by Ophelia Bell
She turned around, facing the throne again just to catch her breath and calm herself. Ozzie and Sophia both watched in silence, but they both had equally satisfied smiles on their faces, and Ozzie surreptitiously gave her a thumbs-up behind one hand. If nothing else, he’d been a loyal friend in all this, and her heart went out to him. He deserved love, and if anyone knew how rough it was to be jerked around by Fate, it was him.
Turning, she strode across in front of the dais, past Bekim and Theron, then spun and made her way back. “There are only two tests I expect the four of you to complete,” she began. “Each test will span six hours, with each of you proving yourselves within that time.” She paused and turned at the other end of the dais and met Cade’s blue eyes. “The first test is to determine how much power you are capable of producing and sustaining at my hands. Your stamina is the key in this test.”
She paused and gave Dionysus a once-over. The cocky bastard was the only one fully on display, and certainly looked like he could go for days. But she had spent long nights with Theron and Bekim and was well aware of how long they could last, even without the aid of divine power. Striding on, she gave the pair of ursa what she hoped was an encouraging smile, and they both smiled back.
This might actually turn out to be fun. She smiled to herself when she turned again and paused, scanning the men from which she would soon choose her mate.
“The second test will show me how well you can drive my power to its peak. No man in existence has found that peak.” She narrowed her eyes at Dionysus’ knowing smile and shook her head. “I am a dragon. Don’t ever forget that. I’ve had plenty of orgasms, but my capacity to absorb power until the need grows beyond my control is far greater than my own small indulgences have been.
“I like orgasms, but I can hold out longer than most of my lovers are comfortable waiting. You will each only have a few hours and no longer, but that is all we need for the ritual. Your willpower pushed beyond its limit and my own at least halfway met. The longer we each go, the more the power is drawn to us, the more power we have to contribute to the creation of the portal. And with enough power, we will be able to target its placement on either side with precision that will give us the advantage we need to win this war.”
She’d stopped pacing and moved to stand at the top of the dais before the throne once more, yet the room seemed small now compared to the vast chamber she’d walked into a little while ago. Her skin tingled and her head felt heavy. All gazes were fixed to her, eyes wide. Even the cocky Dionysus had his brows raised, his gaze quietly assessing as though he were sizing up an opponent. She glanced down at her hands. Sharp talons jutted from where her fingernails had been, and emerald scales plated her hands and lower arms.
Far from embarrassed at the inadvertent loss of control over her power, she settled her shoulders and gazed back at the room, daring anyone to challenge the rules she’d created for the contest. A contest in which she was the ultimate prize.
Dionysus was the first to bow, this time even going so far as to fall to one knee and lower his head. “I accept your terms, Numa.”
Cade, Bekim, and Theron all followed almost as a unit, stating their own acceptance.
Silently, she sent a message to her brother, who was still upstairs with the newborn and his mates. “Exactly how much time have I got for this contest?”
“We had hoped to hold the temporal bubble for a week, but there have been some troubling fluctuations in the shield that we can’t figure out. It’s affecting the baby, so we need to speed things along. Will two days be enough?”
“I can make it work.”
Numa took a long breath and exhaled, returning her gaze to the contestants. “We will begin the first phase in one hour. Dionysus, you are to come to me first. Six hours after, Cade will join me, and then six hours after that, Bekim and Theron. Once the first phase is finished, we’ll take a short break before phase two begins. You are all free to go prepare or rest. The staff will furnish you with rooms, if required.”
She waited while the four men departed and the rest of the residents of the lodge followed after. When the door closed behind the last ursa, the dawn light flickered, casting a strange shadow like a cloud had passed across the sun in an instant.
“That can’t be good,” Numa said. “We’re trapped in a time bubble. The light should remain static.”
Aodh’s worried voice echoed through her head. “Sister, something has happened.”
She hurried out the door and up the stairs, jogging straight to Vrishti’s room. “What is it? Is the baby all right? Is Vrishti?”
“It’s hard to explain. Just come.”
When she entered, she stopped in her tracks. She’d left barely an hour earlier, mother and child comfortably dozing on the bed. Now, Vrishti was still reclining against the pillows, but where there’d been an infant before, there was now a bright-eyed toddler with deep, burnished skin and curly black hair.
She stared open-mouthed at the little girl who sat in the center of the bed, happily playing with a stuffed toy someone had found for her. As Numa approached, the baby looked up at her. She smiled a huge smile with two little teeth already visible and dropped the toy. Her chubby brown hands reached for Numa and she let out an excited squeal. The child’s eyes were more vividly blue than any normal newborn’s. A blue Numa would know anywhere.
“How is this possible? This child is dragon-blessed. By my sister.”
“It isn’t possible,” Neph said. “But what is possible is that she’s the blood of a dragon-blessed. This baby was one of Meri’s experiments. We’ve released most of her captives from the higher races, including the four Elites who used to serve her as Nikhil’s lieutenants. As you know, one of those Elites was Belah’s goddaughter, Neela. I believe Deva is Neela’s daughter.”
“Then who is her father?” she asked, darting a look to Neph.
