by I. T. Lucas
Dark Overlord New Horizon
The Children of the Gods Book 38
I. T. Lucas
Also by I. T. Lucas
THE CHILDREN OF THE GODS ORIGINS
1: Goddess’s Choice
2: Goddess’s Hope
THE CHILDREN OF THE GODS
Dark Stranger
1: Dark Stranger The Dream
2: Dark Stranger Revealed
3: Dark Stranger Immortal
Dark Enemy
4: Dark Enemy Taken
5: Dark Enemy Captive
6: Dark Enemy Redeemed
Kri & Michael’s Story
6.5: My Dark Amazon
Dark Warrior
7: Dark Warrior Mine
8: Dark Warrior’s Promise
9: Dark Warrior’s Destiny
10: Dark Warrior’s Legacy
Dark Guardian
11: Dark Guardian Found
12: Dark Guardian Craved
13: Dark Guardian’s Mate
Dark Angel
14: Dark Angel's Obsession
15: Dark Angel's Seduction
16: Dark Angel's Surrender
Dark Operative
17: Dark Operative: A Shadow of Death
18: Dark Operative: A Glimmer of Hope
19: Dark Operative: The Dawn of Love
Dark Survivor
20: Dark Survivor Awakened
21: Dark Survivor Echoes of Love
22: Dark Survivor Reunited
Dark Widow
23: Dark Widow’s Secret
24: Dark Widow’s Curse
25: Dark Widow’s Blessing
Dark Dream
26: Dark Dream’s Temptation
27: Dark Dream’s Unraveling
28: Dark Dream’s Trap
Dark Prince
29: Dark Prince’s Enigma
30: Dark Prince’s Dilemma
31: Dark Prince’s Agenda
Dark Queen
32: Dark Queen’s Quest
33: Dark Queen’s Knight
34: Dark Queen’s Army
Dark Spy
35: Dark Spy Conscripted
36: Dark Spy’s Mission
37: Dark Spy’s Resolution
Dark Overlord
38: Dark Overlord New Horizon
39: Dark Overlord’s Wife
PERFECT MATCH
Perfect Match 1: Vampire’s Consort
Perfect Match 2: King’s Chosen
Perfect Match 3: Captain’s Conquest
SETS
The Children of the Gods books 1-3: Dark Stranger trilogy—Includes a bonus short story: The Fates take a Vacation
The Children of the Gods: Books 1-6—includes character lists
The Children of the Gods: Books 6.5-10—includes character lists
TRY THE CHILDREN OF THE GODS SERIES ON
AUDIBLE
2 FREE audiobooks with your new Audible subscription!
Contents
1. Jacki
2. Kalugal
3. Director Simmons
4. Kian
5. Kalugal
6. Jin
7. Arwel
8. Vlad
9. Wendy
10. Kalugal
11. Jacki
12. Rufsur
13. Jacki
14. Vlad
15. Kalugal
16. Jacki
17. Kalugal
18. Jacki
19. Kalugal
20. Jacki
21. Kalugal
22. Jacki
23. Kalugal
24. Jacki
25. Kalugal
26. Kian
27. Kalugal
28. Jacki
29. Kalugal
30. Wendy
31. Kian
32. Vlad
33. Jacki
34. Kalugal
35. Rufsur
36. Jacki
37. Kalugal
38. Jacki
39. Kian
40. Kalugal
41. Kian
42. Annani
43. Jacki
44. Kalugal
45. Jacki
46. Kalugal
47. Kian
48. Jin
49. Kian
50. Jin
51. Lokan
52. Jin
53. Director Simmons
54. Jacki
55. Kalugal
56. Jacki
57. Kalugal
58. Jacki
59. Vlad
60. Rufsur
61. Kalugal
62. Kian
63. Jin
64. Kian
65. Jin
66. Jacki
67. Kalugal
68. Jacki
69. Kalugal
70. Jacki
71. Kalugal
72. Jacki
73. Kalugal
74. Jacki
75. Kalugal
The Children of the Gods Series
The Perfect Match Series
FOR EXCLUSIVE PEEKS
1
Jacki
As Jacki escorted Jin to Kalugal’s front door, she had a sinking feeling that she was never going to see her bestie or her other new friends again. In the short time that she’d spent with the bunch, they’d become like a family to her, and finding out that most of them were immortal hadn’t changed the way she felt about them. They were her teammates, and she was going to miss them.
Thankfully, a feeling wasn’t a vision, so it might not come true. Jacki’s gut had been wrong about things before. Besides, being left alone with Kalugal was reason enough for the churning in her stomach. The rest was just panic induced, and Jacki refused to let it bring her down.
