by Ophelia Bell
Assana frowned and narrowed her eyes. She didn’t believe a word of the forced enthusiasm. Beside her, Silas made an odd sound that might have been a laugh. She shot a look at him and he raised a fist to his mouth, feigning a cough.
“I think it’s inappropriate to speculate. You should just ask him, if he has any choice in the matter.”
Ephyra’s expression darkened and she seemed to shrink inward. “Sister, I don’t like this,” she whispered. “The fact that it’s him we get to couple with is the only silver lining, but it’s all wrong. You’re lucky you landed an ursa mate, or your mother would have dragged you into this plan too. She said as much while you were gone.”
Assana’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Ephyra, is she not in your mind now? Can she hear you? Be careful.”
The other nymph shook her head. “It comes and goes. Small blessing that we can tell when she’s got hold of us, even if we can’t do anything about it. She hasn’t melded us deeply enough yet to control us all at once for more than an hour or two.”
“Why won’t you fight her? Band together to overpower her,” Silas said.
Ephyra’s brows shot up and she let out a rueful laugh. “You don’t know Nyx. She’s always got enough of us under thrall to keep the rest in line. Besides, we all agreed to do this. How do you think she got our blood to begin with? She didn’t force us into it.”
“But I thought … When I saw Clio earlier with the rest of you, I could swear she didn’t look like she liked what she was doing.”
“Assana, we hate having our minds invaded. It’s the most unpleasant sensation. Like being asked to take a big mouthful of foulness and hold it without spitting or swallowing. It gets easier each time, though, and it’s to protect the Haven, so it’s worth it. You must understand, or you wouldn’t have brought him back to us … I know you were friends with your brother’s dragon. But the safety of the Haven …”
“How long until you go through with the breeding?” Assana asked, hoping she could have time to come up with a plan.
“Nyx says she needs a week for the connection to be strong enough with all of us. Like I said, it’s getting easier, even though it’s only been a couple days. When she’s in my head, I can feel the power.” She took a shaky breath, darting a glance over her shoulder at Gavra’s cage. “I keep trying to remind myself that it’s worth it. I mean, we want it to be … but we want to conceive with a mate, not through some weird ritual where we aren’t even the true mothers of our babies.”
“No one wants that,” Assana said, though she wasn’t sure what Ephyra meant. Who else would be the babies’ mothers?
“We will bear the children for the Haven. Oh, Assana, why couldn’t you have convinced your mother to try the breeding pact ages ago? There aren’t enough ursa males to go around yet. The Thiasoi all agreed to be last, but now we’re faced with this.”
“Gavra’s not that bad,” Assana said, though she wondered why she’d try to comfort her friend when she hoped they’d figure out a way to divert her mother’s plan before she managed to carry it out.
“He isn’t the man any of us want. Having your mother in our heads … her spirit taking over our bodies, making us all extensions of her just so we can conceive without being marked … I mean, I would love to mate a dragon someday, but not this way. Not this dragon. Is there anything you can do to make her stop? Please, Assana.”
“But you agreed to it …” Assana began, her mind reeling as the scope of her mother’s plan became clearer.
“We didn’t know it would be like this. She claimed it was our duty, so we agreed. You would do anything to protect the Haven, too. This is what we have to do!”
The nymph was shaking now, her lips trembling and tears threatening to escape her eyes.
Assana reached out to console her friend and Ephyra suddenly went completely still, her eyes glazing over for a second before they cleared again. The whirlpools of her irises swirled with a different color and her mother’s eyes looked back at her. Assana gasped.
“Daughter, what has this nymph been telling you?”
“Nothing, Mother,” Assana said through gritted teeth.
Ephyra turned and surveyed her surroundings. “I see you found the dragon’s prison. You will see he is unharmed. I trust he will remain within that cell until I have need of him. I’d rather not be forced to demonstrate what I can do to your sisters if you misbehave.” Ephyra casually unsheathed a sharp dagger at her waist and lifted it so the point was aimed at her own eye.
“I only wish to speak to him, Mother,” Assana said, her voice weak with fear for Ephyra’s welfare.
Silas took charge then, swiftly reaching out for the nymph’s wrist and twisting the dagger out of her hand. Her focus didn’t waver from Assana.
“Don’t test me, daughter. You should be in your quarters completing a second melding with your new mate. You will join me for breakfast tomorrow. I trust you can prove you are going forward with the melding to give me a grandchild soon.”
Assana let out a long sigh. “Fine, we will be there.”
Just as suddenly as she appeared, the presence of her mother was gone from Ephyra’s eyes. The nymph sagged and stumbled, but Silas caught her as she began to sob uncontrollably.
“Ephyra, I promise we will fix this. As soon as we can figure out a way to,” Assana said.
Through her hitching sobs, Ephyra shook her head. “She’s too strong. Unless that dragon can use his powers. Do you think he’ll help? Please tell me he can help!”
Assana glanced across the expanse of lily pads toward Gavra’s cage. He was an immortal, like her mother. They’d hoped that he and his brother together could find a way to subdue Nyx, but perhaps Gavra’s powers alone were enough. It had to be worth a try.