The Dionarch just gave her a helpless look and opened his hands. “He could be any one of the male captives. Calder is the only one who saw the notes she kept on her experiments, but the grimoire was nowhere to be seen when we stormed Meri’s lab. Her parentage is less important now than these growth spurts.”
Numa went to the bed and sat down near the little girl. She smiled and reached out, pleased when the child’s tiny hand clasped around her finger. “Hi there, Deva. I wish you could tell me how you got so big.” She looked up at the others. “It happened when the light changed, didn’t it? Is this the fluctuation you were worried about?”
“Yes. It occurred at almost the same instant,” Neph said. “The fluctuations in the temporal barrier even out as quickly as they occur. We are not concerned about it failing. The three of us have more than enough power to maintain it until you’ve completed the ritual, but if the fluctuation happens again, we should investigate. I don’t want any surprises.”
“Me neither.” She brushed a hand over the top of Deva’s head, her heart warming at the softness of her curls and the way she reached again for her toy. “We don’t want you to grow up too fast, little Deva. Give us enough time to understand who you really are first.”
Deva grabbed the toy in both hands and clutched it to her, laughing. Numa watched her in silence for another moment. The little girl’s aura still gave no hint that a destiny awaited her, but there were new signs Numa hadn’t seen before.
“Aodh, do you see what I see?” She glanced up at her brother, who nodded.
“She has dragon in her,” he said.
“The power is there, yes, but not just that. There’s something more, but I can’t make it out.”
Aodh leaned against the big post at the far corner of the bed, lips pressed together as though he didn’t want to say what was on his mind.
It was Vrishti who broke the silence. “She is a chimera. I remembered a passage in one of the books in the library that describes her aura exactly. Not the strange rainbow I first saw when she was born. Sophia explained what that was. This is a hint of her origins. Thanks to the bond
I share with Neph and Aodh, and the fact that Deva and I shared blood for a short time, I can sense the essences of what made her. She has the power of all four of the higher races, and the blood of humans in her as well. She is the first of her kind to exist on Earth, and every bit as immortal as any of us in this room.”
Numa’s blood chilled. The strange changes in light tied to the child’s growth spurts…
Meri had created this child in her lab. Was it possible she had a way to find her too?
Chapter 6
Meri
Meri’s mind spread out, tethered to her body by only the finest thread. As long as her broken shell of a vessel still breathed, she would be chained to it, but that didn’t matter now. The very air inside her home held magic enough for her purposes, and while they carefully kept her separated from the Source itself, she had another source to draw from.
There were humans within the Haven now, and while the life’s blood of the higher races was still just beyond Meri’s reach, the life’s blood of humanity was not. She had begun this trap at the start and built it little by little over the centuries. Her first choice had been accidental, but oh so fortuitous. Choosing to assume the identity of a physician’s daughter in the court of a pharaoh had given her access to more than enough humans to test her blood on while she still carried enough of her original power to affect them.
She doubted she could have grown so powerful without those small exchanges, and she’d never expected them to pay off to such a degree. She’d been too wrapped up in her research and maintaining control over Nikhil and the Elites to test how far those links went. Her Ultiori weren’t an isolated system, however. The men and women she recruited—mostly men—had all been blood melded to her, but she’d never restricted their breeding. She’d had no interest in how they spread their seed around after learning that the lower-ranking Hunters were useless to her, save for as pawns in her ongoing scheme.
The strangest thing happened after the first generation of her Ultiori Hunters began to die … She didn’t lose the connection. She’d fully expected the link to be snuffed along with the Hunter’s life, but it remained strong, though distant. At first, it was just one child of the Hunter’s blood that was still bound to Meri through that link. And then another Hunter died and left behind not one, but five offspring. More and more were added as the first generation expired, leaving behind a network of blood-bonded offspring among the human world.
Meri only occasionally tested that network, reaching out with her mind to see how far it spread. The effort it took was too great to maintain for long, but she credited those succeeding generations of growing links for her growing power. Humanity itself was linked to her by blood, whether it knew it or not, and now that she had no real body of her own worth controlling, she could finally let her power ride free using those thousands of flowing tributaries of blood to serve as her own River, her own Source. It wasn’t quite as strong as the true Source, but it was enough to keep her link to her Hunters strong and her enemies guessing.
It was also enough to allow her to focus all her energy on the one thing she knew could give her the advantage she needed: the flow of time. The only problem was that she’d lost the last creature that had the most pure nymphaea blood under her control. All the satyrs had been taken from her, and she’d mistakenly chosen the most dangerous vessel to carry the precious cargo of her life’s work into the Haven.
She’d learned the lesson centuries earlier not to fuck with a mama bear. The day Maia Stonetree had escaped her clutches, Meri had lost an entire squadron of Ultiori mercenaries to get that baby back. Vrishti had lashed out exactly as fiercely as Maia had to protect a baby that wasn’t even hers. In a way, Meri supposed she had to thank the ursa; she’d never have discovered the extent of the blood link she had with the human race otherwise. But she’d lost the child in the process and had to find her, if she were to succeed.
