Fate’s grandchild. I blinked at her, about to argue, but realized she was right. Four of the individuals who called Deva “daughter” were effectively Fate’s own children. I hoped to fuck he’d lean toward a sentimental old grandfather and wouldn’t use that connection against her, but the fact that he was even on her trail and had abducted an innocent turul in the process made me question his motives.
“Speaking of links, this latest stunt of yours . . .” She reached up and grabbed my lower lip, yanking it down so I was forced to bend over with an inarticulate complaint as pain shot through my face. Her fingertips dug into the bite mark on the inside of my lip and she drew back, holding her bloody fingertip up in front of me.
“Ow, fuck!” I rubbed my mouth and glared at her.
“You traded blood with a satyr, you fool. He’ll know all your secrets and I’ve seen how he looks at her. Do you trust him not to tell her?”
Anger surged fresh inside me and I flexed my battered fist until my knuckles cracked. But at the same time, a hot wave of arousal rose through my body. Llyr’s blood probably liked the idea of hate sex even more than mine did. The connection between us flared with the thought of his name, and in an instant he was inside my head. It only took a split-second for me to convey the worry my grandmother had spoken before I had my answer.
“I refuse to pursue her until she can see beyond the blood meld to the truth once more. Your secret is as much mine now as it is yours.”
“I trust him,” I said, though I kind of hated that I did. I wanted more reasons to hate the fucker, but it seemed like he was proving himself a worthy guardian for Deva at every turn. He’d keep my secret for her protection.
“Good, then you all need to discuss your next move. I must return before I am missed.”
* * *
“Is my mother safe?” Bodhi asked, cornering me the second I opened the door and slipped back out into the main room of the hotel suite.
For a second, I just stared at the human, not quite comprehending what in the world his mother had to do with anything. Then I cursed, remembering Maddie Dylan’s willingness to help and the sense of comforting familiarity I had whenever I stepped foot into the Dylans’ house. They were bloodline and may all be in danger if Fate was on a rampage and targeting people with a thread of connection to Deva.
Llyr and I exchanged a quick glance, no words necessary to convey our understanding.
“I’ll go,” I said, for the benefit of the others. “Willem, with me. The rest of you stay with Deva.”
Distance from Deva may not matter anymore if Fate had found her, but after the look she’d given me when I’d arrived, I felt better avoiding contact for the time being.
Willem nodded and grasped my outstretched hand. I’d drifted often enough under someone else’s power that I understood how it worked. Having the power myself was new, but one impulsive drift had been enough to imprint the process on my mind.
The pulling sensation began at my navel, and soon we were hurtling through the flow of magic. A dizzy rush overtook me and I barely managed to regain focus in time to direct us to the location I had targeted in my mind’s eye.
We appeared on the widow’s walk of the Dylans’ big Victorian, the sun on the horizon a fiery blaze casting the Pacific into a bloody hue. I tore down the stairs, skin prickling at the chilling sound of resonant growling that drifted up from below. Fucking hell, I hoped we weren’t too late.
Willem pushed past me on his longer legs, taking the steps two at a time. He tore through the door and into the house, then down to the first floor. I barely kept up, darting looks into each of the rooms as we passed and calling out Maddie’s name.
When we made it to the parlor, seven startled faces looked up at us. Maddie stood from the piano, wide-eyed when she recognized me.
“Is my son all right?”
“He’s fine, but we need to get you out of here. You’re in danger.”
Willem cast his silver gaze around then moved to the front door in the direction of the rising volume of growls. “They’re here,” he said. “Get her out, I’ll hold them off.”
He widened his stance and backed up several feet from the door in the wide foyer of the house. He wasn’t about to fucking shift, was he? His horns appeared and his skin rippled with shining white scales, yet he remained mostly human.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Go. Come back for me.”
