by Ophelia Bell
“Fuck,” he said out loud. “We need a plan, brother.”
“Hang on, I think they’re taking me to see Nyx herself.”
“Why would they take you and not me? Where are you now?”
“I’m at the Source.”
“I thought we were at the Source when we arrived.”
“No, brother. When we traveled in here, the current chose our destination for us. Nyx probably had our arrival point set. She’d never allow us in where the true power is.”
“That’s where you are now?” He gripped the lattice of roots on the side where he sensed his brother and stared off into the distance. He saw nothing but mossy forest with the occasional glowing pixie flitting among the foliage. Those wild creatures were the only fauna that lived in the place.
“Yes … I will try to find out more.”
Gavra tightened his grip around the roots, his teeth gritted in impotent fury. He should have used his power to subdue the nymphs who’d met them, but he’d made a promise to Assana to go willingly.
For several more minutes he waited, his anger surging with each moment of silence.
“Brother, tell me what’s happening!”
Aodh’s presence was still there, a mental beacon in the distance.
Finally, he heard the familiar, deep voice. “I guess she hated me a lot more than I thought. When you get out, tell Vrishti to find Neph. Help her, if you can. For me, brother.”
“Dammit, Aodh, what is she doing?” Icy dread trickled down his spine at the finality of his brother’s words.
Then his brother was gone. No glimmer of mental power in the distance, no voice in his mind. He reached out, searching the entire Haven, but Aodh had completely disappeared.
Gavra tilted his head back and roared.
Chapter Twenty
Assana
Assana paced the empty great hall, pissed that her mother would summon her here and then not even have the courtesy to meet her. She should have stayed with Gavra, made sure they didn’t abuse him, but the truth was that the distance eased that insistent urge she had to meld with him.
“Assana, I’m here if you need me,” Silas said.
His steadfast presence calmed her enough to pause and look at him. “I’m sorry,’ she said. “You didn’t have to come, but I’m glad you did.”
“I’m yours, remember? Where else would I be?”
“Safe in the Sanctuary. I saw what my mother almost did to Nicholas. I’d die if I let you risk your life for me.”
He took two steps and pulled her into a warm embrace. “I would do anything for the two of you, Assana. Who knows where Gavra is right now, but hopefully he’s figuring out a plan. I need to stick with you. This is bigger than just the three of us. We can’t forget that.”
She inhaled his calming evergreen scent and let out a deep sigh, sinking against him. “I know. My instincts want me to go to him, though. They want me to take you both and find an isolated grotto and never leave. The need presses at my mind like a constant, nagging voice and makes it hard to concentrate. I can’t lose focus on finding a way to talk my mother down.”
Silas lifted a hand and cupped her chin, tilting her head up to look into her eyes. His brow was creased with concern.
“You know we may have to do more than just talk her down, right? What she’s done goes beyond reason. I saw how the nymphs who met us behaved. They weren’t in control.”
Assana winced, remembering how oddly her sisters had acted, their movements jerky and strange, their eyes a mad swirl of too many colors.
“Assana,” Silas said, stooping down slightly to look into her eyes. “You know we may have to subdue her, to take her out of the equation. You’ll have to take control of the Haven if that happens.”
“I know,” she said, setting her jaw. “I just wish my uncle were here to help. Or Calder.”
“You have me and Gavra and Aodh. We’ll figure out a way. Any ideas where your mother’s holding them? What she plans to do?”
Grateful for his urging to actually think, she nodded. “There’s only one place she’d keep the two of them that they wouldn’t be able to escape. As for what she plans to do …” She shivered, unwilling to even ponder the idea of Gavra being coerced into mating anyone else.
Before she could finish the thought, the doors flew open and Nyx sailed in with swift strides, pieces of her gown billowing out behind her like trails of sea foam. Assana’s eleven Thiasoi sisters followed in formation, moving more naturally now, she was grateful to see.
Silas inhaled sharply at the sight, and Assana pressed her lips together. Few males could resist ogling women as beautiful as these, and her mother was a shining star compared to the other nymphs. Her gown seemed to be made of all manner of growing things, with vines and mosses and dark leaves stitched into intricate patterns that strategically covered the more sensitive parts of her curvaceous body.
The Thiasoi maidens wore more utilitarian uniforms, though no less revealing. They had no enemies inside the Haven, but the squadron of soldiers was always at the ready.
“Daughter, you have returned,” Nyx said, smiling invitingly. The shift in her demeanor gave Assana hope. Perhaps she was willing to see reason now.
When Nyx reached her, she pulled away from Silas and went gladly into her mother’s outstretched arms. Relief washed through her in the other woman’s embrace.
“Mother, I’m so happy you’re back to normal. Where are the dragons? Did you let them go?”
“Nonsense, Assana,” Nyx said, taking her place on her throne. That was when Assana finally noticed that there was only a single throne on the dais at the end of the great hall, and her mother didn’t seem the least bit aware of the strangeness of that sight.
