by Aja James
If the raised hairs on Jade’s nape was any indication, Eveline possessed the Gift. Trust Ramses to walk on the wild side. It took iron-clad balls to consort with witches, never mind Mate one.
“Not to worry, Pure One,” Jade stopped teasing to placate in a serious, no-nonsense tone, “we merely chatted in his throne room where anyone could see.”
“A lot goes on in his throne room,” the Seer said cryptically, her eyes glinting rather frighteningly, not at all appeased by this information.
Jade realized that she’d miscalculated; she should never have embarked on this little game. Now she set about putting the irascible Seer at ease in earnest.
“Eveline,” Jade spoke her name firmly, trying to shake the green-eyed monster loose of her.
“Nothing happened. We debated possible scenarios if our forces were to forge a formal alliance. Boring vampire politics, that was all. We didn’t even touch hands. Everything was tucked away and buttoned up. The male is indisputably yours, you know. You should never doubt him.”
Eveline blinked again. The red haze of violence seemed to clear from her eyes.
“I don’t doubt him,” she said readily. “It’s all the other people I have to watch out for. They all want a piece of him.”
“I don’t,” Jade assured her. “I have all the man I need.”
Eveline sighed, finally calm again.
“I know. I see it whenever you and Seth are together. I know. It’s not every day the most powerful vampire queen in the world gives up her throne to be with the male she loves. Do you ever regret it?”
Jade could see the real question in the other woman’s eyes. She wondered whether Ramses would ever regret Mating her. Whether being with a Pure One would make his life so much more difficult, put him in more dangerous and precarious situations.
“I don’t,” Jade answered with absolute conviction. “It might surprise you to know this, but I never wanted to be queen. I simply wanted to be independently powerful, to not have to rely on any man.”
“But you rely on Seth, don’t you?”
“Yes. But it is by my own choice. We take care of each other. We are strong for each other. It is an equal partnership. And I am beyond happy to be his.”
Eveline nodded, the air finally clearing between them.
“Me too. I feel the same way about Ramses. His love brings out my best self. I feel…I don’t know…I feel so much more centered, so much more powerful when I’m with him. There’s an energy between us that’s—”
“Addictive.”
“Undeniable.”
“All-encompassing.”
“Crazy intense.”
The two women shared equally satisfied, beatific grins.
After a few beats of comfortable silence, Eveline said, “So you discussed politics. Did Ramses come to a decision?”
Jade gave a hesitant nod.
“On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That I take the position of Viceroy at his side.”
Eveline’s eyebrows elevated.
“Well, not precisely at his side. More metaphorically. He wants me to take possession of one of the vampire hives that he recently folded under his wing, so to speak. Apparently, after a failed Challenge for the throne, civil unrest ensued. The queen is dead, and so is her second. Ramses wants me to rule again. This time, over one of the hives in his alliance.”
Eveline blinked that wide-eyed, baby-bird blink, mulling over this information.
“I think that’s a great idea,” she finally said. “What do you think? Have you told Seth yet?”
Jade shook her head.
“Not yet. I am biding my time. The last time I ruled a hive, he hadn’t been…my equal. I hurt him gravely with my selfishness.”
“But not this time,” Eveline stately confidently, not asking a question.
“No, not this time. I would rule with him by my side. As my Blooded Mate. It won’t be easy by any stretch of the imagination. I would need to establish authority quickly and comprehensively. There will likely be bloodshed, the overt sort of violence and the subversive kind. I will need to consult with both Ramses and Sophia to borrow, perhaps for an extended period of time, some trusted warriors for my Chosen, for I doubt they will be easy to find in the chaos-embroiled, lie-infested hive that remains.”
She paused in her plotting to emphasize the most important prerequisite.
“But only if Seth agrees. Else, I am content to remain with him here and help Ramses and the Pure Ones however I can.”
Eveline’s gray-blue eyes softened as she smiled.
“He will support you, Jade. You should tell him. Whether or not you want or need it, you are born to be a queen. That is what I think. You are as formidable as you are fair. The Dark Ones need more rulers like you.”
Jade took a bracing breath and diverted their attention back to where she began when she came into the library.
“Have you found what you’re looking for? Is there anything I can do to help?”
Eveline busied her hands with stacking and arranging some papers together.
“This is what I know: I believe we are nearing the end of a cycle, or perhaps the beginning of a new one. Past and future move in never ending cycles. Only the choices made in the present can shape the passage of time. History has been repeating itself. I’ve seen so many instances of it.”
“Such as?” Jade prodded.
“So many of our different Kinds are thrown in one another’s path. In the past, such…mixed unions…were strictly forbidden. Yet, in the present, we have chosen to forge a new future together, couple by couple, breaking the laws that have always governed the Immortals. We are making different choices. The future is completely uncertain. The Orb of Prophesy no longer speaks to me. Not since right after Rain chose Valerius as her Consort for the Phoenix Cycle.”
“Yes,” Jade mused, considering her words. “I understand what you mean.”
She and Seth were one of those forbidden couples. So were Ramses and Eveline. Tal and Ishtar. Inanna and Gabriel. And many more.
