by Meg Xuemei X
“No,” Héctor said coldly. He didn’t even blink.
“Marigold will forgive you for anything. That’s how much she loves you. She’ll take you back and you get to have eternity with her.”
“Not at the cost of betraying my Lamb,” Héctor said. “The love between us is purer than gold. How dare you, her own mother, try to get between us? Try to harm my mate again and you’ll make an enemy out of me.”
And then, he was behind her, his blade pressed against her white throat. I hadn’t even seen him move.
“Where is my mate?” he roared.
She laughed. It was the most sensual laughter I’d ever heard, and I hated it.
“I’m here, Héctor!” I cried out. “I’m here!”
He pricked his ears as if he’d heard me. But in the ivory tower, its magic muted our mating bond, even temporarily.
I pushed my power to get through to the other side of the glass to get to Héctor, but the force field pushed me back.
“Would you slit the throat of your girlfriend’s mother?” Lilith asked sweetly, as if this was fun for her.
Mom could be a psycho bitch. It tasted vile when my mates and I were on the receiving end.
“It’s tempting,” Héctor said. “Especially after you tried to tempt me to hurt her.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I was but testing you.” Lilith rammed her elbow at Héctor.
Héctor removed the blade and twisted his torso away from her reach. His boot connected to her middle, sending her flying backward toward the pool.
Lilith didn’t fall into the water. A pair of splendid silver wings whooshed out of her back. They gave a powerful boost, and she hovered in the air over the water.
Lucifer’s wings had degraded to chicken wings in the Void, but Mom became more powerful and never lost her archangel wings. She told me it was because of me. The Void rewarded her for giving birth to the firstborn daughter of the realm.
Lilith narrowed her furious silver eyes. “Mortal, you dare to challenge me?”
Héctor brought his longsword before him, bracing for the retaliation.
Lilith flapped her wings, ready to dive toward my beloved to strike him.
Demigod or not, Héctor remained an excellent swordsman. His skill was still there. But he wasn’t the same death demigod. He could die if she wounded him.
And she’d once been the general of the fallen angel army, who led the war against the heavenly battalion. Even Lucifer feared her. And like most powerful individuals, she could be crazy and unpredictable. I refused to risk my mate to her brand of crazy.
I had to claim my birthright to summon the true power of my Void magic. I’d been afraid that once I did that, the realm might never let me go, just as Mom had warned. But the primal need to protect my mates burned brightly in me, overpowering any dark fear.
I’m the first child of the Void, I declared silently and clearly. I now claim my birthright. I won’t be denied.
No longer would I be helpless, powerless, watching as my mates were molested, hurt, kept away from me. The Void was as much my realm as Lilith’s, and it was my turn to protect them.
My new power stirred and fluttered in my belly as my ruthless mother dove toward my beloved.
I roared in rage, claiming the powers in my blood that were my birthright.
Nothing and no one could stop me from reaching my Héctor.
CHAPTER 9
__________________
The Void power brewed inside me, boiling as it rose to my summons. It burned with a furious heat, and I screamed from the pain. Something tore out of my back, a sudden burden so heavy I could barely stand.
I glanced back. A pair of blue wings had sprouted between my shoulder blades.
What the fuck?
But I didn’t have time to muse on the transformation. With a powerful flap of my new wings, which responded to my mental commands as easily as my other limbs, I flew toward the glass wall at high speed. My momentum and the Void magic I wielded broke through the magic barrier and smashed the walls all around.
“No!” I shouted, landing between my mother and my mate like a flash of blue lightning. “You won’t harm what’s mine, Mother!”
They each jumped back quickly, as neither wanted to hurt me.
“I was about to teach her a lesson, but I wouldn’t have injured your mother too badly,” Héctor said.
“As if you could, mortal,” Mom said coolly.
Zak, Axel, and Paxton charged through the shattered glass wall and surrounded me in a protective ring while staring at my wings in shock.
I knew the feeling, but now wasn’t the time to talk about it.