“Why not?” she asked, her gut clenching with renewed worry. This smiling woman looked like the mother she remembered from ages ago, before her father and brother’s squadron had been captured by the Ultiori, but she realized that everything was wrong with her mother’s behavior now.
“The red one will serve his purpose before he is released. As for the other … I have sent him somewhere he can no longer tempt any of my nymphs or my brother to break our laws.”
“What do you mean, Mother? Where did you send Aodh?”
Her mother’s smile didn’t budge. “Oh, he’ll be quite comfortable, though when his power wanes he will likely go mad, but he’ll be far away from the Lamia’s clutches. He’s what she wanted from the start, back when she was still a nymph named Meri. Did you know that?”
Silas uttered a soft curse beside her. “Gavra’s not going to like this,” he said.
“The red dragon won’t have a care once my Thiasoi are ready for him. We’ll keep him in such a sexual stupor he’ll beg for more when we stop.”
“You can’t do this to him, Mother. When the dragons find out, they’ll come for him, and all the work you’ve done to protect the Haven will be for nothing. Please, just let them both go.”
“No!” Nyx yelled, her voice echoing through the hall. She stood and glared down at Assana. “They’re the ones who have put the Haven in jeopardy by taking my men away. It’s that white fool’s fault that any of this has happened. He tempted Meri to taste his blood without a true bond of love, and it corrupted her. If I could execute them both, I would, but at least the red one has some use to me alive.”
Assana raised her hands in a pleading gesture. “Mother, you are wrong. Meri was never quite sane—you said it yourself to father once, after you banished her. How she’d never been the same after you melded father.”
“She was only hurt and lost. That dragon took advantage of her weakened emotional state. Tried to get her to do abominable things for the sake of pleasure. It’s too late for her now, but I can make sure he doesn’t hurt us again. If she comes for him, she won’t find him.”
“That isn’t what h
appened, Mother, and you know it.”
She’d heard the recounting of Meri’s transgressions, though she was barely old enough to understand what had happened. When she was older and asked her brother why her uncle was so sad, he’d told her the full story. Whether her mother’s memory of the events was tainted somehow by her own actions, Assana wasn’t sure. Blood melding was outlawed for a reason. It was enough of a challenge for the nymphaea to maintain control of their sanity if they didn’t carefully manage their sexual energy. Add to that the temptation of power granted through a blood meld and all bets were off.
Her father had been gone too long. And while her uncle and brother weren’t ideal for balancing her mother’s power, they’d been better than nothing. Their very presence had made a difference that she noticed now by virtue of their absence and her mother’s increasingly irrational behavior.
She needed to get her mother in a room with a male, but rejected the idea of subjecting Gavra or Silas to the task. They were hers, dammit.
“Daughter, the safety of the Haven is no longer your concern. When my melding with the Thiasoi is complete, I will birth a new army of immortals to protect us. You should take your new ursa mate and go get started on a child. Your mental state is in dire straits from the looks of it. Have you even fucked him yet?”
Defeated and confused, Assana could only shake her head. “We have melded once. I—I’m not ready.”
“I sometimes forget that I never let you out of the Haven to play with the human men. How have you not had your fun with a dozen ursa males by now? I’m sure even those two dragons would have happily accommodated you and helped you lose your virginity.”
She clenched her eyes shut, hating her mother in that moment, though the woman had once been infinitely understanding.
“I don’t know, Mother. Maybe you were just a little too careful after father was captured. I miss him too, but this is insane. Clio and the others don’t deserve what you’re doing to them. They’re loyal soldiers, and you’re abusing that loyalty.”
“They understand the sacrifice. They’re willing to do what needs to be done for the safety of the Haven, no matter how long it takes.”
Silas stiffened beside her, his hand slipping around her waist. “Let’s give her some space,” he said.
Assana reluctantly let him pull her away and they left the great hall. She wasn’t oblivious to the pained looks in the eyes of her sister Thiasoi and longed to speak to them, though she knew better than to do it under her mother’s scrutiny. She didn’t even have the presence of mind to reach out for the River to see if she could glean some detail about the course of action that might lead to her success. She’d only had the power for a short time, but even in that time had learned that she would only encounter blankness when she sought information linked too closely with her own path, as opposed to that of others.
She saw nothing of Silas or Gavra, either, which should have comforted her because it meant they remained closely linked to her, but that blind spot was a weakness.
Finally outside the great hall, she took a breath and looked up at Silas. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being you, I guess,” she said, giving him a small smile. “Let’s see if we can figure out where they took Gavra. Then get some rest.”
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked, turning to lean on the stone rail of the terrace and face her.
She took a shaky breath. “I don’t know. Ever since I first saw Gavra, it’s like my hormones are in overdrive. I’ve never had to deal with this before, but I’ve heard of other nymphs who fell for human men who did. If a nymph waits too long to find a mate and conceive a child, even the sight of another man can drive us mad, especially if we’re in our primal form.”
