Elements of Desire

by C. M. Stunich

  “I’ll protect Britt,” Siobhan promised me as Gemma stood up and stared at the Daniel versus Shane fight. Billy circled the scuffle, looking for a way in while Warden, George, and Reg were nowhere to be seen. Plucking the beautiful threads that bound us, I discovered they were just over the edge of the roof near the plumbing van. Trying to head off the bio moms was my guess.

  “Thank you,” I said, and even though it could be considered somewhat of a risk, I trusted Siobhan to take care of Britt for me. Shane and Billy would be okay with just Daniel, but I didn’t like the idea of the other three boys down there with four—five, if you counted Nevada—hostile elemental bio moms.

  I gave Dustin one last glance and noticed that he’d shifted back into human form, his hands curled around the Chaos Queen’s upper arms as her face paled and her body went strangely limped. I remembered one of the boys warning me about metal elementals, about how they could do strangely disturbing things like suck all the iron out of a person’s body and kill them.

  Rachel had wanted to start a war? Because, what, there were too many fucking elementals and she wanted to be in charge for a change? Well, what a stupid goddamn decision because as I grabbed Gemma’s hand—ew, but I was not leaving her up here unsupervised—and started for the edge of the roof, I watched Dustin kill her.

  He tossed the body aside as Adonis and Nigel flew up and landed back on the roof, leathery wings snapping closed behind them. The Chaos King let out a violent scream of rage and I felt this … crash of magic that hit me like a brick wall. The urge to fuck and fuck and fuck swept over my body until I felt like I might puke.

  But then Gemma squeezed my hand and I flicked my attention her way. We stared at each other, mutual hatred burning in our eyes. It took me a second to realize that my disgust toward Gemma was helping me fight through the sex magic from the incubus king.

  “Damn it,” I grumbled, not wanting to even grudgingly admit that Gemma was of any use at all. “Let’s kick his ass.” As Nigel took off toward Dusty, erection bobbing as he ran, I let go of Gem and felt her shift behind me. A quick glance over my shoulder … showed a dragon form that looked remarkably similar to mine, damn it! I guess we were related after all. I switched my attention back to Adonis, skidded to a stop and used a wrenching motion with my hands to grab onto and twist his spirit energy. He screamed in pain as I continued torqueing my hands, like I was ringing out a wet washcloth or something.

  Vaguely, I heard a shot ring out from the street … and then another shockwave rippled through us all, this horrible grating sensation that reminded me of when I cut my bonds to the boys. Nevada … was probably dead.

  A lump lodged in my throat, but I refused to acknowledge it. Instead, I focused on the asshole sex demon in front of me, thrashing around as he tried to fight his way through my magic. He didn’t make it that far because Bill grabbed hold of him with his dragon jaws, squeezed tight, and literally severed the man’s body in half.

  Blood sprayed everywhere and it was so totally fucking gross, but I didn’t have even a second to be squeamish because the moms were back with my boys following close behind them. A melee of bullshit crashed down around us, bodies flying everywhere, claws and teeth and wings and tails. I could barely tell what was going on.

  And then Daniel was just suddenly there, grabbing me around the waist with his claws and smashing me into the pavement. His eyes were crazed with something … akin to grief? … but I didn’t have time to be sympathetic or care. Instead of talking my ear off like a proper movie villain, he just crushed me hard against the roof and sucked in a deep breath. Energy rolled off of me like heat from warm pavement, shimmering in the air between us.

  It was the most awful feeling I’d ever experienced … aside from those cut bonds.

  Something about that horrible moment broke through the fear and pain. If I’d survived that, I could survive this, too. With a scream that was supposed to be, like, a super cool war cry, I shoved a massive amount of energy into Daniel, overloading him and sending him rolling across the roof. When I stumbled to my feet in my boots and catsuit, I looked totally badass. Just for good measure, I shoved my knuckles over my bloody lips.

