. It wasn’t a nice dream. Not a nice dream at all.
She was watching an older man with Xuan’s face dying. A Draka soldier had just cut through him with a laser sword.
She was crying, her heart aching. Something inside of her knew that the man was her father. There was a bunch of soldiers on the ground in a ring around him, all wearing golden armor. They must have been the royal guard. And when they had all fallen, her father had, too.
Her heart ached hard as she saw her father die. As Phuong knelt beside him, she watched the light fade from his eyes.
“I love you,” he told her with his last dying breath.
And she stood, totally startled. Had he been able to see her spiritual form? How could her father who had died in the past be speaking to her in a dream so far in the future? How did he know that she was his daughter or that she was there?
The questions confused her enough to wake her up. She opened her eyes. She stared at the ceiling, her cheeks still wet with tears from watching her father fall in battle.
She re-examined the dream that she had just seen. He looked so much like Xuan that he had to be her dad, or their dad, she guessed. She’d been abandoned so young that she couldn’t possibly remember him.
And as he lay dying on the battlefield, he’d looked at her and told her that he loved her.
Could he have seen that she would travel back in time to that moment? She didn’t know if Yore abilities included the ability to sense spirits.
Then she shook herself. Of course the Yore could sense spirits. After all, hadn’t she communed with them in the ocean herself? Her father would’ve had real training, and of course he was better at everything than she was.
She guessed that it was a blessing of the stars that he’d been able to see his daughter once more before he died. She guessed that he had known that she was his daughter the same way that she had known that he was her father.
She didn’t know why the spirits had shown her that moment. She didn’t know how it had happened, but she was sure that the vision was real. Her heart ached for her father.
Xuan looked just like him, with the same silver hair that she had. He had multi-colored eyes, just like Xuan did, and a thin nose and the same two-toned full lips that she had. Her heart hurt, since she couldn’t remember seeing him.
But he’d told her that he loved her.
She wrapped herself in a robe and went to stand by the window. She was cold, and she didn’t know whether she was chilly because of the castle’s temperature or the chilling vision.
55
Strange Dreams
Xuan
Xuan snapped out of a deep sleep. His chest went up and down as he panted. He didn’t know what his dream meant.
His bed was too soft. Sure, they’d had nice sheets in their den, but the Draka bed itself was just too squishy.
He couldn’t remember clearly what had happened, but he thought that they might be in the keep of their enemies.
Bao Dai, their father, had fallen to the Draka. And here they were, with the empress mated to two Drakans, Thrones no less.
The whispers on the street had said that their father had been destroyed when his empress had died from a mysterious alien sickness. He blamed the Draka for bringing it, of course, but there hadn’t been anything that anybody could do for her.
* * *
The next morning, Xuan was walking in the royal gardens with his sister before he found the courage to ask the question that haunted him ever since he had his dream.
“How do we know that we can trust your mates?”
Phuong turned around and asked, “You were pulled into the dream, too?”
“You had it, too?” Xuan asked.
“So you think...”
“He’s alive?” Xuan couldn’t keep the hope from creeping into his voice.
“No,” Phuong whispered. “I watched him die.”
“He was magical,” Xuan protested. He couldn’t recall exactly what happened in the dream, but he knew that his father had better magic than they did.
Phuong walked a little further. Xuan hurried to catch up with her.
“I’ve tried to feel him,” Phuong said softly. “I’ve tried to reach for his essence, but there’s nothing there. There’s no way that he’s alive.”
Xuan took in a slow breath. “Do you trust the Draka that you’ve taken as mates, Phuong? Do you trust that they aren’t our enemies, the ones who defeated the Yore? The ones who dethroned our father and put us in an orphanage with implants?”
“I don’t know,” Phuong said. She looked at him and walked away.
56
Wine
Phuong
Phuong wrestled with Xuan’s question all day. In all honesty, she didn’t know if she could blame her mates for the sins of their race — the millions of Yore that they’d slain while they’d taken over the planet.
Her mates themselves hadn’t even been involved. At worst, their father would’ve been involved in the Draka takeover.
After dinner, the three of them went to Phuong’s room. Like they’d done before, they got undressed quickly.
Phuong reached for Olivier’s body and his mind. She wanted to know the answer, even though she was afraid that it would be something that she didn’t want to know.
If it was true — if their family had dethroned hers — her heart would shatter into a thousand pieces. She knew that she was in love, even though they hadn’t been together for too long. She knew that they were blood-bound mates for life.
But she knew that they didn’t always tell her everything. She couldn’t read their dragon hearts, the shifter part that held the answer that she was seeking.
Olivier shut her out while he kissed her. His tongue was in her mouth as he kissed her slowly and deeply. Could she accept physical but not emotional closeness?
Then the question became academic, because the three of them were tumbling onto the bed.
Gahariet reached for Phuong firs
t, holding her close, his tongue in her mouth.
Olivier was stroking the curve of her waist and then going all the way down to the back of her knees. Normally, she was ticklish there, but today it made her body feel like it was on fire.
Olivier was pulling Phuong’s hands above her head now, keeping them out of the way. Gahariet was pulling her thighs apart and pushing his cock between her legs before entering her completely.
Olivier didn’t try to take her back door. Instead, he held Phuong in place while Gahariet pounded into her soft, small body, taking her over and over again until she was crying out, shaking between the two of them, and Gahariet was groaning as he released inside of her.
Phuong was twisting, her hands still held in Olivier’s hands. She leaned forward to kiss him. He let go of her hands and planted his hands on her butt, rolling so that she was on top of him.
She used her new freedom to guide his cock into her warm, wet opening. Olivier’s eyes rolled back in his head as she rode him, setting a fast and steady pace until she felt him fill her with his seed.
All of them were sweaty, panting, and satisfied.
Physically, anyway.
Afterwards, Phuong stared at the ceiling while she listened to the snores of her mates. She was too afraid to ask them outright about their history with her family — the last imperial family of the Yore.
* * *
The next morning, she was awakened when Olivier kissed her mouth.
“Good morning.”
The question had been bouncing around in her head all night. It was out before she could stop it.
