by Ophelia Bell
His fingers moved between her thighs, stroking over and over from where she and Ked were joined and up to circle around her ass again. After the third stroke, he pressed a wet fingertip at her opening and plunged it beyond.
Evie let out a soft gasp at the invasion, but wanted even more. Marcus gave it to her, adding another slick finger and pressing deeper.
Her entire body clenched with the addition of another finger that stretched her even wider. Ked’s hands clutched the sides of her face and forced her gaze to his.
“Everything, you said,” he whispered, then kissed her, his tongue filling her mouth and his lips pulling hotly at hers.
Then Marcus was behind her, his cock pressing against her ass and she pressed back, urging him inside her. His thick tip breached the barrier and they both emitted sharp cries of surprise. When he pushed deeper, all Evie could think was how much she loved them both. There was pain, but it swiftly turned to pleasure as Marcus sank into her. Then she felt suspended between the two of them as they fucked her, buoyed by the pleasure.
Ked’s orgasm was the most beautiful thing she’d ever experienced. He always took a deep breath and seemed to pause, as though in suspended animation while his cock surged inside her, flooding her with his semen. In that second, she might believe he was simply a statue carved from pale marble. His lips and cheeks grew too flushed for her to believe he was anything less than alive, however. This time she didn’t resist the urge to kiss him and he kissed her back, hungrily, while his cock still frantically thrust into her.
Her own orgasm hovered close, and the combination of Marcus’s bruising slams into her ass and his finger slipping between her thighs threw her far beyond the realm of reason. She let out a harsh, surprised cry and bit down on Ked’s lip, making him groan with pleasure.
Ked clutched at her and refused to surrender her mouth, his cock growing hard again and pushing deep.
Evie’s body soared without even air or wings, her orgasm carrying her across the winds in the arms of the two men she loved. They filled her more than just physically in that moment. Every cell of her being held a piece of them inside that would never be relinquished.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Evie
Dragon Monastery, Sunda Islands
Present Day
A sense of dread filled Evie for the next day, but she clenched her teeth during their preparations to leave.
Maybe it was the baby in her womb making her feel this way, but it all seemed so surreal.
Her overwhelming happiness at having both her mates kept bumping up against the possibility of losing them. She’d spent so many years away from Marcus, finding happiness and pleasure in the cracks between… now that she’d had a solid span of time to enjoy peace and love, the prospect of losing it utterly terrified her.
She kept it tamped down, though. They needed to do this for the others—the prisoners still in the Ultiori’s clutches, and those yet to be captured.
“Sister, thank you,” Aurum said, startling Evie out of her concentrated packing to make sure her gear was dragon-worthy.
She looked up at the golden beauty, dazzled as always by Aurum’s presence. The very proximity to the gold immortal made her happy and she said a silent thank you for the respite from her worries.
“Why thank me? It’s your brothers who are the masterminds of this excursion.”
“Thank you for going with us. I know you’re only going to stay close to them, but your powers are something my siblings and I don’t have.”
“My brothers could have done as much as I can,” Evie said, shrugging.
“Bullshit.”
Evie’s head shot up at the curse spilling from Aurum’s perfect mouth. She stared, blinking at the woman like she’d grown another head. Had she just said that?
Aurum laughed softly. “I’m several thousand years old, Evie. You don’t think I’ve learned how to curse?”
“I—don’t know what I thought about you, to be honest. That you were in another league entirely. I mean… I know your brother… brothers, but somehow you, Numa, and Belah all seemed so… perfect.”
Aurum walked to the bed and smoothed the cover out carefully, then turned and sat, as primly as someone immortal might.
“We can’t die,” Aurum said. She frowned, her face contorting in a way that seemed distinctly wrong for her features. Her blonde waves slipped over her shoulders when she slouched and rested her elbows on her knees. “I don’t wish for death,” she said, looking at Evie, “But I wish for a respite sometimes.”
Evie didn’t quite know how to respond. Their races were all long-lived, and had adapted. But thousands of years as opposed to a few hundred? Immortality didn’t sound so fun, after all.
“Well, this trip is supposed to give you that, isn’t it? I mean… you and your siblings are looking for your Ones now, right?”
Aurum looked at her, confused for a second. “Our Ones. Oh! Yes, something like that. Fate likes to fuck with us too much. If my dreams are any indication, mine apparently has four arms and four legs, but I haven’t heard of any race who turns into spiders.”
She shivered and grimaced.
Evie chuckled. “No. You’re probably reading it wrong. Tell me what you saw. Let’s see if I can find the truth in it.”
She walked to Aurum and stood in front of the woman. Aurum looked up at her, golden eyes studious before she took Evie’s outstretched hands and her eyelids closed.
She took a deep breath and her expression shifted inward, her eyes moving behind her closed lids. Evie held tight and waited for Aurum to speak.
“I’m swimming in a river, my eyes are open, blinking through the current. I test the flow, pushing against it and it pushes back. The stronger the current, the more I must test my strength. But then when I’m swimming upstream and reaching out, fingers thread into mine and pull. I swim against the current until I get to him. And he is beautiful. Blue-black hair flowing in the water, long and wavy, and he smiles and pulls me to him. His words sound like forest rain when he speaks in my ear, and it makes me want him.”
