“Please, I would just like to see her,” said the werewolf prince.
Blu sighed. “Are you well enough to have visitors?”
I smiled at Blu and stood up slowly. “I am. Thank you for your concern.”
Blu rumbled affectionately at me, much like a feline would purr.
I changed quickly and then took a deep breath for courage just as he stepped into the tent. He was even more handsome than I remembered.
He had started to move towards me but stopped and clenched his hands into fists. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better,” I admitted.
“Did they hurt you?” he asked through gritted teeth.
I frowned at him. “Did who hurt me?”
His eyes flicked to the side. “The Dragon Council.”
I frowned at him. “They were trying to help me. I am sure they did not mean to harm me.”
Theseus walked into the tent with a tray of food but stopped when he saw the prince. “I…I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here.” Theseus dropped his head in submission and started to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “Is that food for me?”
Theseus looked at the tray and then smiled nervously. “Yes, sorry. I’ll just leave it.”
I felt the prince watching us as I walked to Theseus and took the tray from his hands. I kissed Theseus’ cheek and smiled at him. “Thank you.”
The prince growled softly behind me, but made no movement besides that.
I ignored him and walked outside to eat beside Blu who still stood guard outside of my tent. Blu moved his tail so I could sit on it while leaning against him to eat as I’d done many times before. I sat down and patted his side before eating the meats and fruits on the tray.
“When will I speak to the Council?” the prince asked. His shoulders were tense, and his eyes glowed with magic.
Why was he so angry? Even if he was my mate, I hadn’t done anything that was considered inappropriate.
“As soon as she is ready,” Blu answered.
The prince started to move towards me, but Blu growled and wrapped his tail protectively around me, lifting me up to my feet.
The prince squatted down in an attack stance and changed his hands to paws.
I smacked Blu’s tail. “You’re being rude and possessive, both of you, and I don’t like it.”
Blu exhaled smoke. “I apologize. I did not mean to offend you.”
The prince changed his hands back and his eyes returned to normal. “I’m sorry. I am not usually like this.”
“The Council will see you both now,” said the combined voices of the Council who were walking towards the center of the mountain.
I walked next to Blu, but felt the prince behind me like a weight on my back. We stopped in front of the Council and I dropped to the ground in a bow. “Thank you for seeing us, Council,” I said as humbly as I could. I stood back up and rested a hand on Blu’s shoulder for support.
“We have spoken to the Prince of Werewolves and know he has spoken the truth.”
Then he was my mate! How? Why were we separated?
The Council continued, “But we cannot perform the recognition spell until the other man you are tied to has arrived.”
“He should be here any minute,” said the Prince.
I looked at the Council. “Wait. What do you mean the other man I am tied to? I thought you said that the Prince was telling the truth about me being his mate!”
“You are my mate, but you are also bound to another. It was an emergency action done to save your life,” answered the Prince.
“But I do not regret it,” said a voice like wind chimes.
I knew that voice, and I definitely knew the language with which that voice would normally speak. Sidhe. The man behind me was a Sidhe and judging by the presence I felt, a very powerful one.
What had I done in my life to warrant the attention of the Prince of Werewolves and the… I turned around and one look at his face released a torrent of memories. I screamed in pain as I saw the Sidhe holding me while I was in pain, saw him walk with me down a dark staircase and reassuring me with his presence. Heard his voice in my head whispering that he loved me…
I screamed again and my eyes flew open. Blu was lying across me, humming and singing in the magic of dragons. The pain in my head was subsiding, but my heart felt like it was going to explode. I turned my head and found the Sidhe and werewolf princes being held back by dragons. Yes, that was who he was, a prince. Wow. Two princes?!
The princes looked at me with fear and anger. Were they mad at me or with the dragons holding them back?
“Blu, I think you can let me up now,” I whispered. The Dragon Council growled and I realized that I’d slipped and addressed him informally. “I’m sorry, I meant to say Draco-Blu. Please forgive my offense.”
Blu let me up, but pressed his nose to my head. “I accept your apology. You’re in much pain still though. Perhaps you should lie still while I heal you?”
“You cannot heal this pain, Draco-Blu.” I looked at the princes. “They are the cause of the pain and I believe only they know how I can fix it.”
Blu lunged across the opening and pinned each of the princes to the ground under his talons. “What have you done to her?”
I rushed to him and put my face in front of his. “No! You misunderstand! Don’t harm them!”
“Let them up, Draco-Blu,” said the Council.
Blu hissed at the princes and let them up, but not before pulling me back against his chest with his head away from the princes.
The princes both began to glow incandescently. “Step away from her,” they said eerily in unison.
“We will begin our discussion now,” said the Council distracting everyone.
I stepped away from Blu and walked to stand in the center of the circle of dragons. “I am ready and will humbly accept whatever decision you give.”
“You are a valued friend of the dragons and we treasure your acceptance of us,” they said to me.
The two princes came to stand on either side of me and I had to fight the urge to reach out and touch them. The Council looked at the Sidhe prince. “You are unknown to us, which is neither good nor bad as we are neither good nor bad, thus we are willing to assist you if you meet our small request.”
