by Meg Xuemei X
Sphinx gave me a satisfied smile. “The path ahead is long, merciless, and treacherous, Daisy Danaenyth, who wants to be the new protector of the Dragon Realm and your mates and the people who don’t want you.”
“Will you step aside and let us pass now?” I grated.
“I have something else for you to muse in your spare time, Keeper-to-be,” he said. His sightless eyes reflected the dark stars and their terrible secrets.
Gain the first and lose the last. Keep the last, and the first will be shattered bones. Heart doesn’t know. Heart betrays. Heart breaks. Heart divides. Heart deceives. Only the greatest sacrifice and boldest move wins the wickedest game. Sphinx sank into the ground, yet his words didn’t disappear; they echoed in the chamber of my pounding head.
That dark promise, like the nightmare I had, dragged my heart into the deep, damp ground with him.
Sybil chirped, We won! We won!
She flew ahead of us toward the cornfields. Henry chased after her as if she were a butterfly.
I averted my gaze from my mates. I’d rather my heart to be the only one broken, but I seemed to be the one who was going to break a lot of hearts.
“Go on,” I said, and followed Sybil’s trail.
We prowled through the path. My mates’ hurt devastated me. Blaze’s, and even Rai’s silent accusation of “Aren’t we enough for you?” in their wounded eyes haunted me. They thought I had something going on with Elvey behind their backs.
I understood their perception of my betrayal, and right now I could barely face them. My own shame wouldn’t leave me alone.
I had no intention of adding one more man to the mix and making the situation even more complicated. I’d just gotten used to the pattern and rhythm with my three alpha dragon princes. They were, for sure, more than enough for me. They were my anchor and my world, and they were always there for me.
But how could I tell them that? Would they even believe me when I did?
I loved them with all of my heart. But still, another man outside their circle tugged at my selfish heart. If I could choose not to have feelings for Elvey, I would.
I wanted to turn to my mates and tell them how sorry I was, but it wouldn’t mend their hurt feelings while my heart also had one more spot for another man.
I didn’t want to lie to any of my mates.
I walked ahead of them in heavy silence.
In the middle of the path between rows of corn, I gave them a backward glance, and all three of them stared back at me. Just then, a shadow of wings flitted by overhead.
“Protect our mate!” With a shout, Blaze lunged at me to shield me.
Rai raised his longbow, an arrow with an iron shaft was nocked and flying through the air before I could even draw a breath. There were over two dozen arrows inside his hip quiver. Rai was said to be one of the best archers in the Oslan Dominion.
Elvey had laid out the conditions he knew about Arianrhod’s quest: no more than seven companions, no magic except the magic I could draw from the land, no shifting, and no technological weapons.
Iokul’s eyes darted, seeking threats around the cornfields and leaving the sky to Rai.
Rai’s arrow didn’t find the target.
“It’s not a dragon,” Rai said. “It’s something else. It intentionally keeps out of our sight.”
“Maybe it’s another test?” Blaze asked.
I stepped back from Blaze’s shielding, my twin daggers in my hands. I wasn’t going to be in his shadow or anyone else’s. “I can fight. I’m also a dragon.”
Who would have thought there would be a day the retired three Furies—the very definition of nightmare—would be regarded as a damsel?
“Let’s get the hell out of the cornfields,” Iokul said.
We burst along the rest of the path with Rai and Blaze leading and Iokul and Chiron bringing up the rear.
As we approached the last rows of the cornfields, I swore to the goddess that if we returned to the hill again, I would kill Sphinx, no matter what shape he fancied next time.
Rai charged out and bellowed, “What the fuck is this?”
Henry was right at his heel, spinning, his heads raising skywards.
Sybil woke up with a jerk of her head, then started preening her feathers.
I stared ahead warily. I really needed to murder the Sphinx for toying with us.
The moment I stepped outside the cornfields, cold, soft snowflakes cascaded on my skin.
It wasn’t the silver trees on the evergreen plain we’d expected. It was an endless land of snow and the howling wind.