They comforted Ephyra until she had calmed. When Assana was sure she would be all right, they left her sitting on the mossy ground beside the pond, catching her breath.
They’d barely reached the outside of Gavra’s cage when he rushed toward them, grabbing hold of the bars.
“What the fuck did she do with Aodh!” he yelled.
Assana winced, wishing she had a better answer than the one she was about to give him about his brother’s whereabouts.
“He’s in a more secure prison,” she said. “Which means Mother’s probably sent him into a temporal bubble.”
Gavra swore. “What time period?”
“I have no way of knowing. Somewhere Meri can’t find him, so it’s likely a time before they knew each other. We’ll get him back when we figure out how to get through to Mother, I promise.” She took a deep breath, ill-prepared for what she was about to suggest next. “I think if you can use your power on her it might help shake her out of this.”
Gavra shook his head. “Assana, she’s immortal like me. Her power as strong as mine is. I can’t affect her with my power unless she already had some desire. I knew the moment she and your father got together that she would want no other male. So short of divine power, it’s unlikely I can make a difference, and I doubt you’ll be able to talk my mother or Gaia, or even Dionysus into stepping in.”
“But you’re male,” Assana said, clinging to her wish for balance in the Haven, sure that somehow his sex must be enough to help.
“That in itself isn’t enough. She doesn’t love me. She loved the men who left her or were taken. If anything, my presence would do more harm than good.”
“Do you think I could help?” Silas interjected, looking at her. “You said yourself that my touch calms your mind. Maybe it would calm hers too.”
Gavra snorted. “She’d see right through you, man. Somehow I doubt seduction’s your strong suit—the females you’ve been with had no other options.”
“You can be a real ass, you know that?” Silas snapped.
“Gavra, please,” Assana said, frustrated by the males’ bickering
. “As much as I hate the idea, I am at a loss right now. We have to try something. At least let me get you out of this cage.”
She stepped close and placed her hands on the bars, commanding the living roots to part. Vines sprouted from them, twining over her hands as tiny leaves and flowers unfurled and reached for the moonlight, but she failed to create even a tiny gap in the web of roots that held Gavra prisoner.
She concentrated harder, her throat constricting with frustration until she was nearly in tears over her inability to break through. Gavra wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed.
“Stop,” he said softly, the heat of his hand sending a jolt of desire through her that did nothing to comfort her, and everything to make her want to drift into the cage with him instead. Reluctantly she pulled her hand away.
“Mother’s probably enchanted the cage so that she’s the only one who can open it. There’s nothing I can do.”
“It’s all right,” Silas said, taking Assana’s hand. He took a deep breath. “I think I have an idea. Just hear me out.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Silas
Silas struggled for a moment with the idea of telling them more of what he’d learned from Sathmaki. Gavra knew none of what had occurred when he met with his clan leader, and though Assana had heard some details, she didn’t know everything. Finally, he decided that he could tell them more without compromising his mission.
“I am what the ursa call a Miteradoro, an ursa who is uniquely capable of receiving Gaia’s gift. Remember when I grew roots when I was helping Assana?”
Gavra let out a hungry growl. “As if I could forget being forced to watch her come for you and not being able to taste even a drop of that power, or the sweet honey dripping from her snatch.”
Assana inhaled sharply, her scent growing strong enough to make him hard. He squeezed her hand and the aroma of her arousal subsided slightly.
“That happens whenever I absorb Gaia’s divine power. Assana’s filled with it because she’s the daughter of a Dionarch. Gavra, you say your own power isn’t enough to seduce her, that you need more to have any chance at controlling her, right? What if I give you everything I’ve collected from Assana?”
“Assana’s still not as powerful as a goddess,” Gavra said. “Even if my own power were magnified, I don’t think it’d work on Nyx. She and Nereus were too close. I don’t see Nyx falling for an attempted seduction, no matter who tries. Whatever energy you give to me won’t be any more effective because I’m still not the man she loves.”
“He’s right, Silas. If my father were here, this wouldn’t be happening.”
Silas frowned, feeling defeated. “There’s got to be a way to get through to her. Is there any way to at least break her bond to her soldiers? You’re close to them, aren’t you, Assana?”
“We grew up together, trained together. We found pleasure with each other when the need arose. We are as close as sisters. But a blood meld … I don’t even know how it works. I just know it’s always been forbidden because it strips the parties of their autonomy when the other person takes control.”
“Aodh said it was like being a passenger inside his own body when Meri took over. He was so surprised by her betrayal, and then somehow she pushed his spirit out entirely and it took the Diviner’s help to get his body back. I suppose the only bonus was that it left him with the power to drift.”
Assana visibly blanched. “I can’t ask the Diviner for help,” she said.
She’d gone pale, and Silas reached out to her, pulling her close. “Why not? If this Diviner person knows a way to help, we have to try. Fuck, Assana, why didn’t you try her first?”
