by ERIN BEDFORD
“You did, did you?” I smiled up at him.
“Of course!” Raijin chuckled, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “Anyone who could put up with those three has to have a hell of a survival instinct.”
“I don’t know about that,” I grumbled, enjoying the twin’s arm around me a bit more than I wanted to admit.
Patrice’s words came back to me as the twins helped me through the woods. More men. Could the twins possible be those she had talked about? The very idea was ridiculous. They had just gone to war with their mother over the very fact. For me to take them into my bed after all that would be, as I said, ridiculous.
Right?
Still, something nagged at me as we walked along. Patrice had said I would gain others, but also, I’d lose something in return. I didn’t have much to my name to lose. My daughter and my men were all that had any value to me. Even the kingdom was negotiable.
My mind was so distracted that I didn’t see the tree limb until after my foot snagged on it. I tumbled to the ground, my hands burning as they skidded against the rocks and branches beneath me. I gasped and came to my knees, Fujin and Raijin quick to kneel by my side.
“Here, let me see.” Raijin took my hand in his hand and picked away the debris. Beneath were angry red scratches that were just this side of bleeding. “You need to be more careful. One sharp stick and you could have been lost something precious.”
I frowned at his chastising tone. “I didn’t trip on purpose. I have a lot on my mind.”
“I can imagine.” Fujin scoffed. “We all have had more than our fair share of trouble lately. It makes one crave the more peaceful times.”
“Did those ever exist?” Raijin asked with dry humor.
I chuckled and rose to my feet. “They’ll happen again. We just have to get through all of our parents’ hell-bent desire on keeping us in the old ways and stay alive while doing it.”
“Piece of cake,” Fujin said, and Raijin followed, “Piece of crumb cake.”
“You guys are so thinking the wrong way.” I laughed as we started our journey once more. “The only kind of cake this will turn into is the kind that bleeds.”
“As all wars do,” Fujin added.
Raijin snorted. “Don’t I know it.”
20
By the time the twins got me back to the village, the sun had started to set. I didn’t even get a foot into the village before I was surrounded on all sides by my guys and worried villagers.
“Are you okay?” Raiden asked, grabbing my shoulders like his brothers had before him.
“I’m all right.” I let him fret over me for a moment before I pushed his hands away. Unfortunately, right after him came Firestar.
“You’re not fine. There was blood, we saw it. Show me your wound,” Firestar growled, the demanding, protective tone in his voice hitting all the right places in me.
I held my hands up and spun around in a circle. “Look all you want. You will find nothing. Though,” I purred, trailing my fingers up and down Firestar’s chest, “I’d be willing to undergo an extensive strip search.”
Firestar grabbed my finger, baring his teeth at me. “That’s not funny. You could have died.” He pressed his forehead against mine, his eyes staring intently into mine.
Seeing the worry there, I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned into him. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It wasn’t funny, but I assure you, I’m fine.”
“Still,” Jack stepped in, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You should let Trina check you out. Make sure the baby is all right.”
I met Jack’s concerned gaze and realized that this hurt him even more than the others. I guess I couldn’t blame him. He was what that caused me to run off on my own. The guilt I had felt inside of him while I was dreaming had to be roaring. It would be even more so when he found out who exactly was responsible for my disappearance.
Nodding, I stepped out of Firestar’s embrace. “Yes, of course. That’s a good idea.”
Surrounded by my men, who barely let me more than a foot away from them as we marched toward Lord Fafnir’s home, with the uncomfortable multitude eyes on me and almost tripping over my own feet, I’d had enough.
Coming to a halt, I was almost run over by Firestar at my back. Hands up, I spun on the guys who all had matching confused looks. “I love you guys, but I need some space.”
The guys exchanged a look, and then Firestar asked, “What do you mean ... space?”
I waved my hands around to indicate my personal bubble. “I mean physical space.” When they still looked at me as if I were speaking another language, I added, “Meaning, I love you, and I understand how worried you were, but I can’t walk on my own with you all so close to me.”
