Triskele (The TriAlpha Chronicles Book 2)

by Serena Akeroyd

  Well, there was always a first, Thalia thought wryly. “Do you sleep with all of them?” It was easier to say ‘them’ than to say ‘my grandfathers.’ This was hard enough as it was.

  “We share a bed, yes. And yes, if you mean do they share me, they do.”

  “You don’t see to each of them individually?” Thalia asked, hating the squeak in her voice.

  Rosa laughed, and the sound was so ripe and rounded that her cheeks flushed in response—how could the grandmother be so at ease with such a topic of conversation when the granddaughter felt uncomfortable and flustered as fuck?

  “Of course I do. But we also do the other. I’m sure your prude of a mother does as well. There’s a special art to it, but once the bond is set in place, it’s incomprehensible not to take them that way.”

  Thalia’s cheeks burned brighter. “Does it hurt?”

  “At first, yes. Then it feels good.” Rosa tilted her head to the side. “Only Rafe has your scent. Theo and Mikkel only have a ghost-like essence of you about them. Why is that?”

  “Mikkel is being fussy.”

  Rosa snorted. “More like finicky. He’ll come around. They always do.” The purr to her tone had Thalia’s eyes widening.

  “They do?”

  “Si, they do. You just have to make sure of it.”

  “How do I do that?”

  Rosa clucked her tongue and cast Thalia a look. “By not wearing these workout clothes you live in.”

  Thalia wrinkled her nose. “Men like yoga pants. They can see my ass and everything.”

  “While this is true, where is the sex appeal?” Rosa made an irritated sound that Thalia could only describe as truly Italian. “Gah, I should not have to explain this to you. Tight skirts, darling. Low cut tops. Make him go blind with desire for you, then he’ll bend to your will.”

  Thalia scowled. “I don’t want him to bend to my will.”

  “No? He’s fighting the bond, isn’t he? And isn’t that the last thing you want?”

  Wincing, she had to concede, “Yes, I want him to be mine but not by taking away the decision from him. That’s hardly fair.”

  “Nothing is fair in love and war. There’s a reason that saying has been around for centuries,” Rosa retorted drily. “Anyway, what about Theo? I have seen the way he looks at you. I thought he was going to start eating you at breakfast this morning.”

  She couldn’t even find it in herself to laugh because Thalia had thought so too.

  She could feel his eyes on her whenever she entered a room with him in it. Instantly, her core temperature shot up, and everything South started to melt in response to the nuclear reactor he had for irises.

  That wasn’t to say Mikkel and Rafe didn’t have that effect on her because they did. But Theo had a way about him that was distinctly different, and considering he was Fae, maybe that shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

  “Don’t you want him?”

  Thalia snorted. “Have you seen that face?”

  Rosa laughed. “Si. I have. That’s why I wonder if my nipotina is a crazy girl, hiding out in the conservatory when her delicious mates are out there by the pool.”

  “You don’t understand, Nanna. The minute I start something…” She sighed. “It’s going to take things to a place I don’t, no, can’t control.”

  Frowning, Rosa asked, “What do you mean?”

  How could she tell Rosa? Her Nanna would only worry, and perhaps, make things even harder for Thalia. Even if it was only inadvertently.

  She shook her head, then murmured, “You’re right. I should be outside with them.”

  Rosa’s frown darkened into a scowl, but she said, “Si, you should.” She kissed Thalia on the cheek. “I will see you later, darling.”

  Thalia stepped away from her grandparent and toward the door. When she just hovered, her hand over the door handle, Rosa huffed out a breath. “In Caelus’s name, Thalia. You don’t have to go out there if you don’t want to. I’m not going to punish you if you keep on being a fool.”

  She peered back at her grandmother, shot her a cheeky grin, and opened the door.

  When Rosa let out a deep sigh, one loaded with impatience, Thalia’s grin widened. There was no need to hide it either, what with her Nanna being at her back. Still, the farther out onto the terrace she wandered, her flipflops sliding against the tiled floor, the more nervous she became.