  Daniel rose to his feet, shaking with fury, his teeth clenched tight as my men kept the moms at bay around me. There were other sounds: explosions on the ground level, the howls of wolves, and … was that money-like chatter the sound of a kookaburra?! A quick glance over my shoulder showed an Unseelie scrambling over the edge of the roof in pursuit of an incubus. It managed to catch up to him and literally rend his neck from his shoulders with its beak before it started making that noise again.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I grumbled as I rolled my eyes. The Unseelie chick was basically a half-naked woman with brown and blue wings like a goddamn kookaburra and a laugh to match. Fantastic. I turned back to Daniel and tried really hard not to make old gum tree jokes in my head. “If you give up now, you can save the others’ lives,” I said, holding my hands up in a placating gesture. At this point, it was pretty obvious that Daniel, his harem, and CUM were going to lose.

  Pretty sure my husbands and I were more powerful that they’d wanted to believe. Monstrosity or freak of nature or load my moms should’ve swallowed I may be. But for the first time in my life, I felt like a true urban fantasy heroine … kicking ass in stiletto boots and a tight leather jumpsuit that chafed my nipples and rode up my crotch.

  I. Was. Invincible.

  “You broke my sept,” Daniel screamed, taking off at a run and … jumping not at me, but at Gemma. He hit her so hard that her head cracked against the retaining wall and leaked blood. She stopped moving, too, and I wasn’t sure if she were dead … or passed out. With another shrill sound, Daniel started pulling magic into himself like a whirlpool. I saw it the moms first, dropping them to their knees and leaving them completely vulnerable to my guys. They quickly disabled them, but it wasn’t going to be the moms who were the problem now, it was going to be Daniel.

  He was draining his own wives and my twin at the same time.

  I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t want to kill him, but I just fucking couldn’t let me, my besties, or my men die.

  So I did what I had to do.

  Using that special little secret I’d carted over with me, I sent the most powerful weapon I knew hurtling at my biological father.

  Cuntmuffin.

  The undead dragon Kuntemopharn exploded over the edge of the building, dripping dirt and fluid and debris as it went, like some sort of macabre, necromantic snail trail. It was ten times as smelly and gross as it’d been when we’d buried it … but it was also ten times as powerful because it was running on Arizona Smoke magic now.

  The creature latched onto Daniel, tearing him off of Gemma with a ghostly shriek that made my ears bleed. I noticed my twin twitching and groaning and wasn’t sure if I was excited that she was still alive … or bitterly disappointed.

  As I watched, Cuntmuffin shook my father around like a dog with a bone, severing his arm and swallowing it. Daniel met my eyes one last time before I tried to reign the creature back in. But it was too late. Opening its jaws to their full width, Kuntemopharn ate my fucking dad. Like, literally picked him up and swallowed him whole, like a snake.

  “You’ve got him, stop!” George called out, stumbling over to me in human form. “Blossom, stop!”

  “I can’t!” I screamed as my hubbies were forced to abandon the captive bio moms. It was either that, or get eaten by the undead dragon, too.

  My men stumbled over to me as I watched in horror over what I’d just unleashed.

  “Grab hands!” Warden screamed, and even though it was super cliché and borderline Captain Planet, we all locked hands, all seven of us. I felt the power of my sept, my soul mates, all the bullshit we’d been through, and all the strange magic inside of me that Daniel and his now deceased wives had unleashed by conceiving me and my twin. We were a product of a rare male spirit with a full sept, one of two even rarer spirit twi
ns. So fuck, I guessed I was a special snowflake?

  As soon as I closed my eyes and tapped into those threads that bound us, I felt magic surge through me in such a violent onslaught that I screamed. My fingernails dug into Warden’s and Reg’s hands as I gripped them tight and sent all of that energy out at Kuntemopharn. When I flicked my eyes open, I saw the creature thrashing as he burned with black and silver flame, crumbling to crystallized ash on the roof in front of us.

  “Daddy!” Gemma wailed from behind me. Tears prickled at the edges of my eyes just a split-second before I collapsed and Reg scooped me up and into his arms.

  “Are we okay?” I choked out, teeth chattering as I felt this emptiness inside of me. I’d used so much magic, it was going to take me weeks to recharge.

  “We’re okay, ST,” Reg said, squeezing me close as I plucked at the magical threads for each of the boys, just to make sure they were all there. It was hard to hear, with Gemma screeching and wailing behind me. Somehow, I’d saved her, too. Damn it.

