by Meg Xuemei X
“Thank you for letting me take on all these responsibilities,” I said.
Before I could make more snide comments, storm wind rose from the ground and tore into us, separating me from my mates.
“No!” they roared, fighting against the wind to reach me, but I was thrown into the circle with the goddess, my hand gripping the scroll.
The ice-wind rose, erecting walls that kept my mates out. Inside the walls, laser beams spun and speared the edge of the circle.
“Don’t get close,” I shouted to my mates. “I’ll be fine. She won’t harm her bloodline!”
The icy wind turned to icy fire, and the fire engulfed me.
Yet I lived.
Visions of the possible futures unfolded in front of my eyes one by one.
I watched as I killed the Olympian gods, all of them, including my father. After that, I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I became death incarnate. Death was my core essence, and I embraced my heritage, both from the God of Death and the Goddess of Death.
There was no room for life. Only the mass of darkness expanded in me infinitely.
I needed to destroy.
I had to devour all.
The hunger in me could never be sated. All was my prey.
The world wasn’t just broken and burning like the old world dominated by the alien gods. It was worse.
I stared down at the blackened corpses of the innumerable dead, and every remaining living thing writhed under my feet. Under my rule, the Earth was pure terror. Living nightmares roamed on every corner.
So, I killed the gods, replaced them, and became a much worse horror. Wherever I went, my black fire sucked the life out of the living and burned their souls, innocent and wicked alike.
Death became my addiction and obsession.
When I was done with Earth, I travelled to other universes and blanketed them all with death. I was powerful beyond measure, and none could stop me.
My mates were but ashes, their bones made into my necklace.
I cried at what I saw, yet I couldn’t change what I was.
“No!” I screamed at the goddess. “I reject the vision. I reject that future. I didn’t care about anyone while I was in the cage, but I’ve changed. I vowed to defend those who can’t defend themselves, and my vow won’t return to me empty. I wasn’t born a mortal or an immortal. I was born a goddess, but my mates have tethered me to them. They gave me humanity, and their hot blood flows in my veins. They’re my forever anchor to the world. So, no, I’ll never be what you showed me! If I have to be a monster to kill the gods, I’ll be my mates’ monster, and even their monster won’t destroy their world. And the world is also mine.”
There’s an alternative outcome that will save everyone but you. Will you accept it, then, my true daughter?
Had she just disowned Jezebel?
I raised my head, realizing I’d doubled over from the onslaught of the ice and wind, and straightened up. The force of the storm threatened to break me, but I locked my unfazed gaze on Gaea, the scroll that held the secret of killing the gods in my grip.
“What is the alternative?” I asked hoarsely.
And then I was given the second vision. In it, I saw my own death. I saw myself torn to pieces. I could kill the gods and save the world only when I died with them. There was no other way. And that was the ultimate truth in that damned ancient scroll.
Cold tears flowed down my face.
I wasn’t afraid of eternal death. Well, maybe a little. I was mostly heartbroken for my mates. They’d just found me, but in the end, and soon, they’d have to lose me.
But maybe I shouldn’t be so devastated. All things die in the end.
Even the eternal universe and the gods, immortals, and mortals with them would cease to exist one day.
“So be it,” I said. “Now let me take the scroll and leave with my mates.”
Be warned, daughter, said the goddess. As the world fears you, you should fear yourself.
You planned all this, didn’t you? I thought, the knowledge burning in me.
And another piece of truth slammed into me. This wasn’t the Gaea I’d met in Apollo’s lair. That goddess was in the present. This one existed eons ago before she’d conceived my mother. She’d watched as events unfolded in my time, and she had waited.
Only in this temple could the goddess from the past exist and last for so long.
The icy wind passed by me and was gone, along with the goddess. As she vanished, she let out an inaudible sigh of sorrow, leaving me to stand alone in the center of the Apotropaic mark with the scroll in my hand and tears glinting on my face.
My mates rushed to me, pulling me out of the circle and into their arms.
“Are you hurt?” Alaric asked urgently, cold rage rolling off him toward the goddess.
Lorcan cursed my grandmother, wiping the tears off my face.
Reys took the scroll from my hand carefully, his arm sliding around my waist in support, and Pyrder kissed the crown of my head.
When my mates were convinced that I wasn’t injured, they let out a breath of relief.
“We need to look into the scroll now,” Lorcan said. “Before everything can go awry.”
I already knew the inscriptions etched on the silky paper, except it didn’t reveal the part that my life was the required payment for killing the gods.
All that was left on it for my mates to see was the technique of how to forge a blade that could kill a major god.
As they looked to the scroll, the temple started rumbling. Without the goddess from the past holding this structure together, her Court of Ice and Wind was going to collapse. It no longer needed to exist as it had served its purpose.
It had locked me into its mistress’s ultimate design.
Several ice columns broke from the middle, part of the ceiling toppling down.
“Bury us here,” I hissed, my voice full of bitterness, “and who’s going to kill the alien gods for you?”
The wind of ice rose again from everywhere, howling around us.
“We must get back to the entrance!” Reys shouted over the wind. “Hold on to each other.”