The only cheerful sight was that the ring of silver mountains wasn’t too far away.
CHAPTER 11
We treaded through the thick snow for a few miles before deciding to camp for the night.
The passing shadow that had twice spied on us unnerved us. There was no need to exhaust ourselves. We needed to be in our best fighting shape when the foes came upon us.
Sybil’s and Henry’s excitement at seeing the first snow had died down, and they started to complain about the cold and wetness. The wind that hadn’t stopped howling made them less than happy.
We shivered from the cold. We’d fare better if we were in our dragon forms.
The dragon shifters found a higher patch on the plain, cleared away the snow, and set up tents. My mates and I shared the big tent. Chiron shared one with Henry and Sybil. But Sybil would most likely come to our tent later. I’d told her several times it would be polite for her to be absent while I had intimacy with my mates, but she never heeded my request for privacy.
One time, she had watched in fascination as Rai fucked me.
For a moment, my mind drifted to Elvey again.
He hadn’t shown up. Maybe he’d never intended to come with us, and I wasn’t surprised. On the other hand, I was both relieved and disappointed.
I was relieved, because like right now while two of my mates and I tangled inside the tent, I wouldn’t want Elvey to hear my moans. Strangely, I didn’t mind Iokul and Chiron hearing that.
Rai suckled at my nipple ravenously, his hand fondling my other breast, his fingers tweaking my nipple.
Every inch of my skin burst with pleasure.
Their hurt still haunted me. I wanted to make it up to them. I wanted to give them all of me—my passion, my body, heart, and soul.
“I want you every day, sweetheart.” Rai broke away from my breast, his face brushing my breast playfully, before his lips found my taut nipple again.
Blaze traced his sinful lips up my inner thighs, slowly and torturously. When his mouth reached the aching flesh between them and licked it, a small scream left my throat.
The sensation was undoing me, and here I was—thinking I was making it up to them.
Blaze’s thumb trailed a small circle on the peak of my sensitive bud, sending a shiver all over me. I had to grab a fistful of Rai’s hair to anchor myself. Rai’s dark brown hair had been cropped when I’d first met him. It’d grown to half-length since then.
“Babe, I need to fuck you now,” Blaze murmured. “I can’t hold back any longer.”
He knelt before me, spread my legs wide, and aimed his large cock at my slick entrance.
I was waiting for him to thrust in, deep and hard, but he just stared at my bare pussy, as if he still couldn’t believe he had a pussy in front of him, free for him to screw.
I wiggled my hips and whimpered with impatience. I needed his hard cock inside me, filling me and stretching me, pounding and slamming into me.
An amused chuckle filled with lust left Blaze’s lips. With one powerful thrust, he drove into me, seating deep inside me.
I sucked in a breath, my fist tightening in Rai’s hair. Poor Rai, while his brother was fucking me, I used him as my sexual punch bag.
Blaze drove his hips forward, again and again, his cock coated in my slick heat.
“Hottest pussy ever,” he groaned, and his need for me overwhelmed me.
I threw my h
ead back as waves of pleasure crashed over me. Heat rippled inside me and my legs quivered as orgasm broke. I arched my back, begging Blaze with my body to fuck me harder and faster.
Blaze and I hadn’t been on the best terms lately, and now as we united in such passionate coupling, all I wanted was to mend every friction between us.
He drew his hips back and thrust forward, slamming up to the hilt with a dragon’s savage strength and brutal speed.
I moaned breathlessly.
His lust-filled gaze flicked between my face and my pussy as he quickened his thrusts.
I rocked my hips, feeling myself reach the edge again, and needed more.
Blaze let out a low growl, pounding between my thighs so hard I screamed his name again.
The carnal pleasure sent me to another plane of existence and I needed to find something solid to hold on to. Only then did I realize that Rai had broken free of my grip while I’d moaned Blaze’s name.