“I don’t like what I turn into when I go to her. It was enough when she granted me my connection to the River. When you go to her, you have to enter her chamber in your primal form. There’s no dishonesty or lies in there … but when I take that shape, my desires control me, and it’s impossible for me to regain my human shape without a fight.”
Gavra made a low rumbling sound. “You let your wild thing out, don’t you? How I would love to be there for that.”
Silas swallowed, remembering how intense her need had been when he’d held her in his arms and fingered her to orgasm, then later when she’d pressed his face between her legs and urged him to do it again with his tongue. That she could be any more wild than that excited him, but for some reason, even letting go to that degree terrified her.
“Hey, you don’t have to go. If you show me how to get to her, I’ll visit her alone.”
Assana’s shoulders sagged, betraying her exhaustion. She nodded. “I will, but can we do it tomorrow?” She turned back to Gavra and Silas caught the look of weary longing in her eyes, as strong as if there were a chain binding the pair together.
“Come,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and steering her away with a worried backward glance at Gavra. The other man nodded after them, his fists white-knuckled on the bars of his cage, making it clear that he’d have torn the place apart to be with them if he could have.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Assana
“I hate leaving him like that,” Assana said, making her way on autopilot down the pixie-lit breezeways to her quarters after drifting herself and Silas back to the Dionarch’s palace.
“He knows what needs to be done, just as we do,” Silas said, his warm presence beside her easing her agitation after the brief but incendiary touch of Gavra’s fingers against hers through the bars of his cage.
She glanced at Silas when she reached her door and opened it. “Do you really think he’ll tolerate it for long? I can’t break Mother’s spell on the cage. I’m not strong enough.”
“We’ll figure out a way to either override her spell or convince her to set him free. Maybe tomorrow after I talk to this Diviner of yours we’ll have a better idea.”
Once inside the sanctuary of her rooms, she felt the tension of the day ease. There was comfort in the familiarity of her home and she ached to restore the normalcy she was used to. Still, she found some peace in the quiet mist that filled the air around the windowed exterior of her home, this small extension of the palace that took up most of the central grotto of the Haven.
The lack of tension only made her ever-present craving for a mate … a child … more evident. It was a strange feeling that she’d simply grown accustomed to over the years. But being in the presence of the two men who she knew she was destined to mate increased that sensation’s urgency.
She crossed the living space and exited a glass door framed by thick vines. Her balcony overlooked the palace itself and the majestic mossy stone behind it with all its white webs of waterfalls cascading down. Despite taking deep breaths of the air of this home she loved, she couldn’t shake the frantic need to act, though she had no idea what she could do now.
Silas came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her against him. Immediately her unease melted away and she turned in his arms, returning his embrace and sighing into his broad chest.
“I wish I knew what to do now,” she said. “I’ve never been so impatient before, but ever since I found the two of you, I can’t shake this feeling that I need to hold you close, to get on with mating you so we can fight this dilemma together.”
“Would it be better for you if we did?” Silas asked. “You and I, I mean. Your mother seemed insistent on it. And if it helps stabilize your psyche …”
She stared up at him, his lovely face shadowed, but his dark eyes visible from the pixie lights that glowed from inside her living quarters. There was only a hint of desire—mostly she sensed concern and a willingness to please her.
“We should meld a second time,” she said. “That will mollify Mother for the time being. But as for breeding … I’m not ready yet. Besides, once we start, I won’t want to do anything else until I’m pregnant, and I’m afraid …” S
he buried her face against him and shook her head.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Assana. It’s just sex.”
“I’m not afraid of that. I’m afraid I’ll fail. Fail my sisters, my brother, my uncle … my father, if he really is still alive. And my mother, because I know if she were herself right now, she’d be horrified by what she’s done. She isn’t really like this, Silas. I wish you could have met her when she was happy.”
He lifted a hand and brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. “We’ll find a way to protect the Haven, save your sisters, and fix her. The breeding part can wait, if you can stand it.”
“I have no choice, but melding with you will help.”
Silas’s gaze slid from her eyes to her lips, lingering for a second before following the path of his fingertips over her jaw and along the top of her shoulder. Her skin tingled pleasantly from his touch, hot tension rising in her, but far more welcome than the anxious tightness she’d been bound up with all day.
“Even if all we ever do is meld, I don’t think I can complain. Besides, I admit it would feel strange taking you fully without him here.”
“I promised him I would wait,” she said. “When we’re together for the first time, with you inside me … and him inside me … I want you both to have an equal chance to give me a child, and he has to mark me for that to happen.”
“Then we wait,” Silas said, his voice low and distracted as he pressed her against the railing and brushed his lips over her temple. “He’ll be rough with you. Right now I think you need someone willing to be gentle …”
Assana’s breath caught in her throat at the way the heat of his palm sank into her, even though his skin barely grazed hers as he brushed his hand down her side. His lips were as gentle as the river’s current in her favorite secluded swimming spot. She could almost imagine she was alone and floating along the surface with the lazy waves lapping over her skin, except his touch made her hot instead of cooling her off.