Mom, however, wasn’t shocked at all. She beamed in pride, her horns turning half-crimson and half-silver in delight. She landed delicately on the edge of the pool and withdrew her wings. I mimicked her, my wings disappearing with barely a thought. I didn’t want my wings to be the center of attention at the moment, even though they were very cool.
I especially didn’t want them to get in the way of my mates and me getting cozy.
“My daughter,” Mom said proudly.
Héctor gave Lilith a hard stare and pulled me into his arms protectively, and my other mates closed in on me. And then I was in a haven of strong arms, finally reunited again.
“How could you put my mates through such an ordeal, Mom?” I roared at Lilith.
“Ordeal?” She quirked an elegant eyebrow. “I think they quite enjoyed it.”
My mates all growled.
Lilith smiled at them. “That’s not the way to greet your future mother-in-law.”
“They could do worse if you weren’t my mom,” I seethed. “You tried to seduce Héctor. Do you have no shame?”
“Why should I be ashamed, darling Belle?” Mom shrugged. “Your mortal is no fun.”
I clenched my fists. I’d asked the wrong question. Demons, gods, and angels didn’t hold to any kind of morality, and therefore never felt shame for their actions. I was lucky that my demigod mates adopted my ethics.
“You blame him?” I asked incredulously, shooting her another glare over my mates’ shoulders. “He turned his nose up at you and your offer, Queen of Succubi! It didn’t sit well with you, did it? All of my mates rejected your seducers. Quit trying to break us up. I won’t abandon them and stay here with you, if that’s what you planned.”
“That’s not what I planned, Belle Marigold, my beautiful, fierce child.” Lilith beamed at me, as if she was the greatest mom ever. “I was only looking out for your best interests. I always do. Who wouldn’t do anything for their child?”
“Maybe you should have that conversation with Lucifer,” I said.
Not every parent was a good role model. Lucifer had chained and whipped Loki in the dungeon because Loki defied the devil’s order to kill his birth mother. I wondered how Loki was doing now. He’d looked after me on Earth, and I’d helped him get rid of his sadistic father.
Hell belonged to him and his dukes now.
Mom regarded me indulgently. “I’m glad he isn’t your father. It irked him to no end that I had a child with another male, and not just any male, but the Titan king.”
My heart lurched at the mention of my father. “He—my father is here?”
“Of course. Hyperion is in the prison,” Lilith said fondly. “You’ll see him soon.”
Something fluttered in my chest. I hadn’t known I was a Titan’s child until Axel dragged me to the Academy and made the priest perform the blood rune ritual on me. Step by step, my mates peeled off the layers hiding my true heritage along with me.
I didn’t know what to make of my parents’ sudden accessibility. And I was willing to bet that visiting a father I’d never known in a prison wouldn’t be any daughter’s highlight of the day.
“Leave us,” Lilith said in a queen’s voice, and all her girls, who still stared at my mates with lust, filed out the garden, swaying their hips unnecessarily.
In a moment, they cleared awa
y, and I relaxed my shoulders. It was crystal clear that my mates weren’t interested in other females, but the possessive part of me didn’t like those nudists gawking at my mates with burning desire.
“Now it’s just us family,” Mom said and twirled a finger.
The pool garden morphed into a palatial dining hall. A diamond and sapphire chandelier hung from the ceiling, while six dining chairs in plush velvet upholstery surrounded a hand-carved Chinese rosewood table.
Mom had the same expensive taste as my mates. I still remembered when Héctor took me to his apartment in Manhattan overlooking Central Park. I had felt embarrassed dripping water on his million-dollar rug.
My mates developed an acquired taste for me after they got the Marigold who raised herself in the wilderness and gangster streets. And I was kind of cheap. After that kind of upbringing, I wasn’t even awed by the gold and silver utensils and fancy napkins. Extravagance did not touch me. All I cared about was the rich display of the variety of food, drinks, and desserts that seemed heavy enough to collapse the royal table.