Rai’s mouth had left my breast. He shifted position. His beautiful, masculine torso displayed before me. His skin was so smooth and tan, and his hard muscles flexing at his every movement was every woman’s wet dream. My trembling fingers traced a tattoo of a storm-gray dragon spitting lightning on his body with appreciation. I could admire his beauty forever.
I wanted to lick the lightning dragon as well.
Then his large and gorgeous cock was above my face. It looked as hard as granite, its thick head pulsing.
“You like my cock, don’t you, sweetheart?” Rai asked roughly.
“Yes.” I breathed out.
I wanted it now, but I had another cock thrusting wildly into my pussy.
Rai lowed himself and pressed his silky, hard shaft on my cheek, its heat scorching me. Thunder and lightning and storm were his essence—so different than Blaze’s flame.
I had them all.
“Oh Rai,” I moaned. “Please.”
His cock traced from my cheek to my jawline, marking me as his. The intense, sensual hunger in his sapphire eyes only made me desire him more.
A drop of clear moisture appeared on the slit of his cock, and he pushed the head of his cock against the corner of my mouth before he traced it along my bottom lip.
His intoxicating male scent wrapped around me. It made me feel home.
My tongue darted out, licking his crown and sweeping over the thick ring underneath it. Rai groaned in his throat. “Yes, sweetheart, suck my cock. Suck it.”
Fuck! He tasted damn good.
Blaze bent down to suckle my tit and slammed deeper into my pussy, unraveling me with never-ending pleasure. My eyes rolled to the back of my head, and I moaned like a feline in heat.
“Come for me, babe,” he commanded as he thrust into me with abandon.
Crashing waves tossed me high to the apex. While I thought I would never come down, it dragged me under. I trembled as my inner muscles convulsed around Blaze’s cock, milking him for every drop he had inside him.
He shuddered and roared. My fire-dragon mate climaxed with such force that a third orgasm hit me before my second faded off.
Outside the tent, the snow twirled in wild dances.
Blaze remained hard in me and wouldn’t leave me.
“It’s my turn to fuck Daisy,” Rai said. “It’s been forever since I had her pussy.”
Blaze gave his brother a withering look and pulled out of me, but he took time to kiss me gently before finally giving up the space to his bother.
My heated gaze flicked to Rai. Lust darkened his sapphire eyes under the metal mask etched with the symbol of a lightning dragon.
My lips parted in wanton desire.
Blaze had given me multiple, mind-numbing orgasms. A regular woman would have been content and snuggled in next to her lover as their breaths returned to normal, but I craved more because they would always give me more. I wanted Rai. I wanted every one of my mates. I kept wanting each and every one of them.
Would the mating fever ever fade in time?
Rai grabbed my hips and flipped me over roughly, until I was on all fours. He splayed a hand over my back and pushed me down, my breasts crushing against the makeshift bed my mates had laid out earlier. I turned my head and rested it on the pillow, my breaths coming out in shallow gasps as he stroked over my ass, his fingers kneading and squeezing. His hands stilled, and he drew in a shaky breath. I knew he was feasting on my pussy with his eyes. His fingers trailed down to the slickness between my folds, and he opened me with his thumb and forefinger.
I moaned, and he rubbed the thick head of his cock over my cleft.
“I’m going to fuck you really hard,” he growled.
“Yes,” I cried out on a sigh. “I want you to fuck me hard.”
“You won’t beg for mercy?”
“Will you grant it?”
“No,” he said, and with one smooth, hard thrust, he drove into me.
I sucked in a breath as his naked skin connected with mine.
Blaze’s steel rod was huge and straight. When he fucked me with blunt strength, his dragon fire often surfaced to caress me. Rai’s shaft was the longest among his brothers and slightly arched. Rai was usually the gentler among the three, but not tonight.
Tonight, he promised something else and he was delivering.
Rai pumped into me, brutally hard, intense pleasure striking my every fiber like lightning. He pulled back before my next breath and shoved his hips back between my thighs, his cock penetrating me over and over.
It was a hard fuck, but I could take it. He knew I preferred it tonight.