  And she knew she shouldn’t be nervous.

  She knew that, if anything, she ought to be dashing over toward her handsome mates. Males that were destined to be hers and hers alone.

  Instead, she was totally dragging her heels, and why?

  Because of some weird prophecy that might not even be true.

  But, knowing Thalia’s luck, as well as the fact she was already fulfilling some other damn prophecy for Lykenkind, she knew she’d been handed a double whammy.

  Who doled out this shit at birth? Thalia asked herself.

  Was there a line of babies that just had ‘bad fortune’ tatted on their forehead? And sure, with the house behind her, she knew it was hard for anyone to feel sorry for her when her family was as loaded as it was, but Caelus.

  Two prophecies?

  What the fuck was that even about?

  “Stop huffing and puffing and come and sit with us.”

  Theo.

  She gulped. There was something about him, something authoritative that instantly made her want to do as he said. And considering she’d spent most of her life avoiding doing the bidding of anyone in authority, including the highest leaders in the land—her fathers—that she wanted to obey at all spoke mountains.

  And she really didn’t feel like climbing mountains.

  Not today, anyway.

  With another huff, she rounded the decking where the loungers were and squinted up at the sun. “It’s too hot,” she groused, and Rafe laughed and held out a hand for her.

  Even though it made her feel kind of pathetic, she rushed toward him and curled up next to him on the double-wide lounger. He was slightly sweaty, the sun having worked its wonders on him, but he smelled divine. Like musk and man and hers. She burrowed her nose into the space between his shoulders, glad that he’d let her cuddle up behind him—he was curved on his side, leaning on his elbow so he could look at the other two males next to him.

  If it made her look like she was hiding behind him, then she totally was.

  Theo, apparently no dummy, murmured, “I’m not going to do you any harm, Thalia. How many times must I state that?”

  “I’m not frightened of you.” Her words were cool and calm and very truthful.

  “Then why seek shelter in Rafe’s arms?”

  “Technically, it’s his shoulder blades. And I’m not seeking shelter, I’m just avoiding you.”

  Theo blinked, then sitting up, he turned to face the males at his side and Thalia. “You can’t avoid me forever.”

  “Don’t intend to avoid you forever,” she immediately mumbled.

  He scowled. “Then why play these foolish games?”

  “Because my life’s in turmoil, I’m the Fae’s idea of artificial insemination with illusions of Doomsday cult grandeur, I have three mates, and someone, somewhere, thought it would be funny if I didn’t answer not just one prophecy, but two.” She rubbed her nose up and down the central line between Rafe’s shoulders. “Forgive me if I find that overwhelming.”

  It wasn’t until all this happened that Thalia finally realized why people under thirty-five in her culture were still considered pups.

  She was a pup. If not in body but of mind. Wholeheartedly unprepared for the big, bad, adult world. Shame the Goddess didn’t agree, she thought drily.

  Theo seemed to ponder her words a second, then, she watched as he rubbed his chin with one hand and his chest with the other. She blinked, wondering if he was undergoing one of those coordination games where you had to simultaneously pat your head and rub your belly, but it didn’t seem like that. If anything, he looked lik
e he was in some kind of pain.

  Had she caused that?

  With her words?

  She wasn’t sure. Theo managed to show very little. His features were expressive, mobile, and yet, he conveyed hardly anything so she had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. Whether that was glamor or simply years of experience with a poker face, she wasn’t sure.

  What she did know was that if he was hurting, she didn’t like it.

  Closing her eyes, she levered herself away from Rafe’s back and leaned up awkwardly on one arm. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice tentative.

  “No.”

  The truth hit her square in the solar plexus. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure.” His eyes popped open. “There’s a strange feeling inside me.”

  “Like heartburn?” she suggested, trying to be helpful.

  “Heartburn?” he scoffed. “The Fae do not suffer with such nonsense.”

  “What do you feel then?” she demanded grumpily.

  “I know grief. This I have felt.”

