Triumph

by Serena Akeroyd

  “The times of Cleopatra and Plato. When the hanging gardens of Babylon weren’t just a myth but a real thing, and the library of Alexandria was as living and breathing as you or I.” His smile turned dour. “They were good days. The best. We lived like kings, then the humans started taking control. Started eradicating us. Instead of being open and proud of our unusual ways, of our traits that helped us make the place a better world to live in, we had to hide ourselves. Shield the humans from our wicked ways.” Ragnor rolled his eyes, apparently as annoyed now as he’d been then. “We were Gods, and then we were nothing.”

  Mikkel’s mouth felt dry as he whispered, “I’m half-Lyken?”

  “Yes, boy. You are.”

  “But mother never told me…”

  “She didn’t know,” Ragnor murmured, his tone perfectly at ease.

  “What about fafa?”

  “Your grandmother knew not to say anything. Creatures like us, we need our fathers.” He cringed. “I should never have gone off to this stupid war. My mother warned me, but I’d made a promise and we are honorable. Not even Theodore Sidhe can claim we go back on our word.”

  Theo’s mouth pinched in a way that screamed, ‘Unfortunately, he isn’t lying.’

  Despite himself, Mikkel had to laugh at just how much Theo obviously hated his father. He wasn’t offended. Jesus, Mikkel knew Theo better than he did Ragnor! Blood didn’t make a friendship, after all.

  Ragnor smirked, apparently getting the same vibe from Theo that Mikkel had. “Your grandmother knew not to interfere with things, but she told me that I’d die in this stupid war, and that she’d arrange for someone to have us meet on this day when you were grown.” He shrugged. “Your grandmother knew some fucked up people, Mikkel. I knew her word was good for it.”

  Mikkel thought of the little old woman he’d seen a handful of times in Denmark over his childhood, who’d visited him in the States twice a year after he’d started school. She’d baked and had a bawdy laugh. Had wagged her finger at him to tell him off in one breath, then had winked at him with the next to say she hadn’t meant one word of the reprimand.

  It was hard to picture that little old lady knowing some ‘fucked up people.’

  Blinking, he croaked, “She’s dead though, yeah? You are too?” She’d stopped visiting when he was about nine, and his mother had had the talk with him about death again.

  Ragnor grimaced. “I don’t know. I don’t have the answer to whether she’s dead. But I am. I’m alive as I speak to you, and on this timeline, which will carry on, I’ll be alive until I’m KIA.”

  “How do you know you’ll be killed?” Rafe asked, confused.

  “Because my boy wouldn’t have grown up without me, and this wouldn’t be happening if my mother hadn’t had to arrange it on my passing.” Ragnor shrugged. “It sucks, but so does a lot of shit.” Then, he cut Theo a look. “Is my mother dead?”

  “Yes. She shifted. You know it’s against the rules.”

  Ragnor closed his eyes and used his thumb and forefinger to rub them.

  Confused, Mikkel asked quietly, “What the fuck is going on?”

  “There are some shifters who are forbidden from shifting, Mikkel,” Theo answered softly.

  “But why?” Thalia asked, sounding as bewildered as he felt. Truth was, it helped that she was just as lost. Rafe too. It was easy to feel dumb in the face of Theo’s boundless, timeless knowledge, but when they were all lost at sea? It was just easier all round.

  “Because our existence in that form is impossible to hide from the lemmings,” Ragnor gritted out. “And those schmucks…” He jerked his thumb at Theo. “…are our police.”

  “The Fae police species who are forbidden to shift?” Rafe asked, apparently seeking clarification, and Mikkel was glad for it too. Because he was as dumbfounded as the other man.

  “Aye, we do,” Theo confirmed.

  “Wait a minute, which species can’t shift?”

  “Dragons, phoenixes.” Theo shrugged, then his mouth pinched. “Jormungandr.”

  Ragnor rolled his eyes. “You know we don’t like that name.”

  “Names have a tendency of signifying what a creature is,” Theo retorted, and it was his turn to sound smug. “Jormungandr means big monster in Old Norse,” he clarified.

  Big monster?

  What the fuck?

