Chapter One
I stood on my private stretch of beach, staring at the Pacific Ocean without truly seeing it. A rock wall extended into the water on both sides of my property, providing privacy, and exotic flowers, including vibrant bird of paradise and sweet-scented vanilla orchids, bloomed in my backyard behind me. The salty breeze coming off the water lifted my hair and should have cooled me but my cheeks remained flushed. My whole body felt flushed and it had nothing to do with the midday sun.
I'd gone to Hawaii for refuge of a sort. Not that there was anything wrong with my life or my relationships with my husbands and fiancé. Yes, fiancé. Slate had proposed and I'd accepted. We were in the midst of planning our wedding but were taking our time with it. There's no rush when you're immortal. It would likely be held in his zone, the underground Beneather sanctuary run by Slate and policed by his army of Gargoyles. But I couldn't be there right now. Nor could I be anywhere my men were. Because another man would be coming to see me at any moment.
King Verin of the Azure Court.
By some strange stroke of fate, we ended up in a complicated romantic relationship. The spell that bound my men to me and unified us in power and love—the Rooster Spell or RS for short—had been gaining strength and when she gained strength, she needed more fuel. More fuel meant more men but every man who was brought into our union added their power to hers, making the RS stronger. It became a vicious cycle.
We tried everything we could think of to stop the RS' growth and consulted everyone we thought might be able to help us. We were getting desperate when the Witches came up with a solution—a spell to suppress the one inside me. Not destroy it, just keep it from growing. But by the time the Witch Leaders were able to cast the spell on me, it was too late. The RS had been weakened by losing Slate—he'd been possessed at the time, long story—and didn't have the strength to survive the grueling casting. As the RS and I are connected, when she started to die, so did I. In short, the spell that was supposed to save me, nearly killed me. Immortal doesn't always mean invulnerable. In my experience, it rarely does.
Before the casting, Verin and I had shared a powerful physical attraction—one that I'm certain would have turned into love if we had given it the chance—but neither of us had wanted that. So, we stayed away from each other. What's that saying about the plans of mice and men? Yeah, things went awry. Big time. Dragon-sized big.
Verin had been present at that nearly-fatal casting and when I started to die, he valiantly offered himself to the RS as fuel. Except there was one little problem: we didn't love each other. We admired, respected, and cared for each other, we found each other incredibly attractive, but we'd gone out of our way to ensure that there was no love between us and we'd been successful. The RS feeds on love and without it, she couldn't add Verin to our family.
I started to slip away despite Verin's efforts, but Vivian, the Witch Leader of Water, used Verin's water magic to connect with him and then with me. Through that connection, she cast a love spell on us. It was slapdash, to say the least, and Vivian assured us that it would be temporary—just something to get us through the casting of the suppression spell and hold me over until I was able to get Slate back and then could let Verin go. She meant that temporary status to be a comfort and it would have been if Verin and I hadn't fallen so deeply under her spell. My men accepted that Verin had joined their ranks but only under the premise that it wouldn't be forever, and they asked Verin and me to stay far away from each other until the spell wore off. They didn't want us forming an attachment that we wouldn't be able to break—one that made the lie of the spell into truth. Totally understandable. My mind told me they were right but my heart vehemently disagreed.
Rational thought and love for my men won out in the end and I sent Verin away with the promise that if our love proved to be real, if we had somehow truly fallen in love during all of that insanity, then I would insist that he be accepted into the family. Even as I hoped for it, I knew it wouldn't happen. Before the love spell, Verin had baldly stated that despite his overwhelming attraction to me, he had no wish to share me with six other men. And who could blame him? I wouldn't share any of my men with another woman (yes, I know it isn't fair but that's how it is). Plus, Verin's father had kept a harem, one his mother had been forced into, and that had—also understandably—left him with a distaste for any polyamorous lifestyle. The odds were stacked against us; we just wouldn't work.
But there I was, wringing my hands and watching the waves—searching for movement beneath them—as I waited for Verin to appear. He had vowed that he'd give the spell three months to wear off and then he'd come for me. Whether it had worn off or not.
It had not.
I took a shaky breath and swallowed past the dryness in my throat. I'd spoken to Vivian only that morning and she said what I'd expected her to say—that magic is unpredictable. The spellwouldwear off, but she had no idea when. In fact, she was shocked that it hadn't done so already. A love spell goes against the will of its target and in this instance, it had two, strong-willed targets. That should have stretched the spell even thinner. Its survival wasn't just surprising, it was also baffling.
After I spoke to Vivian, I called Verin using the enchanted blue coral pendant he'd given me. I gave him a shining one contact charm that does the same thing so I wouldn't have to add yet another charm to the growing collection around my neck just in case he called. But I'd contacted him with his coral that afternoon because it seemed more appropriate. Verin had answered almost instantaneously and said only two words.
