The Five

by Nhys Glover

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE FIVE

  A Reverse Harem Fantasy

  Airshan Chronicles 1

  Nhys Glover

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. With the exception of historical events and people used as background for the story, or those clearly in the public domain, the names, characters and incidents portrayed in this work come wholly from the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental

  Published by Belisama Press

  © Nhys Glover 2017

  The right of Nhys Glover to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This book is copyright. All rights reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please delete it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  .

  OTHER BOOKS BY NHYS GLOVER

  ANCIENT ROMAN HISTORICAL ROMANCES:

  Liquid Fire

  The Barbarian's Mistress

  Lionslayer's Woman (Sequel to Liquid Fire)

  White Raven's Lover (Sequel to Barbarian's Mistress)

  The Gladiator's Bride (Sequel to White Raven's Lover)

  WEREWOLF KEEP TRILOGY:

  Guardian of Werewolf Keep

  Imprisoned at Werewolf Keep

  Defiance at Werewolf Keep

  Insane (A novella)

  NEW ATLANTIS TIME TRAVEL SERIES:

  Nine Lives (Cara/Jac)

  The Dreamer's Prince (Jane/Julio)

  Savage (Faith/ Luke)

  Shared Soul (Maggie/Travis)

  Bitter Oath (Liv/ Rene)

  The Titan Drowns (Eilish/Max, Karl/Lizzie, Pia/Marco)

  The Key (Kat/Bart)

  Pieces (Krista/Dirk)

  Second Chance (Bree/Hakon)

  Watcher (Jin/Rafe)

  Vision of You (Ellen/Duke)

  Osiris (Takhara/Dan)

  Causality (Willow/Jarvidh)

  Gods of Time (Teagan/Jason, Lucien/Alba)

  Book of Seeds (Shay/Cy)

  SCORPIO SONS SF/SHIFTER ROMANCE SERIES:

  1: Colton 2: Connor 3: Cooper 4: Chase

  5: Cameron 6: Caleb 7: Conrad 8: Charles

  GREYWORLD SERIES:

  (Paranormal Sweet Romance)

  1: The Anomaly

  2: Mallory

  3: Earth Angel

  4: Crag Wraith

  REVERSE HAREM FANTASIES:

  THE AIRLUDS TRILOGY:

  The Sacrifice

  The Chosen One

  Goddess Unbound

  THE AIRSHAN CHRONICLES

  The Five

  Daemon

  The Devourer

  OTHERS:

  The Way Home (Ghost Romance)

  Caught in a Dream (SF Sweet Romance)

  Labyrinth of Light (New Age Inspirational)

  Find out more about Nhys and her books here:

  www.nhysglover.com

  Prologue

  There was absolutely no truth to Airsha's statement that Zem and me should be together. Not romantically, anyway. We worked well as partners and friends. And sure, we'd shared a few kisses back during the rebellion, but that had been in the heat of the moment. Later, we made an unspoken pact to keep it platonic.

  I had no time for romance. And having Zem as my husband—or even lover—would be disastrous. He was hard enough to live with as a friend, it would be worse if we became more.

  But Airsha's dig kept eating at me. I wasn't the girl Airshin raped anymore, she'd told me, and I needed to move on. Which was so wrong. I had moved on. As soon as that bastard was dead—his throat slit by Rama—that part of my life was over. And I never looked back. If I wasn't one of those women who jumped into bed with anything in breeches, that didn't mean I was still caught up over that one incident. Gods’ balls, it had only lasted a few minutes. Less than a quarter sandglass turn from the moment I approached him, asking for the cost of a ticket home to my family—that was the con I was running at the time—to the moment he put his limp cock back in his breeches and sauntered away.

  A quarter turn out of eighteen and a half suncycles was insignificant. Meaningless, in the scheme of things. If I'd made it my goal to revenge myself on him the next time I heard his voice, that was just in my nature. I never let anyone get away with hurting me. Ever! And he was dead now, so I had gotten my revenge. It was over.

  Airsha was just wrong. Aye, she was the Goddess Incarnate and often channelled the Goddess directly with Wisdom that left a person gaping in wonder, but the rest of the time she was just a young woman no different from me. We were, after all, both Elemental Mistresses. She just happened to have more elements at her disposal than I did. It didn't mean she was the font-of-all-knowledge.

  Zem and me sat on the veranda of the old Airling Training Centre, now the country residence of the Goddess Incarnate, and stared out at the paddock where our airlings were getting reacquainted with the Airluds’ airlings. We had finally run out of steam, our arguments often going that way when neither of us would give ground.

  I looked across at Zem, remembering the lad he'd been when we'd first come here. Back then, he'd been fifteen— a few moons younger than me—but as scrawny as an alley wadja. I couldn't believe it when Airsha and Calun had both championed his right to join the recruits. Nobody that weird should be an airling rider, I'd decided that first day. No airling would ever choose him.