Perhaps there were even more that they didn’t know about, out there in the world. Perhaps this was all leading to something…
Fateful.
“Beings so rare that we once thought of as myths and legends are proven to be truth,” Eveline continued. “Animal Spirits. Elementals.”
She looked at her own hands as if the answers were written in her fingertips.
“I never knew my own powers until I met Ramses. I don’t think I’ve discovered all of my Gifts, but I think…no, I know I am a Fire Elemental.”
Jade looked at her alertly.
“There are others like me, I am sure of it. Right in front of us. Though they don’t know their Gifts either. Perhaps we are all preparing instinctively for what’s to come.”
“Dragons,” Jade murmured.
Eveline met her gaze.
“And the wrath of vengeful gods.”
Chapter Fourteen
Her creation had been silent as a tomb for the past twenty-four hours.
Rather apropos, since he was encased in a vessel that would have been a form-fitting tomb in the event that the transformation process killed him.
But more than the forced stillness, the Creature’s vitals were also eerily quiet, as monitored by the various machines she’d plugged him to. His faint heartbeat was an occasional blip on the monitor; his blood pressure so low, any human physician would have pronounced him dead already. His brain waves certainly showed no activity, not even the ghost of a thought.
He was alive, however. Though barely.
It usually took longer than this to turn one lump of clay into something different. Something other. But, then, she’d been dosing the Creature with various chemicals, both organic and inorganic, for almost as long as he’d been in Medusa’s “care.”
Sometimes, it was at Medusa’s behest. Sometimes, Lilith slipped in a few tests, as well as slipped out blood and ot
her fluids, bone marrow and organ tissue, from the shape-shifter, unbeknownst to both of them.
After all this time, several millennia of experimentation in a sense, he was putty to be molded in her hands, primed for transformation. It could be any moment that the keys in his body would click into place. Any moment, he could awaken in a new form, even though he would most probably still retain his original Gifts.
He just needed the right trigger.
Presently, he was simply…hibernating. Like a somnolent caterpillar inside its chrysalis. Perhaps his body was rebuilding the reserves it depleted to survive the transformation.
She unlatched a mechanism that overlaid the top portion of his coffin-cum-test tube, revealing his pale face beneath the thick, bullet-proof glass.
“You are quite beautiful in your true form,” she noted objectively, ever the distant, emotionless researcher.
“You’ve never shown Medusa or me, no matter how we tried to make you. What a clever, resourceful little creature you are, to have hidden yourself for so long.”
She brushed her fingers over the glass, as if she were touching the features of his face. Across bold, black brows that slashed elegantly over his closed eyes. Eyelashes so long and thick anyone would have mistaken him for a female if not for the diamond-cut angles of his nose, jaw and cheekbones. The long, corded column of his throat and the obvious bump of his Adam’s Apple in the middle of the hollow.
And those rose-colored, full, generous lips. They would make any girl green with envy. And any man immediately imagine what they would feel like wrapped around his cock.
Lilith could well understand why Medusa used the Creature for more…prurient services to get what she wanted from various allies, enemies and spies. Even if he never revealed his true form as he did her bidding, there was something about him. Something innately compelling, tantalizing. Sensual and sexual.
Lilith could not put her finger on it, but she didn’t care enough to continue ruminating.
“Pity that it does nothing for me. Your unique allure. All I care about is your ultimate form. It will surely be magnificent.”
All that black hair and pale, moonstone skin. He was so tall in his true form, much taller than any of the shapes and figures he assumed in disguise, of either sex. Six and a half feet of long, lean limbs, if she wasn’t mistaken. It was hard to tell when he was horizontal instead of on his feet.
Broad shoulders and narrow hips. Hard but malleable muscles that would enable him to move like a dancer, flowing, instead of stomping. Light and airy. Smooth and silky. Large, vein-wrapped hands with long, elegant fingers. Even his feet were attractive, what little she’d glimpsed of them before encasing him in the steel vessel.
As Lilith learned from her experiment with Medusa and herself, their monster form would take somewhat after their humanoid forms. The two heads of the Hydra, when Medusa and she still shared the body, looked completely different.
The one with the slitted yellow eyes that spewed corrosive poison had been Medusa’s head. Likely the result of the injections Lilith subjected her to over many millennia. The one with black eyes and hellfire was hers. Only one head remained, after Medusa’s destruction.
For now.
“I wonder which type you will be…” she mused out loud, her eyes glittering in the darkness of the cave, roving curiously across the Creature’s pallid features.
Strangely, though his vitals were lethargic and weak, there was something intensely defiant in his face. His jaw looked as if it was clenched in fury, his brow furrowed with determination.
He was strong, Lilith always knew. His soul stronger than any she’d ever encountered before. He was a survivor, just like her. They would be unbeatable together.
But not as team.
No, she’d never have an equal.
