by J B Black
Bellamy chuckled, bowing to press their heads together. “You fought a god while pregnant. Led a damn army and ruled a territory while making deals with pirates. How am I the brave one?”
“Because you never needed anyone. Didn’t need me. I’m terrified. My parents are insane. Their duties kept them apart, so the little time my father had with my dam, he ignored us. I miss my siblings. I hate being alone,” Nereus confessed, curling to bury his face in his mate’s shirt. “It’s so lonely being a god. Everyone expects you to have all the answers, but I’m not that old for a god! My dad spent all his time counting and organizing the dead and dying. My father was so jealous and needy that he barely had a relationship with any of us, so who was I supposed to learn all this from? And then — and then you didn’t want me either!”
“Nereus, it was the cuff. I didn’t know,” Bellamy defended, but shame and guilt caused him to sigh and correct himself, “I didn’t want to know. I had this plan — and you weren’t part of it, and I-I’m a stubborn idiot. Can you ever forgive me? I’m so sorry.”
“I apologize as well.” The words shocked both the sea god and his mate, drawing their eyes to Mar who stood unarmed. He bowed his head. Shame filled his eyes as he knelt. “I should have remembered how young you are. When my mate rejected me, I had centuries on you, and that - that is a hurt you never recover from.”
Though he recognized the kinship awakening in Mar, Bellamy pulled Nereus possessively closer to himself, desperate and ready to defend his mate. “That’s not the same. I can feel the bond now. I love him. I will never leave him again. It won’t be the same. You can’t have him.”
Mar snorted, shaking his head. “I have no intention of trying to interfere in a matebond. Why do you think I cut my own out when I discovered it was one-sided?”
Keeping one arm tightly around Bellamy, Nereus reached out his hand to the older god. “A truce, then?”
“You shall keep the sea,” Mar announced. “It is my penance for being older and starting this nonsense. I will keep this island. A change would do me good.”
Nereus shook his head. “You have many loyal followers in the merfolk. Keep the misted seas which are in flux. My penance for what I did as well.”
The two gods clasped hands, and hope welled in Nereus’s chest. This was the peace he had hoped could be reached. A calm brought from conversation.
“Bell?” a soft voice called, and the three men’s gazes jumped to where the older pirate already stared.
Mira stood. A soft blue dress flowing about her. The long braid of her brown hair fell down her back, and her dark eyes — a match to her son’s — glistened with unshed tears.
“Mother?”
Chapter Nineteen
She was like a vision. Pale and almost exactly as he remembered though the sharp bones of her collar stuck out further than he recalled. This was his mother. Petite but strong, a tired dignity to her which came in soft smiles and the gentle drag of her long fingers through his hair.
Bellamy had no idea what else to say. All his years of questions faded away. With his mate in his arms, the pirate had no idea what he could say — what could be asked that wouldn’t break him.
Ned stepped toward her, reaching out. “Mira...oh, Mira, I’m sorry. I should have listened; I never should have —”
But his mother shoved the older man aside, racing to her son’s side. Her thin arms wrapped around him, pulling him to her with Nereus still in his arms. She hugged them both, weeping.
“My boy!” Mira hiccuped, offering a wet smile. “You’re so big. I thought — I thought I’d be back. I should have stayed. I thought I could — I thought I could make everything alright. I’m so sorry.” Her lips pressed blessing upon his forehead. “I missed you, oh my beautiful boy, I’m so sorry.”
Frozen in her arms, Bellamy held fast to his mate, shifting Nereus a bit back from her in confusion. This couldn’t be his mother. She never cried. Her soft smiles never reached her eyes. Though this woman looked exactly the same, she couldn’t be his mother.
“I don’t understand,” the blond whispered.
Pulling back, Mira cupped his face in her delicate hands. “My pod was near. I went to get them to cast the spell to give you a skin — to make you a selkie, so we could run away together back to the sea, but he cursed my skin. Oh Bell, I tried to get out, but I couldn’t speak — not to my pod, not to anyone. It took so long, decades to find someone to undo what he did. The spell to keep me in my skin.” Her eyes absorbed him, memorizing every inch and scanning as if searching for the boy he had once been. “I thought you were dead. All those years, I failed you so much, my beautiful Bell. I should have never let you.”
