The Fae Queen’s Harem_A Reverse Harem Paranormal and Fantasy Romance

by Meg Xuemei X

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Finrod said.

  “We need the right tool, and we can’t rush it,” Elvey said. “We can’t touch her while my mate is engaged in the Challenge with her. By the end of the month when the game is over, there’ll be an all-out war, no matter the result.”

  “My army is at your command, cousin,” Finrod said. “Anytime. Anywhere.”

  “The demons will come,” Elvey said. “I’ll need you to fight the demonic army. The dragon army will battle the dark Fae.”

  “Let’s rid the world of the filth together,” Finrod said, his eyes fiery with Fae fire.

  “Finrod,” Elvey said, pausing before he continued again. “I’ve found Princess Nerida. Tianna has been using her soul energy to feed the black heart. I couldn’t free her yet, but I put the ward around her to stop the feeding. She’ll be safe for the time being.”

  A terrifying storm appeared, twirling in Finrod’s glowing eyes. Violent wind came out of nowhere and whooshed around us, sucking in tables, chairs, plants, and fences and shattering them. All things outside Elvey’s shield started flying and breaking.

  My White Light enhanced my mate’s shield, yet I still felt the biting wind grazing my face.

  “Calm, cousin!” Elvey said, grasping Finrod’s shoulder. His power slammed into Finrod to cancel the magic that threatened to destroy everything in its path. “I’ll save your betrothed, your future queen. I promise! Just give me a couple more weeks. Now, chill out, Finrod.”

  The forming twister overhead gradually vanished.

  Finrod’s face turned ashen, his lips thinning and paling, carved out in agony.

  “You’d better, Elvey,” he said hoarsely, tears in his stormy blue eyes.

  “We’ll save her,” I said. “We’ll drag Tianna’s skeleton to hell where she belongs.”

  Elvey rose. “We have to go now. I’ll send word, cousin. Do not rush to action and screw up my plan. You’ve waited for centuries. You can wait two more weeks.”

  Finrod nodded and grabbed Elvey for a fierce hug. “Thank goddess, you’re free.”

  “Goddess has nothing to do with it,” Elvey said. “My mate did it.”

  And Finrod grabbed me for a tough hug as well.

  “I’ll get the army ready in a week,” he said, pulling his lips back in a snarl. “I’ll personally cut the foul demon bitch’s heart out.”

  “You’ll have to get in line,” I said with a sweet smile.

  He glared at me. “You think so?”

  “Until we meet again, cousin,” Elvey said. “And don’t look at my wife wrong.”

  Finrod bowed his head. “My brother and my sister, I’ll see you soon.”

  20

  Elvey and I strode toward the throne room in the Red Palace. Rosalinda, Zembyr, and our royal guards trailed after us. My court waited for us on the left side of the hall where my throne was positioned.

  Tianna no longer bothered to vandalize my throne. Elvey would just conjure a newer, shinier one for me. Another reason she left my throne alone was that she knew how much I hated to sit beside her.

  I noticed that more Fae joined my side. They’d all thrown their lot in with me. Many of them had seen what Sihde had become after I’d stripped it of Tianna’s glamour and opened their eyes. It was no longer about which ruler they rooted for. They were angry at Tianna for poisoning the land. Many of them wanted to fight for their home and their future and were ready to give their lives for their beloved realm.

  Tianna sizzled on her throne. Her spies had tried to track me but had failed yet again.

  I settled down on my throne, unease and anxiety slithering up my spine. I always felt this way when I perched on the throne because nothing felt right in this place. Elvey stood beside me, partly shielding me from Tianna. He placed his hand gently on my shoulder, and his body heat and solidity drove away the evil wind coming my way and calmed my nerves.

  “Where have you been, niece?” Tianna demanded. “You should have been at the court earlier. I summoned you, but you failed to appear.”

  “Shove your summons up your bony ass, Tianna,” I said. “You aren’t the true queen of Sihde. You aren’t my heir and you never will be. I denounced you. You’re but a usurper, temporarily sitting on a throne you stole.”

