My breath hitched as he lowered his mouth to mine, but he barely grazed his lips across my mouth, darting his tongue out in a teasing stroke. I parted my lips, meeting the tip of his tongue with mine. He remained delightfully human, his tongue the soft, wet velvet I remembered, not the rougher, twin-tipped version he was so adept at using to drive me wild with need.
But it didn’t take a dragon tongue for Rohan to make me want him, nor to make me want to believe everything he promised. His big, warm, solid body enveloped me as he tilted his head and kissed me fully. He kept one hand at the side of my head, cradling me while the other roamed south, cupping my breast and teasing my nipple before dropping down to seize my ass and pull me tight against his arousal.
He groaned into my mouth, then pulled away with a harsh exhalation. “In the meantime, this is our chance for a slow burn, baby. When the time is right, you and I are going to be on fire.”
“What if it isn’t just us?” I asked.
He grinned, then leaned in and laid a breathtaking kiss on me again. “It was never going to be just us. If I have my way, it’ll be everyone.”
“I wish I could be as optimistic as you are,” I said, more somber now. I pulled away and glanced over to the bus where Keagan waited. “Take care of him. I’ll see you guys when we stop, wherever that is.”
As he turned to go, I opened the door and climbed into the passenger’s seat of the truck.
“Ready?” Bodhi asked, turning over the ignition. The truck roared to life, and my heartbeat sped up. As if anticipating my command, the four hounds jogged several yards ahead toward the exit from the garage, pausing beside the tour bus.
Maddie blew us a kiss, and the others smiled and waved. Rohan hung back behind the truck, and I realized he was allowing us to drive past Keagan without causing me any distress. Bodhi slowed when I lowered the window and reached out my hand to my other mate. Keagan walked alongside the truck for a few strides.
“See you soon, princess,” he said, lifting my hand to his mouth and pressing a soft kiss to my knuckles.
As we passed by Llyr and Ozzie, I darted a look back at the hounds, then diverted my attention to my seatbelt, struggling to bury the confusion of feelings that tangled with each other whenever I looked at the two of them. Both love and hate warred inside me, and the volatile crackle of their mingled auras didn’t help. There was as much conflict going on between them as there was with me.
I was going to miss Rohan and Keagan like hell, though it would be a matter of hours before we saw each other again. But I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief once Ozzie and Llyr were out of sight.
9
Deva
We reached the main road and Bodhi looked at me. “Where to?”
The hounds paced excitedly a few feet ahead of us. I whistled and all four of their heads jerked up, ears swiveling in my direction. I focused on Boots and the smaller hound took a few prancing steps toward the truck, nose lifted in the air. In my mind’s eye, I pictured Maddie and hummed a few bars of the song she’d sung the night before. I tamped down the surge of longing that tune inspired and made a slight gesture with my hand. That was all Boots needed. He let out a yelp, taking off down the street to the right, the other three on his heels.
“And they’re off,” Bodhi said with a laugh as he put the truck into gear and signaled. The three rearmost hounds each hung back a little farther, as if understanding we needed to keep at least one of them in sight. The more I worked with them, the clearer it became that I didn’t need to do more to make them react than wish it.
As a brief experiment, I did just that, wishing for them to return when we reached a traffic light and had to stop. All four appeared again in front of us, and the very second the light turned green, they were off again with Boots leading the way and the others trailing after one by one.
“This is going to be easier than I thought,” Bodhi said. “Did you know they would do that?”
“Now I do. I just wish I knew where they were leading us.”
Just as my subtle desire dictated, the hounds remained close, one of them always within sight as we turned onto a bigger street and the enormous Bay Bridge stretched out ahead of us. I pulled out my phone and dialed Ozzie, stomach somersaulting when he answered.
“Talk to me, szívem.”
“Looks like we’re heading east through Oakland,” I reported.
“Good. Keep us updated. We’ll be pulling out soon.”
“Okay. Um . . .” The sound of his voice reminded me of the simple comfort he had always offered. I craved it more now with just that deep rumble in my ear than I had looking at him. Whatever the blood meld with Llyr had done, it apparently hadn’t affected his voice, only what I felt when I looked at him.
“It’s going to be all right, Deva,” he said softly, and the cacophony of noises in the background on his end faded as if he’d moved someplace private. “We’ll figure this all out. Just stay safe. If you see any sign of hounds that aren’t yours, call us. Llyr and I can both come to you instantly.”
“I don’t think they can hurt me. I’m immortal, remember?”
He chuckled. “I know, but you’re still really fucking young. I don’t think all the ancient satyr blood in the world is a good substitute for hands-on experience. Just be careful, please.”
The worry and tenderness in his voice made me inhale sharply. I missed his caring, attentive tone. When had that become so rare?
I took a deep breath and nodded. Then, realizing he couldn’t see me, I said, “I will, I promise. I’ll call you again soon.”
When I hung up, Bodhi glanced at me. “Is that really true? You’re immortal?”
