He increased his pace inside her, pulling out faster now so that she had no time to adjust before he was plunging back in, stretching her to her limits. She continued to move beneath him, arching her back against him in a way that drove him mad. But she was fueled by the strength his blood gave her, and by her own growing desire, and he needed her stillness for what he was about to do.
I’m going to have to tie her down, he thought distantly. But instead, he stayed lodged deep inside her, gently kissed the side of her throat, and pressed expertly on her clitoris. Within short seconds, Eva wrapped her arms around him, dug her nails into his back, and came around his cock.
She screamed again, this time in pure pleasure. Below, she clenched and unclenched, her muscles innocently massaging his dick so that he was suddenly seeing spots, and his vision tunneled. He ground out a desperate sound, low and deep, a growl that was more monster than man. And then, as she was wrapped tight in this cocoon of erotic bliss, Calidum carried out the rest of his plan.
He maintained his hold on her hair and brought his other hand to the side of her face. He touched her tenderly, in a way she would barely notice through her haze of contentment. Gingerly, he tilted her head, again exposing the length of her throat. He eyed the bite marks menacingly. These were more personal, more meaningful than the one Arach had left on her wrist. They had to be dealt with another way.
Calidum bared his teeth – and bit down.
His fangs slid tightly into the twin wounds, stretching them as he had stretched her below, but this time there was no pleasure in it, and he knew that. Another man had attempted to claim her. Calidum was a dragon, and not just any dragon. He was as dragon as they came, and dragons possessed their mates completely. Entirely. In every way.
They’d both known it would come to this, that Cal would make Arach’s marks his own. But the pain was the same, warning or not, and he’d been right that she would fight him.
She screamed, and beat at him suddenly, torn from her initial pleasure by the cruelty of teeth. But Cal kept his grip firm and didn’t move a muscle, waiting for her to calm down beneath him. She carved up his back; he felt blood running and it almost made him smile. She was bruising him, tearing into him, but he remained steadfast in his task.
This would be done.
His hardness throbbed inside Eva’s beautiful body, insistent and aching, not at all abated by the fact that he now tasted her blood on his tongue. His teeth were in her throat, his cock in her warmth. She was his – his – in every single sense, and he yearned for nothing more than to show her exactly what that meant.
But he waited.
And before a full minute passed, Eva released a shaking sob and returned her hand to his hair, gripping it as tightly as he held her. Thank you… her mind whispered. She’d wanted him to do it, to erase Arach’s presence from her once and for all.
Cal closed his eyes and sucked gently, pulling just the tiniest bit of her blood onto his tongue. It was like wine, heady and powerful, refueled with a Legendary’s magic by his own infusion. He could have kept drinking. He could have just stayed there and rammed himself into her again and again and taken them both over the edge of oblivion. But they both knew he wasn’t finished.
His free hand found her breast and tweaked the nipple just hard enough to be nearly painful. She gasped, and he did it again as he pulled his dick out a few precious inches. She moaned when he took that hardened nipple between his fingers and twisted, pinching hard enough that she arched into his hand to ease the pain.
As she did, he withdrew his fangs from the bite that was now his. Eyes still closed, he ran his tongue over his teeth and almost shuddered at the taste of her. As he slowly pressed his length back into her, he grasped her chin and turned her toward him for a kiss.
The kiss was hard and deep; he was running out of will, nearly at the end of his rope with need, and all the while he moved within her – in and out. He pulled away slowly, tauntingly, and drove forward brutally, deeply. They settled into a rhythm, and he heard her heart race, caught the scent of renewed desire, and knew he was once more taking her to pleasure’s plummeting cliffs.
The pain of his bite was all but forgotten when he again focused on her throat and the second bite mark. He was almost out of his mind himself at that point, driven near blind by the feel of her around him and beneath him. But he moved over the marks, bared his fangs, and did what had to be done, sinking them hard and fast into the holes already there.
This time, there was no scream. She made a sound, and her body lurched beneath him, but the sound was different and laced with lust, a mixture of pain and rapture, of surrender and pleading, the sound of a woman on the very, very edge.
Calidum smiled wickedly against her flesh and carefully drew her blood into his mouth, swallowing the precious liquid that made him drunk with power. He released her hair and let his hands slide down her body, circling her breasts before he squeezed them both gently and ran his thumbs over her nipples.
Again he twisted. Again he pulled. Eva responded to every manipulation like a beautiful, precious puppet on his wickedly drawn strings, and as he quickened the pace, driving harder and faster into her tight core, he took another drink and swallowed.
Mine, he thought again.
You.
Are.
Mine.
Eva exploded into her climax, her body going rigid, her breasts thrust forward, her head flying back as it rocked through her like an electric bomb.
Calidum saw stars when that pulsing, ringing climax mercilessly wrenched from him his own orgasm. He pulled his teeth from Eva’s neck and rose above her, roaring into the night as he came into her with violent fury. Again and again, he released his seed deep within her, searing her with yet another part of him as he once and for all claimed his mate. In every possible way.
Across the realms, dragons everywhere heard the bellowed cry, distant but strong, and knew what it was.