She stretched the very limits of her consciousness, drawing on the power at her disposal to find that flow of time within the blood of humanity. All living creatures had a miniature River within them; all she needed to do was tap into it to manipulate the flow for her own purposes.
Once within the flow, it took only a moment of practiced observation to find the anomaly, a bubble at the very edge that glowed with the power of the Source that sustained it. When she used her sight to peer inside, a wild rage consumed her. Neph and Aodh had escaped with the pregnant Vrishti and were now blood melded. The bubble they were inside now wasn’t just powered by Neph alone—it was reinforced by immortal dragon power and the magic of the Summer Spirit. She railed at it with all her own considerable power, beating as hard as she could, but barely causing more than a flicker in its strength.
Something happened inside with that flicker, though. Vrishti’s pregnant belly grew bigger until the baby insisted on being born.
Meri stilled and watched, focusing sharply on the child, reaching out with her mind for the link she had lost. That child meant everything. If she could just get her away from diligent parents who had claimed her…
She pressed at the barrier once more, with slow, deliberate care this time. With an effort of will that could have torn down mountains, she exerted herself. It took all she had, but the barrier finally flickered again, if only for a moment. In that time, the child grew. That feedback Meri caused in the temporal bubble had flowed straight into the child, making her age.
If she could just break through, the child would be hers, but aging her would serve a purpose too. It would do her no good if she could reach her own link with the child and finally transfer her soul to the baby’s vessel if the baby was too small to care for herself. This would take time, and if this bubble was any indication, time was exactly what it was designed to provide.
Chapter 7
Zorion
It felt strange for Zorion to walk the halls of the temple his own race had once slept within, and to sense the power of the creatures he called kin, but who he had never known. Somewhere within these halls, his own parents waited. Would they greet him with fear and revulsion, or something else? Would they be as accepting of both his aspects as his beloved Neela was?
He caught Zil’s glance and met his darker half’s ebony gaze. Zil’s brow was creased, his lips pressed tight with the same dread Zorion felt.
Ahead of them, Asha practically dragged Naaz along by the hand, bouncing with eager enthusiasm. She glanced back and gave Zorion and exasperated look. “Come on, you two!” she called before running ahead. Naaz gave them an apologetic shrug before tearing off after her down the spiral staircase that seemed to have no end.
Neela pulled up short, tugging on his and Zil’s hands. She looked up at them both with eyes of glowing embers. She still radiated heat, but with practice, had learned to keep her raw phoenix power tamped down to a comfortable temperature, though they’d learned that only clothing conjured from Zorion or Asha’s breath could withstand being against her skin for any length of time. They’d arrived dressed like soldiers, because Neela and Naaz both insisted that was what would be expected of them.
“They will love you both,” she said with certainty. “I promise.”
He shared a dubious look with his darker half. “If you say so. We’ll believe it when it happens,” Zorion said, and reluctantly followed when Neela began walking down the stairs again.
He could feel them as he drew closer. There were thousands of dragons in residence, and he was acutely aware of them all around him, but even more aware of the pair of powerful minds that had joined eons ago to create him. He didn’t dare reach out; they seemed just as reserved as he was. He almost wished for Zil’s relative isolation—without the power of fire running through his veins, Zil lacked the same mental link to their origins and could remain comfortably oblivious.
They finally reached the bottom and found themselves in a huge foyer in front of a pair of double doors. Smaller doors branched off to either side, the presence of all the resident creatures buzzing b
eyond, but within the room beyond the bigger doors, Zorion only sensed five heartbeats.
Asha and Naaz waited by the doors expectantly. “We should go in together, brothers. The three of us.”
“You ready?” Naaz asked. Neela moved to her brother’s side, each of them grabbing hold of one of the big door handles.
Asha took Neela’s place between Zorion and his darker half and reached for each of their hands. She gave Zorion an excited look, then bestowed a matching one upon his other half.
“Reunion time,” Asha said, the subdued tone the only thing betraying her own nerves.
Neela shot him an encouraging smile before she and her brother pushed the big doors open.
Five sets of eyes shot to the door, and the instant Zorion stepped past the threshold, he was aware of the hopeful mood within. Not just hope, though… desperation greeted him as palpably as if he’d walked into cold water.
Relief quickly followed, and before he knew it, a strikingly beautiful, dark-haired woman rushed toward their group. She shot her blue gaze to each of their faces, her brows only twitching once when she darted her glance back and forth between him and Zil.
“You’re here! Oh, Sweet Mother, finally. My children are here, and safe. Come, my babies, let me hold you!”
Asha didn’t hesitate, and instantly released his hand and flew into her mother’s arms. Belah held her daughter with one arm, waving at Zorion and Zil with the other. He closed the distance to her and embraced both mother and sister in his big, glowing arms while Zil mirrored him on the other side. He didn’t care where this damned temple was, he was home.
After a few moments, Belah slowly extracted herself, though she kept reaching up and touching his face, her eyes wide as she marveled at his appearance. She did the same to Zil and Asha in turn, somehow unable to avoid touching them. She clutched Asha’s hand in hers on one side and gripped Zorion’s tightly on the other, then turned to face the room.