As she wept, touching Bellamy and seemingly terrified that if she stopped he might disappear, Mar watched in stunned silence. He looked to Ned, pointing at the woman. Struggling for words, he murmured, “Ned...is she —?”
“Hush,” the sorcerer hissed, but he fidgeted, drawing a step closer to the god before purposefully backing away.
Focusing on the strangeness between the two was so much easier. If he looked at his mother too closely and too often, Bellamy would break into tears. This couldn’t be true. His mother hadn’t abandoned him. She wanted to take him with her. It was his father — it was a curse. All these years wondering, and she had wanted him.
When Nereus shifted, sitting up, Bellamy held all the tighter to him. Desperately clinging to the man as a way to ground himself, but the dark-haired sea god settled against the blond’s chest.
“I hope Leon hasn’t been bothering too much. He’s rather excited to be a big brother,” Nereus said, and Mira seemed to notice him.
Her lips trembled. “Oh, thank the gods. You’re his mate?”
Bellamy swallowed. “Yes. He’s my mate.”
She smiled so brightly that she almost looked unrecognizable. “I’m so happy for you.”
“Mira is currently living with my brother, Athanasius, and his mate, Castor. Castor was the one who undid the curse,” Nereus explained.
Mira added, “Thanks to you.” Her dark eyes shimmered as they returned to Bellamy. “My sweet boy, you’ve grown so big.”
Everything he had ever hoped she’d say — all the dreams he denied having, and yet here she was, saying exactly those words. Telling him she missed him. That she always wanted him, and suddenly, he was that little boy again. Terrified and confused and desperate for his mother to tell him everything would be just fine. That none of it mattered.
“Mum?” he whispered.
Tears poured down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Bellamy. I love you so much.”
“Mum,” he repeated, shifting forward and drawing her into a tight embrace.
Her arms — despite how thin they were — held fast to him. The strength and warmth of her embrace stitched back together the scarred pieces of his heart.
“Did you know?” Mar demanded, turning on Ned.
“Shut up,” the older pirate hissed. “If you have any —”
“We were a polyamorous bond, and you just didn’t want me in it? Is that what this is?” Mar demanded. He scoffed, shaking his head. “You’re a cold one, Edward —”
With a growl, Ned turned, knotting his hands into the god’s copper hair and pulling Mar into a heated kiss. The sight was so absurd. Though shorter, the sorcerer completely controlled the god, viciously nipping at his lips before plunder his mouth as if affection were a battleground.
“Shut the fucking hell up, you pushy bastard,” Ned spat when he pulled back, cupping the older god’s cock in his hand and squeezing. “Yeah — I knew. What of it? I had no interest in being a damn bride.” He pointed to Nereus who sat with Bellamy’s arm around his waist — the blond’s hand remained possessively over their unborn child. “But apparently gods can conceive, so if the only damn way anything is happening here is if you’re the bearer. Got it, Mar?”
Before the god could even sputter a reply, Mira sighed, shaking her head and glaring at the two of
them. “Whatever issues you two have can be dealt with later. I am reuniting with my son, and you are being rude.” The two men murmured their apologies. “And I always wanted a large family with my mates. If neither of you wants to bear, I have no qualms carrying all our children.”
“Incredible,” Mar whispered.
Mira’s lips curved upward. “What did I say?”
“May I court you?” the god asked. His eyes glanced to Ned who pointedly stared at the ground until the god said, “Both of you?”
Her dark eyes turned to her son, who had no desire to be asked his opinion on the matter. Seeing his discomfort, Mira offered, “Only if I may court you in return. Matings shouldn’t be one-sided.”
“What she said,” Ned huffed.
Bellamy laughed, drawing their gazes. “You’re always so calm, Ned, but you’re an absolute mess now.”
With a shrug, Ned shook his head. “Mates.”