  “I’m here, hun,” Britt gargled, stumbling over and leaning her bloody body against mine while Siobhan watched from behind, shaking and now also totally covered in crimson. I wondered which one of her fellow chaos members she’d had to kill? But she’d done it. She’d protected Britt even though she hated her with every molecule in her body. And that’s when I knew for sure that she could be saved.

  “Reginald!” Joan was shouting from somewhere down on the street. “Baby, are you okay? Mommy’s here!” Reg just rolled his eyes, looking down at me with a strange mixture of sorrow and love.

  I’d taken out Daniel and the bio moms … but it was going to take me a while to get used to that, and he knew it.

  “Can we go home now?” I asked, and it was George who answered.

  “We can go home now,” he said, kissing me on the lips. Each of the other guys took a turn, too, until I’d kissed all six of them.

  “You can bet your fecking ass we’re going home,” Dustin grumbled as we made our way to the staircase and started down it, Britt and Siobhan trailing close behind.

  I tried really hard not to look at that crystallized ash as we passed. But then I changed my mind and wiggled out of Reg’s arms. In the end, I took home an entire ice cup filled with ashes.

  It gave me the closure I needed to put an end to all of this … and start on my beginning.

  Nine months had passed before I really felt safe, settled, before the trauma of starting my new life started to fade away and the joy of it all really began to sink in as deeply as my husbands’ dicks did on a regular basis.

  Watching my bio parents be eaten by a rotten undead dragon had been sort of … traumatizing, but saving my besties and learning the truth behind everything had helped make it all worth it. Well, that, and the three little bundles of joy I’d never really wanted but now couldn’t imagine living without.

  “She has her father’s eyes, don’t you think?” I asked Britt as she lounged on the couch opposite me and wrinkled her nose at the three babies in my lap. If I’d been a better friend to her, maybe she’d have never been kidnapped in the first place? I’d found out later that Britt had gotten kicked out of her Montana pack for sleeping with the alpha—who already had a mate of his own. Not the coolest thing to do, but she’d fled with her tail between her legs to New York to be with me and forget the whole thing. When the alpha dude had shown up and demanded one last meeting with her to sever pack connections, she’d been the dutiful little werewolf, gone to see him, and ended up being ‘sold’ by that asshole to CUM.

  “Which one?” Britt asked, tossing dark hair over her shoulder and then tapping away at her phone. She was crazy in love with the Hudson Valley Alpha and Beta, so I didn’t blame her. Better she was texting the only serious boyfriends I’d ever seen her have than playing fucking Candy Crush on her mobile or some shit.

  “Seriously?” Siobhan asked, snuggled up close to Gemma. I couldn’t even believe I had that bitch in my house, on my couch, and I wasn’t trying to murder her. Or she wasn’t trying to steal my men. We hadn’t exactly learned to like each other over the last nine months, but we could now at least tolerate being in the same room. “You’re fucking rude, Britt.” She smiled over at me, as if to say I have your back now, babe. Sure, we had some issues to deal with—she was still a tad miffed about Dustin, and even though she’d gone faux evil to save our asses, she hadn’t been totally honest with me—like when she’d lied to be about being in Barbados so she wouldn’t have to face me knowing she was dating my soul mate. So, yeah, we weren’t back at full bestie capacity, but we were getting there. “Just because she had sex with lots of guys doesn’t mean the babies are any less cute or amazing or … oh God, just give Auntie Siobhan one to snuggle!”

  “I didn’t say they weren’t cute!” Britt snapped as George appeared in the living room with a glass of wine and handed it to me. It was hard to juggle with the other two cuties in my lap, so I handed one over to him and patted the cushion so he’d sit down next to me. “I just want to know which guy is the real father.”

  “Bio father,” I snapped, because if I’d learned anything from all of this … it was that blood wasn’t necessarily thicker than water. Family was what you made of it, and this here, this was all the family I needed. “They know who their real daddies are.”

  The last remaining baby licked my face and I giggled.

