by Marie Harte
Jentaron seemed to think about the answer before replying. “Yes and no. We will each retain our hold on our territories. But there must be room in the realms for others. As the middle realm is the one place we can all exist without harming one another, it must be the place where we all come together as one. Neutral ground. The upper and lower realms will continue to anchor this one world.”
“Only in the middle realm can angels and lower realm creatures touch without burning each other,” Zelec shared with Ella.
Lucifer and Uriel stared at each other, then nodded. Myfere and Felhyx didn’t seem to care either way. Asael nodded his agreement without further hesitation, surprisingly. But the dukes and angels had a fit until Lucifer snapped his fingers and they all vanished.
“I sent them home, Uriel,” he said to the high angel. To Jentaron, he nodded. “They will all acquiesce.”
No one questioned his judgment.
Zelec moved closer to her, protectively, and she wondered what he made of all this.
“Now if that’s over, we have real world issues to return to,” Lucifer said. “Let us know when and how to deal with the Hunger, Jentaron. We will be there.” Lucifer sounded as if he’d just given the dragon his seal of approval.
“Those plans will be coming from me,” Kingu said in a voice that still echoed. “Jentaron must ready to meet the Hunger head-on. Asael, myself and representatives of the other sects will figure out how to handle the Hunger while Jentaron builds his defenses. I think we can make do without humanity during the battle, but afterward, we’ll have need of them.”
She had no idea what that meant but then realized Jentaron planned to confront all the creepazoids by himself while the rest of the world…what? Attacked? How could one dragon hold off the Hunger? Why not let Lucifer take them on? What the heck?
“Fine,” Lucifer agreed. “I have a meeting with Him to get to.”
Him. Holy crap. He meant God. All of this was so beyond her pay grade it wasn’t funny. Lucifer nodded at the gathering, then looked right at Ella. She felt his power all the way to her toes and vibrated with tension, unable to look away.
He only said, “Nicely done,” gave her a strange feeling of acceptance, then vanished.
Her knees buckled, and she would have fallen to the floor if Zelec hadn’t held her upright.
The others gathered around Kingu.
“Well?” Kingu took the form of Myfere, which freaked her out. Myfere didn’t look pleased about it either. “Go bond,” Kingu said to the three of them. “You don’t have much time. A week at most before they return.”
Zelec gripped her hand, then latched onto Jentaron.
Between one blink and the next, they appeared in the dragon stronghold, the same place where they’d first arrived in the lower realm.
“I just…whoa.” Ella bent over to catch her breath, but when she straightened, she saw Zelec step between her and Jentaron before punching Jentaron in the face. She flinched for him, because that had to hurt.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for far too long,” Zelec sneered. “What the fuck did you do to me? We’re mates?”
Ella blinked, not sure what to do. Other dragons suddenly flew into the common area Zelec had teleported them to, and she feared he’d be torn apart for daring to harm the dragon king.
“Ella, please relay to Ranton and Teban what just happened at the conference,” Jentaron said in a voice far too calm to be real. Worried, she started to panic, especially when Jentaron’s eyes turned red. “Zelec and I have to come to terms.”
Her—the—dragon grabbed Zelec, and they vanished.
Everyone’s focus turned to her, but fortunately she saw Ranton in the crowd and breathed a sigh of relief when she recognized Eve with him. “I have a story to tell.”
A green-scaled dragon even larger than Jentaron bounded forth. “Ah, little brother’s new mate. Welcome, nephilim.” He grinned, showing sharp teeth. A man and woman who somehow looked more than human walked with him. Teban and his mates, which meant the man was a demon and the woman a havoc. Jentaron’s precious Kihra seemed smaller than Myfere but had a feral beauty, like everyone else around here. Ella disliked her intensely.
“Is there someplace we can go to talk?” Ella asked Eve, finding her the least threatening of the bunch.
Eve nodded. “Come on. We’ll go to the throne room. It’s empty since we can never get Jentaron to stay put.”
The other dragons scattered, still watching her with suspicion, while Ella and her small entourage of dragon royalty walked down the corridor to a huge room complete with a giant round table and golden throne.