Evie raised an eyebrow. If forest rain were words, she’d lose herself, too.
“But he isn’t the only one. Another hand pulls from the other side and I wind up on the shore. Then it all gets very confused. Too many arms and legs.”
“Story of my life,” Evie said, laughing. “Can you handle more than one man? Because I think that’s what your dream is telling you. There isn’t just one. There are two.”
Aurum’s face transformed with a delighted smile. “Two? Oh, that makes more sense. How can you tell?”
“I’m good at hearing the wind between the words. The first man is a water nymph—a satyr—which is rare enough, isn’t it? How many of them even exist anymore? The second is an ursa, tied to the earth. You may have to choose between them, or you could mediate to have them both. A female as powerful as you are might manage it.”
Aurum closed her eyes and sighed. “It’s true. He should not even exist, but your grandmother insisted my mate was still held captive and my brother confirmed that he spoke to a satyr in one of the cells when he went in to rescue you. The trick is finding the other one. I need your help with that, sister.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
Aurum gripped her hands suddenly, and Evie stared at her, surprised by the familiarity of Aurum’s caress. The woman lifted a hand to Evie’s cheek and leaned close.
“Let me give you a gift in return.”
Evie snatched her hands away and stood, walking away a pace. “Not yet. I know what you were thinking, but we don’t need it yet. Ked mentioned blessings might be needed to make sure the baby lives. Right now, I promise the baby is very vocal about what it wants, and that’s the only sign I need about its health.”
Aurum laughed. “Yes, the young ones are needy early on. If you need any
thing from me, you have it.”
Evie smiled back and sat down again, gripping Aurum’s hand. “If you need anything from me, you have it, too.”
“What I need is both of these men to materialize in front of me now. I’m not used to being told who to mate or that it shouldn’t be a human man. Is it crazy that it scares me what kind of baby might come of this union?”
Evie closed her eyes. Her baby had such dubious origins she couldn’t deny them, but it wouldn’t be nice to let Aurum worry about that.
“You’re not a new mother, Aurum. I know that much. Why does this bother you so much?”
The golden dragon stood and paced across the room. “My other child were all conceived from human men. They were each born nearly a century apart, and I loved them all dearly. They sated my maternal urges, and I’ve enjoyed not being a mother ever since. The role we play as Dragon Council is enough. But the higher races have never mixed their blood before. And even though I am ready to be a mother again, I’m frightened of not knowing what will come. You have the power of foresight that your grandmother has. When we get to the Ultiori compound, please don’t hesitate to tell me everything you hear on the Wind.”
“You have my word, sister.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Evie
Canadian Rockies
Present Day
It took some convincing for Evie’s mates to agree to let her join them. She had to promise that she would avoid shifting once they arrived, for fear that the change would harm their child. Since Belah had been transported a couple times via Aodh’s drifting power and her child was still well, Ked and Marcus agreed that Evie could travel in the same fashion with them.
She dreaded returning to the compound where she had been held prisoner for so long. Not even Marcus’s comforting arms the morning before they left could dispel the worry.
“I don’t want to go back any more than you do,” he said, “but this was the last place Aurum’s satyr was seen. If there’s a chance we can get him out, we need to take it for everyone’s sake.”
Evie squeezed his hand and turned to kiss him on the cheek, trying to shed her fears through her intimacy with Marcus.
“I’m not worried about being captured again. I know Sterlyn and Naaz are on our side, and so is Nikhil. I just hate the idea of being that close to any of the Ultiori who might not be so friendly as long as the baby’s doing well.”
A few moments later they all stood in the same clearing Evie remembered from her rescue, but the place had changed even in the short time since they were there last. It was late Fall, so there shouldn’t be many leaves on the trees anyway, but even the evergreens surrounding them were bare of needles, the entire area as silent as a grave. When the others shifted around her, she heard a collection of soft curses from the dragons.
“Evidence of Nikhil’s curse is all it is. He was forced to absorb the life of the vegetation to heal himself before he came to surrender to us,” Ked said, his darkness pulsing around him. He seemed far too eager to fly to the compound and confront whatever evil might lie in wait. Thankfully his brothers kept him reasonable.
“Let the Norths reconnoiter and tell us the situation first, brother,” Gavra said, placing himself between Ked and the direction of the peak the Ultiori lair was nestled behind. “If this trap Nikhil says he set has captured the Lamia, we’ll want to be prepared before we go inside.”
Evie’s brothers flew away again, disappearing into the gray November sky. While the rest of them waited, Evie closed her eyes and listened for any secrets that might be carried on the wind. Around her the bare, dead branches of the trees rustled eerily, causing her to shiver. The Wind itself spoke of sadness and pain, but that was nothing new compared to what Evie had experienced when she’d been there last.