I gave him a halfhearted shrug. “Yeah, as far as I know. I haven’t ever tested it, but my parents all insist it’s the truth. You heard Mama Belah last night. Meri wouldn’t have been so dead-set on creating me and holding onto me if that wasn’t the case.”
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “This immortality thing aside, what do you mean, creating you? I get the mixed family concept, but I thought you had a mom and a dad like the rest of us.”
My skin prickled at the realization that I’d never told him about my origins. “Keagan didn’t fill you in, I take it.”
“Honestly, we spent most of the day avoiding the topic of you, except when we were . . . you know.” He shrugged, skin reddening above the dark scruff of stubble on his cheeks.
I gave him a quizzical smile. “You only talked about me when you were having sex?”
“We shared a couple fantasies, but nothing like last night . . .” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Back to the topic at hand,” he said, fixing his gaze on the road ahead of us. “You were about to tell me what the hell you meant about being ‘created.’ Were you some kind of test tube baby? Does your kind even do IVF?”
I wasn’t sure what those terms meant, so I shook my head. “First, you can call us the higher races. That’s how we think of ourselves, anyway. And to keep a long story short, I was the result of thousands of years of experimentation by our oldest enemy. I only know the details secondhand, though. My parents are the ones who know the full story.”
“Well, I’m kind of a captive audience here. I’d love to hear whatever you want to share. Maybe start by telling me about your mom and dad.”
I bit my lip. “That’s a complicated place to start.”
“Give me something. I told you about my grandfather last night. Do you have grandparents? If you want to start with broad strokes, tell me about them.”
“My grandparents?” I blinked at him, and he frowned.
“Don’t tell me—they’re complicated too.”
“It depends on which ones we’re talking about. My human grandparents died more than three thousand years ago. They lived in Egypt, when Mama Belah was Pharaoh there.”
The truck slowed for a moment and Bodhi paled.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Do I even want to ask about your othe
r grandparents? I assume we’re talking about step-grandparents, right? Because I’m starting to think it might be better for you to draw me a picture, perhaps when I’m not driving.”
“My other grandparents are all . . . ah . . . gods.”
I left it at that; Bodhi seemed to be having a hard enough time with the concept of my parents’ age. Besides, if those kinds of familial connections were all that mattered, it followed that the very entity we were on the run from was my own grandfather and grandmother, several times over.
Fate was the one who had orchestrated the creation of all four of the higher races, inserting itself as the parent by assuming various aspects of different genders, then coupling with four different gods and goddesses. It was simply a fact, but thinking about it within the context of this conversation made me realize I should be careful how I shared the details with Bodhi.
Bodhi remained silent long enough for me to worry I’d spooked him. “I’m mostly human,” I offered. “At least, I want to be. I’ve spent most of my life in the homes of the higher races, only interacting with them. I want to understand what being human means.”
“But you’re, like, thousands of years old, aren’t you? How can you not already have the whole ‘being human’ thing down?”
“My parents are thousands of years old. I never said I was. And my surrogate mom is not much older than you, technically.”
He chuckled, the sound verging on hysteria. “Technically? I think I’m going to just shut up and let you explain. Start wherever it makes sense to you. I hoped this trip would mean getting to know you better, but I really had no fucking idea.”
I sighed and sat back, trying to decide which of my beginnings would make the most sense or freak him out the least. But he’d seemed interested in my parentage too, so that meant beginning with my mother, which was never an easy place to start.
When I painted a picture of my mother’s life, such as it was, and her relationship to my father, Bodhi looked stricken.
He said, “She was his prisoner, and he still . . .”
“Dad was a prisoner as much as my mother was. Meri—our enemy—was a nymph, a powerful one whose skill with blood magic had increased over the centuries. Dad was basically a puppet made to believe he was in charge for most of the time he was under her control, and through him, she was able to control others.
“But he and my mother did love each other, in a fashion. Mama was Belah’s goddaughter from before Meri wrecked things, and she’d always looked up to my dad. She and her twin brother were his best Elite soldiers, at one time. That connection to Belah meant everything to my dad. If the two of them hadn’t loved each other even a little, I wouldn’t have been possible.”
“How do you mean?” he asked.
I shrugged. “For the higher races, if there is no love present in the union, we can’t conceive children. It took Meri a long time to figure that out.”
“But she was one of you, wasn’t she? How could she not know how crucial love is?” He smacked his hands on the steering wheel.
I gave him a surprised look. He was suddenly very interested in the topic. “I don’t know, but I think she simply didn’t understand the concept. Everything she did was about gaining more power. Love never factored in for her. When she figured it out, it was just another piece of the experiment falling into place.”
“Okay, so I got that. Meri was a sociopathic mad scientist who had your dad mind-controlled and your mother imprisoned, then forced them to have sex with each other to conceive you. Then what happened?”
I blinked at him, open-mouthed for a second. He’d pretty much managed to sum up the situation in only a few words. “When their breeding worked and I was conceived, Meri drifted me out of my mother’s womb and into a secret tank inside a lab she’d constructed.”