  “Bluff all you want and enjoy your short stay here,” she sneered. “You’re every bit as nasty as your exes said. You’re losing it because your ex-consorts are no longer yours. They’ve chosen me over you. By the way, your eyes are still a little red and puffy, and no amount of makeup can cover that. Did you cry yourself to sleep last night after my dragon princes turned you down and treated you like the trash you are?”

  I’d been hardening my heart, but it still felt like a dagger plunging into my heart to hear her calling my former mates her princes.

  “They’re mine now,” Tianna continued to gloat. “You’re the one who won’t be warming that throne by the end of the month. While you cried your eyes out last night, my princes, who shall soon be my consorts, were confessing their undying love to me.”

  I had tried my best not to spare a glance in their direction from the moment I’d entered the throne room. I’d pretended that Blaze, Rai, and Iokul didn’t stand behind Tianna like three massive puppies, afraid that if I looked at them I’d melt down again.

  Tianna had noticed that, knowing how much their presence still affected me and their changing of allegiance hurt me like iron nails in my flesh. As such, she kept hammering the nails deep into my body, wanting to see me bleed over and over.

  Their cruelty toward me rushed back to me at her mention, and the scene of Tianna seducing Iokul swirled alive in front of me. I’d been shut out on the other side of the mating bond, so I’d never had the chance to see it through. Had she succeeded?

  Probably not in truth since I was still here.

  But had she gotten that sultry goodnight kiss from Iokul?

  My heart seared in pain, a feverish wave of fury rolling off me. All of my fault in the relationship to them was that I hadn’t been able to lift the last piece of their curse, but I was going to try everything in my power to remove their masks. All I’d asked was a little more time, but they’d turned on me at the first chance. They turned against me and spat in my face when they spotted a better candidate.

  I’d loved them more than anything, but I was ready to scratch that love from my bones. I hated them, and the hate burned hotly and brightly, despite Elvey’s efforts to stop it from consuming me.

  I wanted to hurt them as much as they’d hurt me.

  “What do you gain by bragging of having my leftovers, Tianna?” I said in a bored voice. Through my faint mating bond to the princes that cracked open just a little, I sensed how tense, shocked, and seething they were on the other side of the bond.

  So, my words still had an effect on them. At least, it could still hurt their huge male egos. Good. Now that I had their attention, I was going to pierce their apathetic, pathetic walls.

  “I’ve been long since fed up with them,” I said in an amused, cruel tone. “Those three pretty faces are good for nothing. Their constant bickering and competing only gave me headaches. I should probably thank you for picking up my scraps and saving me the trouble of taking out the trash.”

  The black hatred in Tianna’s eyes wanted to cut a bloody trail to me, yet she could do nothing about it, not while she was also trapped in our Challenge.

  A ring of fire puffed out of Blaze’s nostrils, and a flash of lightning struck across the wall, leaving black marks in its wake. Despite Tianna’s magic ward, the room’s temperature abruptly dropped. Even the ice dragon couldn’t keep his cool.

  The court turned deathly quiet, waiting for a fight to break out.

  Elvey’s heady chuckles rose amid the silence that threatened violence. He stopped for a heartbeat and laughed again, wiping tears from the corner of his eyes.

  Tianna turned to glare at him, her venom dripping from her every pore.

  “Do
n’t you enjoy that, Tianna?” he said. “This is the best fun I’ve ever had in your twisted, fake court for centuries.”

  He had become the insufferable thorn in her side. Yet there was nothing she could do to pluck it out. I could see how she regretted her impulsive decision to release him from her blood bond—the only way she could control him.

  “Come laugh when the day comes and your whore turns to three beasts, just like before,” Tianna said. “And this time it’ll be forever.”

  “As long as I breathe, the curse will never come upon my queen and my wife again,” said Elvey.

  Blaze, Rai, and Iokul snapped their heads toward Elvey at his mentioning of wife, their sudden, enormous pain slamming into me through our mating bond. Did Tianna know what our bond could do? It was a private channel. As long as the princes didn’t broadcast to her, she wouldn’t find out about it.