Chapter Twenty
Mating a god dramatically changed the course of Bellamy’s life. While he had not learned to swim until he wore a cuff which paralyzed him in water, the blond spent almost all of his time underwater now. Nereus’s kingdom — their kingdom — had a number of coasts and islands, but the bulk of it stood underwater, and wasn’t that a strange change? The first time a whale swam over his head, the once-pirate swore he had to be dreaming.
Not to say he didn’t spend some time on land or in air rooms within the castle. His mother hadn’t mated with her own god yet, so she still needed to surface for breath often. Even when Nereus offered to provide an enchantment to let her breath beneath water, she refused. Bellamy suspected she feared losing control of her shape-shifting. Some wounds would take longer to heal, but he had his mother back.
And wasn’t that the strangest change of all? After spending so long looking for his mother, she slept down the hall. They spent time together, relearning each other as she introduced him to her pod and to what it meant to be a selkie. For all the happy stories of her life before his father, she never hesitated to remind him that for all the horrors she faced, she never regretted him. That he was her one bright light in the midst of what he could only think was unimaginable pain.
“I feel a bit guilty,” he confessed to Nereus one evening as they lay in their bed. His head rested against the now visible curve of their child as the god ran his clever fingers through the blond’s hair. “We’re mates, so we were fated, so my mother was fated to be tortured by my father, so I could be born to be fated to you.”
Nereus hummed, considering for a moment before replying, “I’m not sure that’s how it works. Gods don’t have mates until we claim a territory, and I didn’t have a territory until years after you were born.”
“But isn’t your territory fated too?”
“I suppose it is a question of whether you and I would be fated in every conceivable universe, so if I would have a mate if you hadn’t existed. I have never heard of a god who didn’t have a fated mate, and I’ve never heard of a god finding a second fated mate if theirs died,” Nereus informed his husband, frowning as he thought over everything his fathers had told him. “Thanas is one of the first gods. He didn’t believe he had a mate, and so until Vasant claimed his territory, gods didn’t think we all had mates or even understand the demigod to god change necessary for our bonds to awaken. There’s likely more to this than fate, but it sounds romantic for most to say it.”
Bellamy sighed, sitting up to press a kiss to the sea god’s lips. “Then what do you think to call it?”
“Soulmates?” When the blond chuckled, Nereus huffed, glaring. “What? It sounds nicer to me. It has nothing to do with your body, but your soul and mine were made for each other. I’ve seen the afterlife, you know. I know how death works, and reincarnation is a choice. Perhaps our souls simply loved each other before, and they wanted to find each other again.”
“And what if our souls are new?”
Scoffing, the god rubbed the curve of his belly. “Must I think of everything?”
Despite the struggles Bellamy had with what his mother had suffered, Mira recovered at her own pace, keeping her mates at a distance as the three courted each other. Strangely, she seemed more drawn to Mar than Ned, completing the circle of preference and begrudging affection which seemed to tie them together.
“I was thinking of a spring wedding, so that the pods which go north could be there,” she mentioned to him one evening as they walked along the shore. They often took walks on the coast together, speaking about nothing and everything.
“Something big and happy.”
“Mar will love that.”
“And Ned will hate that,” Mira laughed. “We’ll find a compromise.”
Bellamy smiled. “As long as you’re happy.”
Looping her arm in his, she leaned against him. “I have my son and my freedom. What else could I need?”
Their peace was soon interrupted by Leon, running about their feet with Castor and Nereus chasing after them as Athanasius watched with the twins. Nereus had too many siblings. Even the young ones who would otherwise have stayed with their dam in the Underworld came up and visited them at Athanasius’s and Castor’s home when Nereus brought him for introductions.
They were all so powerful. The Gods of Springs, several gods of mountains, valleys, and forests. One or two claimed stranger things — singular cities or a particular type of plant, but they all loved just as fiercely.
When Bellamy first met Athanasius, he blanched at the height of the man who stood as tall as Teague had. With long black hair and a scarred face, Athanasius looked every inch the warlord and first son of Death, but with a child in each muscular arm, the fierceness became intimidating in an entirely different way.