She’d survived worse, and she was going to survive this as well.
“I hope that Arwel isn’t still mad at me.” Jin took a deep breath before walking out the door.
“He loves you too much to stay mad.”
“I know that he loves me. But that doesn’t mean that he’s not angry.”
During their imprisonment in Kalugal’s bunker, Arwel and Jacki had become good friends, and at the beginning, they had even pretended to be a couple. The thing was, Jin must have witnessed some of their pretend flirting through the mental link she’d had to Jacki, and she must have also heard Arwel ranting about her decision to surrender herself to Kalugal.
Perhaps that had created doubts in Jin’s mind?
Jacki wrapped her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “I won’t lie to you. When Rufsur told us that you were going to be traded for Arwel, your guy was majorly pissed, but that was because he was terrified of what Kalugal might do to you. Since nothing bad happened, and you are going back to him unharmed, all is good in Arwel’s world.”
Jin nodded. “I was scared too. Thank God that Kalugal turned out to be a decent guy. But while that might be true for me, I’m not sure about his intentions for you.” She eyed Jacki with concern. “I hate leaving you behind. Without the tether, I can’t check up on you.” Glancing at Kalugal and Julian, who were standing further down the driveway, Jin leaned to whisper in Jacki’s ear. “I don’t like it that he demanded that I remove the tether from you. It should have been enough that I removed it from him, and it was also what he and Kian had agreed on.”
“I think that it makes perfect sense for Kalugal to ask that,” Jacki whispered back. “If you'd kept the tether to me, you could’ve spied on him through my eyes. If I were in his shoes, I would have done the same.” She gave Jin a slight push. “Get out of here and go to your boyfriend. Everything is going to be okay.”
Jin pulled her into a tight embrace. “See you soon.”
“I hope so. Give Arwel a k
iss for me. On the cheek, of course.” Jacki winked. “The other kind of kisses are all yours.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Then go.” She pushed Jin away. “I’ll be fine.”
Thankfully, empathy wasn’t one of Jin’s paranormal talents, so she bought the lie and the fake smile that Jacki had plastered on her face.
Watching her friend walk down Kalugal’s driveway, Jacki didn’t feel fine.
She was scared.
When Jin reached Kalugal, she pointed a finger at him. “Be good to her.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll treat her like a visiting dignitary.”
Taking a last glance at her friend, Jacki turned around and walked back in. With a sigh, she sat at the dining room table and reached for a piece of toast. Perhaps chewing on it would relieve the churning in her stomach.
So much for thinking of herself as tough, resourceful, and fearless. Except, there was a limit to how much she could take in such a short time.
Jacki felt as if she was staring down a tunnel, and it seemed that with each step she was tumbling deeper into an alternate reality.
The thing was, she knew precisely what had gotten her to where she was now. She’d been having visions her entire life, but the first tumble down the rabbit hole had started with one particular vision, which in hindsight, she regretted not keeping to herself.
As soon as she’d seen the old clunker that her friend Allison had gotten, the vision had hit Jacki hard. The car was going to break down, and Allison was going to end up in a ditch with multiple fractures and spend the next six months in rehabilitation.
Naturally, Allison had dismissed Jacki’s vision as nonsense and had taken the clunker on a road trip to California. Jacki’s prediction had come true, and a week after Allison’s accident, she’d been contacted by Marisol, who had offered her a job in the paranormal talents’ division.
Apparently, during her phone calls to Allison, Jacki had mentioned the words visions and predictions, and the bots had picked up on the trigger words, flagging her as a potential paranormal talent. When her prediction about Allison's accident had come true, her talent had been confirmed.
Still, all of that had been small potatoes compared to what happened next.
Meeting Jin in the program and foreseeing her rescue was the reason Jacki was sitting in the dining room of the fanciest house she’d ever seen, and until a few minutes ago, staring at the face of the most gorgeous, arrogant, sexy man ever born.
Correction.
Not a man, an immortal.
And not just any immortal, one of the two most powerful immortals on the planet.
Damn.
Up until three days ago, she hadn’t known that immortals even existed, or that the people who’d helped her escape from the program weren’t human.
Her biggest fear was that the knowledge could mean the end of her.
Humans were not supposed to know that immortals had been living among them since the beginning of civilization. If not for her immunity to mind manipulation, they could’ve erased the memory from her head like they did with all the other humans who had the misfortune of finding out about them. But there was no way to erase Jacki’s memories, and she was stuck with what she’d learned.
Even if Kalugal released her in exchange for what Kian had promised him, she would never be free again. The way Jacki saw it, there were three possible outcomes.
One was being Kalugal’s prisoner for the rest of her natural life, the other was the same fate at Kian’s hands, and the third one was her death.
