Staring up at Fury’s silver-blue eyes.
Fury changed back down so fast Layla hardly felt it; only a wash of tides as she was one moment laying over his strong coils and the next she was in his arms, pressed up hard against his gloriously naked body. Fury crashed into Layla with his vast passion, surging with bright-dark heat as Layla was pressed to him, their bodies melding together from their Bind. She was drowned in his quicksilver and midnight eyes; rolled so deep. Wearing nothing but the silver pearl on a seaweed thong around his left wrist, Fury stared down at Layla with amazement. Wet with seawater, he was naked and glorious as he breathed hard, and Layla realized he’d swum all the way from the White Deeps in his Siren-form. Swam here and roared up from the world’s darkest oceans.
Just to have her in his arms tonight.
A wave of power flooded from Fury, so hard it sent an enormous wall of water crashing through the hall, flushing everyone to their asses as it soaked down through the pearl and coral floor. All revelry was broken as the North Sea Sirens stared at Fury with enormous eyes and shocked faces. Trembling with the massive nature of his power, Fury was like a tsunami in Layla’s hands as he gripped her close. The demon of his Dragon was in his eyes as he corralled her, as she felt him twine his Siren’s coils, massive as the ballroom, all around her. Securing her fast, Fury left Layla no choice as his lips descended.
As he kissed her with passionate abandon.
Layla’s magic roared, drowning out all else as Fury kissed her. Her magic fought his power, but it was the fight-fuck all over again as Layla felt her Bind surge with that kiss. She felt the seething brightness of her Dragon pour into Fury like molten fire, possessing everything as he gave her his heart. And then she felt Fury go quiet deep inside, his inner drake staring at her with astonished eyes as Layla’s drakaina rolled all his tremendous power to her will.
Quieting it, soothing it – and uniting the man with his beast.
Releasing their kiss gently, Fury stared down at her like a man saved by an angel as he breathed hard. Putting a hand to his chest, he swallowed, grateful tears filling his eyes. Setting his forehead to hers, Fury shuddered with relief as the tremendous might of his Siren-drake was mastered inside him by the joined power of the Bind.
Breathing hard, her head still whirling from the truly massive flow of Fury’s energy pouring through the Bind, Layla was unsteady as Reginald stepped to her side. But as Reginald’s arm stole around her waist, he reached out, gripping Fury’s shoulder as he stared at his twin with a beautiful sobriety. There was so much in that gaze; so much unsaid between the two brothers. But as Fury nodded, setting his hand to Reginald’s shoulder also, Layla felt Rhennic step to her other side. As Rhennic curled an arm around Layla’s waist, he reached out, setting his big palm to Fury’s heart. Layla felt Rhennic’s strong blitz of joy flood into Fury, how incredibly bright it was.
As both Reginald’s control and Rhennic’s brightness stabilized Fury through the Bind.
“Forgive me. I had to come tonight.” Fury spoke as he looked at Layla, then Reginald with a tremendous relief in his silver-blue eyes. “When I felt how your lovemaking earlier soothed me, made me one with my Siren-drake in a way I’d never felt… I had to come tonight and see if it was true or if it had just been a dream.”
“No forgiveness is necessary.” Reginald spoke quietly, as every breath paused in the hall. Reaching out, he stroked tears from Fury’s cheeks as a beautiful love softened his features. “Layla’s Bind has the power to save us, my twin – but what it seems to save us from most, is ourselves.”
But before Reginald could say more, another power roared into the hall suddenly. This one was not bright and it was not sexy; and it was everything Layla could do to not shudder as that vast, heaving power crashed into the ballroom like a black tide. As that tide surged in with actual whitecaps whipping across the floor, Reginald turned like a demon of the deeps towards the oncoming maelstrom, and Fury did also. Like the sun and moon hauling the tides, Reginald and Fury were one as they cast a hand in unison at the floor as that blackwater energy smote the hall, summoning a double-ring of protective water-harpoons up from the floor all around their group.
As King Léviathan arrived to the dance.
“Curs!” Léviathan roared, shaking the dome as water rippled everywhere to his massive rage. “How dare you sunder our Beltane revelry over awoman?” Clad in an archaic tunic of pearls with a Siren-crest, a crown of grey pearls, diamonds, and platinum upon his brow, Léviathan was like a furious Arthurian King as he rode a flowing wave of water into the hall. Halting before his sons, Léviathan’s arctic eyes flashed.
And as he lifted a ring-clad hand, the court pulled back in fear.