“One hour.”
“I'm in Hawaii,” I told him.
“I know where you are,” Verin growled. “I can feel you through the coral.”
That was one aspect of the coral that I hadn't been aware of. Leave it to a dragon to give me a contact charm that doubled as a tracking device. I was kinda glad I hadn't been wearing it.
Oh, yeah. Did I forget to mention that Verin is the King of an undersea dragon court? It's just another reason we'd be a bad fit. I love the ocean—my mother is a Siren which means that the sea is in my blood—but I don't want to liveinit. I can't, I had too many responsibilities on land, not the least of which were my commitments to my men: a Griffin, a Gargoyle, a Blooder (AKA vampire), two shining one kings (AKA fairies), and a god (who's also a shining one king). In other words, I was already attached to some extremely powerful Beneathers (citizens of the supernatural community on Earth) and none of them wanted to live underwater.
“All right,” I had whispered to Verin.
He had grunted and hung up. It was kind of his thing—the grunting, not the hanging up.
So, there I stood, in the shallows, toes curling anxiously in the sand, my feet getting buried deeper with every wave, as I waited for a sea dragon to rise from the water like fucking Aphrodite.
Verin may not have appeared on a giant clamshell but he didn't disappoint.
Something bluer than the waters of the Pacific crested an incoming wave. A massive head lifted above the churning water, trailing vivid orange whiskers in its wake. Reptilian lips pulled back to reveal teeth as long as my forearms but substantially sharper. Water sprayed with his rough, audible exhale—the inner flaps of his nose opening to pull in air—and turquoise, dragon eyes the size of my face flashed with magic. The beast dove, crimson fins cutting the surface as its tail undulated up like a cracking whip. One snap was all it took to bring him to shore. I watched, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as the Blue Dragon shot toward me like a missile, his body condensing into another form as he came—the transformation blurred by a lens of water. By the time Verin reached me, he looked human... mostly.
King Verin rose from the sea—a glorious, naked, god-like creature too beautiful and achingly exotic to call a man. His sleek muscles, narrow waist, and broad shoulders registered with me absently. The indigo hair dripping down his sculpted chest also called for attention, as did his strong hands—clenching and releasing anxiously. But even the thickening piece of flesh that hardened between his corded thighs couldn't pull my gaze away from his for very long.
Verin's turquoise eyes glowed and deepened to an even darker shade. Indigo. I knew what that color indicated: a strong emotional response. That put us on the same page; my emotions were jumping off the charts. Despite the powerful feelings that must have been riding him, Verin didn't speak, only gave a satisfied sound as his arms closed around me. Our lips met and everything else faded into a hazy backdrop. I closed my eyes and gave in to that sublime touch. It was gentle but also urgent—desire pulsing through waves of adoration. So much to feel and taste and take. I pulled him closer, water soaking my dress. He lowered me onto the sand. Warm waves lapped at our legs as Verin's body covered mine. I opened to him in every way, my thighs spreading wide and my mind filling with him. My hands slid over his tight ass and urged him closer. My dress washed up around my waist. Only a thin piece of silk separated us. Verin pressed against it, starting to push into me with the fabric. The silk started to slip aside. His sex touched mine. Water rushed around us.
“Getthefuckoff my wife,” a voice growled furiously.
Chapter Two
Verin lifted his face from mine, his eyes narrowing at Darcraxis—that would be my husband who was both a god and a shining one. Technically, his and my status as true gods—as opposed to the self-proclaimed gods who are really just aliens—was diminished. We'd cut out most of our magic—literally, cut it out of ourselves—and locked it away, relegating our souls to physical forms that, though immortal, were not as immortal as they'd been previously. That being said, the small pieces of magic we'd left behind had been growing in power. This created a bit of uncertainty over exactly how godly we were. To simplify, I just call us gods.
Darcraxis, God of Darkness and Water, wasn't alone. My other husbands and fiancé stood to either side of him. And they all looked pissed. Livid, actually. Darc stood at the center of the group, the tallest, if not biggest, of the bunch. That's not to say that he was lean. Quite the contrary, Darcraxis had a Henry-Cavill-in-Superman body but Gage, my Griffin mate, was more Schwarzenegger-in-Terminator. Standing beside the fair-skinned, raven-haired Darc, Gage seemed to glow, or perhaps radiate is a better word for it. He looked golden, with tawny skin and hair like a lion's mane. Even his hazel eyes had flecks of gold in them. Griffins are elite warriors and it showed in every line of Gage's furious form. His arms were crossed, the muscles bulging, and he glared back at the Blue Dragon as if hoping for a fight.