At least Mom had gotten that right. Well, she’d watched me through her spyglass.
She took the head seat and waved at me with a smile. “Sit by my side, daughter. I won’t have much time with you in this realm.”
I perched on the seat next to her. My mates settled around me.
“There’s coffee in the Void?” I squeaked in delight and snatched the steaming mug at my place setting.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had smelled coffee, let alone sipped it. For coffee’s sake, I would forgive Mom for her stupid moves on my mates. I drank a mouthful of coffee and moaned in bliss.
My mates gazed at me, shame and sorrow and lust all twirling in their eyes. I got it. They each took their roles as provider, protector, and mate seriously. They were thinking of the months when I’d been Lucifer’s and Ares’s captive in Hell. They thought they failed me.
Guilt brimmed in Axel’s amber eyes.
I knew what ran in his mind. It all started with him forcing me to attend the Half-Blood Academy.
“Don’t spoil my fun, boys,” I said. “I don’t regret any of it. Without the Academy, I’d never have met you, and I’d have lived the life of a bored virgin for eternity. Now I have a life I look forward to, with all of you. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.” My eyes misted. “I’d go through Hell again and again just to be with you.”
Tears simmered in my mates’ eyes.
“Eat and drink,” Lilith said, heaping food onto a plate and shoving the plate in front of me.
At the same time, my mates all competed to get food for me. So I got five piled plates before me in no time, and they were still getting more for me.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “It’s like you want to shove all the food down my tiny throat. Serve yourselves, mates. Or I’ll fast.”
No way would I fast, but I didn’t mind throwing a threat here and there to have my way.
“I wouldn’t suggest fasting, Belle,” Mom said. “After you leave my domain, you might not find food resources for a long while. While you and your three demigods might sustain yourselves, the hotheaded mortal won’t last long without sustenance.”
“I can sustain myself fine under any circumstances,” Héctor said. “I once suffered severe torture for centuries and never broke.”
I stared at him, my mouth gaping. “You never told me about that, Héctor.”
I’d gone through inhuman torture as well in Hell, and I nearly broke.
“Don’t fuss, Lamb,” said Héctor as he cut my steak for me. “It was a long time ago, and I killed all of my tormentors. The past holds nothing on me as I look forward to a future with my beloved mate.”
There was still so much I didn’t know about my mates, but I had an eternity to get to know them. I just had to make sure we all survived.
“If we won’t have food for a while, then we need to pack food and water to last at least a week when we leave your tower,” I said. Giving it another thought, I added, “Make that two weeks, just in case.”
Héctor had been a mortal for only a couple of days. I doubted he truly understood how fragile and high maintenance a mortal could be.
“It doesn’t work that way, child,” Lilith said. “Everything in the Realm of the Ivory Tower is made of magic. It can’t exist outside it.”
Great. Just great.
I regarded my mates as they devoured their food. Men ate at a different pace than women, even demigods. When it came to food and sex, they were my cavemen.
For a second, the cozy scene of dining with my mates and Mom filled my heart with warmth and contentment, something I hadn’t felt for a long time.
“You’ll be fine with your demigods and mortal looking after you, Belle,” Mom said softly. “That’s why I had to test them, to make sure they weren’t as rotten as Lucifer. I won’t let my daughter be shackled to unworthy males.” She scanned them one by one critically, yet with approval. “Congratulations, you’ve all passed the tests. Your hearts are loyal and true for my daughter. You have enough love for her to carry her to eternity. So I allow you to stay by her side.”
“I trusted them before you tested them,” I muttered. But I couldn’t deny that a small part of me was insecure. It was nearly impossible for anyone to settle down with even one partner in the era of the Great Merge. And the four of them? The most powerful, gorgeous males on Earth had to share me. I had to make sure I was enough for them. I still had a hard time processing that I was the one fortunate woman who caught their eyes and hearts.
And more than once, I felt this was just too good to be true. So if they ever walked away from me and chose other women, I wouldn’t blame them much, though my heart would be shattered.
