Searing Ecstasy

by Setta Jay

  “I’ll find a way to block them from him,” she bit out to the healer. His voice calling her back now made sense; he’d wanted to help her. When he couldn’t, not with the dreams. But she knew well that the dragon leader of the Guardians wouldn’t let her suffer if he thought he could fix it. She shook away that thought. She’d have to find a way to do what she said, block him somehow, because the dreams were staying.

  “What happened yesterday?” Delia asked, because their other conversation was over.

  Sirena looked like she wanted to argue, but instead asked a question of her own, “What exactly did you feel? What caused you to form the connection to Drake?” He’d obviously told the healer what she’d done.

  She really wanted to know what happened the day before, so she answered, “I felt something in the air.” Her beasts hadn’t pinpointed it to danger, but they’d grown still… watchful. She wasn’t sure how long it went on before it accelerated and everything happened at once. Delia had forged the connection to Drake right before the shadow beast ripped free and demanded he free them. The dragon didn’t, but Delia mentally tracked his signal to Earth Realm while she’d battled the animal back. The shadow was just too strong, whereas the Lykos howled in a corner of her mind. She’d grown numb to the wolf’s constant pain, but the shadow, the non-shifting beast she’d gotten from Cyril, was full of power and rage.

  “What exactly was it?” the female prodded.

  Delia wanted answers, so she’d play Sirena’s game. “The air charged until it was almost electric.” She didn’t say that she’d tracked Drake’s location and could see his connections to the other Guardians. Best not to worry the female. She was sure the idea of Delia knowing the whereabouts of all the Guardians might be unsettling for the healer. Sirena had dealt with the feral shadow enough in the past month. The blonde had witnessed Delia’s beast half burn the contents of the room in fury at not being set free. In fact, Sirena had used her powerful voice to calm it several times during Delia’s first weeks there.

  “Tell me what happened,” Delia asked in irritation. She’d tracked almost all of the Guardians to a location on Earth, and after the air calmed, most came back to Tetartos.

  Sirena made her wait. The healer had stopped pacing and was just looking down at her. “We had guests.”

  “What kind of guests?” Delia was bothered by Sirena’s tone.

  “Warriors who came out of thin air.”

  “Teleported?”

  “No, it was something else. We just don’t know what exactly.”

  “And now they’re gone.” Delia felt sure that was the case.

  Sirena nodded.

  “What did they want?” Delia asked.

  “They wanted Apollo and there was a battle,” Sirena ground out.

  She growled low at the thought of Drake in a battle and Sirena’s eyebrows rose. Delia managed to cut the sound off, but just barely. “Was anyone hurt?” she demanded. The crazed possessiveness and protective instincts she had for the dragon weren’t good. She knew it, but it was one reaction she couldn’t seem to fight back. She was a primal creature where the dragon was concerned, more a beast than the two she held.

  Sirena’s eyes grew assessing. “Drake wasn’t hurt. We had a couple of injuries but no deaths.”

  Delia let out the breath she’d been holding and knew without a doubt she’d have been lost if he’d been harmed. “Good.”

  Her heart raced, because only Drake had the potential to completely unhinge her while at the same time it was his presence that grounded her, had saved her. In the last month he’d given her all the comforts he could, and he’d made her feel… something beyond the need to fight or the icy cold of the dreams. She let the soft emotions in, allowing herself the comfort and pleasure he offered, while refusing to feel cheated. She knew there was already too much darkness inside her, any more would turn her into the nightmare. Her existence had to be carefully controlled, and she had a bad feeling that linking to Drake could derail everything.

  She sat there trying to relax. “Did you capture any of them? And did you get Apollo back in his box?” Delia had been there when the God was freed. Her shadow had hunted Cyril’s followers down and had been about to kill the last, Elizabeth, when the Guardians arrived. Delia wasn’t sure how Apollo had gotten into Elizabeth’s grasp.

