Fate's Fools Box Set

by Bell, Ophelia

  “What the fuck are they doing here?” I gritted, jabbing a finger at the couple Iszak still held hands with. They were the two people I least wanted to see, and the reason for half the hell I’d endured.

  Lukas gave me a shocked look and stuck his hands in his pockets. “We were about to leave, actually, but Nyx grabbed us before we could go. Glad to see you back, buddy.”

  “We’re all glad, Ozzie,” the Blue Beast added, her voice smooth as silk. The fucking Blue Beast was holding hands with my cousin. What the actual fuck?

  I held my hands out, shaking my head. “There’s no fucking way this is real. No fucking way. Lukas, tell me this isn’t what it looks like. That mark . . .”

  I pointed at the glowing emblem on the side of his neck and blanched when I saw Iszak’s matching one.

  I avoided looking at the other two figures—the pair who had wrought nightmares upon the higher races for my entire existence, the worst of them occurring within the last three years. One of my bitterest memories was of the day I’d met the Blue Beast, believing she was mate material, only to have her brutal lover show up and lure her away, leaving me beaten and broken in a dark alley.

  “Do you know who they fucking are?” I snarled. “You fear the Ultiori, don’t you? They are the Ultiori!”

  Lukas’ mouth fell open and Iszak released her hand.

  “Whoa, dude,” Iszak said. “Just back the fuck up for a second. That’s old news. Really old fucking news, all right? She was our One. Fate chose her for us. He’s part of the package.”

  “And you’re fucking okay with that?” I barked. By the fucking Winds, this world wasn’t better—everyone here was fucking insane.

  “He kills dragons!” I yelled, pointing at Nikhil. They’d said something about him earlier, but I couldn’t remember what. Being face-to-face with him had kicked my adrenaline into high gear, but I had nowhere to run.

  Nikhil grunted and glanced around the room at the others. “You sure you found the right man? This doesn’t sound like my daughter’s Ozzie.”

  “He is,” Llyr rumbled. “He’s just misinformed. We hoped seeing familiar faces would help. Apparently where he’s been, Fate doesn’t exist.”

  I didn’t see how that was particularly relevant, but the Blue Beast turned her gaze to the pair of Dionarchs and sighed.

  “That would have changed many things,” she said. “In a world without Fate, I would have never thought to search for Iszak and Lukas. Would have never fallen for them. It was their love that helped me remain strong enough to help Nikhil break Meri’s hold on his mind. He is not the man he was when you met him, Ozzie. You don’t need to fear him, or me. We’re your family.”

  I stared at Lukas, seeking some kind of validation. I didn’t know what the fuck to believe anymore.

  “How . . .?” I asked, sinking back down on the sofa and grabbing a pillow to try to comfort myself.

  A tentative hand rested on my shoulder, followed by warm curves sinking down at my side. I glanced over as Deva settled on the soft cushions, sliding her arm around my waist. Fuck, she felt good.

  That was when Nikhil’s other comment sank in.

  “You’re his daughter?” I managed to rasp.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Just listen, all right?”

  She gave me a squeeze, and the sensation somehow managed to soothe me. I had no idea what I was in for, but turned back to Lukas for his explanation.

  “Belah found us,” Lukas said. “Nanyo tried to set you up on a date with her—all Belah knew was that Fate sent her dreams of a turul. It wasn’t you, though. You both knew it. We always know when we meet our One.”

  “Or we used to, I guess. That curse has been broken,” Iszak added.

  “If you could call it a curse,” Lukas said. “I wouldn’t, but what’s done is done.

  “Iszak and I both knew she was ours, but Nikhil believed otherwise—he wasn’t exactly right in the head back then. Meri still had a pretty firm grip on his mind. He was her puppet.”

  “He doesn’t speak for himself?” I asked, finally daring to look directly at the man. He was a little less frightening now, though, and I realized he bore glowing marks around his neck and wrists reminiscent of slave shackles. His gaze bore into me as if challenging me to point it out.

  “It’s better for Lukas to tell the story. I dislike reliving it,” Nikhil said.

