Chapter One
“I love my children. I love my children. I love my children,” I chanted, hoping the mantra would sink past my urge to murder the fruit of my lions—I mean, my loins. Ugh, that's an awful word—loins. Great, I just added revulsion to my murderous rage.
“Silence!” Odin roared.
The children, none of whom were Odin's progeny, went still, their eyes wide and locked on my husband. In case you aren't caught up with my sitch, I have seven husbands and children with four of them. Three of those children live in the Faerie Realm with my Fey husband, Arach. But the other four brats—I mean adorable little lights of my life—live with me and my other six husbands in the God Realm. Not that I don't live in Faerie. I do. I am everywhere at once—bwahahaha!
All right, so I'm not all-powerful, though I am a goddess. I'm able to be in multiple realms at the same time thanks to my Fey father's Ring of Remembrance which allows me to travel through time. The ring is supposed to be used to relive a faerie's memories. It takes a person back in time, but you can't change the past. You just experience it again. Relive it so you can refresh your ancient memories. However, there's a loophole. If you go to a realm during a time when you weren't there and therefore had no past to relive, you could function freely. So, I bop back and forth between the realms, returning seconds after I left so that I essentially never leave. It can be a bit mind-boggling, but I've been working with the magic for years and it's only once bit me in the ass. In my defense, that one was all on Arach.
But I digress.
Lesya, my daughter by Kirill; Vero, my son by Trevor, and the twins—Sebastian and Dominic, my sons by Azrael, all gaped at their Uncle Odin. Not because he had shouted—they were in one of those moods where shouting didn't affect them—but because the King of Asgard had invisible hands, or maybe arms, binding them. They struggled against the unseen hold, shoulders shimmying and, in the case of the twins, feathers rustling.
I laughed my ass off. And it's a significant ass, so it took a lot of laughing to get it off.
“Mom!” Lesya shrieked. “What's happening?”
“I've had enough of you four disobeying us,” Odin said while I continued to laugh. “One of you gets started and then the others fall in line as if disobedience were contagious. It's disgraceful!”
I laughed even harder. Ever since Odin shaved his distinguished beard and revealed the beautiful baby face he'd been hiding beneath, it was easy to forget how old and powerful he was. There was a reason he had worn that thing for so long. Facial hair—worn in the right way, mind you—can give a man a certain amount of gravitas. But with or without the beard, Odin was still the King of Asgard and the supreme god of the Norse Pantheon. He didn't take shit from anyone. Not even children. Especially not children. There's a reason they call him Allfather.
“Mother, this is so uncool,” Vero said.
Uncool. Vero's new favorite word.
I gasped upright, got my amusement under control, wiped my tears away, and said, “Baby,youare uncool for using the word uncool. It's cheurgy these days. Update your lingo.” I snorted a laugh. “You're so cringe, baby.”
“And you're giving main character energy right now, starlight,” Viper, who did a slightly better job at keeping current with the pop-lingo, said with a smirk.
Tossing my hair, I set a hand on my hip and struck a pose. “That's because I am the MC. Duh. Look around.” I held my smirk for two seconds before bursting into laughter again.
“If you two don't mind, I'll just go back to parenting,” Odin said.
“Oh, yeah, sure, babe.” I sauntered over to him and kissed him on his gorgeous jaw that, in the words of Lady Gaga, went on for days, darling. Then I whispered in his ear, “I've never seen you use that magic out of bed. Well done.”
Odin's lips, set in a firm line, twitched as he slid his peacock-colored stare my way. “You thought I could only use the magic for—” He glanced at the kids, then added, “Playtime?”
“No, it just never occurred to me that it would have so many uses.”
“Um, excuse me?” Vero prompted. “My nose is itchy!”
“Are you done behaving like a pack of wolves?” Odin demanded.
Vero blinked.
Trevor snorted. “Uh, you wanna try that again?”
Odin grimaced as he realized his mistake—Vero, as Trevor's son, was a Froekn. Otherwise known as a werewolf. So, my husband amended his question. “Are you done behaving like ruffians?”
“What's a ruffian?” Sebastian asked.
I snorted. “You, my darling. At least sixty percent of the time.”
“What's sixty percent?”
“A lot,” I said dryly.
Sebastian nodded as if this made perfect sense, then said to Odin, “I can't stop being a ruffy-in, Uncle Odin. I'm sixty per tent it.”