There had been a time…a time before time…when she’d relied on, shared everything, and tied her fate to another. When heaven, earth and hell had been theirs to rule. When she’d felt no lack, only fullness. No pain or regret. No sadness or longing. She’d trusted that everything would always be the same. She never thought about breaking the laws of the universe because there was nothing to gain. They already reigned supreme. Herself and her other.
Two halves of the same coin. The perfect balance for each other.
Look where that complacency had gotten her…
And then, despite everything she lost and suffered, punished equally but differently for a crime her partner committed against the Universal Balance, she’d survived on her own. Relying on wits, cunning, trickery. She’d been powerless. Defenseless. Relegated to being a parasite among Immortals. The lowest of the low—a fox spirit who could only pretend to be the skin she wore, but never the real thing.
She’d suffered as a Pure One, Dark One, human, animal…But because she was never truly one of them, only wearing their skins, she never enjoyed the “benefits.” The strength and purity of a Pure One. The insatiable lust and dominance of a Dark One. The wildness and freedom of an animal spirit. And even the mundane, childish, averageness of a human.
She’d always been on the outside looking in. Emulating, but not feeling. Sometimes, she could almost sympathize, but never could she empathize.
If Medusa had called her a “sadistic sociopath,” there was good reason for it. She had no real appreciation of “humanity,” of the lessons she was supposed to learn when she was cursed and trapped in this form.
She was probably not a sadist in the truest sense of the word, however. It didn’t make her “happy” or feel stimulated when she inflicted pain. She just didn’t care enough about the suffering of others. She was merely curious what their reaction to various forms of stimuli would be. A means to an end.
Pain was simply the most expedient and readily available stimulus. And it just so happened that her experiments required the subjects to endure quite a bit of it. Even if there were ways to numb the pain for Immortals, as there was for humans, she wouldn’t bother. She simply didn’t care about their suffering.
Until she met him.
After eons alone, she longed again for the closeness and affinity of another. She’d let him inside as she’d never done before, joined with him in body and mind.
He’d been so bright, so full of irresistible light and joy. She’d wanted to consume him whole. Devour him and make him part of her.
But that was the tricky part of souls—each one was unique and independent. She could bind herself to him, wrap herself around him as tightly as a thorny vine. But he would always remain separate from her. To have him fully, she would have had to make herself vulnerable too, so that he could have her in return.
She couldn’t do it fully. Expose her weaknesses like that. Even to him. She was determined that she had no weaknesses. Her parasitic fox spirit forms were abhorrently weak enough. Thus, though they’d been Mates, they hadn’t truly Bonded.
Besides, she hadn’t truly been Pure.
But she lost him too. Her tiny slice of heaven after an eternity of Darkness.
Never again. She’d never submit to another. She would ever only be above.
She’d be a god.
“What will you look like?” she continued to muse over the Creature’s dragon form. “Something sleek and dangerous, most likely, given your humanoid form.”
Pale scales with black mane? Four claws or two? What magical powers would he have?
She was so very curious.
“You will serve me well, Creature. Or I’ll crush you like a worm beneath my claws and create another. After all, your spawn has all of the necessary ingredients already. He simply needs time to form fully. One day, he will no doubt surpass you.”
Her blood-red lips curled with anticipation.
“I cannot wait to meet him.”
She closed the window over her creation’s face, then, and sealed him back inside the coffin.
Which was why she didn’t see the Creature’s lips part in a savage snarl, baring two rows of tightly packed, r
azor-sharp dragon teeth.
*** *** *** ***
A couple hours before the first rays of dawn, Dalair carried a bonelessly replete Sophia back into the cave behind the concealing waterfall curtain.
He quickly checked on the boy, who slumbered obliviously on, as children seemed to have the unique capacity to do when exhausted. Then, he joined Sophia’s sleeping form by the entrance of the cave.
Both of them still naked, he curled his body around hers from behind, lifted her thigh, and slowly pushed his still hard and pulsing erection inside her tight, swollen-slick channel.
She moaned in her sleep and clenched reflexively around his aching flesh, locking him even deeper inside her.
He laid one arm beneath her head so that she could use his bicep as a pillow, pulled the thin blanket she had around both of them, and wound his other arm possessively around her waist, his hand cupping her mons from the front.
This was how they would always be together. His body inside hers, wrapped around her. Giving her pleasure, strength, providing protection.
In return, she was his home. His sanctuary. She would take all of his pleasure and pain and guard his secrets, all of the vulnerabilities and weaknesses he showed only to her.
His thumb strummed lightly across her pearl, his face buried against the back of her neck.
She smelled so good, his Sophia. The elusive notes of Lady of the Night Orchid infused with her own unique scent of innocence, passion, darkness and light. Even though he’d known her in two incarnations, Kira and Sophia, and even though everything about these two women were different—looks, personality, experiences—somehow, she always smelled the same.
His soul recognized hers.
Always.
His muscles tightened around her, his cock hardening and thickening even further to Claim her.
Automatically, she fisted him tighter within her core, her inner muscles milking him even in slumber.
“Dalair…” she sighed, her orgasms surging and ebbing through her like gentle waves.
“Love you…”
As if her words were a command, his body answered by giving her everything he had.