Whether she was too exhausted and shocked to feel ill at ease or just burned out that all this really existed, she felt like part of the team. She belonged. No human intruder, but an ethereal chess piece involved in a game of war.
“I’m hungry,” Ranton complained.
“We can always eat and talk,” the handsome man with Teban said. He looked enough like Eve for Ella to know they were related. Blue-black hair, strong cheekbones, bright blue eyes and a grin that had damnation in each curl of his lips. He wiggled his brows at Ella. “I’m thinking medium rare.”
“Shut up, James. Ignore him,” Eve said to Ella, who understood the joke but couldn’t summon the energy to take it seriously.
But when Teban licked his lips and chuckled, her adrenaline spiked, proving her common sense hadn’t completely disappeared, just gone dormant.
She hoped Jentaron and Zelec ironed things out, and soon, before someone added her to the menu.
“Ella, how about you explain just what kind of mess my little brother has gotten us into?” Teban suggested. In the blink of an eye he changed into a handsome human male wearing designer clothes.
Talk about devastating. She blew out a breath, wishing again for Jentaron or Zelec to hurry the hell up and fetch her. Might as well stretch out her time with the truth and hope it didn’t bite her in the ass before her lovers returned.
“Well, it all started with this bitch named Lauren…”
Chapter Eight
Zelec did his best to figure out Jentaron’s game. The dragon wanted something from him, surely. Perhaps the lizard’s claim on Ella wasn’t as certain as it had seemed. That made sense, since Zelec had subtly marked her first.
He hadn’t realized he’d staked her for his own, but the sexy little human had been too angelic to pass up. She’d gotten under his skin with a kiss. Odd, but he’d heard of demons mating like that before. Take Asael. One look at his precious Bethany Sinclair and he’d lost his heart. A fallen angel, done in by a pair of bright blue eyes and a heavenly rack.
The comparison alarmed him, especially because he couldn’t stop thinking about the fact Asael had fathered him and hadn’t known. He refused to consider Kingu as his mother. It was unfathomable. All in all, it was a holy hell of a mindfuck he still couldn’t wrap his brain around, and then Jentaron tried claiming him as his own?
They’d landed in the middle of a large chamber, surrounded by a perfect mix of brimstone and warmth. The magical scent of security, power and—oddly enough—creation, enfolded him. Jentaron, the bastard, still caged him in his arms.
“Get the fuck off me,” Zelec snarled and in anger sharpened his nails into claws. He sank them into Jentaron’s powerful shoulders, annoyed and alarmed to find the dragon larger than him in both dragon and man’s form.
Though still winged, Jentaron’s toughened human skin couldn’t withstand a demon’s claws. Zelec smelled a rush of magic in the blood now pooling around the cuts in the dragon’s shoulders.
“You do realize our kind consider this foreplay?” came the amused reply. Jentaron tightened his hold around Zelec.
To his shock, Zelec felt the dragon’s enormous erection press against his stomach, right through Jentaron’s trousers.
“You don’t
like males,” Zelec said automatically. He’d done his homework on the dragon two years ago. News of a rare royal birthing, after the theft of the egg, had borne close attention. So what if he’d spent more time watching and learning about the dragon king than he’d been ordered to? It only made sense since Jentaron had more power than any other being, aside from Asael, in the lower realm.
“I have never tried males before, but for you I will make an exception.” Jentaron leaned closer, his eyes now a bright red—just like Zelec’s. “You smell surprisingly good. Demonish, yet tasty.”
“W-what?” Zelec blinked, falling into Jentaron’s gaze. Mesmerized… “You bastard. Back off.” He yanked himself out of Jentaron’s hold with a welling of strength that continued to build. “You dare try to enthrall me? I’m a higher demon, you angelic shit.” High insult indeed throwing the A-word in there.
Jentaron grinned.
What idiot laughed at a demon’s rage? Perhaps the power play in Asael’s chambers had unhinged the hatchling. No, not a hatchling. A young dragon, but a kingly one.