  “I’m just trying to decide if it was the beagle, the boxer, or the Rottweiler that contributed actual sperm to these puppies. Their mother was so much of a mutt, and since the owner confirmed she’d seen the dog mate with those three breeds at least while she was in heat, we might never know.”

  “That’s true,” I said, cuddling the puppy close and not even caring that he was sloshing red wine all over me as he tried to lick my face again. Hah. And you thought I’d actually had triplets. Sorry to disappoint, but no kids until I’m thirty-five at least. And that’s a huge maybe. For now, I had three puppies, six husbands, two besties, and a dead grandmother whose ghost would not fucking leave no matter how many exorcism spells I’d tried. Thus far, the only spell that worked to get rid of her was spelled o-r-g-y. “But Warden doesn’t care, do you, Warden?”

  “Fuck no,” he said, scooping the pup from my lap and giving it a quick squeeze. Billy and Shane came down the stairs behind him, and I noticed all three of them were … sweaty and flushed and wearing brand-new fresh clothes that were different from their earlier outfits.

  Uh, codeword sex anyone? A three-way dude bang? Thank God I’d had Reg help me install those hidden cameras in the bedrooms, so I could catch the action later. I’d been encouraging the guys to heal old hurts, explore their sexualities, and see if maybe they liked each other at least a fraction as much as they liked me? Obviously, I was still their spirit, and I knew nothing could replace me, but I wasn’t such a selfish, insecure bitch that I couldn’t handle my six husbands having relationships with one another. I wasn’t threatened by that.

  “Feck this lawn,” Dustin snarled, storming into the house, shirtless and smelling like fresh-cut grass. Reg was with him, and now I had every person in the world I gave a shit about in one room. Joan would never be a part of that equation, but at least I was learning to put up with her a few times a week to learn the elemental language and do some basic training. At this point, she knew if she ever stepped out of line again, we were done with her. The guys had even offered to cut her off completely, just for me, but I didn’t want to put them through that, so I was giving her one, last chance.

  Besides, I liked her harem just fine. It was only Joan herself that I despised.

  “Don’t see why I have to mow it,” Dustin continued, scowling as he plopped down on the end of the couch and took the puppy from George. As soon as it started to lick the sweat from his face, he cheered up quite quickly.

  “Because it makes you humble, and because I find it hot as fuck to see you guys mow the lawn shirtless.” I shrugged and sipped my wine, wondering if the r
enovations we were doing to the old house would be enough to keep the guys here. They were all used to luxury and Gram’s place was sort of shit, but I liked it anyway and they hadn’t pressed me into moving. I appreciated that.

  I didn’t need a mansion or money or super nice bathrooms with soaker tubs—although I did have that and enjoyed using it on an almost daily basis—to be happy. All I needed were my husbands, my friends … and my puppies.

  “Y’all fancy a group date to play mini golf or some shit?” Shane asked as Billy moved over to the window, pushed it open and lit what was most definitely a post-coital cigarette.

  “Bookstore first, then mini golf, then restaurant?” I suggested as Britt rolled her eyes.

  “Sounds like a totally lame date; sex club sounds better. But I’ll text my boys and tell ‘em they’re going or they don’t get BJs for at least twenty-four hours if they don’t comply.”

  “How kind of you, Furball,” Reg said with a roll of his eyes. “After we went through all that trouble to save your life, too.”

  She flipped him off, and he grinned as both he and Warden tried to fight for a spot in my lap. I ended up with the water elemental on me, and the energy elemental on George. The puppies didn’t seem to give a shit either way, tails wagging and tongues flicking out to lick whatever exposed skin they could get a hold of. Heh. Almost like Britt, just … not as slutty.

  “We’re … invited?” Siobhan asked hesitantly, looking only at me and not at Dustin, Gem, or anyone else. As much as I wanted to say fuck my twin to hell, she was the only blood relative I had left. Daniel and the bio moms were dead, and even though what’d happened in the end was their fault, I still regretted that I never really got to talk to any of them. One day, after I stopped hating her so much, Gem could provide that connection to the past I never knew I had until … the day the plumbing stopped.

  “You’re invited,” I said, holding my sister’s green eyes for a moment.