  Taken aback by that, she whispered, “That’s all you recognize?”

  “The Fae are not like humans or Lykens.”

  “Ya think?” she retorted under her breath, glowering at Rafe when he elbowed her gently in the side.

  Theo shrugged. “We don’t feel all that much after our seven hundredth birthday.”

  For whatever reason, that grabbed Mikkel’s attention. “Why seven hundred?”

  Rafe snorted. “Would you prefer they stop feeling at five hundred or a thousand?”

  “I prefer round numbers,” he retorted with a grin that melted Thalia’s heart. As well as everything else below her navel.

  Theo stared out over the ocean, not seeming to hear their teasing. “It’s a rite of passage.”

  “What is? To lose feeling? That kind of sucks.”

  Theo’s smile was small. “It’s the opposite to us. The less we feel, the stronger we believe we are.” He licked his lips, budging that tiny smile that Thalia’s gaze had focused on.

  He was a strange man, but then, she reasoned, he was no man at all, was he? He was a Fae. Royal Fae, no less.

  “Why is it considered better not to feel?” she asked quietly.

  “Because emotions are volatile. We pride ourselves on being cool and calm. When I met—” He broke off, and Thalia narrowed her eyes.

  “When you met who?” she demanded, mostly because he was so candid that for him to prevaricate made her heart pound.

  That was one thing she was learning, Theo could be trusted to speak the truth.

  She’d spoken with him last night and this morning at breakfast, and in that tiny span of time, she’d come to learn that.

  It helped, she supposed. Helped allow her to trust him. She hated how Mikkel was testing at the bonds between them, and she loathed that she was doing the same with the one she and Theo shared. Mikkel hurt her by denying their connection, so she had to be doing the same to the Fae male who had declared her his. But she couldn’t stop herself. Theo was too different, and she couldn’t understand why.

  The man in question turned his head away from the ocean and caught her in his gaze. Her heart froze as she stared deeply into his green eyes, but the trouble was, they were so green that they ensnared her. Made her question if she’d ever seen anything like them before. A Lyken’s eyesight made a human fighter pilot’s vision look paltry. From this distance, she could see his irises, the individual flecks and the special markings that made his eyes unique…

  And while that was the same for anyone, there was something about his that made her leap headfirst into the orb. She knew that made no sense. How could you dive into someone’s eye? But she did. Suddenly, the world around her was awash with shamrock. It tinged everything with it, made it glint and sparkle as though there were a bed of emeralds around her. She felt drowned by it, her lungs filling with it, until Theo clicked his fingers and sheepishly whispered, “Sorry.”

  She jerked back so hard she toppled off the lounger. Only Rafe’s instincts saved her from splatting on the ground at the side of the sunbed. He spun over, grabbed her arm, and hauled her into him.

  She let out a shaky sigh, blinking a few times before she had the guts to demand, “What the hell was that?”

  “Fae defense system.” Theo’s voice was pensive, then he rubbed his chin. “I’m surprised it hit you. I didn’t think it would as you’re my mate.”

  “Maybe because you’re not bound yet?” Rafe asked, his hand stroking up and down Thalia’s spine.

  The word ‘bound’ acted like an electric shock through her system.

  “What kind of defense system?” she asked quietly, otherwise disregarding Rafe’s comment.

  “Stopped you in your tracks, didn’t it?” he murmured with a cock of his brow.

  “She looked mesmerized,” Mikkel pointed out softly, and considering Mikkel did nothing softly, that was saying a lot.

  “She was.” Theo let out a breath. “I apologize, Thalia. I’d have warned you otherwise.”

  She pursed her lips then, with her faculties in full form, got to her feet. Her grandmother was right, it was time to stop acting like a scared little girl. She pushed her shoulders back and gritted out, “I’m ready to see your wings.”

  “You fainted the last time you saw them,” Rafe cautioned.

  Pink tinged her cheeks. “It wasn’t the wings that did that,” she mumbled under her breath, managing, barely, to keep her chin raised.