  But I'd been wrong on so many counts. Not only had he made a great airling trooper, and their unofficial leader, but he'd been the first of the recruits to be chosen by an airling as her own. He hadn't known what was going on, of course. But that was what happened when Storm wandered across the field when she saw him.

  Such an odd lad. And though he was so much more than that scrawny kid now—passably good looking and fit—he was still odd. And I was fine with that. The way he thought seemed almost natural to me now. And I knew how to pull him out of his obsessions when they took him over. When I couldn't, I just went with them because, as often as not, they were right. Like the way he was when Airsha was stolen from us. He'd gone on and on about the connections. How the wagon had to connect. And he'd been right. Though Airsha had been on her way back to us by the time we found her, she could have just as easily died in that forest if we hadn't listened to Zem and sent in a search party to follow the direction he’d theorised the enemy would have taken her.

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, not wanting him to know I was appraising him. He'd developed a cocky, over-confident way about him in the last sun or so that really annoyed me. The fact other girls were drawn to it like flies to rancid meat made it all the more annoying. Zem wasn't that good looking. Not like the
Airluds. But his brown hair did have a way of falling over his forehead. And his brown eyes did have a depth to them, which made it easy to get lost in them if you stared too long into them. Those cheekbones and hollowed cheeks were impressive too. They were often covered with a light dusting of beard these days, which should have been off-putting but, strangely, only made him look that much more attractive.

  To other women. Attractive to other women. Not to me. He was just my friend. And that's the way I liked it. If I let him into my bed he'd just toss me aside after, as he tended to do with all his conquests. And that would hurt. And I'd have to avenge myself on him, which would disrupt our friendship. No, I wouldn't become one of his bevy of females. I didn't share.

  There was pressure on me to start a harem. All the Elemental Masters and Mistresses were encouraged to support their power by having more than one spouse. But I didn't want one man, no less many. They could pressure all they liked, but I was my own person and that was the way I liked it.

  "You know I love you, right?" Zem finally said, after the silence had gone on too long.

  "I know. I love you too. You're my best friend," I answered stiffly, brushing my red mop of hair back over my shoulder. I should have tied it up into a harem knot, as I usually did when flying, but I’d wanted to look my best when we came home.

  Huh, home. Where the Airluds and Airsha were— that was home for me. Would I ever get used to that?

  "Not just as a friend. I've always loved you, Flea. I wanted to make that very clear."

  "You love all the girls you coax into your bed. Until you don't."

  Zem sighed heavily. "I’ve never loved anyone but you. You can tell yourself something different if it makes you feel better, but that’s the truth. I make those girls no promises, I tell them no lies. We share pleasure and that's all there is to it."

  I glanced over at him to gauge the truth of his words, though he was an open book to me on most matters. I could read every thought in his head. Except for the ones he blocked. He was good at blocking me. Like the Airluds and Airsha were good at it.

  But he wasn't blocking me now. All his feelings for me were laid out like sealings drying in the sun.

  No, it wasn't true. He couldn't feel like that toward me. It would make things uncomfortable between us. Because I didn't want any man in my bed. Or any girl, either. I was fine just as I was. I had no desire to be big with childlings every suncycle or so, like Airsha. She might be the human face of the Goddess of All Creation, but I wasn't. I had no driving need to populate the world with my magical offspring.

  Because I would have magical offspring if I took Zem as my husband. We were both magical. That meant we had a better than average chance of producing childlings who were also magical.

  What was I thinking? I was not marrying Zem! I wasn't even taking him to my bed, no matter how sweet his words. He could save them for his other conquests.

  He had an uncanny way of reading my thoughts, probably because they were usually written all over my face. So he simply sighed.

  "I’ve said it," he said sadly. "And that’s the end of it. It won’t change tomorrow or in a hundred suns. My heart is yours. Though it isn't much, I grant you, it is yours—will always be yours, whether you take it or leave it.” He drew in a deep breath as he put up the walls in his mind. “Let's go inside and see the childlings. I want to give them the gifts I brought."

  That was so Zem. He'd brought gifts for the childlings when I hadn't even thought to do such a thing. He'd make a good father one day. For the right woman. Not me. And not because his heart wasn't much. It was plenty. Any woman would be lucky to have him. Just not me.

  I nodded and stood up, stretching out some of the kinks a day on an airling usually gave me. Flying was wonderful. My favourite thing. But muscles did seize up when you stayed in one position for too long. What I needed was some training. Preferably with Airsha. I'd have to coax her into it after everyone was settled in.

  We headed inside and were greeted by the noise and chaos of a big homecoming. My heart leapt as it always did at times like this. Home. We were home.