  Mikkel, now unsure as to whether he wanted to puke or just run out of this goddamn house, whispered, “What? Stop talking in circles. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  Ragnor, his eyes narrowed on Theo, his anger evident, lifted his arm and began to fold down his cuff. As he did, he revealed a sleeve of tattoos. A serpent was in the middle. “Seen this before?”

  “An Ouroboros,” Mikkel confirmed. It was a snake. One long enough to eat its tail.

  “We are that race.”

  For a second, Mikkel wasn’t sure if he’d heard his father right. Then, when Ragnor looked utterly serious, without even a twitch of his lips to indicate this was some kind of practical joke, he whispered, “We’re snakes?”

  Ragnor’s mouth tightened. “We’re not fucking snakes! We’re a special kind of Dragon.”

  Blinking at that, Mikkel snorted. “Dragon. Yeah. I’m a Dragon.” He turned to Thalia, pointed at himself. “I’m a Dragon, Thalia.”

  “You have the temper of one,” she told him, her smile tight even as she tried to ease the tension building in him by joking.

  He turned back to his father and demanded, “What the fuck kind of Dragon can eat its tail?”

  “An Ouroboros,” Ragnor retorted, but he was patient. His tone was slow and easy, like he’d known this would be a hard conversation. “I blame myself for your not being raised with the tales. If you had, you’d understand.”

  Mikkel gaped at his father, then he bowed his head and rubbed at his temples. “Hang on a minute. You said Dragons and Jormungandr can’t shift. You separated the two species.”

  Theo shrugged. “They are two separate species. Dragons can fly, Ouroboros can’t, even though they have wings.”

  “So, it’s like the difference between a lion and a tiger maybe?” Rafe queried, and Mikkel was appreciative of that, considering Theo’s next answer:

  “Exactly. Both of the same genus of creatures, but different species.”

  For some reason, and he wasn’t sure why, that eased the burn in Mikkel’s gut.

  The notion of being a snake didn’t sit well with him. A dragon on the other hand was as fucking crazy as could be, but he’d take that over a goddamn snake. And yeah, maybe that was racist to snakes, but he’d been bitten too many fucking times out in the sandbox to like the damn things.

  “You said it’s hard for your species to breed,” Rafe stated softly, and Mikkel was glad that he had the wherewithal to process this shit, because this was a one-time deal, and Mikkel just didn’t have what it took to deal with this information right now.

  It was crazy enough to have his mate kidnapped. Weirder still for the kidnapper to figure out she was pregnant before them. And then to learn that she’d chosen to leap to her death? Yeah, the day hadn’t been fun.

  And now, he was talking to his dead father, and he was learning he wasn’t human.

  He was…

  What?

  Half-Lyken?

  A swirling sense of panic was thrumming in his veins. It was almost overwhelmed by confusion, but it was there. He had a feeling two things were keeping him together.

  He didn’t want to look like a pussy in front of his dad.

  And, Thalia was at his side.

  As he sucked in a shaky breath, he actually felt her respond to it—she nestled deeper into his side, until, he realized, she couldn’t get much closer without sitting on his lap.

  He wanted to bury his face in her throat, wanted to hide from her, his father, Theo, and Rafe. But he couldn’t. That wasn’t who he was.

  He wasn’t the kid who he’d seen clinging to his mom’s hand anymore.

  He had
responsibilities.

  He had a woman and a baby on the way.

  Hiding wasn’t for soldiers.

  His gut seemed to cramp as he forced himself to toughen up, to get his head in line. Even as he distanced himself from the scene, like he did when he was about to leap into a mission, he felt the physical ache deep inside.

  His heart, he realized. The sight of his father triggered a response in him that was close to child-like because the last time he’d seen him, that was what he’d been. A small boy.

  “Inordinately difficult for our species to breed,” Ragnor confirmed, his words breaking into Mikkel’s thoughts. Then his nostrils flared. “Interesting that she’s whelped though.”

  Mikkel immediately stiffened at the disrespectful comment. “Excuse me?” If the bastard had known Thalia was carrying a baby, why the fuck had he brought her beer? The disrespect was just piling up, goddamnit.

  Thalia’s hand tightened around his. “It’s not offensive. We call it that all the time.”