Like a light bulb had gone off, I was met with an equal amount of embarrassment on each of their faces. They all took a step back, and it was like I could breathe again.
“Thanks,” I muttered and turned back toward the house, my feet moving a bit faster than before. The guys were quiet as we entered the building and I worried I might have hurt their feelings. Hoping to break the tension, I made small talk. I hated small talk.
“So, who won?” I crossed my arms over my chest, scuffing my feet on the ground as we walked.
“Won?” Raiden asked.
“You know, the hunt.” I glanced at him with a raised brow. “I kind of missed, well, all of it, but surely you guys heard something?”
They exchanged a look over my head before Jack frowned at me. “We don’t know. We spent most of the day looking for you.”
“Looking for me?” I scoffed, suddenly angry with them. “Even if you found the blood trail, it was Raiden’s brothers who actually found me. What, did you get lost after following the very straight river?”
“Hey,” Firestar grabbed my arm, stopping me in my tracks. “We were doing the best we could, searching for someone who didn’t want to be found. If you had stayed close to us like we wanted, none of this would have happened.”
I shook Firestar’s arm off and glared at Jack. “And if someone hadn’t been getting handsy to make his ex mad, I wouldn’t have taken off, and she wouldn’t have gotten all handsy on me.”
“What?” Jack asked, his voice rising more than I’d ever heard before. “What do you mean, she got handsy? She hurt you? Where? Show me.”
Jack pulled at my clothes, and I slapped his hands away with a growl. “Back off. I’m not about to strip down here in the hallway, and besides, it’s gone now. Nothing to see.”
“Gone? How?” Raiden asked as he tried to usher us toward our rooms, so we didn’t draw any more attention to ourselves.
I kept my mouth shut until we were safe behind my bedroom door. Getting out from between the guys, I went over to my bag and dug through it for something comfortable. Pulling my shirt over my head, I was met with a mixture of gasps and growls.
“What happened?” Jack rumbled, his hand touching my back where I knew there was nothing to see. “There’s blood but no wound. How can this be?”
I shrugged. “While you guys were chasing your tails, I got rescued by this old woman. She’s a seer, I think.” I frowned and shook my head, still not a hundred percent sure of what had happened.
“A seer?” Jack asked, his brows rising. “I haven’t heard of anyone being an actual seer in a long time, not since the great Seer, Patrice, left us.”
“That would be her, all right.” I sighed and made for the bathroom. My skin itched, and my hair felt like it had a mountain of dirt in it. Turning on the water to the shower, I shimmied out of my pants.
Three sets of eyes burned into my back. I might have blushed at all the attention, but the day had been too long. I wanted to just scrub it away and forget it ever happened.
“So,” Raiden started, not even trying to hide how his eyes swept over my bare skin, “this seer, Patrice. She healed you, I’m assuming?”
“Yeah.” I stepped into the shower and raised my voice as I spoke. “She has some killer he
aling powers, they burn like a bitch by the way but really work. Just don’t try her cooking,” I quickly added, wagging a finger out the shower door.
“How bad were you hurt?” Firestar asked, his voice muffled because my head was under the faucet.
Sighing, I quickly scrubbed my hair and rinsed before ducking out of the water. I’d have to do a better job later when there weren’t so many questions to be answered. Jack handed me a towel which I gladly took.
Taking my sweet time drying off, I bathed in their admiring looks. After the day I had, a girl needed all the good feelings she could get. The guys waited patiently - far longer than I would have - for me to answer.
I wrapped the towel around me and sat on the edge of the tub. Leveling my eyes on their collective stares, I sighed and settled my gaze on Jack. “Your ex packs quite a punch, or rather claw. I might have died had it not been for the seer.”
I told them what happened with Gretchen. All the gory details, even my plunge into my potential ice death. The guys handled it better than I expected. There were only a few roaring outbursts, most of them from Jack, who I thought might actually have a heart attack, if he didn’t rip Gretchen’s throat out first.