All around the Siren King, waves of water spiked up into ugly black spears, as if Léviathan’s dying body had diseased the water through his very magic. Atlantos, Leni, and Typhos suddenly surged forward from nearby, enormous walls of water hurling from their hands as they hammered triplicate battle-maneuvers at Léviathan. But the Siren King didn’t even look as he cast a hand out, creating a wave so enormous that the three siblings were dashed against the far wall of the coral dome like flotsam. Secured by twisting lengths of water around their wrists, ankles, and torsos, they were incarcerated by Léviathan without the King even breaking a sweat. Heaving and cursing, they struggled, all three of them shifting though Atlantos and Typhos couldn’t quite manage it under their father’s iron grip. Leni, however, swirled up into a glittering obsidian-violet Siren, breaking her restraints with a roaring snarl as she heaved, opening her massive maw with a furious roar to do battle against the man she despised.
But with a snap of his fingers, Léviathan dashed Leni’s graceful head back against the corals with such awful force that her Siren sagged, unconscious as blood trickled down her temple. Though Atlantos and Typhos writhed under the Siren King’s grip, scales and fins flowing from them as they half-shifted, Léviathan penetrated them with his cold blue-white eyes – telling his blood-sons firmly to stay put with his vast mesmeric power. Though both shuddered, their seething half-shifts fell quiet beneath their father’s awful gaze as they breathed hard. Wrath smote both their eyes, but they were becalmed now by Léviathan’s incredible mind-power. Rushing to the unconscious Leni, Vindaris stared at his father in horror, though he didn’t move to attack, as if he knew he wasn’t strong enough.
Léviathan’s gaze returned to Reginald and Fury, both surging with power now in currents of gold and silver all around the Bind-group. “Look at you two. Always protecting each other from a father’s lesson that needs to be learned.”
“You are not our father.” Fury snarled as he stared Léviathan down.
“And we will never take your cruel lessons upon our flesh again.” Reginald spoke just as coldly, finishing the first twin’s thought.
“Tell me, both of you, how does it feel to be the spawn of a madman?” Léviathan’s gaze was terrible as he stared them down from inside his ring of watery black spears. “How does it feel to have his bestial essence roaring through your veins, half-breeds to the darkest insanity this world has ever known? Though I have tested you both time and time again, neither of you is fit to take the Siren throne as your mother wished – as Hunter wished. Your mother was a fool for loving that mad bastard. And his bastard sons are fools, facing off with me to save their common whore.”
Suddenly, Léviathan cast a hand out, but not at Reginald or Fury. It was Layla he cast his power to, and as he did, a hundred of those black water-harpoons around him rose up, hurtling at her. Though no water actually hit her, Layla felt herself get skewered by Léviathan’s terrible attack, despite Reginald’s pearls. Like a ship crushed in the leviathan’s coils, she fell hard, gasping as a terrible black burn spread through her entire body.
Seawater already bubbling up her throat as a drowning black tide swamped her.
“NO!” As Reginald roared, he and Fury moved together, casting a thick shield of water up around Layla and Rhennic. With a roar, Rhennic blitzed a powerful wave of white plasma through the dome also, seething with lightning as he caught Layla and cradled her to his chest. As Rhennic’s healing light blazed through her, Layla felt Reginald and Fury’s barrier cast back Léviathan’s vicious attack. She could breathe again, though she doubled over, coughing seawater out of her lungs with vicious spasms.
The water was tarry and black, and as Layla coughed and spit, it burned her like some kind of acid. With a dark growl, Rhennic gathered Layla close so he could wrap his big palms over her chest. The burn eased as Rhennic tripled his sunlit healing, and Layla caught Reginald’s gaze as he watched intently from beyond the dome. With a nod, Layla signaled she was alright. But Léviathan had just tried to kill her – and as one, the gold and silver Siren twins turned towards their once-father.
Wrath flashing through their eyes as they raised their hands.
But even before their hands finished rising, Léviathan flowed up fast into an enormous silver-white drake. As Reginald thrust a hand towards Layla’s protective dome, shoving her and Rhennic back against the corals at the edge of the hall, Reginald and Fury surged up fast into their own Siren-drakes.
As one, they faced their father, towering with glittering gold and silver scales in Reginald’s opalescent white and Fury’s scintillating darkness. The twin Sirens were equally massive tonight, filling the hall with their moon-silver and bright opal-gold coils. Though tremendous, Léviathan’s silver coils seemed tarnished and elderly before theirs, his fins and joints bulbous from his malady. Hitting their once-father with wave after wave of furious seawater and mind-intent, the twins hammered their King against a row of columns as they surged forward. As fins and spines shot out, their strangling tendrils heaved at Léviathan.
Reginald and Fury combining their strength – balanced now through the Bind.