  “No and no. They took him.” Sirena’s voice was hard.

  Delia almost choked. “They captured Apollo? How?”

  If someone had the God, that meant they were strong enough to contain him. She realized her mouth was open and closed it. This couldn’t be good.

  “Do you know where they took him?” Delia asked. The female wasn’t telling her something and she stared at her for a moment before turning her attention back to her connection with Drake. Checking it was a compulsion she needed to stop succumbing to, because it was fast becoming an obsession to see where he was, to check for any emotions slipping through. A sense of danger, anything.

  “Your turn.” Sirena leaned forward and cocked a brow. The female looked less tired and entirely calculating.

  Delia narrowed her eyes, the female had baited her. “What do you want?” Though Delia already knew that answer. And it was something she’d never give up.

  “The formula.” The exact details of the drug Cyril had concocted to circumvent a true mating. Sirena wanted to know just what was in Delia’s blood, what he’d used to turn her into a monster.

  “No,” Delia snapped with finality.

  The healer made a frustrated noise and started pacing again. “I need your help if I’m going to find a way to fix what he did to you.”

  Sirena couldn’t seem to trust that Delia knew there was no help. Delia had Cyril’s memories and his power because of what he’d done to her, so she knew the damage couldn’t be undone. She’d been going over it every day for the weeks since she’d wrestled control from the beast. If there was a way, she would have found it herself, so she shook her head and sighed. “There’s no way to fix this, Sirena.” The blonde only wanted to help her; she understood that and appreciated the effort.

  “I don’t accept that,” the female snapped back. “Let me try.”

  Just the thought of having that formula written down, or even in Sirena’s mind, made Delia’s skin crawl. “That drug can never be remade. It’s too dangerous.”

  Sirena looked offended. “I’d never allow it to get out. I just want to find a way to help you.”

  Sirena thought she could fix her and everything would be perfect. That Delia and Drake would be able to bond, but that could never happen. Drake’s true mate was dead. The sweet innocent Delia, untainted by death and crazed beasts, had been his. No matter how much she wanted the dragon, she could never have him. Sirena might think she could fix this, but it was far too late for that.

  The thought made her stomach hitch. Mates were supposed to be some rare and beautiful thing, and instead Cyril had twisted it and made a monster in the process.

  There was no telling what the drug inside her would do to Drake and she’d never chance it harming him. Besides, her sanity would never survive having another animal. How could she contain a dragon with the shadow beast and a wolf? It was impossible. And those were only two of about a thousand reasons she couldn’t have him.

  All she had were fantasies and the link she shouldn’t have forged. The memories of his scent alone were enough to make her ache. It was like nothing she’d ever encountered, like the woods at night or something ancient and magical. Beautiful.

  “We’ve been through this, Sirena. I will not give you that formula.”

  Her mind had already slipped to the memories of her first encounter with the beautiful dragon. He’d been so damned magnificent. Before that she’d only seen images of him. All of the Guardians were depicted in the cities of Tetartos, but few actually visited them.

  Seeing an image hadn’t been anything like seeing him firsthand. His eyes were such a brilliant emerald they looked like jewels. His shoulde
r-length golden hair had been partially pulled back out of his fierce face. A short beard covered a strong jaw and all seven feet of him looked to be a mass of hard surfaces and rippling muscle under the plain tee shirt and jeans he’d been wearing.

  She nearly moaned at the memory.

  He was perfection, whereas she was a wild beast covered in spelled mud to hide her scent. An abomination. Cyril’s drug had destroyed one female and created an animal with no chance of ever having a normal life. She still wore the mud every day; otherwise she’d never be able to be this close to others. The synthetic pheromones running through her veins were too dangerously addicting to Immortals to allow free.

  She cringed that the first time Drake had seen her, the shadow had been in control of her body. She’d been a feral animal consumed with bloodlust. The beast had been at the end of a long trail of Cyril’s dead followers and she’d been seconds from killing the last. She shook her head at the thought.

