War of the Gods Complete Series Boxed Set

by Meg Xuemei X

  “You got any family, little one?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t call me little one. I might be older than you.”

  Well, no one liked to be called little.

  “I’m twenty-three in human years,” I said proudly. “And next year I’ll be twenty six. I grow up very fast.”

  She widened her eyes. “Then you’ll reach eighty very soon.”

  “I won’t die if no one kills me.” I smirked. “I’m more immortal than an immortal.”

  “But you don’t know what you are exactly,” she said. “Your heritage is also hidden from my visions.”

  “It’s hidden from everyone. So, tell me about yourself.”

  “I was brought up in an orphanage,” she said in a small voice.

  “I grew up in a cage,” I said.

  “I saw that,” she said. “I couldn’t get to you. If I could, I would have. I didn’t get other visions, only a glimpse. And then I was told to wait here for you.”

  Someone gave the same sort of visions and assignments to my mates as well. Someone desperately needed me to kill the Olympian gods. And someone was homing in on me to sharpen me as a weapon.

  Whoever it was, I didn’t trust her/him, even though she/he got me out of the cage.

  Then another thought hit me. Could that someone also be responsible for making Jezebel believe it was best for the world to keep me in the cage in the first place? My mother had religiously believed that it was her life’s purpose to lock me up and save the world from me.

  My head started throbbing and spinning from all the heavy thoughts and useless guessing.

  “Don’t look into the visions, dreams, or whatever prophecies,” I said. “They’re mostly misguided and dangerous as a double-edged blade.”

  “I can’t abandon my purpose,” she insisted.

  She took her seer’s role very seriously, then.

  “Whatever. Don’t say I didn’t tell you when one of the fortune cookies grows teeth and bites you in the ass. Anyway, you got any cake here? Aren’t you going to offer me a drink since I’m your honored guest? That’s what a normal person would do, right?”

  “Yeah, you’re a good honored guest. You tossed me into the sky, dumped me into the water, ruined my books, and dragged me here. You even wear my clothes, which will be broken by your bosom by night. And guess I’ll have to wash your wet clothes after you’re gone.”

  I grinned. She did have some fire and a sense of humor when pushed hard. “I thought you thrived on serving me.”

  “I can make you tea, Cass, though it isn’t of good quality.” She sighed. “I seldom have a cake. The gods destroyed a lot of production. Food resources are getting scarce. I’m grateful I still have two meals a day.”

  A jolt of guilt shot through my chest, which surprised me. I wasn’t one to let guilt and shame ride me. I didn’t even think I had a moral compass.

  “Uh, sorry,” I said. “I’m not really thirsty. I took a swallow of the pool water by accident anyway.”

  “I’ll make you tea, Cass,” she said. “That’s the least I can do. You’re the first student who ever defended me against Mellissa and her minions since I came to the Academy six months ago, waiting for you.”

  Anger sizzled in me. “You put up with those bullies for six months?”

  She smiled. “I don’t care about them. I don’t care how people treat me. I came here for you, and you came. That’s all that matters. You’re what matters. And you want to be my friend.”

  “And no one else helped you?” I asked, my eyes burning darkly.

  “We’re living in a tough time.”

  Fucking Academy! It wasn’t what I thought it was.

  I spat. “I don’t care that it’s a tough time. Humanity isn’t all that rosy. I’m not even sure if it’s worth saving, supposing I really can take on the gods.”

  “There’re some good folks,” she said, her brown eyes turning warm. “I’ve met good people who helped me along the way. Let’s save the world for them.”

  She rose to make the tea. I grabbed her sleeve.

  “Hey, it’s okay. I prefer you just talk to me.”

  I was careful not to touch her skin, in case she’d roll her eyes back and utter more outrageous riddles. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was kind of scared of the oracle shit. It’d messed up Jezebel big time.

  Amber wheeled to me. “I’ve wanted to ask you, Cass. I hope I won’t offend you.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Nothing can offend me. I have the thickest skin ever.”