Thinking of Jentaron as so young didn’t sit well with Zelec. At all. Like Asael, Zelec didn’t believe in tainting true innocence. He enjoyed furthering the corruption of the already tainted, but besmirching purity repulsed him.
Now that he knew of his birth father, it made sense. For all that Asael had Fallen, he’d once been an angel. A noble creature born to protect the innocent. His children swayed souls for hell, but those souls were far from blameless.
“Have I seduced you yet into being mine?” Jentaron asked and blew a breath of blue fire over Zelec’s body.
It should have burned. Instead it turned him on. Way on. He’d already been aroused in the dragon’s arms, first through anger, then in a growing passion. But now he wanted to fuck. Hard.
“Stop it,” he hissed even as Jentaron’s gaze wandered over his torso and centered on Zelec’s obvious need. His whole body throbbed in time to his cock—the desire present to take and be taken one ingrained in the mating act. By all that was unholy, was he really preparing to mate this beast? “Are you doing magic?” Magical manipulation made more sense than that a demon of Zelec’s caliber would lower himself to join with a young dragon. King or not, Jentaron still had too much troubling naiveté to handle.
“Am I doing magic? In a way.” Jentaron’s trousers disappeared, showing sculpted perfection of the human male form. “How do we do this? Is it through oral stimulation? Anal? This is a popular pastime among humans, is it not?”
“Pastime?” Zelec rasped, out of breath though he stood still. He clenched his hands into fists, drawing blood because his nails refused to retract. Everything in him felt exposed, from his now erect wings to his claws, fangs and stupid cock.
“Yes, sex in all ways. I have enjoyed anal sex with Eve, but I haven’t yet attempted it with Ella. I look forward to it, especially the way she had in that vision you shared with me.”
Zelec groaned. That image he’d read from Ella, of him and Jentaron both taking her at the same time, only added to his desire. The worst form of torture has to be expiring from blue balls. I swear this is worse than The Pit. If simply fucking the dragon to ease a physical ache were the answer, he’d have done it. No question. He admitted an attraction to the blue-scaled beast. The problem stemmed from the fact that much more lay beneath a physical connection. He already felt bonded to Jentaron, and the fluctuations in his own power bothered him.
Jentaron was stronger than he’d realized, far more powerful than Zelec—and Zelec didn’t like feeling second best.
“Why me? You want Ella, is that it?” he asked, frustrated, angry, and strangely, hurt. Which made little sense. “You can’t have her. She’s mine.” The one good thing Zelec had and he didn’t want her to go away before he knew what to do with her.
Expecting Jentaron to argue, he could only stare in befuddlement when Jentaron agreed with him. “Yes, she is.”
“You—what?”
“She is yours. And mine. As you are mine, and I am yours.”
“Hold on. What game is this?”
Jentaron glanced again at Zelec’s arousal and sighed. “Do you really want to talk first?”
“Yes, damn it.” Zelec felt his face heat. What the hell kind of demon denied his own carnal needs? An idiot, apparently. “Explain yourself.”
“Fine.” Jentaron sat on a bed large enough to host an orgy. His wings flapped around him in agitation before settling and occasionally brushing his human body, as if he sought comfort and wasn’t sure how to go about it.
In that instant, Zelec felt a need to protect, to care not just for an innocent, but for one who belonged to him. Just the way he’d felt with Ella. Double damn. He was mating this oversized lizard.
Utilizing every ounce of energy inside him, he sent an arrow of telepathy into the dragon and darted back out before Jentaron would be aware. To his shock, Jentaron’s agitation was no act to manipulate, but a reaction to the deprivation of something Jentaron desperately needed—Zelec’s acceptance.
Floored but unwilling to show it, Zelec tamped down his emotions and waited.
“I have always known that my purpose was for more than the benefit of my kind,” Jentaron began. “My birth was predestined.”
“Aren’t they all?”
“No.”
Zelec hadn’t realized that. “I thought fate, a higher power, something more, determined the reason for everything.”
“No. That is a human concept of course, something you learned from the demons in the Abyss.”