The Dragon Realm now had a queen.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Lilith forced her eyes to remain dry when her sister again slammed her against the wall, and the electric sconces of the theater dove brutally into her back, cracking ribs and rupturing discs. She gritted her teeth, told herself she knew a few healers, and fought back.
Beyond them, the Entity did battle with six of the Thirteen Kings. The theatre lay in ruins, though someone’s magic had put out the flames. Someone else’s magic had rid the building of every human inside, transporting them en masse into the streets and alleys beyond. Alarms were going off everywhere, and the world was filled with the screams of sirens.
Right now, all that mattered was Amunet and Katrielle, and the siblinghood that had soured between them when time began.
Nomads were solitary figures, born into a body here or there, at random and without reason. They’d existed for a long as time itself, and no one, not even the Nomads themselves, had any idea why.
But when Katrielle first came into being, she and Amunet were placed together, in the same home. In the bodies of sisters. It had never been done before, and it was never done again. And again – no one knew why.
No matter how many lifetimes Lilith lived as a healer, a witch, a fae, or ordinary human, she would forever remember that first lifetime. She and Amunet grew up close. Amunet was slightly older than her; it was how she’d been formed, as the older sister. She was gentle and patient with Kat, showing her the ways of the world.
But Amunet was beautiful. They both were. And one day, when Katrielle was ten and Amunet thirteen, as seemed to fill the pages of history books, men came to town and brought with them ruin.
Their parents were killed. Katrielle was beaten and tossed to the side, too young to keep as a slave. Amunet, however, was taken.
Katrielle searched for two long years for her sister, but failed to find her. She was new in her first Nomad form and unaccustomed to using her powers. She was lost, and only the kindness of strangers and her ability to sew and cook kept her a
live.
Just as she was beginning to blossom herself, and her foster parents were beginning to talk of marrying her off to a noble in a distant land, Katrielle awoke to the worst feeling she had ever had. Worse than her beatings. Worse than losing her parents.
In that moment, that morning, she knew Amunet was dead. She knew how it had happened. She’d been used and abused to the point of death by her abductors. And now Kat’s big sister was no more.
She ran away from her foster home that day and made her way into the mountains. There, among peaks of death that were laced with ice and the ragged welcome of rocks weathered by time, she slipped and fell.
And found herself floating above the chasm, held aloft by a power she hadn’t known she possessed. This was her first experience with Nomadic magic. She had been born into the form of a young witch. And with this initial step, she started down the path of mage, becoming stronger – and more beautiful. In time, she found the dragons.
And they found her… but that was another story.
In the decades and even centuries that would pass, Katrielle would come to fully learn and appreciate who and what she truly was. She would come to understand her own powers, and she would understand that somewhere, in some realm, the Nomad that had strangely been born as her sister had probably been reborn as well. She was perhaps making a life of her own, time and again. And hopefully she had learned how to use her powers so that each life was better than the last.
You learned how to use your powers all right, said Lilith now, speaking directly into her sister’s mind.
Across from her, Amunet’s gaze narrowed. You knew… all this time, you knew where I was locked in that sleep. And yet you never came to me. You abandoned me.
No, said Lilith. I abandoned the monster you became.
Monster! Amunet’s indignant mental shout caused a rupture in the wall beside Lilith’s head. The brick and mortal split apart, and pieces of building material crumbled away to fall to the charred theatre floor below.
You think I’m the monster? How can you? After what we suffered?
And then Amunet froze, and her eyes grew wide, and Lilith knew that her sister had just figured it out. All of it.
It was you…. thought Amunet. You told Amun Re to place me in that sleep. How else would he have known to keep me from dying? “Only you knew,” she hissed aloud. In the distance, thunder rolled closer, drowning out the sound of sirens and alarms.
Only you knew what I was! Only you knew that asleep, I could never be reborn!
Lilith felt those tears now, the ones easily held back in physical pain but impossible to deny in the face of family. Amunet released her, and she stepped back. Her eyes were dark and stricken. All hint of glee at the situation she and the Entity had caused was suddenly gone. In its place was pain, pure and unhidden by practice.
But it was short-lived.
Outside the main theatre came the sounds of explosions, several one after another. The ground beneath them shook, and Amunet glanced to her right, to the open doors that had failed to keep the humans locked in to their demise. Beyond them, smoke and debris hid from view what was transpiring.
She seemed to consider the outside world a moment – then she straightened, rolling back her shoulders. She faced Lilith again, and her gaze narrowed. Just like that, her expression was serene. And cold.
“Evangeline is your daughter,” she said coolly. “I sensed there was something more to her, and now I know why. She is my niece. I had planned to make her family. Little did I know she was family already.”
Lilith felt a spike of something nasty rise within her. But she tempered it, knowing that Eva was with Korridum now, and he would die keeping her safe.
“And Arach will die to possess her, little sister,” said Amunet with a smile. She’d clearly read Lilith’s thoughts. “Should your Dragon King dispense of Arach’s current form, you and I both know he will only return in another.” She smirked and reached out to touch Lilith’s hair. “You look quite fetching with flaxen hair.”