Bodhi’s laugh sounded demented. “Mad scientist, yep.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, we’ve established that she was insane. To keep me alive and sustained, she attached my tank to another where she’d been keeping five satyr soldiers she’d captured and began to transfer their blood to me. Satyr blood is infused with incredible power from the Source of all Earth and Water magic, and she needed that magic to ensure my immortality. I still remember the day the link began. It was the first time since leaving my mother’s womb that I was no longer alone.”
“You were self-aware at how young?” He’d calmed down a bit and sounded more curious than freaked out, which made conversation a little easier.
“I was self-aware from the start,” I said. “That’s . . . another story, maybe.”
He tapped the clock on the dash and gestured out the window at the sun. Beyond the glare, I could see the tail end of the rearmost hound, Jimi, with his tufted ears. He was nearly a blur, keeping pace directly ahead of us between the lanes of vehicles.
“Unless my mother’s soul mate is in Oakland, I’m going to assume we have a longer trip ahead of us,” he said.
“Why couldn’t her soul mate be in Oakland?”
“Because I know her. If she has a soul mate, he’s in a place filled with music. And there aren’t a lot of places like that near where we are now. At least not in that direction.”
“I hope whoever he is measures up to your mom. She’s wonderful and deserves true love.”
He smiled at me and reached out to take my hand. I gripped him in return, a shiver of yearning coursing through me when he threaded our fingers together and tightened his grasp. “You’re pretty wonderful too. But please, out with it.”
I sighed. “I’m not going to get out of this story, am I?”
“Not a fucking chance. Start at self-awareness. How soon did that happen?”
“At conception, I think. And I think it was because my mother’s soul mate was there with us. Zorion is one of the oldest dragons in existence, but one of the youngest immortals.”
“You mean besides you.”
“Besides me and my sister, Asha. He had the power to project his soul to my mother while she was held captive. He was there the moment I came into being. I think some of his love for her sparked my own consciousness to life. That’s the only explanation I have for it.”
He shot me a searching look. “You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, haven’t you?”
“I want to understand who I am. Every little detail is important—why I exist, how I exist, who helped make me exist.”
In a soft, tender voice, he said, “You know there’s so much more to life than simply existing.”
I blinked back the surge of emotion welling up and nodded, keeping my gaze fixed out the window. “I’m trying to figure out how to do that . . . how to live.”
10
Bodhi
I had half a mind to turn back around and take her windsurfing to show her what living felt like, but a quick mental rundown of what I’d seen since I met her let me ease up on that wild idea.
“You’re not exactly boring, angel. Hell, just a day ago you were a fucking dragon. You can fucking sprout wings and fly.”
Her entire face lit up and she laughed, the sound music to my ears. I grinned back at her.
“Yes! And it was amazing. But I haven’t always been able to do that. It was literally my first try, but I knew I had to make it happen to find you and Keagan.”
“Thank you for that,” I said. How the hell could this woman not know how amazing she was? Every moment I’d spent with her, she’d been full of life, her thirst for adventure rivaling my own. She didn’t hesitate when faced with a challenge, even the strange ordeal with Rohan and Keagan the night before, which somehow Llyr had found a workaround for. My groin heated with arousal and I forced myself to push those thoughts aside.
“You know how to live, Deva. That much is clear to me. But the fact that you seem so worried about it makes me want to ask what the hell you’ve been doing all this time. You act like you just crawled out from under a rock, or something.”
She pressed her lips tight together and darted a he
sitant glance at me. I wished I could give her my full attention, but didn’t want to take my eyes off the road and risk rear-ending someone or losing sight of the hounds.
“I may as well have been under a rock. My parents were very protective of me, especially my dad. I’m pretty sure he had Llyr tortured after finding us together.”
My mouth went dry as I recalled all the piercing looks Nikhil had given me. He’d clearly been the kind of man I wanted to avoid crossing, but I got the impression that Belah held the reins in their relationship, at least partly. I still wished I’d taken the time to reassure him that my intentions toward his daughter were entirely honorable.
Deva seemed to sense my struggle, because she placed a hand on my knee and squeezed. “Don’t worry,” she chirped. “He knows he can trust you with me. He has powers similar to mine, a little from all the higher races.”
I forced out a sigh. “Oh? Don’t tell me he was bred in a lab too.”
Secretly, I was buoyed by her shift in mood. She was talking as though we were together and she wanted it that way.
“No. He was Blessed. When he and Mama Belah got married—the first time—all the immortals imbued him with blessings in the hopes the magic would protect his will when Belah claimed and marked him. Basically, he can tell if you’re lying to him, but so can Iszak and Lukas, and Belah can read your emotions. Between the four of them, they learned enough about you just being in the room with you that they knew they could trust you with me.”
I frowned out at the traffic. “So she knew he might lose his will if she mated him, and it took all the immortals to protect him from that? How many are we talking?”
“Sixteen altogether, but she didn’t actually complete the mating until last year just before the war. Some . . . pretty bad shit happened in between. They weren’t exactly on speaking terms for about three thousand years—”
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