“I’m going to kill her,” Jack snarled, heading for the bedroom door. Jumping up from the bathtub, we hurried after him. Before Jack could leave, Firestar cut him off, blocking his path. “Get out of my way.”
“You need to think about this,” Firestar argued, not budging an inch. “We need these people to help us and killing one of them won’t endear us to anyone.”
“But she hurt Maya.” Jack glanced my way, his teeth bared. “She could have killed our child. Don’t you want her to pay?”
“Of course, I do.” Firestar shook his head. “But I also know that going after her in a blind rage is not the way.”
I snorted, causing the two to look my way. “What?” I shrugged and gave Firestar a wry grin. “You have to admit, you giving advice on keeping one’s head is pretty funny.”
Firestar tried to argue, but Raiden, who had been watching from the side, interrupted. “So, this seer healed you and at no point did you think to ask about your future?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I had asked, but I wasn’t so sure the guys would like what she said. No, I knew for sure that they wouldn’t like it. Well, maybe the part about our daughter - not the all-powerful part though - but not the adding to the list of people in my bed or my heart.
Jack stopped trying to get past Firestar and turned to me. “Maya? What did she say?”
“Not much.” Chewing on my thumb, I stared down at the ground. I didn’t want to lie, but I didn’t want to hurt them either.
“Maya,” Jack said my name with a bit more warning in it this time. Instead of trying to get through Firestar, Jack’s anger had turned on to me. “What did she tell you?”
Glancing up from the floor to meet their expectant eyes, I dropped my arms and let out an over exaggerated breath. “Ugh. We’re going to have a girl, and she’s going to be a super dragon. Not like powerful vagina powers to gift others with - thank god for small favors.” I chuckled briefly but didn’t get the expected laughs in return. “But anyways, she’s going to be like this big bad that’ll combine the whole of Waesigar.”
Raiden made a whooping noise, his face lighting up at the news. “A daughter, yes!”
Jack gave him a pointed look before turning back to me. “That’s it?” Jack stepped closer to me.
His expression was unreadable, something I didn’t like. I scurried backward, clutching my towel to me, though really what was the point? My back hit the wall as Jack caged me in with his arms.
“Maya,” he growled, the heat of him sinking into my skin, making my thighs press together to stave off the sudden bout of need.
“I-I …” I licked my lips and swallowed deeply. This back and forth with my hormones was really giving me some major whiplash. One minute I was madder than a teenage girl ditched at prom, and then the next I was that same teenage girl ready to hump in the back of her boyfriend’s daddy’s Cadillac. It was really confusing.
“You what, Maya,” he murmured, his mouth closing in on mine.
My eyes darted from Jack to Raiden and Firestar who didn’t seem the least concerned by our ice man’s out of character actions. Firestar simply crossed his arms over his chest and raised a brow. And Raiden! Raiden, the cheeky bastard, grinned like the idiot that he sometimes seemed to be.
“Answer him, Maya,” Firestar smirked, and I glared at him.
Not able to handle all the testosterone in the room anymore, I put my hands up between Jack and me, easing him away from me. “Look, you won’t like it. I don’t really know what it means, anyway.”
“Just tell us,” Jack insisted, only backing off enough to let me breathe.
I ran a hand through my still-wet hair and tugged the towel a bit closer. “She didn’t give me much. Something about how to gain is to lose, and I have more room in heart than I think.” I shrugged and raised a brow, looking at them to see if they had come to the same conclusion as me.
Jack moved further away from me, his gaze locking with Raiden and Firestar. “Any ideas what that means?”
Raiden tucked his hands into his pockets and smacked his lips. “Nope. I’ve never been good at riddles.”
“Me either.” Firestar sighed and then looked at me. “Are you sure that’s all she said?”
“Yep,” I popped the end of the word, hoping none of them caught that I had left out some important parts. While that had been what Patrice had said, I still didn’t want to cause more issues than we already had. Emotions were high enough. Revealing more might make them go ballistic. Then Gretchen wouldn’t be the only one who would need to be watching their backs.