“So you’re his mate,” Athanasius intoned. His voice low and deep as he set the children in Castor’s arms before marching over to greet the two. Glancing between his brother and Bellamy, the older god offered the most charming and bright smile, pulling the blond into a tight hug. “I’m so happy to meet you!”
Generally soft spoken, his husband’s elder brother proved to be completely unlike his appearance, but as they joined the older couple on a blanket on the beach, Castor — shorter and wrinkled a bit about the eyes as if constantly smiling — had wrapped an arm around the ex-pirate’s shoulders.
“Nereus never gave us the details, but I’m glad to see you came to the right decision,” the once warlock drawled, and though his tone sounded light, his eyes glinted like daggers. His eyes were like slivers of ice when he dropped all guise of gentility to proclaim, “If you ever hurt my husband’s brother again, I will place the worst curse on you, and believe me, I know all the most painful of curses.”
Flushing, Nereus hissed, “Castor!”
Bellamy refused to back down. Meeting the other’s gaze, he simply said, “Good.”
The mounting tension quickly broke when Leon held up a crab in Bellamy’s face, informing him, “This is Harold.”
“Harold is the latest of Leon’s hermit crabs,” Castor said, picking up his son and settling him in his lap. “And what happened to the other crabs, Leon?”
Grinning, Leon furrowed his tiny brow and announced, “Hurt Uncle Nereus, and you’ll find out.”
“Castor! You can’t teach him to say things like that,” Athanasius scolded, but Castor tickled Leon as the little boy giggled, overjoyed to be part of the joke.
Bellamy had no intention of ever finding out what happened to the prior hermit crabs, but he kept an eye on Harold at the end of the gathering, watching as Leon set the crab down and told him to bring a friend next time. The little boy patted the top of the crab’s shell gently before his eyes met Bellamy’s. He didn’t say anything. Just waved, but an eerie feeling settled in the blond’s stomach.
“Is your dam still looking to retire?” he asked Nereus.
Already sprawled in their bed, the sea god hummed, “Da? Oh, yes, I suppose, but it’s a bit more complicated now that Father doesn’t hav
e a territory.”
“I think Leon’s going to take over the family business,” Bellamy informed his husband as he crawled into bed beside him.
With a shrug, Nereus curled up in the blond’s arms, settling with his head on the other man’s chest. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“He’s a child, Bellamy, and thanks to how my brother and Castor are raising him, he actually has an opportunity to be one. Leon could be anything. Same with the twins,” Nereus told him. “Besides, I’m the son of the former God of Spring and the God of Death. Where does the sea come from that?”
Bellamy sighed. “The more I learn about gods, the less I understand.”
“Welcome to godhood,” Nereus murmured into his chest. “Constant chaos.”
As his mate fell asleep, Bellamy enjoyed the quiet contentment of his life. Nereus slept beside him. Warm and sweet, the sea god held him loosely, curling close, but though such nearness used to worry him, the weight of his mate and the soft whispering sound of his breath soothed the blond’s soul. Setting a hand on the curve of their child, Bellamy pressed a kiss to the top of his mate’s head and drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Insatiable!” Nereus cried as Bellamy chased after him.
The blond chuckled, sweeping his mate into his arms and pulling the sea god close. Their lips met. Despite his protests, Nereus held fast to him, wrapping his legs around Bellamy’s hips as their tongues entwined. Floating in their bedroom, there were no eyes to see as they stripped each other bare, desperately curling and drifting in the water.
Bellamy’s hands groped possessively at Nereus’ supple bottom, pulling him forward to rut their cocks together as his fingers traced his lover’s crack, dipping to rub his finger over the tight furl hidden there.
Clucking his tongue as he pulled back, Nereus licked his kiss-swollen lips. “You utter beast.”
“You’re the one who sat on my lap and guided my hand to your cock,” Bellamy retorted as he pressed, allowing his finger to dip inside just the barest amount before pulling back to circle his husband’s rim.