by Unknown
Aradia shrieked in delight and launched herself at me. I caught her with a huff of expelled air and she squeezed me so tight, I couldn't get another breath in. I had to tap out. Literally tapping on her back to get her attention so she'd let me go.
“Thank you so much!” She pulled back but gave my hand one last squeeze. “I can't tell you how much this means to me.”
“I'm not going to piss off your mother by doing this, am I?” It suddenly occurred to me that I should take a few minutes to consider the ramifications of my actions before I leapt into something. Yeah, I know, a new concept for me. Plus, I really didn't want yet another mommy-goddess mad at me.
“Oh, not at all,” she assured me. “I have my mother's blessing.”
“Great googli moogli!” Odin declared and everyone went quiet as they turned to stare at him. “You're a fey-god halfling.”
“Great googli moogli?” I heard Pan whisper to Horus.
Horus shrugged, watching Odin intently, like he'd just sprouted wings... out of his nose. I admit I was a little distracted by Odin's very un-Odin-like phrasing and it took me a second to catch on as well.
“Oh, there's more of us,” she shrugged. “It was kind of the thing to keep our births a secret from our fey fathers. No one wanted their babies stolen.”
“The High King will be very interested in hearing about that,” I said softly as it hit me. “The fey have had trouble conceiving for quite awhile, children are very precious to them.”
“Yes, I've heard,” she gave a small smile. “I'm hoping that will make my father more inclined towards a relationship with me.”
“Why wouldn't he be inclined?” I asked.
“Because her other half is god, Vervain,” Azrael said quietly.
“So? He didn't have a problem with her mother being a goddess.” I scoffed and then thought about it. It had taken the fey quite awhile to accept me and still, many of them didn't. But then, I was a bit more than a halfling and I was sitting on a faerie throne to boot.
“Are you sure he'll want to see me?” Aradia asked.
“No,” I had to be honest with her, “but only because I don't actually know Craigor all that well so I can't safely gauge his reaction to having a child but either way, you need to go into Faerie and tell them about these half-god children.”
“Oh, I can't do that,” she shook her head.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because maybe they don't want their fey fathers to know about them,” Odin offered and Aradia nodded.
“I can only speak for myself,” she added. “I don't have the right to divulge anyone else's secret.”
“Fair enough,” I conceded. “Okay, I'll take you into Faerie tomorrow. Maybe you're positive experience will help to change the minds of these other halflings. Meet me back here at one o'clock.”
“I'll be here,” she shook my hand again. “Thank you, Godhunter. Mom was totally wrong about you, you're not a monster at all.” With that, she turned and left.
“A monster?” I huffed. “I've never even met the lady.”
“There's been rumors circulating about you since before you joined the God Squad,” Thor shrugged. He was leaning against the balcony railing a little ways down from us. “Diana only has the words of other gods to go on. If you think about it, Aradia was pretty brave to come here and seek you out.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I agreed, still a little peeved about the monster comment. Though then again, I had a soft spot for monsters.
“A faerie/goddess,” Odin shook his head as we all headed back to our seats. “Unbelievable. And hidden away all this time.”
“Not so difficult to do with all those human myths that are only half accurate,” I nodded. “Like with Zeus and all his supposed children when he only actually had four.”
“You're right,” Odin looked at me in surprise. “We've let our truths become obscured by myth and that's left a lot of room for lies.”
“Not lies exactly,” I considered it. “Secrets.”
“I wonder who else is half fey,” Trevor mused.
“Well,” I glanced at Odin and he nodded his assent. “He's not half but we just found out that Odin is part faerie.”
There was a lot of shouting after that, especially from our sons, and we had to wait for it all to die down before we explained it to them. Most of the gods reacted to the news as I had, with sober expressions, but some(Pan and Torrent) thought Odin being fey was wonderful. Cool and freaking awesome were the terms used, I believe.