“Well, yeah. I’m a demon.”
“Of which I’m very aware.” Jentaron smiled, a sincere appreciation that churned Zelec’s insides. There was something so pure yet darkly sensual about the look that Zelec wasn’t sure how to handle it. “Fate is a human concept that applies to important moments in our existence. Kingu, a creator deity, would tell you that nothing it creates is without value.” Jentaron blinked, but the red in his eyes had yet to fade.
From what Zelec knew, dragons and demons had a common ancestor from a long time ago. Something he’d once overheard Kingu and Asael arguing about, actually. Perhaps that had some truth in it, because at the moment, Jentaron looked mouthwateringly demonic.
The bastard smirked at Zelec’s erection and continued his tale. “Most of the world came about from a thought or an idea held in the mind of a higher power. The humans’ many versions of their god and gods, Kingu, Izanagi, Cociho, Tlaloc, Chaxerte, Jowantu.” He named a few more ancient beings Zelec had never heard of before continuing. “But there are also things that came about spontaneously. It is the rare human being who was created by a god. Most of those in the Ordinary sprang up through the power of magic. That unfocused energy of mana harvested a will, resulting in random chance. Not fate.”
“So then what of Decision makers? Of the balance they strive to keep through human souls? If it’s all luck, why bother with humanity at all when the Decision makers could grab the god-willed, who I’d think would have more power and purpose?”
“Souls, from what I gather, are that power that came from the core of the world. Not the three realms, but all the world as one. There was no Ordinary, no Abyss or heaven in the beginning. It was all of one piece, but then the creators grew bored and evolved, in turn spawning the ethereal to squabble and entertain. The magic at our world’s core evened out. Souls are actually parts of the world returning to their place of origin. Whether above or below, all the energy belongs to this world, no matter who created it.”
Zelec tried to absorb the truth, because he felt the rightness of it deep inside him, in the darkness and buried light in his being. “But if it’s all the same, then what does it matter where it goes, to the upper or lower realms? What is balance if it’s all the same?”
“That’s the fault of the creators. They tampered with the nature of the world, and the co
re shifted. It is no longer in one place, but all around.”
“So like a scale that will tip if overbalanced on one end or another.”
“Exactly.” Jentaron smiled, and his teeth appeared flat and white. Human-like. “You are very intelligent. I desire that in a mate.”
Zelec’s arousal, which had begun to flag during their discussion, returned. He cleared his throat and tried to ignore it. “But these other creators, where are they? Only Kingu and the human deities remain.”
“We are not the only world in existence, Zelec.” Jentaron sounded wise beyond his years, and Zelec had the uncomfortable feeling the dragon considered him the juvenile.
“Oh?” That chafed. Zelec had more experience in most matters. Especially when it came to sex. That thought relieved him…and tantalized him with images of how to teach Jentaron the art of male-on-male fucking.
“Jowantu and Chaxerte, along with a few others, left our world to populate others. I fear it’s one of those other places from which the Hunger grew. They have been taking over countless worlds, absorbing power and crushing through it. The Hunger are greedy, never sated, never satisfied.” He sounded distracted, and Zelec wondered if the dragon knew fear, since Jentaron had all but insisted he confront the Hunger by himself while the others readied for battle.
The thought did not sit well, and alarm grew at the thought of Jentaron facing such a heinous foe alone. Even Lucifer had deferred to the necessity of a group alliance. “You don’t really think you can face this Hunger on your own?” He scoffed. “You might be a dragon king, but you’re not all-powerful.”
“Not yet.” Jentaron flared out a wing to graze Zelec. “I need to build my defenses with a triumvirate of souls.”
“Huh?” Zelec’s body buzzed, their shared contact impossible to ignore. Heat unfurled throughout his body, enflaming his nerve endings.
“When my mates and I finally come together, then will I be strong enough to confront the Hunger. But only if all our worlds unite to fight them will we have a world to come back to after the battle.” Jentaron’s smoky voice filled the room, a dragon’s gift of persuasion and skill.