  She blew out a breath and resisted the compulsion to touch the link to the dragon. She’d become dependent on him. Whenever he was near, her beasts seemed to still and she didn’t have to fight so hard to maintain control. His presence didn’t always stop the shadow from breaking free, but having him near made it so much easier to leash the beast when that happened. After being lost to the beast for months, he’d given her freedom.

  Delia wanted to know what happened with Apollo, but Sirena wore a distracted look as if she was in the middle of a telepathic conversation while Delia’s mind wandered. The healer gave her one final look. “I’ll be back.”

  And she was gone, leaving Delia with questions and an uneasy feeling.

  Chapter 4

  Guardian Manor, Tetartos Realm

  Nastia started yanking on the clothes her twin had dropped off before Tasha had run off with her mate to some Guardian meeting Nastia hadn’t been invited to.

  She was sick to death of being treated like a damned invalid, so she’d hauled her ass up and showered. She hated that she still felt drained, but she was getting hornier so that had to mean she was getting better. She gritted her teeth because the damned healer had been right about that. Once her energies started leveling out, the effects of the mating frenzy started kicking in.

  Now she was both tired and needy.

  Just perfect.

  She didn’t care that she wasn’t a hundred percent yet, she needed to get out of this damned cavern room. The fucking walls were closing in now that she wasn’t so drained and exhausted that she only cared about sleep.

  This was absolutely not her running away. No way in hell was she running from that damned Phoenix. She didn’t care that the bastard had been in her mind, eavesdropping on all the sappy things she’d been thinking about him. She just wished her damned traitor of a twin had mentioned that little side effect of the frenzy a hell of a lot sooner. She’d have built a mental block to the male the minute he touched her. Not hours later. He’d obviously known all about it, because she hadn’t gotten any of his fucking thoughts. Asshole.

  She yanked the jeans the rest of the way up her long legs and slipped on the black KISS tee shirt before she even zipped up. She didn’t bother with a bra, regretting it the second the soft cotton grazed over her hard nipples. She growled at the sensation. Everything was so fucking sensitive. She would have taken care of it in the shower, but she’d just needed out of there.

  She looked around as she zipped the jeans. They hugged her curves, and just having the harsh material on her aching flesh only added another layer to her blaring annoyance. The mating frenzy was making her life miserable. This was the Phoenix’s fault. Not only had the bastard touched her, starting the frenzy of no return, he’d taken her to Tetartos, which had a damned confinement spell. She was trapped.

  Although her sister said there was some supersecret way to get home to Earth, she hadn’t shared it. She wanted her car, her club, her own damned bed and computer so she could do something productive.

  Those unknown asshole warriors had crashed her party and taken Apollo right out from under her fingers. She wasn’t overly threatened by them; yes, their weapons had knocked her on her ass, but they hadn’t killed her. Without their toys, the dickheads would have been dust under her boot, because aside from a little speed and strength, they were no match for her, her twin or the Guardians.

  Without their pretty gold sticks and big giant holes in the sky, they were just a bunch of pretty faces with marginal fighting skills.

  The whole thing still made the back of her neck itch. They hadn’t cared about any loss to their ranks; they’d focused solely on getting the God.

  And Apollo was capable of any number of horrible things, did they want him to make them more powerful? That was FrankenGod’s specialty, after all. She should know, he’d created her and her twin using the blood of his sister, Hera, and some other poor Immortals. She and Tasha had been trained and hidden from birth to be his special weapons against the other Gods. She and her sister had escaped him millennia ago, right before the Creators came back and put the Deities to sleep for nearly destroying the world.

  She and Tasha had lived secretly in Earth Realm all this time, knowing that Apollo would hunt for them if he was ever freed. And he had.