  “It’s a bit involved, really,” Lukas said, shooting Nikhil a crooked smile, his eyes glinting with a sexual undercurrent that made me blink back at them all in surprise. “But the short version is that a combination of Belah’s and Evie’s magic freed Nikhil from Meri’s mind control.”

  “Evie’s magic? Does that mean she’s still alive?”

  Belah nodded. “Very much alive and mated to my brother Ked. They and their other mate, Marcus, have a son named Sebestyan.”

  I was stunned. Evie’s disappearance and presumed murder had been the catalyst that threw myself and her brothers into a decades-long tailspin of self-destructive behavior. Lukas, Iszak, and I had enlisted in the human military and fought in several wars we had no business getting involved in as turul.

  “All this time?” I managed to blurt, frowning when Iszak cast a grim look at me.

  “No. She was captured and tortured by the Ultiori. It was Ked’s insistence that she was his fated mate that prompted a true search for her. But the day we rescued her was the day Nikhil reclaimed control of his mind. It wasn’t long after that the Ultiori fell. Evie has recovered; she and her mates and child are alive and well in a turul Enclave.”

  “All because of Fate,” I muttered to myself. “Meri, the nymph you all keep mentioning . . . She was behind the Ultiori all along? And she’s dead now—you’re sure of that?”

  “I bled her myself,” Nikhil said, resting his palm against the hilt of a dagger at his belt.

  At my side, Deva said, “If we can restore your memories, you’ll know the rest. My dad and your cousins are good people who you trust. Would you rather remember a world where the Ultiori continued to torment the higher races, or one where they were destroyed? And where their destruction happened thanks to you?”

  I was so thrown by the new . . . old . . . faces, I wasn’t sure how to answer at first. I turned to her and gazed into eyes like rainbows.

  “What exactly could I have done to help?”

  “You loved me enough to protect me,” she said, pressing a hand to my cheek. Then she leaned in and brushed her lips across mine.

  A jolt went through me at the warmth of her mouth. I pulled back and stared at her. Who the hell was this woman? I didn’t know her, but everything I’d learned sure as fuck made me want to.

  “Tell me what you need me to do,” I said. “If it means holding onto this truth—the one where the Ultiori are crushed, where those two aren’t really monsters, where my cousin Evie is still alive—then I’m in.”

  They were all silent, and I looked around the room as they exchanged worried looks with each other.

  “What is it? Do I need to let you mark me?” I asked Deva. “Here. I’m ready.”

  Yanking my shirt open, I bared my chest and the tattoo I’d had inked there after a particularly vivid dream about the design. I’d lied earlier—I had no clue what it meant, only that I’d been compelled to have it embedded in me.

  Deva lifted her hand and traced her fingertips over the design. My groin tightened with arousal.

  “It isn’t that easy. To help us, you need to return your soul gift to me. And to do that, you need to make love to me.”

  “Which I am fully capable of doing, honey. Just point the way to a bed.”

  She winced and shook her head. “You said yourself that you don’t feel that way. It won’t work otherwise.”

  “Are you sure I loved you before?” I asked.

  Her face went ashen, and I hated the uncertainty I saw in her gaze. What the fuck had I done to this poor girl? Whoever I’d been before, that asshole deserved to be alone probably as muc
h as I did.

  “You loved her,” Llyr said with absolute certainty—I could sense it through our strange bond. He fucking adored her, but mixed with it was a sense of disappointment in me. I’d never been the sort of man to fall for a woman on sight, or at all, for that matter. I hadn’t been lying about the curse Ouranos placed on us, so she was right; I couldn’t properly make love to her.

  “Well, I sure don’t have any fucking ideas here,” I said. “If you think returning these lost memories to me will fix me, I’m game, but I won’t make any promises it’ll work. How do we even do that?”

  “Will you permit me a moment?” the Blue Beast said, sauntering closer. I had to suppress the urge to flinch. Dragons as old and powerful as she was were dangerous as fuck, and the fact that she was clad in only a short, mostly transparent slip of a garment didn’t do a thing to make her less intimidating.