  ‘There you are, sister,’ Calun thought silently, a big grin crossing his handsome face. ‘We were starting to think you two had left us again.’

  “Leave you? Don’t be an idiot. We just didn’t want to add to the noise in here.”

  Once I’d fancied myself in love with Calun. Jaron teased me that I’d fallen for him because he looked so much like me. That I carried self-adoration a step too far. But really I’d just been attracted by his kindness. Up until then no one had truly been kind to me since Dah had died,. But as I was drawn more and more into this huge, odd family of four husbands and one wife, I’d started to experience what being loved was really like. And I’d opened up and found myself loving them back in return. Even Rama.

  Sometimes I wondered at how willing to put up with me they’d been back at the beginning. I’d been obnoxious, especially to Airsha. But maybe the Goddess’ hand had been at work, even then. She wanted me to be part of this family, and She made it happen. It was really the only explanation for why they forgave my dishonesty. It wasn’t because I deserved it. I didn’t deserve any of the love I’d been gifted with then or since.

  Calun came to my side and kissed my cheek. His compassionate green eyes told me that he saw right through me. Saw that, even now, I sometimes felt like I existed on the periphery of this extended family. Undeserving of the place I was given among them.

  ‘One day you’re going to have to let the love in, sweet lass.’

  I gave his shoulder a shove as the heat burned its way up my neck and into my cheeks. I wasn’t sure if he meant Zem or all of them. Right now, I didn’t want to know.

  So I stepped away from him and went to pick up Trace. His father had been like me. Loved even after his betrayal was discovered. Maybe that was why his death had affected me so badly. That, and guilt. Always guilt.

  Jaron, the youngest and most outrageously handsome of Airsha’s husbands, came up behind me as I cuddled the smiling, sticky-faced childling. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and cocked his head in Zem’s direction.

  “Why don’t you give that poor lad a break.”

  “Why,” I huffed back in annoyance, “doesn’t everyone mind their own business!”

  “Because we love you and that’s what family does. Sticks its nose in where it’s not wanted. Surely you know that by now.” He mockingly waved a finger at me like a school house pedant.

  I didn’t have an answer to that so I simply grumbled under my breath and made much of young Trace in my arms. At least he wasn’t giving me advice!

  Chapter One

  The airling rider arrived a few days later when we were all lolling about on the veranda like over-stuffed daublers. The heat and too much food made us lazy, but not enough to drop our guard. Zem was the first to notice him, but Darkin was the first to put a name to him. Ralic, one of the youngest of the recruits back during the rebellion, and one of the few whose airling had remained bound to his rider after the war was done. Such troopers as Ralic became messengers for the new government, or scouts like Zem and me.

  The rebel leaders had been disappointed when most of the airlings returned to their undomesticated state, but Airsha had been determined. The Goddess had Willed their involvement in the war. The war was over. They were therefore free to return to their own lives. She refused to force them to stay when their hearts called for them to be free. They already carried a taint from their time in the human world. A taint that it would likely take many suns to cleanse.

  "This must be important," Darkin said, climbing to his feet.

  "It's always important. They really have to learn to stand on their own feet without me," Airsha muttered petulantly, sounding more like a child than a mother and pseudo-queen.

  But I could tell her body had gone onto alert, and her thoughts, which she'd allowed me into as we all relaxed contentedly on the veranda, were now locked down.

 
; We waited for Ralic to reach us. Which he did at a run. By the time he was standing at the bottom of the stairs he was gasping in air like a landed sealing.

  "The Godling has escaped," he wheezed out, leaning on his knees.

  At just over sixteen he had yet to start growing. But not, as had been the case with Zem, because he'd been malnourished. With Ralic it was simply his breeding. His family were from the Badlunds to the south and both parents were small—or so he'd told me once—so he was never going to grow into a big man.

  But he was a chatty one. And anyone who was around him for any length of time would know his whole life story in no time at all.

  Airsha frowned and shook her head. "That is unfortunate. But why has the Airshan Government sent you here?"

  She shuddered a little when she said the name the representatives of the different parties had chosen for their new government. The Goddess had no name, or they would have named it after her. As her incarnation, and the leader of the rebellion, they had chosen to name the seedling government of the kinglunds after her. It was the highest tribute. But Airsha found it discomforting.

  "Because the word is he is coming after you. The luds who broke him out have been keeping tabs on you. They believe that if they kill you the new government will collapse, and the Godling will be able to take back his kinglund."

  Airsha laughed and shook her head. "Why do people insist on giving me more significance than I actually have? The new government doesn't rise or fall on me. It exists firmly in its own right."

  "Be that as it may, we need to be on guard. What do you know of the escape and the plans?" Rama demanded of Ralic, his deep voice harsh. Little Ramin, who was curled up on his lap like a wadja, stirred at his tone. Rama stroked his downy-white hair to relax him again.