I actually left halfway through the discussion that followed. I had no intention of having my night abducted by god talk. So I grabbed Trevor's hand and pulled him downstairs with me, to dance to the music of Roar. Staring up into Trevor's wolf eyes as we swayed beneath tree branches and candlelight, I knew that I'd made the right choice. Sometimes an escape was a necessary part of success. There was no way I could have continued hunting gods without this incredible man in my life and I needed to take more time off to be with him so that I could continue to be the Godhunter.
Chapter Five
Taking a visitor over to Faerie with me was tricky. I normally went back and forth between the God Realm and Faerie by way of my Ring of Remembrance which allowed me to return to whatever time I'd left the last realm. It was wonderful magic but it had restrictions and one of those restrictions was that I couldn't take a passenger along for the ride. That meant that I either lost all that time with my fey or I went back and waited for time to catch up before I returned to the God Realm and grabbed Aradia to then bring her back with me to the current time.
I opted for the latter simply because I knew how testy Arach could get when I was gone for a long period of time. I even understood it. I knew that if our roles were reversed, I'd be pissed if he didn't make it home immediately. Mainly because I'd know it meant something had happened to keep him away and that would worry me. As it worried him. So after the amazing charity benefit, my men went home without me and I went back to the Faerie Realm.
Luckily, I hadn't been gone too long and I'd only have to wait a week for time to catch up. I thought it might be good to get there before Aradia anyway and give the High King a head's up. Then I saw what was waiting for me in my giant faerie bed.
It was a faerie king and he was very happy to see me.
This wasn't an odd occurrence with Arach. He often liked to send me back to the God Realm right after we had sex. His way of making sure that I thought about him, I guess. Whatever the case, it meant that I also came home to find him naked.
“A Thaisce,” he grinned. It meant my treasure and it never got old for me, especially now that my dragon nature was all out in the open. I could fully appreciate the intimacy of the name. Treasure was about as high up as you could get on the compliment scale for a dragon. Heh, scale.
“Hey, hot stuff,” I crawled into bed, happily letting him divest me of my clothing when I reached him.
“Is all well in the God Realm?” He asked as I slid in against his warm skin.
“We may have an Indian uprising and there's a half-fey goddess who wants to come over to meet her daddy but besides that, it's all good,” I started kissing my way down his chest as I let that bomb drop.
Mmmm dragon chest. As I drew my fingers over his skin, red scales emerged to outline his sleekly muscled torso. A clear sign that I was raising his... interest. He shifted beneath me, long legs spreading so I could settle between them, and his strong, elegant hands sunk into my hair. Dragon musk surrounded me, a rich scent unlike any other. It had the hint of amber but it was warmer, spicier. Resin tossed on a fire with coriander. Violets in the sun. Coffee brewing with cinnamon. I can't explain it right, it was all and none of those things. Sweet and spicy, the scent of Arach.
“Wait. What?” He sat bolt upright, lifting me by the forearms as his scales retreated into his skin. “Did you say a half-fey goddess?”
“Yep,” I pouted a little, staring at his scaleless but yet still beautiful chest. All sculpte
d muscles pointing downward into a V as if proclaiming it were mine. I sighed, my eyes traveling further down the V. A treasure trail of crimson hair started at the base of his belly, drawing my gaze even further...
“Impossible,” he scoffed, disrupting my lust. “We've never been able to breed with the Atlanteans. No children have ever come out of any union with a god.”
“What about with a goddess?” I said distractedly.
“What?”
“I'm assuming you mean that no fey woman has ever gotten pregnant by a god but what about a fey man impregnating a goddess?” I cocked my head at him and sat back, accepting that this pause in the sexual proceedings was completely my fault and that I'd best get the talk over with so that I could concentrate on him fully, without interruptions.
“Why would it work one way and not the other?” He scooted back a little so that he was sitting with his legs angled out around me, totally unabashed in his nudity.
“Maybe it was easier for fertile goddesses to conceive by not so fertile fey than it was for not so fertile fey women to conceive by fertile gods,” I offered with just one little glance down.