  Sex was a weapon for women like her. Nymphs and dragons weren’t to be trusted, at least not in my world, though knowing that they were probably mind controlled by the Ultiori leader to make them that way made a lot more sense now.

  I stood and nodded, resisting the urge to run again. Something about the quiet vulnerability Deva had shown coupled with the stalwart loyalty of her four mates made me want to do whatever I could to complete her. It wasn’t love—after all, I’d just met the girl—but I hadn’t had a sense of purpose in a really fucking long time, and something deep down inside told me she was worth the trouble.

  “What do you need me to do?” I asked when the Blue Beast came close.

  “First, you can stop thinking of me as a beast. That’s a term only Nikhil uses for me anymore. My name is Belah, and Deva is as important to me as my own daughters. Second, all I need you to do is breathe.”

  She reached out and gripped the back of my head. When she leaned in, I was sure she was going to kiss me, and my gaze darted anxiously toward Nikhil, but he only watched.

  She didn’t completely close the distance, though. Before our lips could touch, the scent of rain filled my nostrils and a chill swept through my head, sinking down into my lungs.

  Belah dropped her hands to my shoulders and looked into my eyes, concentrating. The coolness of her power filtered through my mind, and it was as though she were exploring all the myriad rooms within, searching for something she’d lost. Something I’d lost.

  She didn’t get very far before she stopped and frowned at me, her brilliant blue eyes filled with worry.

  “It is like your mind is a prison, but the lock is not on the outside. All these memories are fabrications of Fate, including this curse you believe was placed on you, but your true memories are locked behind a wall I can’t see past—a wall you erected, not Fate.

  “It was not difficult to retrieve you from the plane Fate sent you to, so we have to assume Fate wanted you found. But this . . . this fortress inside your mind is going to take more than my power to breach.”

  “We need to find Fate,” Deva said. “Fate unlocked my lost memories. It could do the same for him, couldn’t it?”

  I turned to her. “What do you mean, your lost memories?”

  “The first time we made love, you were worried about our safety. Fate didn’t like it when the turul bypassed its control and chose their own mates. So we agreed to forget that night when we left the room. I lost the memory entirely after it happened, but by then I had your soul gift, so I was safe.”

  “Except Ozzie never forgot,” Llyr said. When I glanced at him, he shrugged. “Until now, anyway. Perhaps it was a delayed response?”

  “Why would he forget everything else, though? That makes no sense!” Deva insisted.

  I stopped her. “Hold on. Are you saying we just made a pact to forget being together and—” I snapped my fingers. “—that was it?”

  “No. We were in the realm of the gods. The lock on the door allowed us to make requests. I simply requested not to remember once I left the room. It would be harder for Fate to punish us if neither of us had a memory of that night. Fate only took a second to unlock the memories for me.”

  The realm of the gods . . . I didn’t know what the hell to do with that information. I was inclined to sit down and have them all explain every little detail of my history with this woman, but I didn’t think that mattered as much to her as actually reclaiming whatever these lost memories were. I decided to leave that be for now and focus on what we could actually do.

  “This Fate creature—person—whatever . . . How do we find it?” I asked the room at large.

  “You don’t find Fate,” Belah said. “Fate finds you.”

  “That is supremely unhelpful,” I told her. “Where were you when you saw it last?”

  Deva gave me a half-hearted shrug. “It summoned us. Your grandmother came, and then the hounds . . .” Her face lit up. “Sophia! She worked with Fate. She has to know how to get to it. Can you send her a message?”

  She was looking at me, but I turned to Lukas and Iszak. “I’m not exactly on speaking terms with Nanyo—at least not that I recall. I honestly wouldn’t know what to say to her, either.”

  “You were always her favorite,” Lukas said. “Still are, considering the shit she’s gone through lately to help you guys. But no worries, I’ll handle it.”

  He glanced at Nyx and made a twirling motion in the air. The Dionarch lowered the barrier, and the man who was the happiest version of my normally broody cousin I’d ever seen closed his eyes and began moving his lips, his words audible only to those of us who were capable of hearing a turul’s wind whisper.