  “You don’t read, do you, Cass?”

  My face flamed so hot I wanted to dig a hole to hide inside. That was one of my fatal flaws I’d hoped no one could ever find out.

  “Shush!” I snapped at her. “Why would you say something like that?!”

  “We’re the only ones here,” she said. “No one is listening in. They’re all at the training field.”

  Now I remembered that the magic class had been my next stop. But after the Helmer drama, I had spaced out. And then I’d been distracted by Noah. It wasn’t like I was smitten with him, but he was something. And then Amber and I got wet and ended up here.

  Maybe subconsciously I’d worried about crashing into another Helmer, so I hadn’t been keen on pursuing the next class. However, I still wanted to hang around the Academy for a while and see how things went.

  I hoped my absence wouldn’t be seen as another offense.

  I rubbed my temples. I needed to come up with a good excuse if the magic instructor ever confronted me. Then my gazed darted back to Amber—I had another crisis here. The seer had just discovered my fatal weakness because I got too close to her.

  I eyed her sternly.

  “It’s fine you can’t read, Cass.” She moved to my bedside and squatted beside me, so her eyes met mine with sincerity. “You have me now, and I got your six. You have street smarts. You know how to survive. I have book smarts and future visions. We’ll combine. And I’ll teach you to read and write.”

  My heart pounded. I just got the sweetest deal ever.

  But I narrowed my eyes, trying to add menace to my hard stare. “And you won’t tell a soul, not even my four mates?”

  Her eyes widened in shock. “You have four mates, seriously?”

  “I thought you knew.” I snickered. “Aren’t you the seer?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t see everything. I know that some powerful males are tied to you to protect you, and I saw a vampire lord and a panther free you from the cage. But I didn’t see your four mates together with you in bed doing it.”

  “Hey, chick,” I said, raising a finger before her eyes. “You’d better not go there, vision or not, if you don’t want your little ass getting kicked.”

  Amber’s mouth remained an O. “Four mates?” She repeated.

  “I can handle them, you know,” I said.

  A huge male appeared at the doorway, his presence instantly sucking the air out of the bunk room. His honey-brown gaze found me, and his sensual lips that also suggested menace curled up at the corners.

  My eyes brightened, and my pulse raced.

  Amber, who squatted beside the bed, fell on her ass. Her eyes went round. The poor girl stared at Alaric as if she’d never seen a male before, her small hand pressing her chest.

  “I know.” I laughed. “Alaric has that kind of effect. But don’t drool. He’s mine.”

  Alaric, dressed in a shirt with a stylish scarf around his corded neck and leather covering his muscled torso, strode toward me. Then he was by me in an instant. The dude was that fast.

  “Sweetheart,” he said huskily, swooping me up into his arms in one fluid move.

  Alaric was the best tracker of me, and when I became a little difficult, my other mates usually sent him to deal with me. Pyrder and Reys had a hard time saying no to me, and Lorcan lost his temper now and then. But Alaric would make me bend.

  Thinking of bending, I looked at the beds nearby.

  If Amber weren’t here, I�
�d let Alaric bend me over the frame of the bed or a desk, and fuck me from behind right there.

  Alaric must have been imagining the same scene, lust burning darkly in his honey-brown eyes.

  I ran my hands over his cut chest, feeling his hard muscles.

  Amber cleared her throat, more embarrassed than me. When did she get her ass up so quickly?

  At that moment, neither Alaric nor I paid heed to anyone else. I hadn’t seen him since yesterday when he had gone scouting with Celeb. He was sending a section of his army to the fae realm in case the full-front war with the gods and their horde broke out near the Academy.

  So Alaric and I were like two magnets that missed each other’s presence.

  “How did you find me so soon?” I squirmed in excitement, the heel of my palm pressing against his dimple, one of my favorites.

  “You know how,” he said as he dipped his head to kiss me.

  The kiss was hot, raw, and hard, scorching my soul.