With a quick nod, I said to Maddie, “You first. Take my hand.” I didn’t want to confess my worry that drifting with passengers was new to me. I’d arrived with Willem just fine but he wasn’t a stranger to traveling that way, while Maddie was. I also hoped that she was the only one in any real danger. The others—her sisters and her mother—all appeared to have partners, and I hoped that meant they were all soul mates.
Maddie nodded and reached out to me. This time it was easier to summon the magic, though it felt strange and heavy once it flooded me. Nothing like the Wind when I used it to fuel my power.
I didn’t waste time once we landed in the hotel room with the others, instantly drifting back to help Willem once Bodhi had his arms around his mother.
But when I arrived the second time, the Dylan house was free of the growls. Willem still stood at the door, waiting. Susannah and Maddie’s two sisters were gathered around behind him, their partners all by their sides looking determined to defend their home at all costs. The hounds were gone.
Willem gave me a small shrug. “They were on the porch just as you left, then they were gone.” He looked around at the others and tilted his head, his eyes flickering with his power as he viewed their auras. “You all have soul bonds with your mates.”
“Does that mean we’re safe?” Susannah asked. “Maddie doesn’t have a soul mate. Hell, if I’d known I would have worked harder to find her a man. We got on fine without for all this time so it didn’t make sense to bother.”
She turned to pierce me with a steely look. “You keep my daughter and grandson safe from those monsters. I could feel them. Something wasn’t right about them . . . they were different from before.”
They’re different hounds,” I said. “The ones who bit you before are under Deva’s control. These though . . .” I moved to the piano and played a brief melody. “If you feel like you’re in danger, sing or play this tune. The words don’t matter, just the melody. I’ll be able to hear it and can come. These hounds will kill, but I don’t think they harm you if you have a soul mate.”
Each of Maddie’s two other daughters stepped closer to their partners. Within the circle of Gus’s arms, Susannah said, “Go make sure my girl and her son are safe. And take care of that pretty girl of yours too.”
I started to object to her assertion of Deva as “mine” but shut my mouth instead. I nodded and turned to Willem. “Ready?” He clapped a hand on my shoulder for the ride back, my stomach twisting more from dread than from the pull of the current that powered the drift.
23
Deva
I huddled into my robe in the center of the big bed, ignoring the repeated knocks on the door from each of the men who waited outside. I couldn’t bear to look at any of them and wished like hell that I hadn’t ever entertained Rohan’s suggestion that I mate all of them.
All of them. What the fuck had I been thinking? I may be flying under Fate’s radar, but some other divine force out there must be fucking with me. I’d succeeded in mating two amazing men, who’d been selfless enough to sacrifice pieces of their very souls to me. Yet I couldn’t be with them both without experiencing agony. It wasn’t exactly physical pain either, but a body-wrenching emotionally crushing sense of feedback deep within.
Bodhi might be the answer but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I understood Llyr completely on one point. He refused to let me give into that strange and confounding desire to trust him, to be with him, that hadn’t existed yesterday. He rejected that trust because he knew it wasn’t based on my true feelings for him.
Just like him
, I didn’t want Bodhi to agree to be with me for any reason besides his own desire or affection. He was too kind, too likely to sacrifice his own needs for my sake.
Llyr had warned me about Ozzie, but his words couldn’t have prepared me for what I experienced once he’d arrived. The man I once adored, looked up to as a mentor and protector, longed for as a lover—he had changed just as much as Llyr. Only now that sense of betrayal sank in deep and I found it hard to let him touch me. But the most confusing part of seeing him was the sense that we had known each other for far longer than the past year. When I’d looked into Ozzie’s eyes, the love I felt for him had seemed to stretch out into an eternity, which made that sense of betrayal hurt all the more.
I hadn’t been unaware of the effects of a blood meld, but until today, my understanding of them had been limited to the stories told by my family. The nymphaea were the only race who could draw power from bodily fluids. Their mating ritual involved exchanging their essence three times with a lover, the third time signifying an official mating. But for the past three thousand years that exchange only involved sexual fluids, not blood.