  He knew that. His half-brothers had said the same when his sister Carina had been pregnant. But Thalia wasn’t a fucking dog. An animal. She didn’t whelp their child.

  Ragnor raised his hands. “Apologies. Didn’t mean to offend. I meant it as a compliment. The child scents of all four of you. Interesting mix.”

  Theo’s scowl darkened. “Motherfucker.”

  “Theo?” Thalia asked, her tone cautious.

  His jaw was like granite. “There are very few Ouroboros left in the world. And our daughter scents of it.” His nostrils flared. “The Gods play too freely with our lives. I can accept that. I have no choice. But that of our child?” His hand sliced through the air. “She is…”

  “She will play her part as well as you four do,” Ragnor murmured, and this time, he didn’t sound smug, or aggressive. He sounded like he was trying to soothe Theo. “We all have our role to play in this game we call life, Theodore. There is no avoiding it. No evading what must happen.”

  “She’s not even born yet and already she’s lost her wings,” Theo grated out, voice filled with devastation, the sound catching Rafe, Thalia, and Mikkel’s attention.

  At his words, and Theo’s unusual emotional outburst, Mikkel felt a heavy presence behind him, and Ragnor sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of Thalia’s wings sprouting from out of nowhere.

  “Caelus,” Ragnor breathed, leaping up into a half-standing position before hovering and then sitting down. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

  “I was captured by Morningstar,” Thalia told his father, but her voice was shaky as she huddled into Mikkel’s side. Rafe, sensing her distress, did the same, until she was tightly sandwiched between the pair of them. Her grip on Mikkel’s fingers was enough to make them ache, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was putting her at ease.

  “And he let you go?” Ragnor retorted, his voice as close to a squeak as a man with a bass pitch could soar.

  “She is with child, ouro, she will not birth that Fae babe outside of Heden.”

  Ragnor’s eyes widened. “He wants the child?”

  “Yes. Insists she’s his mate.”

  When Ragnor’s gaze traced over Thalia’s wings, then cut to Theo who nodded grimly, Mikkel’s father licked his lips. “I can understand your temper, Theodore Sidhe. This is much to process.”

  Much? Talk about a fucking understatement.

  “We’re only here today because Morningstar released Thalia,” Rafe intoned, his voice grim.

  Ragnor ran a hand over his head. “As much as I dislike the tales of the Old Norse, some hold a semblance of truth.” The sound of his fingers scraping against his buzzcut was a familiar noise, one Mikkel was accustomed to hearing when his own hair was newly shorn.

  The connection was so minute that it made his heart ache. Men did that all the time; rubbed their hands over their heads. But those men weren’t his father.

  “What do you know of Ragnarök?”

  “It’s the Norse equivalent of Armageddon, isn’t it?” Theo asked. “All bullshit.”

  Ragnor’s eyes flashed with a heat that couldn’t be feigned. “You Fae are so arrogant. Walking around with sticks up your asses. You don’t even listen to the Gods’ other children. You just think because you’re the firstborn, you know it all. You don’t.”

  Theo’s green eyes flickered silver, a sure sign that his control had been breached.

  Great.

  Just what they fucking needed.

  “Before we argue, why don’t we let Ragnor explain?” Thalia put in, her voice soothing. The epitome of reason. “I, for one, don’t know what Ragnarök is.”

  “Along the way, things grew turbulent. The truth distorted. It is not what the book readers say. Ragnarök isn’t about the end of the world. It’s about a change. A new world. Where things are different. Where we are open and free. We do not have to hide. Where creatures like us, powerful and great, forced to cower behind closed doors, can roam once more.” His eyes were trained on Thalia’s stomach. “This child… born of four of you. With four separate traits. Uniting races that have forever been at odds?” He shook his head. “She’s a game changer.”

  Mikkel, uncomfortable for the tenth time in as many minutes, murmured, “She’s a fetus. She has a childhood ahead of her first. Then a life to lead.” Thalia’s hand tightened about his again and he felt, without her having to say a word, her gratitude.

  She agreed.

  She felt the same way.

  From Theo’s reaction earlier, he figured the Fae was on the same page, and considering Rafe made the Pillsbury doughboy look hard as nails with his soft-and-squidgy inner core, it was doubtful he didn’t share their feelings about their daughter’s future.