Silas pushed his lips out thoughtfully and nodded. “I know what you mean about Gavra. He’s …” He took a long breath and then let out a chuckle. “There’s no word for what he is, but you saw first-hand what he does to me. But I have to ask. I’m a male, yet you seem perfectly … ah … sane right now.”
She looked into his eyes, surprised that she didn’t see any confusion or hurt—only curiosity. Biting her lip, she turned her gaze to the ground and teased her bare toe over a gap in the stones beneath her feet.
“You’re different,” she said, struggling to find the words to describe exactly how Silas made her feel. The primal ache for a child burned in her belly, filling her with unfettered energy, an anxious need to breed and sate that hunger inside her. Her skin felt charged with that power with every passing moment, but with Silas near her … touching her … She reached out a hand to him and he instinctively took it. The swelling pressure immediately dissipated.
Letting out a long breath, Assana said, “With you, I feel grounded.”
He smiled. “I get it. You guys are like ursa females on crack. Are you always like this?”
“It’s been worse since Mother locked down the Haven. But yeah, as for me, I have been like this ever since I came of age, but it’s gotten worse every century. I don’t shift, as a rule, because I learned in my primal form I go a little crazy.”
“But there are no men here. At least, there weren’t until the ursa you brought in. Where are the ursa males, anyway?”
“They’re spread out among the other grottos. You probably won’t see any while we’re here, though. It’s only been a few days since they arrived, it’ll be a few more before they even come up for air. They probably don’t even know anything’s gone wrong.”
Silas frowned. “Should we warn them?”
“Not yet. It’s too soon to worry, and I doubt Mother will harm them. She’s too concerned with producing male children to interfere.”
He tugged her close. “All right, but if things start going south with your mother, or her soldiers, I want to give them the choice to fight. They’ll want to know, and I have an obligation to them to keep them safe.”
“I know. If it comes to that, we’ll tell them.”
She sank against his warm chest, marveling at how swiftly his simple touch could calm her wild urges. Odd that he didn’t have that effect on Gavra. The red dragon seemed more likely to incite lust in a calmer person than the other way around.
The thought of Gavra made her push back and look into Silas’s eyes. “Did you like what he did to you before?”
He raised his eyebrows, studying her for a second, then his tongue slipped out and licked along the curve of his lower lip before being replaced by his teeth. He made a little humming sound that became a rumble deep in his chest.
“You mean when he forced me to suck his cock?”
Her breathing grew shallow and she nodded, envisioning the scene as it had unfolded when she’d arrived. She’d scented them both through the magic barrier of Gavra’s room, and it had taken all her shaky will to keep from entering and having her own taste of both men.
Now she’d tasted Silas, had melded him once, and that connection had provided a link that would help keep her grounded for a time.
“I love everything he does to me,” he said. “But I especially love that you need me to balance what he does to you.”
She shook her head. “He hasn’t done anything to me. I never even touched him before that kiss.”
“And yet you’re in danger of falling to pieces just imagining his dick in my mouth. Or are you imagining his dick in your mouth? We still have a little bit of a mental link, but it wouldn’t take a genius to know what’s going through your head after that question. This is what he does to us both.”
She let out a groan and pressed her face into his chest. “Yes. He’s in my head so deep—has been since the first time I saw him.”
“So …” Silas drew the word out as he rubbed both hands down her sides. “Maybe we need to get into each other’s heads a little more to balance him out.”
She breathed him in, tempt
ed to say yes and take him to her quarters and stay there, fucking away all her worries. But Silas was only half of a piece that would make her whole, and she couldn’t keep hiding from the other half.
“Not yet,” she said. “I need to know he’s okay first.” She stretched up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips, pulling back just as he began to open up and ask for more.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Silas said, looking a little irritated.
“Come on,” she said, ignoring his comment and taking him by the hand. “Brace yourself. The drift is short and easy here, but still discombobulating for non-nymphaea.”
Without giving him another second to prepare, she closed her eyes, reached for the River, and dove in.
There were a dozen major grottos in the Haven, and each one had a small collection of cages that would be suitable for someone like Gavra. It didn’t take long to find the one where he was being held. Her mother would have wanted to keep him close.
They ended the drift in the shade of a tree near a small pond with blooming lily pads floating on its surface. Before Assana could step onto the path, the air filled with dense fog right in front of her and there was a familiar rushing sound. A second later, a figure appeared with a loud pop.
Silas jumped and let out a curse beside her when the nymph appeared out of thin air.
“Ephyra! What are you doing here?” Assana asked.
“Guarding this beast,” the nymph said, casting a sidelong glance back at the structure where Gavra was being held. “He’s a wild one … I don’t recommend getting too close. He keeps trying to seduce me into letting him out.”
“We just wanted to make sure he’s all right,” Assana said, cautious not to say more lest her mother be listening in.
Ephyra smiled shakily, her good humor appearing forced. “He’s more than all right. It’s just a shame there’s only one of him for all of us. I’m only disappointed that it’s going to take longer before we’re ready to have a go at him. We’re still debating whether we want to have him one at a time, or all at once. You’re acquainted with him already. What do you think he’d enjoy?”