  A moan escaped from the depths of my throat. As usual, he was going to carry me home and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Since it would be futile to fight the demigod, I clasped my hands around his neck, and wrapped my legs around his waist to make myself comfortable.

  “They sent you to collect me?” I asked.

  He chuckled. “You caused a lot of distress and panic among us. If I hadn’t persuaded them to let me come first, they’d all be here.”

  “How did you persuade them?”

  I hoped he hadn’t resorted to his fists, flaming sword, or lightning. That was how he usually persuaded people.

  “I warned them that you’d run again if we crowded you, and that you’d complain the whole day.”

  “I didn’t run, Alaric. I teleported,” I said, peeking into his gorgeous, cruel eyes that always scared other people but never me. “But I don’t know if I can do it again. It was fun and spontaneous. It just happened.”

  “You can do it again, sweetheart,” he said. “That’s why we need to carve a new training program for you.”

  I groaned. I’d find a way to kick Alaric out of any training sessions. He was all steel and no fun in the field. I still remembered the last time he had made me do a horse stance for an hour. It had been brutally boring.

  He strode toward the door carrying me like a feather.

  “You forgot my friend, Amber,” I said.

  He looked over his shoulder at Amber and paused. “Why aren’t you following, girl? You won’t live in this bunk anymore. You have a tie to Cass, and now that they know who you are, you’ll be a target. We can’t chance it.”

  “But—” Amber murmured.

  “Come along,” Alaric ordered. “We don’t have much time. I need to get my mate home. Ambrosia will come pack your stuff.”

  Amber bowed her head and sprinted after Alaric as his long legs strode away. Wow, I needed to pick up Alaric’s commanding tone, which would be useful if I needed someone to do my bidding. But first, I’d have to practice a deep voice.

  Two of them walked through the campus, with me hitching a ride. Curious eyes shot toward us but instantly darted away at Alaric’s glare. His menacing power rolled off him wherever he went. I bet that the whole Academy now knew a demigod walked among them, and I was his luggage.

  Just then, the top two buttons on my shirt popped open, exposing my breasts. This was super embarrassing. I pressed myself tightly against Alaric’s chest. I could no longer demand he put me down.

  “What was that sound?” Alaric asked, looking down at my breasts, his eyes turning to liquid gold. “What happened to your buttons?”

  “They just broke and dropped because you hold me too tight.”

  “You borrowed the clothes from the girl, and they’re too small for you. Why are you wearing her clothes? What happened to yours?”

  “I teleported to the middle of the pool for elite students.”

  Alaric threw his head back and laughed. “It’s never boring with you around, sweetheart.”

  “The point is we got into the pool for the elite students without an invitation.”

  “You can go wherever you want. You don’t need any fucking invitation,” he said. “And I know what happened in your history class. That little rat fled as soon as he learned who you live with. If he’d stayed, I would have fried him.”

  I wanted to protest and demand he not kill anyone on my behalf, but then I shut my mouth. Helmer was a bad man.

  I’d thought that since we were all going to fight the gods, we were all good guys. I was naïve about world affairs and humanity. There were plenty of bad people in the Academy.

  But just as Amber had said, there were a lot of good people, too, and we’d fight the gods and save Earth for them, for my mates and their warriors, for Amber, and for me.

  I leaned my face against Alaric’s chin, taking comfort from his scent of ice and sandalwood and steel strength. I wouldn’t fear the gods and the badness of the world as long as I had my mates.

  16

  As soon as we entered the foyer of the heavily guarded, silver and lilac building that housed fae, my other three mates stalked up to us. Lorcan tore me from Alaric’s chest and hugged me to his. I snuggled closer to him.

  “Careful with her,” Alaric grated. “Cass is sleepy.”

  “Dulcis, are you all right?” Lorcan asked. “I heard you suffered today.”

  They all treated me as porcelain instead of a lethal weapon.

  Amber followed us into the building, and her eyes grew huge again. She now had met all of my mates.