Was she being overly dramatic? Fatalistic?
Probably.
Jacki doubted that Kian and her new friends would kill her, but she was quite certain that she would never be allowed to go back to her old life.
There was also a fourth possibility.
Kalugal could fall in love with her, and they could live happily ever after.
Right. Talk about fairytales and fantasies.
A man like him might want her in his bed for a night or two, but no more than that.
Except, Jacki was not going to be his or anyone else’s plaything, not even to save her life.
For her, it always had been and always would be all or nothing.
2
Kalugal
“Welcome back, my friend.” Kalugal pulled Rufsur into a one-armed embrace and clapped him on the back. “How was your stay with my cousin’s people?”
“For the most part, uneventful.” Rufsur dug a key out of his pocket and leaned down to open the lock on his leg restraints.
“They gave you the key?” As Kalugal looked down at the chain connecting Rufsur’s ankle cuffs, he wondered whether they were the same ones that Phinas had put on Arwel.
“The only reason they did that was so I couldn’t run. If I had stopped to open the lock, that would have achieved the same result. They wanted Jin to reach their side before I reached ours.” Rufsur tossed the chain aside and straightened up.
“Come, Jacki is waiting for us in the dining room.” Kalugal turned and started walking.
Rufsur followed. “She is still here?”
Kalugal arched a brow. “Where else would she be?”
“I thought that you’d already talked to your mother and released Jacki.”
He stopped and turned to his lieutenant. “Didn’t they tell you about what happened with Jin?”
“Only that the exchange was delayed because she didn’t feel well.” Rufsur cast Kalugal a regretful look. “You must have been disappointed to find out that she was not an immortal and therefore not a clanswoman. That ruined your plans to forge an alliance with the clan by marrying the spy.”
It had been a contingency Kalugal had come up with in case Jin couldn’t remove the damn tether she’d attached to him. If that had been the case, he would have needed to keep her by his side, and the only way he could have done so without starting a war with the clan was a political marriage. The alliance with Kian had been a secondary consideration. Luckily for them both, Jin was able to demonstrate that the tether was gone.
The problem was that he wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it was.
“Those plans were irrelevant anyway. Jin is in love with Arwel.”
“So I heard. Is she all better now? She looked fine to me when I passed by her and that guy. Who was he?”
“That was one of the clan’s doctors. Jin got sick all over the gazebo floor before she could demonstrate the tether’s removal, and then she passed out. I couldn’t let her go, so they sent the doctor. After he gave her an antibiotic shot, she recovered almost immediately.”
“And then she proved to you that the tether was gone?”
Kalugal shrugged and resumed walking. “I’m still not convinced that it is.”
“So why did you let her go?” Rufsur followed.
“I didn’t have a choice. It was either that or start a war with the clan.”
“But you felt something, right?”
Kalugal nodded. “I did. But it might have been a placebo effect. I might have felt it because I expected to feel it. I compelled Jin to tell me the truth, but that’s not foolproof either. She might have believed that the tether was gone while some of it still remained, or she might be able to re-establish the connection remotely. I’ve just realized that I didn’t ask her about that.”
“Do you mean that you forgot to compel her to answer that truthfully?”
“It didn’t occur to me to ask about it at all. I’ve made a mistake, and it might cost me dearly.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to trust her that it’s gone.”
Rufsur arched a brow. “That’s not like you.”
His friend knew him well. Kalugal had an idea of how to prove the tether’s removal, but he couldn’t tell Rufsur about it because it would defeat the purpose.
His plan was to pretend that he believed the tether wasn’t there, do something that would provoke Kian, an
d then wait for his cousin to react.
As they entered the dining room, Jacki smiled at Rufsur. “We meet again after all.”
He grinned and walked up to her. “You are a sight for sore eyes, Miss Jacqueline the Fair.” He took her hand and kissed the back of it.
“I like it. You make me sound like a fairytale princess.”
Kalugal didn’t like it at all, barely stifling the impulse to grab his lieutenant by the throat and toss him across the room.
Fortunately, Jacki pulled her hand out of Rufsur’s. “Are you hungry? There is plenty left over, but it’s cold. I can take it to the kitchen and warm it up for you.” She started to rise.
Kalugal put a hand on her shoulder. “Sit down, Jacki. Shamash can do it. You are my guest.” He put a slight emphasis on the my.
But Rufsur hadn’t been paying attention and pulled out a chair next to Jacki. “I don’t mind that it’s cold. I’m not a finicky eater like my boss.”
Taking his seat at the head of the table, Kalugal glared at Rufsur. “Tell me your impressions from the time you spent with Kian’s men.”