“I know this,” Zeuzehn says. “I have a full life, a well-rounded life that few can match. For some, it is plenty. Our objection to our sires’ plans for us were never the plans themselves. It was that we didn’t have the freedom to find true mates. I have always wished for more children besides Eilidh.”
He looks up at Parxon. “We knew at our first meeting as children, long before we were joined, that we didn’t feel a mate bond. We most likely wouldn’t have produced viable heirs, even had we consummated our mating. There is a reason the jotnun birth rate is dropping so dramatically, and it is because too many people are mating for money or convenience or family estates, instead of love and instinctive attraction.
“Instinctive attraction means the best chance of having children. We’ve settled into a…lazy way of pairing off. It is evident in our race’s decline, yet our rulers have decided to ignore all the evidence to the contrary and fall back on old and ineffective ways. By enforcing a class system, it’s reduced the ability to freely choose mates, since genetic diversity has also decreased.
“The elders who decided on isolating what became humans, vampires, and shifters from the rest of us didn’t anticipate what the loss of natural diversity would do to our kind eons later. They worried about the hybrids’ abilities to reproduce faster than us and were concerned that females were ‘weaker’ than males. They thought they were ‘purifying’ the jotnun race by isolating us, but instead, they merely doomed it to inevitable extinction. Mixing what we are would only have made us all stronger, eventually.
“And, of course, they found sympathetic ears within the representatives for those races, who were being given an entire new world they could shape however they wished, without our restrictive ruling class in charge. At our population’s current rates of birth and attrition, we will likely quit producing offspring within a thousand years, and effectively die out completely in less than ten thousand. Which might sound like a long time, but considering our life spans can easily be two thousand or more years, that is not long at all. Just a few generations. Parxon and I are still very young by our race’s standards. Barely adults.”
“Well,thatsounds familiar,” Amber snarks. “Trying for species ‘purity.’” She shoots a glare at Garrett. “Your dad and uncle would fuckin’loveit here.”
He blushes a little, like she hit a nerve, but he doesn’t reply.
Interesting.
“Serxon was younger than I am,” Parxon says. “He was incredibly selfish and immature, and he never cared if I was happy. All he ever cared about was the prestige of finally ascending to the ruling class, and that I sire a legitimate Alpha heir to make it happen.”
“Why couldn’t he just mate and sire one of his own?” Garrett asks.
“Because I’m the eldest, an Alpha, and have a registered mating without an Alpha heir. Even had he mated and sired, it would still be ruled common class. Only if he was elevated to ruling class throughmewouldanyheir he sired be a ruling class member. That was put into place to prevent younger siblings from trying to kill off elder ones to improve their status.”
“That’sfucked up,” Eilidh says.
Zeuzehn smiles. “Yes, it is. But with our declining birth rate, people are loathe to challenge the system. They feel a more strict dedication to it will turn things around, and that’s simply not the case. The ruling class tightly holds their power, and the common class blithely believes no change can be had.”
“I’m surprised Serxon didn’t try to kill you off from the start,” I comment.
“Because of our laws,” Parxon says, “at that time, everything would have then gone to Zeuzehn’s family by default, since he is my mate, because of my will and our sire’s will and his birthright statement. I also had many protections around Zeuzehn to keep him safe from Serxon, in case he tried to harm him. My plan had been to rewrite my will and birthright statement so that if something happened to me, only once Zeuzehn mated again would Serxon ascend. I was obviously not going to tell Serxon that, however.”
He looks down at the smaller man. “But then Zeuzehn was the last of his family, and Serxon murdered Sorcha. Once I killed Serxon, then our full focus became locating Eilidh.”
“As the last of my family,” Zeuzehn says, “if Parxon is recognized as dead, because of his will, everything reverts to me. Including the bulk of my family’s estate, which, as my legally recognized mate, Parxon’s been controlling since my sire’s death. Without an heir, my status will be converted to full ruling class member, as if I am an Alpha. Once I have ascended to ruling class, I can freely choose any mate I wish, regardless of their class, and they will also ascend to ruling class, if they are not already.”
Parxon drapes a protective arm around the other man’s shoulders and nuzzles his chin against the top of Zeuzehn’s head. It makes my heart ache for both of them, especially since the omega reminds me so strongly of my Robert.
“Zeuzehn told me to keep hope alive,” Parxon says. “He was correct.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t kill Serxon sooner,” Garrett says. “He sounds like an asshole.”
“I was not aware he knew anything about the crossing rings. My sire passed on the knowledge to me before his death, and he was the last to know from his generation, with his brother dead. Told me to keep tabs on the other world so the knowledge wasn’t lost. To pass it down to my eldest heir. He was part of an old, secret organization that monitored events in that world, and he conferred those responsibilities to me, even though he was the last of the members, as far as he knew. Had Serxon not killed our uncle, he would have passed his ring and the knowledge to Serxon because our uncle had no mate or heir.
“The night Serxon attacked me and Sorcha, I needed to be at our estate to oversee the annual assessment. Zeuzehn had covered for me as long as possible, until I could cross back here. Every crossing period, he would leave messages for me at the stone ring for me to retrieve, so I would know when I needed to be present. We told people I travelled a lot for my work as a researcher and historian. Technically, not untrue. I gave Serxon a generous stipend we thought would keep him living a life of leisure far from the estate. Bought him a large, beautiful home in the city, paid for him to go to school and travel.
“That worked, for a while. Zeuzehn was happy and contented running the estates, which my brother never showed any interest in. My brother’s ways were, I was certain, destined to get him killed. We knew if we waited long enough, his fate would take over. He was always picking fights, drinking, gambling, getting arrested, angering people. He was like that from childhood.
“I brought Sorcha through to me for an evening visit, because I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to return until the next crossing phase. The stone ring is on our land. I didn’t know Serxon had returned and spotted me sneaking Sorcha from the residence, or that he followed us.
“He caught up to us at the stone ring, where he attacked us. He saw her mating mark and realized what had happened. He also wasn’t expecting Sorcha to be as tough as she was. We got free and ran from him, crossed back, and I was shocked when he crossed through behind us moments later. I gave your mother my ring and told her to run. That I would drag him back, take his ring, and find her.”
“Plus, you thought I’d be able to bring us back through at some point,” Eilidh quietly says.
“Yes. She knew she couldn’t use the ring on her own, but we already knew you could.”
“Because you sometimes had me sing the song during the blindfold game,” she softly says.
He nods. “Exactly. Anyway, that night, I fought with Serxon and dragged him back through to our world. Demanded to know where he’d obtained a crossing ring.
“He admitted he plundered his ring from our sire’s younger brother when Serxon killed him several years earlier. Serxon apparently got him drunk one night, and he confessed we were one of the old families, that the rings were for crossing, the secret society—everything. Everyone thought my uncle had drowned at sea in an accident, the body never recovered.