  “It’s nothing,” I murmured, a bit embarrassed by my mates’ overprotectiveness. I preferred to keep my badass image, especially in front of my new friend, but it was impossible to maintain when my mates came into the picture. “I’m unharmed, as you can see. But my energy is a bit low lately without Phobos.” I tried to talk as elegantly as the High Lord of Night, but it wasn’t easy.

  “Your energy will return, dulcis,” Lorcan said. “I’ll make sure of that. You don’t need the terror god.”

  Just then, all of my shirt’s buttons broke free and dropped to the ground because of Lorcan violently yanking me away from Alaric. My shirt’s front fluttered open, completely revealing my breasts.

  “What did you do to her?” Reys demanded. He tried to take me from Lorcan as we walked through the corridor but Lorcan refused to let go of me. “Why did you tear her clothes off in public?”

  “She was half-naked when I took her from the demigod,” Lorcan hissed.

  “Why did you make our mate indecent, Alaric?” Pyrder glared at Alaric as they escorted me to our suite on the top third floor.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I said on a sigh. “I borrowed the clothes from Amber, and they were a bit too small for me.”

  I suddenly realized that I’d returned to my round, womanly shape. My mates had been taking good care of me.

  They whisked me into the vast sitting room in our suite, put me on a couch, and helped me put on new, comfortable clothes.

  “I thought you were having an important Council meeting with Noah,” I said.

  “We sent him away as soon as you disappeared,” Pyrder said drily. “He went to search for you as well. And then Alaric returned. He was under the impression that he was best suited to track you down.”

  And the males threw me hundreds of questions at the same time. Amber glanced at my wild look and stepped in to explain everything.

  Just when I thought all was settled, Lorcan said, “Run this by me again: Why did you accept that male’s offer of an arm? No male should touch you other than us—your own mates.”

  I got it. Lorcan was the most jealous one. I had thought it was Alaric. Sometimes I just got them all wrong.

  “I’ll say this one last time,” I said with exasperation, waving my hand and pacing on the couch back and forth. “I have no interest in Noah or any male. He has this vibe I couldn’t figure out. I just wanted to know if he was like Phobos—a disguised god amo
ng us. I laid my hand on his arm to see if I could drink his energy.”

  “It was a dangerous move without us around you,” Pyrder said.

  “I couldn’t pass up the window of opportunity,” I said. “How can we be sure there isn’t a god among us in the Academy? Don’t you know your Academy is out of control? And I don’t trust this Noah dude. He has too much power for a mage, and my magic can’t find the pulse of his magic. I think he’s hiding something.”

  “They’re all hiding something,” Pyrder grunted.

  “Noah is the head of the mages,” Alaric said. “Their collective magic allows him to siphon a portion of power out of any mage under his thumb. If he turns out to be a problem, he’ll be formidable. We must keep an eye on him.”

  “We watch everyone,” Reys said. “We’ll follow through on our former decision. We don’t present Cass to the Council. We keep her a secret as long as we can.”

  “She might have blown her cover on her first day in school,” Pyrder said. “She spewed fire at a bunch of students, turned a fae girl bald, and melted Helmer’s magical whip.”

  When he put it that way, I suddenly sounded horrible. Hadn’t Amber explained all the incidents?

  Alaric laughed. “That’s my girl.”

  “Noah demanded that we let him in our circle. He’s okay with us not informing the Council for now,” Pyrder said.

  Reysalor rubbed his temples. “In the end, we won’t be able to hide the fire with a paper wrap. We’ll present Cass to the Council when the timing is right. We need their support.”

  And then they discussed spying on Noah. They all had extensive spy networks. They’d find Noah’s source—the ones who fed him intel about me.

  After that, the day went by in a blur.

  Amber was sent to share a room with Ambrosia. She was now officially under the protection of the fae princes and me.

  I took a nap.

  17

  My mates trimmed down a lot of my course load. I didn’t fight them, considering how the history class had turned out for me. Sometimes, I might have to acknowledge that occasionally they knew better.