He had my hand in his tight grip. Alaric held my other one. My mates held onto each other as a unit, and the fae princes conjured up their teleportation magic.
Nothing happened. We were still here.
“Teleporting doesn’t work between the realms,” Pyrder shouted.
Large ice chunks plummeted from the top of the pillars that supported the temple. Lorcan shoved me away and threw himself on top of me to shield me.
Instinctively, I threw up my own wind and it halted the ice rocks in the air.
At least my magic still worked here, but I couldn’t pull off the teleport, either.
Time raged outside. A trace of time leaked through the crack to reach for us. If we were stuck between time—
“We’ll get out of here,” Alaric said, his voice hard. “We won’t fail our mate.”
He pulled out the thumb ring that he stole from Zeus for me and tossed it into the air.
For a second, only the unnatural wind and time bellowed.
Then the shimmer of a portal formed in front of us. The icy wind slashed at it. The shimmer flickered.
“Let’s go!” Lorcan ordered. “With our mate in the middle.”
The wind whipped at us, pushing us back, halting our every step. But my immortal mates countered it with their strength. With Reys and Pyrder on either side of me, grabbing me so tightly, we pushed through the violent current toward the gate to our world.
Alaric planted himself half inside the shimmer and half outside to hold it, his face distorting at the effort, but he didn’t falter. The demigod connected his hand to Reys and hauled us through.
The Court of Ice and Wind collapsed just as Lorcan stepped through the shimmer and into the void with us. Time dove into the temple with the grating sound of a crashing iceberg.
It kept chasing as we spun in the dark tunnel, wanting
more than anything to drag us back into its reign.
There was no starlight or color to accompany us, only endless wind. Finally, some force spat us out the other end of the tunnel. We grabbed each other’s hands with all our strength and will. We dared not let go. We’d never let each other go, no matter where the end was.
Then, suddenly, the icy wind receded.
Alaric hissed a command and the shimmer vanished, faster than time, shutting it out from the ancient past and another realm.
The five of us stood atop the cliff, a crashing sea lapping at the rocks beneath us.
We had returned to Alaric’s secluded cabins in Australia.
18
Amber and the warriors had also returned, apparently guessing that if we came back, we’d come to Alaric’s hideaway.
We gathered in our main cabin.
I’d been quiet since we escaped the destruction of the Court of Ice and Wind.
Alaric dove into decoding the inscriptions on the scroll, and my other mates joined him, offering whatever assistance they could. They were all acquainted with ancient linguistics, and Alaric was also fluent in the Olympian tongue.
It took them one and a half days to boil down the details.
The Blade of Five Elements must be forged in the hottest fire on Earth.
Only Hephaestus, the God of Blacksmiths and Fire, could build the blade.
The runes of ancient Earth and Olympus must be engraved on the blade with a mixture of our combined blood.
“Hephaestus will jump up and down with cheers at the chance to make the only weapon that can kill the gods, including him,” I said in a sarcastic tone, unable to conceal my resentment.
Their death also meant mine, but my mates could never know that.
The whole thing sucked.
I wanted to delay this task a little longer. I was selfish. I wanted to have a bit more time with my mates.
I’d been out of the cage for only a few months. I’d just found home with my mates. And soon, I would have to head to my eternal death.
But then, if I stalled, there’d be graver consequences. Any day the gods could find us. Apollo and Ares knew exactly how to hit me the hardest. By taking out my mates first.
“He might,” Alaric said. “Hephaestus is one of the most mistreated gods in the history of Olympus.”
Lorcan nodded. “Everyone knows that his parents, the King and Queen of Gods, tossed him out of Mount Olympus and crippled him because he was ugly.”
“Then Zeus forced the Goddess of Love and Beauty to marry Hephaestus as a punishment,” Pyrder said. He was in a competitive mood. He wanted to take part in teaching me the history of the Olympian gods as well. “Aphrodite wasn’t pleased, so she had an affair with Ares and bore him three bastard children.”
Alaric gave my fae mate a look. He was Hephaestus’s half-brother, and many had called him Zeus’s bastard son. “Abandoned, abused, and cuckolded. That’s Hephaestus’s life story,” said the demigod, staring at the scroll spread across the long table. “He still hates them for his eternal humiliation. He’ll take our order. All we have to do is find him.”
After the meeting, Alaric wasted no time in finding the God of Blacksmiths and Fire. He often took Celeb with him. My mates took it in turn to accompany him while two of them would always stay with me.
Days upon days, they hunted for Hephaestus, until they found his secret residence in a ramshackle castle. They waited, but Hephaestus didn’t return.
Alaric then assigned his team to wait for the blacksmith and came home to me. I was grateful to spend more time with my mates.
Then one night, Gaea showed up in my dreams.
I eyed her warily. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see her, especially after I’d met the cold-blooded her from the past in the Court of Ice and Wind.
I felt like a lamb that would be led to slaughter soon.
“My true daughter,” she greeted.
“What is it you want this time?” I asked. “I’m busy with my mates, you know.”
“They’re asleep,” she said.
In my dream, I couldn’t see my mates, but I knew they all sprawled around me in bed.