  Why did they keep secrets from her? They were devoted to her. They’d vowed to her that they’d been actively seeking to break our mating bond.

  I turned to smile at Elvey sweetly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the princes clenching their fists in rage. Their veins jumped violently on their temples.

  Gotcha, bitches! I sneered coldly. I can be as cruel as you. And more brutal.

  I was done taking punches from them. I was done being bruised by them. And I was done crying for them and myself.

  “You get what I dumped, old aunt, and you think you get the hidden gem.” I smirked at Tianna. “Look what I have here—a demigod, powerful in every aspect.” Including in bed. I’d bet my former mates could hear the blatant hint.

  For a few seconds, their rampaged emotions rammed into me through the bond like destructive tidal waves, but then all of a sudden, the bond shut down. Their rage and their other emotions were sealed on the other side.

  Elvey intertwined his fingers with mine, brought my hand up, and brushed a kiss over my knuckles. The dragon princes tracked his every action, death threats in their eyes and in their every line of muscles.

  They didn’t want me, but they couldn’t stand Elvey having me.

  “It won’t be long, Danaenyth,” Iokul said, bone-chilling glacier in his voice. “This will be over soon.”

  Was that a threat or a promise?

  “Threaten my wife again,” Elvey said, “And I’ll destroy you. I won’t care that she once cared for you.”

  “Bring it on,” Blaze said, stabbing a finger at Elvey, his nostrils still flaring fire. “You’re dead, Elvey. You’ll be charred meat before the end of this.”

  “I’m interested in seeing how you plan to achieve that, dragon boys,” Elvey said. “You couldn’t even stop me when you had Daisy. Now she’s all mine.”

  A taut muscle twitched on Blaze’s clenched jaw.

  “Don’t take his bait,” Rai said, a trace of lightning sparkling beneath his mask of storm dragon. Even his lightning couldn’t help to remove that metal mask of his. But at the moment, I had no sympathy or warmth toward him, or any of them. “Let’s wait for the final day, then revenge will only be sweeter.”

  They would deliver the last blow and completely betray me on the last day. That was their threat and promise. Despite that I’d warded my heart against them, the impact of their blazing hatred for me still rammed into our closed bond and made me stagger.

  Tianna snickered sadistically, reveling in her vicious puppies’ cutting words.

  “The full-blooded dragons don’t even know how to threaten,” I purred, leaning toward Elvey on my throne. “Maybe we should teach them a thing or two, my king?”

  “Keep calling the demigod bastard king, you whore, like he was born of some noble,” Tianna said, her every word dripping with venom. “He doesn’t even know his own origins.”

  I wanted to punch her and reveal the foul demon king in her in front of the entire court, but that would screw up my plan. However, I could let her lose face and feel the bite of new humiliation.

  On our way back from The Flowing Isle, Elvey had told me more about his heritage. Even if he were born base, I wouldn’t have minded it at all. He deserved me in every way.

  “You know my clever husband fooled you for centuries,” I said. “King Elvey was never a dark Fae. He’s the direct descendant of God of Night and Sky, Caelus, and light Fae Princess Levana.”

  Elvey’s mother had died in labor because of the complications and difficulties for any mortals and immortals to give birth to a powerful demigod. It was forbidden for a god to mate with flesh, but Caelus couldn’t fight his lust for Princess Levana.

  Elvey had never forgiven his father and himself for his mother’s death. After Levana faded, the Sky God left for another universe and never returned.

  Elvey’s ability to open the portal and teleport among others must have come from his father’s side.

  “You’re lying,” Tianna hissed.

  Elvey dropped his glamour and glowed in glory. Two pairs of black wings whooshed out of his back and extended to full length. They were different than the dragon wings, but no less magnificent.

  Pride swelled in my heart.

  “Behold your king!” I said.

  Tianna’s eyes bulged out, her extreme jealousy and madness whipping through the air. In all those centuries, she’d never seen his true power and his true form. If she’d seen, she would never have let him go. But then, if it weren’t for his desperation of finding me and the damned prophetic dream misleading him, she would never have been able to trick him into the blood bond in the first place.