No, that wouldn’t be the case. If they ever cheated on me, I’d shove the steel heel of my boot into their sorry asses.
Why did I keep having all these conflicting emotions?
“You could have just asked me about my mates and trusted my good judgment.” I gave Mom a hard look. “You didn’t have to go to such extremes and order the succubi to molest my mates. They were naked in front of them! Did you think I liked seeing that? What were you thinking, Mom?!”
I paused a second to get my emotions back under control, drinking more fabulous coffee.
Mom only smiled at me.
“What if they had failed?” I couldn’t help but ask. I was curious.
“Things would have ended badly.” Mom sipped her wine. “They’d have been sent to the Eternal Realm of Emptiness and Misery, wandering, wailing, and repenting to no end. They would never escape, and never get a second chance.”
I shuddered. “That’s cruel! They don’t deserve that even if they had chosen others over me.”
Yet my mates didn’t even flinch at Mom’s words, as if they thought the punishment was just.
“No one can promise that life is easy and fair, my soft-hearted child,” Mom said, reaching to ruffle my hair. “Your mates agree with my methods to weed out the weak.”
I ducked. My hair was already wild. I didn’t need Mom to mess it up more. No matter the circumstances, I needed to maintain at least a passable appearance to keep my mates interested.
“Any dickhead who betrays you can rot in the Misery Realm,” Héctor said as he finger-picked a honeyed and spicy buffalo wing, ready to consume it. He gave Paxton, Zak, and Axel a glare to make his point before biting into the wing.
“See?” Mom grinned. “They all agree.” She twirled her fingers, and the used plates and half-consumed dishes disappeared. A second later, more food appeared to replace them.
I drained the coffee and gestured for Mom to refill the mug.
“I do not fully agree, Queen Lilith,” Zak said unhappily and put down a salad bowl. “You haven’t tested me. Why was I excluded?”
I blinked.
I wondered about that too, and a pang of guilt jabbed me. I often paid less attention to Zak than to my other mates, mostly beca
use he didn’t demand my attention, not like Axel. And sometimes I felt that I didn’t get the Demigod of Sky, even though I loved and desired him as much as I did my other mates.
Mom rolled her eyes. “You were the unfeeling one for eons until you met my daughter. You don’t and won’t feel for anyone except for Marigold. No sense in wasting resources beating a dead horse.”
A wave of sadness washed over me at Mom’s opinions of Zak.
Zak was the bastard son of Zeus, the King of the Gods. Zak seldom talked about himself. Héctor once told me that Zak was one of the few demigods brought up in Olympus and was treated like second class.
Raised in the cold, brutal, and cut-throat environment, the sky demigod never thought he was good enough, and he couldn’t escape his fate as nothing but Zeus’s tool and weapon. When Ares came to Earth to rule and recruited him, Zak accepted the offer, but he still couldn’t feel anything. He was as cold as stone until he met me at Half-Blood Academy. I’d unlocked deep feelings in him, and I felt his profound love for me. But he was careful about showering me with his affections, not wanting to overwhelm me.
I needed to be a better mate for Zak. Once we put some distance between ourselves and all the dangers of the Void, I’d tell him that I accepted him unconditionally and would try to get him to open up more.
“I’m not a dead horse,” Zak grated. “I just wanted the same courtesy to prove my undying love and loyalty to my Rosebud! I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
“Whatever,” Mom said.
“I don’t get it either, Lilith.” Axel grated at my mother. “Why was I tested? You thought those naked women in my bed could interest me? Not a damn chance. But you hurt my Cookie by throwing those unwelcome succubi at me. This is about my father, isn’t it? I’m nothing like Ares!”
His father’s betrayal had wounded Axel deeply. He’d looked up to the God of War as his hero all his life until Ares had tried to take me from his son’s bed and then tried to kill me after failing. That prick messed up my war demigod mate badly, and it would take time for Axel to bounce back.