I was a dragon, too.
His long thrusts slammed into me, shoving my shoulders to the bedrolls, the sound of flesh slapping flesh adding a coarse chorus to the howling wind outside.
In such rigid, harsh weather, Iokul, Chiron, and Henry should get into the tent instead of standing guard and suffering the cold. No friends or foes would be interested in attacking us at such stormy night.
I’d tell them to take it easy after Rai and I finished fucking.
Rai adapted to short, rapid thrusts, letting the head of his shaft rub at the edge of my wet entrance. The teasing was driving me half-mad. I slammed my ass back toward him, wanting to take him deeper into me, but his hands gripped my hips and pinned me there.
His dominant alpha trait, which he hadn’t shown often in consideration for me, had come to the forefront. Tonight, he wanted to fuck me however he wanted, and he showed me just that.
He was in total control of me, and I gave him whatever he wanted.
I had hurt him and my other mates with the revelation of the fourth mate. They didn’t like the prospect that I might add another mate into my harem.
Rai plunged into me vehemently, again and again, not to punish, but to reclaim me.
Sphinx’s riddle and my answer had made my mates insecure, but they didn’t have to feel that way, not if they knew how my heart belonged to them.
His next assault of powerful thrusts had me burying my face into the pillow, muffling my scream of pleasure. My breasts bounced up and down from the force of his relentless pounding.
Rai wrapped his muscled arm around my breasts and yanked me up. He didn’t want me to stifle my screams. He wanted me to moan and scream his name, and I obliged him.
We now both knelt, my back against his hard, warm chest, my legs planting wide on the blanket while he drove hard and fast into me from behind.
He was showing me what it was like to be fucked by a thunder and lightning dragon and demanded I surrender to him.
My fingernails raked across his muscle-rippled legs, drawing blood.
He groaned roughly, liking it. His large hand squeezed my breast, making the fire between my thighs burn hotter.
He bent forward, his hot lips tracing from my earlobe down to the column of my sensitive neck, licking away my glistening sweat. By taking a moment to show me his tender feelings, he intended for me to know that he wasn’t merely fucking me.
No matter how har
d and wildly he fucked me, he couldn’t change his caring nature.
And I forever felt cherished.
He resumed his savage strength and bruising speed, driving into me, the slapping of flesh against flesh filling my ears.
“Yes, Rai! Fuck me! Harder,” I cried, my head rolling back against his massive shoulder.
Warmth, security, need, and pleasure blended, threading into me and swaying me.
That was all I ever wanted.
Thunder rumbled from the mountains, and Rai roared through the night as my climax shattered me.
“Rai,” I whispered when he stopped roaring.
“Sweetheart,” he answered, holding me tightly as we both shuddered in carnal joy.
Then Blaze joined us, pressing against me from the front, his huge erection heating my skin. He slanted his mouth over mine, and I rested my hands on his hard, muscled shoulders.
A gorgeous head poked in between the tent flaps. Iokul gazed at me, his icy-silver eyes glowing with white-hot heat above his white metal mask.
“Iokul.” I beckoned him.
Then a sense of urgency pierced my lust-addled mind.
The realm’s magic yanked at me. Danger! Violence! Black death!
And the land pulsed.
CHAPTER 12
My mind clicked into the link to the land, and my consciousness expanded. The realm and I should be one since I was the last of the bloodline of the Danaenyth royal house. I was supposed to be the Keeper. With that thought, I pulled the land’s magic to me, and it allowed me to use a trickle. I sent it out to explore and spy.
On the brink of my consciousness, I detected over forty invaders on the ground and three in the sky.
“Sweetheart, honey, babe,” my mates all called me at once, pulling me into their arms. “What’s wrong? Your eyes turned glassy.”
“Enemies,” I hissed. “Over forty demons and beasts are coming.”
Iokul and Chiron had kept watch, but they couldn’t see too far without being in their dragon forms. I learned of the coming of an army of assassins because of the warning of the land.