  “I’ve had enough of this batshit! That bastard always loves showing off!” Blaze spat out.

  Elvey gave him a cold, taunting smirk and folded back his wings.

  The whole court still gazed at him, mesmerized.

  “Asshole number one,” Iokul murmured.

  I ignored the immature dragons and turned my attention back to my court.

  “Anything you want to report?”

  Many of them stepped forward to reveal what they had seen and condemned Tianna for polluting the realm. The whole realm was sick, and my court wanted the usurper’s blood.

  Tianna only laughed during the hearing, as if we’d just paid her a compliment.

  “You do know when your hybrid abomination ‘queen’ goes down,” Tianna said, gesturing for her lady-in-waiting, a noble-born Fae, to come polish her nails, “which will be very soon, you all will be flushed down the toilet with her, don’t you?”

  My court glared at her in rage, and I raised a hand to stop any of them from attacking her.

  Tianna shook with laughter.

  All of us—friends and enemies—were waiting for the final strike toward each other.

  21

  Rai the Storm Dragon

  We—our three brothers—wanted our queen and mate more than anything. Every second we saw her, we wanted her. We longed to touch her, but we clenched our fists at our sides instead of going to her, so we could save her.

  Every minute was pure fucking hell when we couldn’t be with her. Our blood boiled with unbearable angst, especially so when we peeked through our mating bond and saw her entangled with our rival in bed. We were jealous, but we had accepted the demigod. He was taking care of our mate for us.

  We wanted to join them. We wanted to bury deep inside her as well. My cock grew so hard at the glimpse of Elvey fucking her. The bastard had the best end of the deal.

  During this new ordeal, the bond between me and my brothers only became stronger, considering how we had fought and tried to eliminate each other for nearly a century.

  Iokul sacrificed more than any of us. He took lead to play with the bitch queen, because he carried ice in his bloodstream and was better than us at deception and staying emotionless. He also wanted to spare us the trial as much as he could, like how he pretended to kiss Tianna and massage the slut with his new glamour magic, which he borrowed from Elvey.

  Daisy didn’t know that Elvey had connected to us through our common mating bond. The demigod had more kn
owledge about how it worked and was taking full advantage of it, but we kept our mate in the dark on the other side.

  She couldn’t know about it, and so she didn’t.

  We’d had to go with Tianna. That was the only way to save Elvey—Daisy’s fourth mate—and prevent the curse to ever touch our true mate again.

  Her love for us had turned to hate, and it burned white-hot, searing our souls to charred pieces.

  How could we blame her, given how fucking cruel we had been toward her since the start of the Challenge? I’d backhanded her and thrown her to the ground in the throne room in front of everyone while Tianna’s coarse laughter pierced my ears. The utterly shocked and heartbreaking expression on my mate’s face had been like a blade twisting in my heart.

  Yet I couldn’t back down. We had to keep hurting her in front of Tianna. I could see that something in her died every time she suffered our brutality. We had slandered her with vicious words and threatened her very life.

  All that we had done haunted us like unending nightmares, but we had to live through it every minute, so in the end our mate would come out unharmed and victorious.

  I knew she’d been in our heads twice, peeking through our bond at the fucked-up scenarios where we pampered her fatal enemy and showed our devotion and affection to the usurper. We forced the heat into our eyes while we served Tianna, though repulsion pulsed in our every fiber. Fortunately, Tianna wasn’t a dragon, so she couldn’t tell whether the heat was from rage or from lust.

  In her great distress, Daisy couldn’t tell the difference, either.

  She’d been so convinced that we’d consorted with her worst enemy and would deliver a final blow to her. She’d believed our fake betrayal.

  Only Elvey knew the truth. That fucking demigod, who got to hold and fuck our mate day and night, was a good actor. Maybe too good for his own good. And through the mating bond that linked us all, he taught us how to keep Daisy out. He also opened to us completely and lent us his magic to deal with Tianna. The most useful one was glamour, and it was state of the art. Tianna had never suspected us because she believed that dragons had no glamour magic. It worked to our advantage that she didn’t take the three us too seriously other than that we were pretty faces and her playthings.