“Anything for her,” he said without hesitation.
The Council then turned to the werewolf prince and their mood darkened. “You are very well known by us. You almost destroyed the race of dragons, you and the vampire prince. You are no friend of ours.”
“I will do anything you ask to make amends for the devastation I caused and for my ignorant and childish actions,” he said quietly.
“You are no friend of ours and there is nothing you can do to make amends for what you have done, but we love the hatchling you are mated to and thus we will agree to ease the suffering in her if you agree to a test to prove your loyalty.”
“Anything,” he answered without pause.
The Council was silent a moment and then they said, “In addition to one task we will divulge later, you must retrieve the lost dragon egg.”
I gasped and Blu snorted in surprise.
The werewolf prince asked, “Would this be the green egg which the vampires found eighty years ago?”
The Council looked at him suspiciously. “Yes, that is the egg we speak of. We have heard rumor that the King of Vampires has it in his possession and plans to hatch it and control the dragon within. We must not let this happen.”
“So, if I get the egg and hand it to you, you will help Ar…Chandra regain her memories?” he asked.
The Council shook with anger. Why was he asking them to repeat themselves?
“Yes, if you hand the egg to us, intact and safe, and pass one more test, we will assist the hatchling in regaining her memories and thus returning her to you as she was before she was stolen from you.”
The werewolf prince nodded. “Alright, deal. I will need Ach…the Sid
he prince to fly down to the bottom of the mountain to assist me, is this alright?” The Council nodded and the werewolf prince smiled. “Great. We will be back as soon as we can with your egg.”
The Council was eerily silent as they talked amongst themselves, probably pondering what he had up his sleeve.
I turned to the princes. “You do realize that the King of the Vampires could capture you and kill you, right?”
The princes both smiled at me, their smiles bizarrely similar. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that they were brothers. I wanted to get closer to the werewolf prince to smell him, but decided better of it and planted my feet on the ground.
The werewolf prince asked, “Are you worried about my safety?”
I stepped back and then glared at him. “I was just saying that it seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a girl who doesn’t remember you.” Both princes winced as though I’d struck them. I hadn’t meant to be so harsh, but he was rude and I didn’t like it.
The werewolf prince came to stand a few inches from me and whispered, “I would face the entire Flight of Dragons to have you back in my arms and have you remember the times we’ve spent together. I would cut off my arm and give it to the dragons as payment if they would accept it. You are the only important thing in my life and I will face a hundred Vampire Kings before I let something as simple as death make me hesitate in getting you back.”
The conviction and feeling in his voice were overpowering and I would have fallen if not for Blu’s tail catching me. “She needs to rest.”
The werewolf prince smiled at me and said, “I’ll be back. You don’t need to worry about me.”
I groaned as a memory of a weaker, non-magical me stood on the porch of someone’s house watching the werewolf prince leave somewhere and say those exact words to me. Blu whisked me away from the princes and into my tent before I could say anything else. He laid his head on me and sang until I fell asleep.
5
Achilles
I couldn’t believe that we had finally found her. She looked even more beautiful than I remembered and yet I could see that she was not herself. The need to touch her was incredible, but I resisted so as not to cause her pain. She was so strong and yet so fragile since she had not found herself yet. I gripped Ares under the arms and jumped out of the Lair, letting the wind catch us.
“Could you please not jump.” Ares hissed as his heartbeat quickened.
“I had forgotten that you are afraid of heights,” I said.
He growled. “I’m not afraid of heights, I’m afraid of you dropping me.”
We landed on the ground and I patted his shoulder. “I wouldn’t drop you, Brother.”
Ares grunted, cleared his throat and then howled as loudly as he could. I wished I could see the process of his vocal chords and throat changing shape when he went from a human’s throat to a wolf’s throat. Although I doubted slicing a man’s throat in half to watch would then allow the process to complete.
A bat screeched nearby and I smiled. Victor loved being a bat when he could. I think he just liked being smaller and able to fly.
A small black bat came to hover in front of us and then changed into a six-foot-tall, black eyed man. If you were human you might think he was simply imposing, but it was just his raw, incredible power. Victor was one of the few vampires I genuinely trusted and did not fear. He shook out his body and then looked at me with a smile, showing just the tips of his fangs. “I do enjoy being smaller and being able to fly.”
I pointed at him. “Stay out of my head.”
Ares sighed. “If only that were possible.”
We’d known each other so long that most times we knew what the other was thinking without the use of telepathic abilities, so Victor’s abilities were not as intrusive as they once were.
Being one thousand years old made years seem like a human’s minutes, but the last one hundred years had felt like a lifetime. I had finally revealed myself to Artemis in Lyngvi, trying to claim her, only to come up against Ares and the bond they had already developed. Then, after many fights and binding her to save her from Hera, I had told her that I loved her and showed her my memories only to have her taken from me by my mother. I understand why Hera had done it, but it didn’t make the pain at being separated from Artemis any easier. Especially when we hadn’t been able to find her where Hera claimed to have left her.