“You're making my head hurt,” he said dryly.
“I'm telling you, it worked,” I shrugged. “I've met her and she says there are others like her, children of goddesses who hid the fey parentage of their babies so that the fey fathers wouldn't steal the children.”
“Steal the children?” He huffed and then he saw my lifted brow. “Okay, so we may have stolen the children just because our birth rate was so low but they would have been treasured.”
“Yes, I know, but that's exactly why these children were hidden. The myths gave them god fathers and their mothers never disputed the claims.”
“So no one was the wiser,” he mused. “Not god or faerie.”
“Exactly.”
“How many others are there?”
“I don't know,” I shrugged. “She wouldn't tell me, said it wasn't her right to divulge their secrets and I agree with that.”
“Well King Cian won't,” he said grimly. “He'll insist that she tell him the identities of the other fey children.”
“Half-fey,” I corrected. “Then maybe we shouldn't tell him about the others.”
“Vervain,” he gave me his grim grown-up face.
“I don't think she'll give up the names, even under coercion,” I continued. “And I really don't think it would be smart to have her first experience in Faerie be one including faerie torture.”
“All right,” he sighed. “You may have a point.”
“Thank you,” I smiled and launched myself at him. “Now, where was I?” I looked up from his chest again.
“Lower,” he purred.
Chapter Six
I spent my week in Faerie catching up with my fire fey, including my new earth-turned-fire pixies and of course, Blossom, the sentient flower Alfheim had grown for me. I was so relieved that she'd survived the severance of my ties with Alfheim. Technically, I still had a connection to all of the Nine Norse Worlds, through my connection to the Nine Great Magics, but the personal connection I'd had with Alfheim in particular was gone.
Blossom was actually a big help in me getting over that loss and I often took her out of the center of the pixie village so she could ride on my shoulder while I went about my day, her little roots wrapped around my neck. With Blossom on my shoulder and Dexter, my not-so-baby nurial, at my side, I made quite an odd figure but I didn't care and I don't think my fire fey did either. Odd in Faerie was a relative term.
The children especially loved my companions and we spent a lot of time with the phooka pups, the Hidden Ones babies, and with Hunter, Roarke's son. Roarke himself was getting more and more busy with kingly matters, which basically means he mediated a lot of cat fights. He was still chasing Anna, Hunter's mom, but she was being stubborn about the whole thing and he was getting a little frustrated.
“I just don't get it,” he whined to me. “Every other pussy in the kingdom wants me, why not her?”
Let me just add here that pussy was a common term used for female cat-sidhe and Roarke was not being derogatory. I know, I know, so many jokes and Roarke himself was often the perpetrator of said jokes ever since his discovery of what the word meant in the Human Realm. Sometimes I think he tried to use it more often around me just to see if I'd break down and laugh.
“Maybe you should try not chasing her,” I suggested as Hunter fought Dexter for space on my lap. I grabbed Hunter's flailing hands and tutted at him. He'd have to share if he wanted to sit with me. Dexter never got the boot, not even for Arach. Hunter huffed and sat back, making an expression very similar to the one Roarke was wearing.
“I don't know how to not chase,” Roarke whined more. “I'm a cat, I chase. It's in my very blood. I'd probably chase that toy if you shook it wildly in front of my face and then threw it,” he gestured to a little stuffed animal near my feet.
“So chase someone else, maybe Anna will get jealous.”
“I've already tried that,” he growled. “It only made her angry.”
“Angry is good,” I encouraged. “It means she has feelings for you.”
“You've obviously never really seen Anna angry. It's not good. Not in any way.”
“Well, I'm all out of advice then.”
“What?” He snorted and rolled his fiery cat eyes. “You're the Goddess of Love, you gotta have more for me than that. Can't you put the whammy on her or something?”
“Do you really think that would make you happy?” I frowned at him and he transferred his gaze to the nursery floor.
“No,” he sighed.
“Just stop your pursuit and be calm around her,” I tried once more. “Maybe once she thinks you've lost interest, she'll lower her guard.”