“I want to give you more time,” she said, sorrow tainting her musical, earthy voice. “But time isn’t on our side. You know where the blacksmith is. You can find him, as you can find anyone on Earth.”
“Whatever,” I said, suddenly finding myself standing with the Goddess of Earth atop the cliff, overlooking the crashing black sea. I slouched on a large rock nearby. I was tired. She made me tired. “Why don’t you just make it simple and tell me where he is instead of making me work so hard?”
“When you expand your mind and search for the alien forms, the powerful ones,” she said, unmoved by my sarcastic, hostile tone, “you’ll find all the gods. You’ll know which one is the God of Blacksmiths and Fire.”
“And then I’ll use the weapon he forged to kill the gods and myself, right?”
“Death isn’t the end, Cass.”
“It’s easy for you to say,” I said, tasting the bile in the back of my throat. “Death will separate my mates from me. And they’re all I have.”
Tears flowed down my face as I thought of my final fate.
“You carefully bred me just for this,” I said. I wanted to smash her, but I knew it was useless. “You forged me as a weapon. After I’m used, I soon will be discarded, erased, and forever forgotten.”
“I care for you, my flesh and blood,” she said in grief. “If I could go in your place, I would. I’ve been weakened for too long. I’m still not complete.”
She waived in the icy wind, and then she was gone.
I fluttered open my eyes, lying still for a long moment. Then I centered my mind, letting it expand and search.
A strong pulse made of alien fire and metal glowed amid billions of other life forms. The God of Blacksmiths and Fire stood out in the matrix of the Earth’s web.
He was waiting, but he wouldn’t wait forever.
My throat was parched.
Instead of joy, it felt like doom, a destined doom, and I couldn’t lift it off me.
My inner sight turned away from the smith god. My gaze focused on my mates, tracing each one of them in bed with me, around me.
They watched me, wondering why I’d put a shield around my mind ever since we’d returned from the collapsed Court of Ice and Wind.
“I’ve found Hephaestus,” I breathed out, forcing a smile. “I know where he is.”
19
“Good morning, sunshine,” Lorcan grunted in a sexy, sleepy voice.
The High Lord of Night usually slept alone in his own chamber when I wasn’t with him, but lately, he had joined us more and more often in our vast common bed.
He no longer needed to slumber at high noon, as other vampires had to, since with my blood coursing in his veins, the sun couldn’t burn him.
He could now watch the sunrise with me, and he deemed it one of the most precious gifts I’d given him.
I’d shrugged, though I couldn’t hide my smug grin. “That’s what a mate is for.”
He also no longer considered it beneath him to fight for a spot sleeping next to me. So there he was, snuggling his dark head against the hollow between my neck and shoulder.
Sunlight bled into the room, offering a sense of bright morning serenity. But there was no safe place so long as the Olympian gods were hunting us. The concealment spells Alaric cast on this location wouldn’t go undetected forever, and the ward wouldn’t stop the gods when they got here.
I turned to smile at Lorcan, then at Reys on my other side, his muscled arm draping over my hip.
I hoped I could have them forever.
In the morning, my males looked all refreshed, sexy, and less edgy. I wanted to start the day with my scent coating them, declaring to the whole world they were mine.
Mine, no matter for how long.
I threw the blanket off, until all of my mates’ naked forms were exposed for me
to relish. The only one who wasn’t in bed was Alaric. The demigod lounged on a big sofa he had dragged to the corner from the other room.
Pyrder groaned on the other side of his twin.
“It’s chilly, Cass baby,” he said. “In case you don’t know, Australia is near winter now.”
“You have furs,” I said.
“You wouldn’t let me get in bed the last time I was in my panther form,” he complained.
“Because you were wet.”
“Was I? Or you just enjoyed bullying me?”
“I don’t want to start the day fighting, baby,” I purred. “I want to—” My eyes roved over the hard muscles flexing and rippling over my mates’ cut chests and powerful legs.
Every one of them was incredibly beautiful to me, yet formidable to others.
My gaze dipped to their huge erections, and my face flamed in excitement. Lust swirled alive in me, raging in my blood.
Lorcan’s nostrils flared, hunger for me darkening his eyes to storm gray. He’d scented my arousal, as did my other mates.
Pyrder chuckled in approval.
On the sofa bed, Alaric let out a curse. He must be cursing himself for not getting a spot beside me last night.
My lips parted, my eyes flashed darkly, and my heart pounded.
I couldn’t tear my gaze away from my mates’ cocks. They were all mighty, gorgeous, and steel-hard, all of which promised great pleasure.
I wanted to taste them all, licking them, sweeping my tongue over their hard length, and grazing my teeth over the thick rings of their crowns.
I bit my lip, feeling torn. It was never easy to decide which one of my mates to go to first.
“Dulcis,” Lorcan said, leaning to me, his voice laced with desire darker than night, despite dawn’s light fluttering on his lush lashes.
Before I reached for him, I was lifted off the mattress. Then I was straddling the fae heir, my ass sitting on his thighs.
Lorcan growled, but he soon let it go. My mates, all alphas and fearsome and difficult, fought each other sometimes, but they always worked it out.
And the High Lord remembered that my other mates had all let him be the first to claim me.