Deep in the undercurrents, she could hear other notes. Abandonment, deep regret, loneliness, hunger, despair. The notes came from the direction of the compound but sounded like long forgotten echoes from many instruments, their songs dissonant echoes carried on the wind. Except there were still two bright notes that called out to her, disguised by the sound of the rushing river on the other side of the compound. After hearing that river outside her cell for five decades, she’d learned to differentiate between its song and everything else.
Her brothers returned a few moments later, grave looks on both their faces.
“It’s abandoned,” Lukas said. “I could hear nothing inside. No life. Last time we were here, the place was full. Mostly with prisoners, but not even a rat is in residence now.”
“There are two still,” Evie said, surprising herself at the ringing strength of her voice. She was even more surprised when Lukas abruptly stopped talking and turned to stare at her, along with everyone else. “I may be out of practice, brother, but fifty years of trying like hell to hear anything has refined my senses. There are still two inside. I don’t know more than that, but everything I can hear suggests that they were left behind—trapped and abandoned with the compound.”
“Two?” Aurum asked, grabbing Evie by the arm. “Is it both of the males from my dream? Can you tell?”
Evie gripped the dragon’s hand and squeezed. “I can’t tell who it is. The place is deserted otherwise, though.” She turned to tell Ked she believed it safe to go in, but he was already flying away, with her brothers close behind.
“Climb on my back, sister,” Aurum said, her eyes wild with excitement and worry as she shifted and bent low for Evie to climb on.
They flew together, following the others up over the ridge line covered with dead pines and rocks. Aurum’s massive wings pulled them through the air and in spite of Evie’s elation at being aloft at all, she could sense the female’s apprehension as though it were her own.
Aurum made a slow circle around the roof of the sprawling building that had been constructed into the mountainside over the rapidly churning river. Evie had only seen that view once in the dead of night when Ked had taken her away. Her only other memory of the river was from the view she’d seen the day she and Marcus had arrived. That day she’d thought it beautiful from within the glass trap she’d let herself walk into unknowing.
Now it seemed violent and unforgiving, the white caps of the water churning over the rocks.
When Aurum landed, Evie slid off and Aurum immediately shifted and walked toward the rest of the group. Evie followed close behind, hoping she would be able to hear any hint from the Wind that would give her insight into the situation. Ked was inside now, she could tell that much, and he’d taken Marcus in with him. She knew they’d gone together to more quickly navigate the place, but their absence now in the belly of this dead beast made her anxious.
The air currents shifted around them suddenly. Only Evie and her brothers seemed to notice, all three of them turning their heads at the whispers of approach.
At the other end of the rooftop, a dark cloud coalesced and Ked appeared holding a huge, limp body in his arms. Aurum and Evie both ran to him and helped him lay the body down.
The man’s long arms and legs flopped to the rooftop and his head lolled to the side, but he was breathing.
“This isn’t either of them,” Aurum said with certainty. “The ones from my dream both had dark hair. This man has white hair. But he needs help, still.” She turned and called over her shoulder. “Numa! Come help, please!”
Aurum’s sister rushed over and knelt on the other side of the unconscious man.
Before Evie could reach him, Ked disappeared in a cloud again. Marcus had yet to make an appearance, and she guessed he was still inside.
Instead, she went to kneel beside the unconscious man.
He wasn’t entirely unconscious. Numa touched his face gently, and he turned into her palm. His lips moved constantly, repeating words over and over. Sometimes they sounded like, “Mama, save me.” Other times they were just gibberish. With a breath from Nu
ma’s lips, his ranting slowed and he slept.
Evie studied his white-haired features that seemed contradictory to his youthful appearance. Maybe youthful wasn’t the word, though. He wasn’t young, but he was by no means old, either. His huge body, in spite of appearing malnourished, was strong and fit. Yet he had long white hair and a white beard. He’d been inside for a very long time. And for fifty years she’d been in there with him, yet had never known him. She’d caught so many fleeting impressions of the residents on the days when her door had opened and she was led to the lab, but had no memory of his voice carried on the recycled air around the facility.
Before she could hear more from Numa’s soft questions, an uproar came from behind her.
She turned in time to see Ked struggling with a black-haired man who kept yelling, “Let me go, I need to go after her!”
Beside her, Aurum let out an incoherent cry, and the air around Evie grew thick with her friend’s power—a combination of utter joy and acute need for intimate emotional connection.
Every cell in her body gravitated to Ked and Marcus. She went to Ked and he met her, pulling her into a tight embrace. Marcus materialized a second later, walked toward them, and embraced them both. She didn’t understand this need to be with them until Ked grumbled, “She found him, I guess. Hard not to want to be with loved ones when Aurum’s lit up like that.”
They turned together and watched as Aurum approached the man who knelt a few yards away, raking his hands through his long, lank, black hair.
He wasn’t just a man, though. Beneath his crouched form, Evie saw hooves rather than feet, though his upper half was entirely human in appearance. A very upset human.
Aurum knelt in front of him and he held completely still while the golden dragon spoke.
“Do you know me as I know you?” Aurum asked.
The man let his hands fall to his lap and bowed his head. Beneath him, his hooves transformed into human feet.
“You are she,” he said. He let out a sigh through quivering lips. “I am not ready for you yet. I still have work to do.”