Blood melding had been outlawed ages ago, thanks to our old enemy. Meri’s abuse of the blood meld had birthed the Ultiori and resulted in all the races being hunted. Half of the nymphaea race had been decimated. Nearly all the males were killed, their blood drained to use for Meri’s purposes. Only Llyr and his fellow Thiasoi soldiers had lived. The remaining female nymphaea could procreate with human men, but without males of their own blood they hadn’t produced any male offspring in thousands of years. My little cousin Sylvanus was the first satyr to be born since the Ultiori were vanquished, proving at least that the nymphs could produce satyrs if they bred with the other higher races—just not humans.
But when someone was infused with nymphaea blood along with the blood of another higher race, more interesting things occurred. My aunt Evie and uncle Marcus were evidence of that. My own father, too. Evie was a turul, the race dictated by Fate to have only a single true mate—their One. Fate had decreed that the immortal dragon Ked was Evie’s true mate. Yet when Marcus was infused with Ked’s blood as a captive of the Ultiori, Evie then recognized Marcus as her mate just as strongly as the big black dragon himself.
Similarly, Evie’s brothers would not have loved my father Nikhil so dearly had he not been infused with the blood of their One, my stepmother Belah.
And now I was cursed with the same confusion of feelings, it seemed. My link to Llyr was a blood link—a bond that would never fade, though it only went one way since I had yet to give him my blood. His exchange of blood with Ozzie must have extended that bond to the turul I loved, and the love I felt for Ozzie had been transferred to Llyr. But along with that exchange had gone the hatred and betrayal, things I never wanted to feel for Ozzie.
I couldn’t look at either of them now without wondering who the feelings were meant for. And I couldn’t look at Ro or Keagan without craving them both in my bed.
I grabbed a pillow and hugged it to my chest, burying my face in it and groaning in frustration. I looked up when I heard the door to the room crack open.
“Go away!” I snapped in irritation.
A dark head with delicate, feminine features appeared. “Honey, you can’t sit in here and wallow alone all night. Can I come in and sit with you?”
“Maddie?” I let out a deep breath and scrambled off the bed, running into the woman’s arms. “Oh thank Gaia you’re safe. What about Susannah and your sisters?”
She squeezed me tight, then pulled back. “Ozzie seems to think they’re safe enough, seeing as how they all have soul mates. Bodhi and I are the odd ones out.” She held me at arm’s length, frowning. “What the hell made you cry, girl? Or should I say who? Please tell me Bodhi didn’t do something to hurt you.”
I swiped my hands across my eyes and shook my head, laughing softly. “No, Bodhi didn’t do anything. It isn’t anyone’s fault really.” I thought about what Llyr and Ozzie had done to complicate things but decided that couldn’t have been helped either, and Maddie didn’t really need to know.
Slumping down on the end of the bed, I sighed. “I thought it would be easier.”
“How complicated can it be?” she asked, settling beside me and taking my hand in hers. Her fingers were surprisingly strong beneath her smooth, warm-brown skin. Staring down at our hands, I was struck yet again at how closely she resembled my own biological mother, at least when Mom looked human, which wasn’t often lately. She was an otherworldly creature with fire in her veins—literally—and it tended to shine through when she was emotional, making her resemble a glowing ember that was just as hot as it looked.
But Maddie’s touch comforted me the same way Mom’s did, and some of the tension eased out of me when she squeezed my hand in hers. “Either you guys love each other, or you don’t. I don’t see how it would make a difference how many of them feel that way, unless they’ve got a problem with it.” She said the words as though they were a challenge for any of the guys to dare object.
“They do. I do, mostly. It’s complicated. I mean, you’re right. It shouldn’t be, but it is because of me. I can’t be with all of them. At least not without—” I stopped short, realizing I was talking to the mother of the one man who could help me be with all the others. I wasn’t a fool; if I could sort out my feelings for Llyr and Ozzie, I needed them to make myself whole as much as I needed the others. Bodhi gave me hope, but I had no choice but to wait for him.