  “Whether you think of it now or in twenty years, it will come. There’s no avoiding it.” Ragnor murmured, “You’re half-Ouroboros, boy, but that doesn’t mean the power isn’t in your blood. Unlike Wolves,” he nodded at Thalia, “and unlike the more common species, we’re unique. Our magic is some of the first.”

  “Creatures like Ragnor roamed the world before anyone else. They are the Goddess’ second born,” Theo murmured, but his tone was wooden. “For this reason, they are considered blessed.”

  Mikkel, uncaring about that, asked, “I can’t shift, then?”

  Ragnor shook his head. “I don’t think so. But who knows? It isn’t unheard of for the power to quash the human half.” His eyes narrowed. “Which elements are you aligned with, Sidhe?”

  “Wind and water,” Theo begrudgingly answered when Thalia shot him a dirty look, silently prodding him to respond.

  “And you’re fire, aren’t you?” Ragnor asked Rafe who flushed.

  “I-I don’t…”

  But Ragnor shook his head. “I can scent the Dark on you. You’re Fire. With Thalia being Wolf, she’s Earth, and you… son, you’re the Cosmos—Ouros are far more than just Lyken, we are special. We have gifts unique to us.” He rubbed his hands together. “The girl and any other children you have will unite those five elements.” The motion morphed into a clap. “Mother was right. She knew you were special.” He beamed with pride.

  “What?” Mikkel asked with a scowl. “Special? And how the hell do you know I’m affiliated with the Cosmos?”

  Before Ragnor could reply, Theo groaned. “Gods, he’s right.”

  He was?

  Blinking back his bewilderment, he turned to Thalia’s third mate. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your bow, Mikkel. Diana’s bow. It’s aligned with you. She is of the heavens! She was worshipped in Ancient Roman times as a Goddess of the sky and the hunt, but she was a powerful Lyken. One of the very first.”

  “She still lives?” Ragnor asked, his tone curious.

  “As far as I’m aware,” Theo said, somewhat stiffly.

  Ragnor smirked a little, but didn’t reply to that. “You got her bow then, son? That’s a damn fine weapon.”

  “He can’t fire it, though,” Tha
lia teased gently. “Can he, Rafe?”

  Rafe’s nose wrinkled. “If his aim is his foot, then he’s right on target.”

  Ragnor slapped his leg and guffawed. “No!”

  “Yes,” Mikkel admitted drily. “They’re giving up my secrets.”

  A sadness overtook the bright light in Ragnor’s eyes. “Mates always will, but they’re worth the sacrifice to your pride.” He forced a smile. “Anyway, you look big. Nice. Mother said you’d be a protector. She wasn’t wrong, was she?”

  “He’s in the Special Forces,” Thalia chimed in, sounding proud, and Mikkel, though it made him feel like a douche, preened a little at hearing that.

  In the face of a mate who could click his fingers and, like a genie, give you whatever you wanted, and a healer who’d take any and all pains away, his talents weren’t exactly anything special.

  “He’s the leader of his unit,” Theo corrected, and Mikkel froze inwardly at hearing that same proud note in his voice too.

  Ragnor’s eyes gleamed. “They speak the truth?”

  Mikkel nodded.

  “You’ve honored our name, boy. Thank you.” He grinned. “Our race is a protective one. By forcing us underground, the humans did themselves a disservice.”

  “Why?” Thalia asked quietly.

  “Because the Darkness always seeks the Light, child,” Ragnor told her, sounding suddenly ominous.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at your mate, the Dark one. Attracted to three creatures of the Light. It’s how it works.” He pursed his lips as he shot Theo a nasty look. “Haven’t you told them anything?”

  “I’ve told them what they can handle. Do you know how hard it is to share twelve thousand years’ worth of information, damnit?” Theo moved away from the wall and began to storm from one side of the room to the other.

  Ragnor’s mouth curved in a smile—his satisfaction at seeing the other male so out of sorts apparent. But, all he said was, “This is your warning, child of Isaura. Share the truth with them shortly, otherwise you’ll rue the day you didn’t.”