And now Ares had been the first to find her, the first to make contact with her. I hated that he had been able to find her first, but I could not direct that hate at him. I’d watched him suffer each night with only Koda there to console him as he lost the ability to hold shape and turned into a wolf. Not being able to maintain shape was something very uncommon for the Prince of the Werewolves. Every night he dreamed of her being taken and then turned into a wolf, howling his grief until he passed out from weariness.
A wolf’s grieving howl was the most eerie and heart wrenching sound I’d ever heard. It made it that much worse to feel the same pain and sorrow echoed in my own heart. My soul howled right along with his as we ached to see and touch her.
The day Ares had come back from the town to confirm it was her, he had seemed defeated instead of happy. Now, seeing her and knowing she did not recognize us and did not feel for us as she had when we’d last seen her, hurt incredibly. She had been the love of my life since I had first seen her, and she had no clue who I was.
What had she been doing since we last saw her? Had she found a mate? Had she slept with someone else? What if she had a family? Could we really give her back her memories if she was already happy?
Theseus had said she was living in a witch’s coven and that she didn’t smell of a man, but it had been a hundred years; she could have mated with a human and had a family between now and then.
The thought of another man touching her made my fists clench and my skin start to glow.
“Achilles,” Ares said softly, “It’ll be alright.”
I turned away from the concern on his face and ground my teeth together. “You have already established a bond with her. Of course, you think it’ll be alright. I am, yet again, left to wait.”
“Would you like me to answer the questions you were asking yourself a moment ago?” Victor asked me quietly. “I have seen some of her memories and know some of the answers.”
It was tempting, extremely tempting, but I shook my head. “No, thank you. I shall wait to hear them from her lips.”
Even if I hadn’t been bound to her and she hadn’t been my match, I wouldn’t have been able to leave her or forget her. She was perfect. She was the only woman I wanted. The only one I thought about. She was everything to me.
Ares rested his hand on my shoulder and then turned to Victor. “We need the dragon egg your father has.”
“That is the price the Council asked of you?” Victor gaped at us.
Ares smiled. “Yes, well I don’t think they knew that you could just pop in and get it and come back.”
Victor smiled. “Yes, translocation is a handy ability.”
It would have been a much handier ability if he had had it when we were captured one hundred years ago. Of course, we had all learned some new ability which would help us should we be captured again. None of us enjoyed being imprisoned.
Victor closed his eyes, chanted a few words and then disappeared. Ares turned and met my eyes. “She’ll remember you too, Achilles. She won’t get only the memories of me back.”
I sat down on the snow-covered ground and exhaled. “I know, Ares. It’s just…”
“Painful,” Ares offered.
I laughed bitterly. “Yes, painful. I see the way she looks at you now, even without memories, and it’s like being back in Lyngvi again.”
Ares sat down beside me and sighed. “I hadn’t intentionally set out to find her first, to keep you second. I was just overcome with emotions when seeing her and her not knowing me. She looked so different, but then she yelled at me and I knew that she was still in there.
I had to try.”
Victor appeared in front of us holding a large green egg. “Got it.”
I pointed at the small man latched onto his arm. “Someone grabbed on for the ride.”
Victor hissed and handed Ares the egg. “I hate stalkers.” He pried the other vampire’s teeth from his arm and then snapped his neck.
Ares cradled the egg like a baby. “Let’s go, Victor you come with us.”
Victor sighed. “I knew you’d get me in trouble at some point. You better hope they don’t try to kill me.”
Ares smiled. “That would be a shame.”
Victor smiled wide enough to flash all of his fangs and then changed into his bat form, squealing as he flew up towards the Lair’s entrance.
I extended my wings and smiled. “Life has been entertaining with you two around the last hundred years. Losing Victor’s comedic relief might dampen the mood.”
Ares laughed. “Let’s hope the dragons don’t eat the winged rat before we get there.”
I jumped up into the sky, flapping my wings to propel me higher. “We’d better hurry then.”
6
Chandra
I was really tired of sleeping so much. I woke up with Blu’s heavy head still on my chest. “Blu, I need to use the restroom,” I said as I pushed at his head.
Blu rumbled something incoherent and pulled his head out of my tent.
After freshening up, I walked outside to find the Council gathered around my two princes. I ran toward them and widened my eyes at the vampire standing in between them. He was tall with black hair and solid black eyes. I’d heard about him before, the vampire prince.
“Please accept my humblest apologies. I was a much more immature man then and very impulsive. I return what is rightfully yours in accordance with the agreement between you and the princes here. I hope you can heal her quickly for all of our sakes.”
“I know you, too? What kind of woman was I? Do I even want to know about my former life?” I blinked and shook my head.
The vampire prince turned towards me and I saw several emotions flit across his face before happiness settled in. “You are even more beautiful than I recall,” he whispered as he walked towards me, “and definitely more powerful.”
Artemis Lupine- The Complete Series Page 49