“Spit it out, girl. Don’t make me get my mama. Trust me, you don’t want Susannah Dylan to light into you about honesty.”
“It’s Bodhi,” I whispered.
Maddie tutted like she was disappointed and I laid a hand on her arm.
“No, he didn’t do anything wrong. I feel the same way about him as I do the others. But he just needs more time. The problem is I can’t be with the others together unless he’s part of it. And I mean all-in. Please don’t tell him. I know if you did, he’d do it out of a sense of honor and sacrifice and I don’t want that.”
Maddie nodded sagely, then looked toward the closed door and chuckled. “That boy always was the one who kept the peace in our house. Mom and I would fight something fierce, and don’t get me started on the fights I had with my sisters. Even as a kid he’d come into the room and just be himself and somehow we couldn’t stay fighting. I don’t know if I can keep quiet about it though. Not if you’re hurting like this.”
I squeezed her hand and shook my head. “Not yet. I promised him that I would help you first. I intend to keep that promise so don’t fight it, all right? Let us find you a soul mate. Then maybe we can revisit the idea of telling him the truth.”
She looked like she was about to object, but I squeezed her hand again and gave her an emphatic look. She finally exhaled slowly and nodded. “He looks happier than he’s been since the attack. I think as long as he has all of you at his back, I can be satisfied that he’s okay. But if it isn’t meant to happen for me, I don’t want you to waste any time, you got it?”
I nodded just as a heavy rapping vibrated the door. I recognized it as Keagan’s intense, direct pounding and relented, inviting him to come in.
Keagan nodded politely at Maddie as he stepped in and closed the door behind him. “Sorry for the interruption, but princess I’m not the only one going crazy with worry out there.”
“I’ll be out in a minute.” I waved him off, but he scowled and stalked toward me. Maddie stood and wandered into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
“Deva, listen to me,” Keagan said, sinking down to his knees in front of me. “I knew the second I set eyes on you that you’d be a complicated woman. Whatever has you spooked, you need to know that Ro and I aren’t going anywhere. We’re yours, even if we need to work out a schedule to be with you. I love the guy but I won’t deny that the idea of having you all to myself has its appeal. And even if I have to take turns sharing you with all the others, that only makes the t
ime you and I spend together all the more important to me. My point is . . .” He paused and pressed his lips together then let out a harsh laugh. “Ah, fuck. My point is I love you and I’m okay with not sharing, but if you want all of us, maybe Llyr can do whatever the fuck he did earlier to make that possible again.”
I bit my lip, overwhelmed by his sentiment, but the feeling was tempered by his assumption about Llyr’s involvement in our earlier tryst. Even though I wanted all of them, the dishonesty about what that required ate at me. I glanced at Maddie who appeared again in the bathroom doorway. She looked back at me with raised brows.
Looking back at Keagan I leaned forward, curling my fingers into his hair as I kissed him. “I love you too. I think I’m fine with keeping it simple until we figure out a long-term solution. But the fact is, we have bigger things to worry about.”
“Yeah, about that . . . you need to come out and hear what the Maestro has to say. He’s antsy as fuck about getting on the road. As if he wants the band to go on tour or something, only we all know we’d be running from Fate.”
On tour? An excited shiver cascaded through me. Making music with them all, as a band, was one of my earliest fantasies. Ever since Ozzie had told me about Fate’s Fools and shared their music with me, I’d craved that kind of experience. The higher races weren’t big on electricity in their sacred homes, but he’d brought me an MP3 player loaded with music on one of his early visits. I’d loved it at first, but then it just made me morose because I didn’t see an end to my cloistered life being shuttled around between each of the four higher realms.
Fate's Fools Box Set Page 55