“Yeah, or she'll stab me in my sleep,” he sighed. “I guess either option will put me out of my misery.
“What exactly happened between you two?”
“Enough to make me understand her reluctance,” he sat heavily in a chair beside mine.
“Don't want to talk about it?”
“Don't want you to know what kind of a fey I was,” he slid his eyes over to me and then away again.
“Roarke,” I reached out a hand and nudged his arm. He looked up at me with a sober expression. “I know the kind of fey you are now and that's all that matters to me. I think once Anna accepts who you've become, she'll feel the same way.”
“I was spoiled and mean,” he whispered and looked at Hunter like he didn't want him to hear it, even though Hunter couldn't possibly understand the words. “I treated women carelessly. I treated Anna the worst, mainly because I think I loved her. I was so afraid of love. Love is a death sentence to a tom cat.”
“Love is a tricky thing,” I leaned back and the babies leaned back with me. “It can turn people into angels or devils, make them reach for greatness or sink to depths of horrible evil. Such a powerful thing and so incomprehensible. There are too many versions of it, too many layers to interpret. You can never truly know love. The only way to deal with it, is to simply accept what it does to you and try to make the most of it.”
“Sweet singing selkies,” Roarke exclaimed. “You really are the Goddess of Love.”
“Yeah, alright,” I rolled my eyes.
“No, really,” he shook his head on a little laugh. “That was actually helpful. A little depressing but helpful.”
“Love can be a little depressing,” I saw Azrael's face again. Those eyes, so bright and so accepting.
“It can also be uplifting,” Roarke grinned at me and took his son back. He rumbled a purr at the baby and Hunter purred back. “You're right, V. It's a powerful thing,” he looked over to me. “You just have to know yourself in order to be able to control it... and use it.”
“I don't know if I like the sound of that,” I narrowed my eyes on him but he just laughed.
Chapter Seven
I went back to Moonshine at a point a few moments
after I'd left it. I walked across the second floor and over to the railing, to find the club mostly empty. Only our staff was there, cleaning up after the charity event. Sometimes it could be unsettling, coming back to the same time I'd left and finding nothing changed while I had essentially moved forward.
If no one was there to give me something substantial to interact with right away, it usually took me a few minutes to adjust and I perused the club in a bit of a daze. A large black wolf padded through the trees below with a look of magic about him and I had the oddest feeling that I was still in Faerie. His fur caught the light of the candles above him and then brightened, his form turning hazy as he shifted into a man. It was Ty, Trevor's younger brother. He stood up and stretched, then saw me watching him. He grinned and waved at me, no shame at all.
I waved back and turned away with a little smile. Werewolves and dragons, both were shameless beasts. I walked over to the door at the back of the balcony, marked Family Room. I went through it and down the stairs, then entered an empty cement corridor. A halogen shone brightly above me and the metal bones of the warehouse Moonshine once was were shown in stark relief against the white walls. Doors lined the corridor, leading to the rooms we rented out to vampires in case of emergency. I saw that a few had the “occupied” sign displayed but from the sounds of it, they weren't asleep yet... or alone. At least I hoped they weren't alone but then, who am I to judge? I gave a little chuckle as I walked past and entered the last door on the left, the tracing chamber. I stepped into the Aether and in moments I arrived at Pride Palace.
I stepped out of the small tracing chamber at Pride Palace and walked straight across the foyer to the elevator. I took it up to the top, the penthouse suite as it were. I shared the entire top floor with Kirill and Trevor, and I admit it was nice to have all that space. When you lived with a whole house of shapeshifters, you kind of needed a sanctuary to retreat to.
I came out of the elevator and into a narrow hallway(the better for defense) that led to our bedroom. I could hear the men talking as I approached. They were deep in conversation, though I knew they were aware of me. At the very least, they would have heard the elevator doors open but they probably could also smell me coming. Yeah, it's hard to sneak up on shapeshifters.