  If only they’d had a few more seconds, they would have had the bastard in a nice metal prison cell. That was entirely the Guardians’ idea, not hers. Apparently the Creators told the Guardians that the Gods would be needed for something super important. Yet, not quite important enough to say what the fuck that meant. Her mental musings on that particular point were chock full of sarcasm.

  She guessed that the idea of the asshole in chains had its charms, but his head rolling down a bowling lane was entirely more appealing. She could see the screen light up with the word “STRIKE!” in big bold letters as she pumped her fist and high-fived her twin.

  She might be getting delirious at this point.

  She ran a shaking hand through her wet hair. The shower had been amazing, but now she was feeling exhausted all over again. It really grated that apparently she was the only one so affected by whatever the hell those warriors had used as weapons.

  Jesus. Apollo had created her using Hera’s blood to be an assassin of Gods, and some pissant warriors with shiny sticks knocked her on her ass? Talk about crushing her ego.

  Worse was that it hadn’t done a damned thing to Sander. That edible Phoenix had taken several hits playing hero and carrying her off the battlefield. The male was entirely too hot and sexy in normal terms, but he’d been so sizzling and ruthless in battle that he’d melted her panties. He’d distracted her, or else she’d never have been hit.

  It had been completely mortifying.

  She lifted her hand and tried to apply some pressure to the ache behind her eye. Her entire body was oversensitive and needy, and no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t stop feeling the echo of Sander’s hands on her skin. Damn him. He’d ruined everything. There wasn’t a way out of the mating now. She’d spent a week watching her twin go through all the phases of animal lust over her Guardian, Bastian.

  She had to stop thinking about him and the mating and get the hell out of there. She looked around for her boots and blade.

  She growled as she spun, searching the seating area by her bed.

  Of course her damned sister couldn’t be bothered to give her one damned blade. She turned again in case she’d missed it. She’d had several when she’d come in. Someone had taken off her clothes while she slept and stuck her in a fucking hospital gown and it better not have been Sander, now that she was thinking about it. No doubt the bastard would have copped a feel to get back at her for messing with his memories and sneaking into his house when he slept.

  She’d never once touched him, but he still wanted revenge and she wouldn’t put anything past him.

  She groaned. Damn it, now all she could think about was him touching her while she slept. Obviously she was sicker than she thought because she wasn’t feeling the right emoti
ons. She should be pissed not hot.

  After one more glance around, she bit out several choice expletives. She was going to murder her meddling twin. That bitch took her shit, leaving her with only clothes and some boots.

  Are you still in that meeting? she snapped through the mental link to Tasha. She could have just checked to see where her sister was, but she didn’t have the energy to do anything but rant.

  No. Bastian and I are getting some of our things.

  Her mouth gaped open. And you left me here?

  Her mind rushed to check the telepathic link tethering her ass to the Phoenix. He was still in the building, but he wasn’t on his way to her. Somehow that only pissed her off. Last night he’d sent her one telepathic message. Rest, because I’ll be coming for you. Or something like that. That was it. She’d been left all night to stew after her sister played medieval matchmaker and ditched her.

  She could almost feel the smugness in her sister’s response. We’ll be back.

  She put her hands on her hips and demanded, When?

  Later. Tasha was definitely staking her out like a lamb for the slaughter just because her sister wanted Nastia to finish the bond with the Phoenix. This was bullshit.

  The only plus was that it was probably safe to say there wasn’t a battle brewing if Tasha was picking up clothes, but she still wanted to know what was going on. What happened in the meeting?

  She sank down in a chair. She just needed to rest a minute before she went to check on Brigitte and got the hell outside. Her friend had been taken by Apollo as incentive for Nastia and Tasha to come to him. At least the Guardians had located her after the God was taken.

  Supposedly Brigitte was fine after her whole ordeal, but Nastia wanted to see for herself.

  Tasha answered after a second. Drake’s working on a way to find Apollo and the warriors. There’s still no sign of them anywhere and the only clues we have is their blood. That hasn’t given us anything helpful.