  “What was it then?” Theo asked, his tone curious, but he stood, squaring his shoulders as he moved to face her.

  “When they appeared, they…” It was hard to describe. It was why she’d been so flaky since he’d arrived.

  She wasn’t scared of much. Well, she hadn’t been. Her life hadn’t been much, death couldn’t faze her when its opposite wasn’t that enthralling. Now she had something to live for, though, that was different.

  She had her men. And yes, Theo was included in that even if she’d been treating him like shit, and she had, she realized. She’d been pushing him aside just as Mikkel had her and it was time to get on with things.

  For whatever reason, the Mother had brought all her three mates together within weeks of each other. That had to mean something. Good or ill.

  It was time to pull on her big girl panties and get on with shit.

  A hand pressed against the upper half of her calf, behind her knee. She felt Rafe’s grounding presence even though he hadn’t moved an inch. It gave her courage to admit something she’d never dared admit before.

  “I-I don’t think you guys are aware of how close I’ve been running to the edge these past few years. Hell, these past six months, if I’m being honest.”

  “The edge?” Mikkel asked, frowning at her even as he sat up taller on the lounger.

  “To madness,” she whispered, ducking her head to escape their gazes. It was a relief that Rafe was at her back, because she didn’t want to see the shame on his face or in his eyes.

  She’d always been unstable. Ever since that first vision. It had fucked with her head in more ways than she knew how to count.

  “What are you talking about, Thalia?” Rafe asked quietly.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t stand to be so close to them, to have their gazes pinned on her. She shuffled to the side, facing the pool. It made her eyes hurt it was so bright, and the crystalline depths encouraged her to strip off and play. Her She-Wolf wanted that with surprising alacrity, enough to make her realize how having the three males here was grounding her.

  Her beast didn’t play.

  But now they were here, she wanted nothing more than to swim and laugh and slip in between their silken, wet forms. She wanted to feel their nakedness slide against hers as she darted out of their arms while they tried to catch her.

  She wanted them to pin her down, make her submit to them, and wanted to lead them on a merry dance until they did just that.

  The surprising need made
her realize how huge a step she’d taken and she sucked down a sharp breath. “I’m talking about the fact I was months away from going feral.”

  Silence fell at her words, and she knew they wouldn’t hold as much weight for Mikkel or Theo—who, despite his age, she didn’t think was fully aware of how Lykenkind worked. Not the intricacies, anyway.

  “What’s she talking about, Rafe?” Mikkel grumbled, sounding concerned and unhappy about it.

  It soothed something inside her that they looked to Rafe for guidance, Theo too. She knew his gaze would be on the smallest of her three mates, the one whose power was surprising in its strength and which was still growing, as was hers.

  It made her question what her males would bring to their union.

  Mikkel was human. Theo a Fae.

  If she had a child with them, then they’d ascend to the TriAlpha, but with only half their unit of four actually having Lyken blood, what would that child be? A mix of Fae, human, and Gamma and Alpha Lyken?

  It was a bizarre cocktail that was a concern for a later date.

  “It’s very unusual for our kind to go feral nowadays,” Rafe informed them softly, his tone grave and gravelly at the same time—like he knew what she was saying, and how dire the circumstances had to have been for her to feel close to the edge. “We don’t get to spend enough time in our wolf skin for it to become an issue.

  “Most Lykens get to shift once a week at the most. Thalia spent a lot of time in her wolf skin, going feral is when a Lyken simply can’t change back. Where the She-Wolf takes total control and won’t relinquish the human—usually for the human’s safety.”

  “Your She-Wolf is strong,” Theo inserted softly. “I can feel her.”

  “Yes. She’s uncommonly strong. And she has talents that we’re only just learning about, she could take on her fathers in a challenge and win. That’s unheard of. Her She-Wolf and she work together to bring down opponents, sensing weaknesses they can target. I’ve never heard of anything like that before in my life. And considering how much time she has spent in her wolf skin, it’s made her immensely strong.”