“Very well.” Jack nodded and offered me his hand. I slid mine into his cool one and let myself give into the comfort of his touch. “Let’s get you checked out, shall we?”
“What about Gretchen? I thought you were going to kill her?” I cocked my head to the side.
Jack’s lip curled up at the edges. “She can wait. Our daughter cannot. We have to make sure everything’s ticking right if she’s going to be the glue that brings our kingdoms together, right?”
I pressed my lips together tightly. “Right.”
21
“Take a deep breath in, and out,” Trina advised as she passed her glowing hands over me. They settled on my stomach, and that familiar but still strange tingling feeling filled me.
My eyes met my anxious mates. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know we were all worried about Trina’s diagnosis. I’d been beaten by Gretchen and the rocks beneath the ice, not to forget the freezing water I’d been submerged in. It’d be a miracle if our child was still in one piece.
I didn’t know how I felt about that. I’d complained and blamed my pregnancy for all my current problems, most of that hormone related. But for some reason, knowing that it will be a girl made my pregnancy seem all the more real, like she wasn’t just some bundle of cells inside of me hell bent on making me miserable.
Plus, she was going to be an all-powerful ruler someday. The one to join all of Waesigar together. How could I want anything but for her to be good and well? Though, that part didn’t make my nervousness about being a mother any better.
Being a parent was hard enough. Being the parent of the savior of the dragons? Pfft. I had a feeling I would need all the help I could get and maybe a special stash of Dragon’s Tears. That said, at least I wouldn’t have to do it alone. My lips curved into a smile and my heart filled with appreciation for the men around me.
Yes, we had our differences, plenty of clashing personalities and butting of heads, not to forget the drama that is Gretchen. All that aside, I knew with complete certainty that they would be there for me through all of this. I wouldn’t have to worry about being a single mother or even part of a pair. Four parents had to be better than two, right?
“The baby is fi
ne,” Trina announced with a small smile on her face. The tension in the room lifted as we all let out a much-needed breath. The guys crowded around me, each showing me their affection in their own way. I hopped off the table, thinking I was done, but Trina stopped me, her face no longer smiling.
“The baby is fine, but I still want to see you over the next couple of weeks to be sure nothing comes up.” I nodded my head, not surprised she’d want to check up on me. Then she gave me her no-nonsense doctor face, and I knew I was in trouble. “I know you probably won’t listen to me, but I’m going to say it, anyway. You are pregnant and have a target on your back. That means you can’t go gallivanting off on your own whenever you get pissed off, which will be often, I have no doubt.”
Firestar grunted in agreement, and Raiden chuckled. I shot them a glare which softened when Jack placed his hand on my shoulder.
I glanced up at him and sighed. “I know, I was reckless.” Firestar snorted at that, making me shoot him a warning look. “I’ll be more careful in the future.” I gave a wry grin. “And believe me when I say I will not be going off on my own again.” Well, anytime soon, but I was going to leave that unsaid.
“Good to hear.” Trina nodded at me before turning her attention to the guys. “You need to take care of her. She’s going to need you more now than ever. Being pregnant is hard enough without having to look over your shoulder. Focus on making things easier for Maya, the less stress, the better.”
“Don’t worry, Trina. We got this.” Raiden clapped his hand on my shoulder a bit hard, and I winced. He quickly lifted his hand with a grimace. “Sorry.”
Jack let out a huff and shook his head. “As Raiden so elegantly put it, we will do everything in our powers to make sure that Maya and our ... child,” he caught himself before calling it our daughter. No one but us knew I had seen the seer, and it was probably best we kept it that way.
“I’m sure you will.” Trina inclined her head to me before backing off from the table.
Firestar filled the spot Trina had left, his hand laying on my thigh. Even through my pants, I could feel the heat of him, warming my insides. I shifted on the table uncomfortably. I rarely had all three of them surrounding me like this. It excited me more than I expected.