  When he was finished, he waited, frowning, then opened his eyes. “Weird . . . It doesn’t usually take this long for her to answer.”

  “You did say I was her favorite. I’ll add a postscript.” I quickly whispered, “Lukas really is telling the truth, but my memories are for shit. If you’re not mad at me, please help. Or even if you are, I’m not too proud to beg.”

  Deva lifted her brows at that and I shrugged. “It’s true. I’d like to make this work.”

  Nothing happened, not even a hint of a breeze suggesting we’d been heard.

  “She can hear us from the Haven, right?” I asked.

  “Wherever the winds blow,” Lukas said. “And they don’t disappear from the human world just because the four of them have bodies now.”

  “That’s who those other men were, isn’t it?” I asked. “Zephyrus and his brothers.” I shook my head. “This world is blowing my mind.”

  “It won’t seem so strange, once you remember.”

  “Well, what do we do, wait?”

  “I can try something else,” Deva said. She gave a short, melodic whistle, then crouched, her hands resting flat on the ground while she darted her gaze back and forth. It was a strange display that lasted a few moments before she stood again, looking pleased and hopeful.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  She frowned at me. “I just sent the hounds to find Fate.”

  “What hounds?” I asked, for the first time truly worried about the girl’s sanity.

  “Fuck, you can’t see them anymore, can you?” Keagan asked. When I gave him a blank look, he cursed again. “Listen, we’re obviously going to have to wait a bit for Fate to get its head out of its ass and come help us. Let’s get some food up here and a bottle or two and just lay it all out for you.”

  A faint sense of relief washed through me at his suggestion. “I like the way you think.”

  4

  Deva

  The more time he spent with us, the more Ozzie’s aura brightened. I couldn’t help but wonder how awful the life he’d been trapped in had been to completely leech all passion out of him.

  To him, it had been his entire life; he had no memories whatsoever of a life where Fate existed, and Fate’s absence had apparently caused a ripple effect that extended through the lives of all the higher races. But there were enough similarities between that world and this one that it seemed strange for him to have forgotten us entirel
y.

  He claimed it hadn’t really been torture, just endless disappointment, so if Fate had intended to send him to a sort of hell, it had failed—particularly since it had only taken the four Winds, the Dionarchs, a simple spell, and a few hours to bring him back. I desperately wanted answers, but even after talking for several hours and filling Ozzie in on the events in the real world, we hadn’t heard a peep from Sophia.

  Periodically I reached out to my hounds, only to find them still searching. When I tried to peek through Blaze’s eyes, I saw only a strange, bleak landscape I didn’t recognize. But he was still on a trail, so I pulled back and let them do their jobs.

  We’d shared a meal, and Ozzie was warming up to the other guys. The presence of his cousins helped. They’d started telling stories that, as it turned out, had remained part of Ozzie’s memories from his prison world. Most of the stories seemed to have occurred in Las Vegas, which probably shouldn’t have surprised me.

  It was strange to feel so drawn to him, yet not see the love in his eyes when he looked back at me. If I’d ever doubted his love before, I didn’t now. There had been so many moments over the past few weeks when I wondered how he really felt, despite his emotions being clear in his aura and in the way he looked at me. I’d doubted him because of how he kept pushing me away, but I knew now it was for my safety, not for a lack of love.

  This new version of him clearly regretted that lack, but that didn’t change the fact that the feelings weren’t there.

  I extracted myself from the conversation and slipped away to the edge of the balcony, needing some space, but my worries followed me. I tried to remind myself yet again that I had the other four. I had doubted whether I even deserved the love of so many mates, but there was no question that I had them now, and they were all devoted to me. It seemed selfish to want just one more, but I couldn’t help it. I missed Ozzie, and that emptiness inside me couldn’t be filled by anyone else. My soul needed him.

  Being near him now was as much a challenge as being apart had been. It was like I’d been starved and sustenance was just within reach, but locked behind an impenetrable barrier while I wasted away.