Lilith pushed outward with her power and struck her sister in the chest, sending Amunet flying backward over the seats behind her. Somewhere near the fourteenth row, she struck velvet, and the seats beneath her crumbled.
Amunet’s fallen form vanished – and returned in a flash, standing to Lilith’s right. Lilith spun, but Amunet was sneakier and faster on that kind of draw. She struck Lilith across the face with a vicious backhand aided by cruel, hateful magic, and Lilith followed her sister’s example, flying backward to land twenty feet up the aisle, closer to the theatre’s doors.
She rolled a few feet, stopped, and looked up to find Amunet very slowly approaching her. “You know, you can always apologize,” said the dark haired Nomad. “And ask to be welcomed back into the fold. There’s always room for family.”
Lilith pushed herself up onto her elbow, but she was admittedly dizzy. She’d never been struck by her sister before. Pain was exploding behind her eyes and moving down her neck. Amunet’s power was immense. “Apologize for what, exactly?” she asked, as she touched her head and blinked to get the blurriness out.
“Oh, well let’s see,” said Amunet, pausing in the aisle to tick off her fingers. “First you let those men take me away. Not that you could have stopped them, but I’m choosing to count it anyway because that pretty much set the ball rolling.” She paused and grinned proudly. “Would you look at that, I’m absorbing the colloquialisms of this time already! Now, where were we?”
She ticked off a second finger. “Second, you stopped looking for me. That was most certainly your fault. Third, you had me killed – so to speak – by my own husband no less, which counts as our number four offense, in my book.” She held up a fourth finger as proof.
“And you did it right after I’d given birth to my daughter.” She held out her thumb, in a high-five of things Lilith had done wrong, then she lowered her hand and cocked her head to one side. “And now you dare to stand against me.” She shook her head slowly. “You’ve been a very naughty girl, little sis.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
William stood atop the tallest building in Seattle and watched the storm spinning miles away, where he knew two opposing forces were locked in deadly combat. For the first time in forever, he couldn’t tell how things would end. He didn’t know who would win or who would lose.
She was taking his Sight from him, just as she was once more giving him a chance at everything else. He’d known he would lose it; he’d never been able to see past this point. He saw flashes, nothing more. But he hadn’t realized… it would be because of her.
He closed his eyes as her face floated before his mind’s eye. She laughed, and he heard it down to his soul. She always looked the same, sounded the same. In every life. She always had those eyes.
Pain gripped his chest, real and physical. Heart attack? he wondered bitterly – because he knew he could never be so lucky.
Time pressed in on him. Helena was out there, alive again. And so was he. William could feel the bastard in his very non-human bones.
The storm over Elliott Bay and downtown Seattle was growing into a very big storm. Strange colored lightning emanated from its core, and fire smoke, thick and black, billowed up from some catastrophe below. Even from this distance, William could make out the combined extra lighting of police cars, firetrucks, and ambulances. Helicopters circled overhead, but had to steer clear of the unnatural tempest.
There were Nomads in that battle, Travelers of immense power. There were probably a dozen Kings and Queens of the Realms. And yet it was nothing compared to what William knew had been unleashed on the world.
He couldn’t put his finger on the exact moment or the triggering event, but something had set it in motion. Perhaps it had all begun when Roman D’Angelo first laid eyes on Evellyne Grace Farrow. Perhaps it was sooner than that. Something with more power than him had brought her back, breaking his contract with Time. And no matter how much he wanted to rail against the worl
d for betraying him so cruelly, the truth was… he’d known it was coming.
William was the last King. Helena was the last Queen.
He’d known all along. He’d known for eons. Every time he met her again, he knew. Every time she perished in his arms, he knew. Even when he’d signed the contract with his Time-tainted blood. He’d known.
He’d simply wanted to believe otherwise. And sometimes that desire was stronger than logic, stronger than fact. It was the fiction that ruled nations and started wars – belief. He was a fool.
“The good guys don’t always win,” came a small voice from behind him. William blinked, and slowly turned. The wind whipped through his coal black hair, and lightning flashed in his green eyes.
A young boy stood with him on the rooftop, fifteen to twenty feet from William. He was dressed in clothing from the early twentieth century, and he held a cap in his hands. His hair had perhaps at one point been slicked back by well-meaning parents, but play and weather had set it free, and now the wind tousled his dark locks with glee.
William laughed softly and shook his head.
The boy frowned. “What are you laughing at?”
“How good my imagination is,” William replied. Then he turned back to the storm and watched.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
William lowered his head, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. “You aren’t going away, are you.” It wasn’t so much a question as an admittance of defeat in this.
“I can’t. Not as long as you need me,” the boy said.
William turned back to him. “Yes, I’m scared. Are you happy?”
The boy seemed genuinely unperturbed, and genuinely curious. “Why are you scared? Nothing lasts forever. If he takes her, the world will end. You would finally be at peace.”
William’s anger spiked. Somewhere, a clock stopped. “Really?” he asked softly, incredulously. His accent, sculpted by countless years and too many places, became thicker in his ire. “Does time stop when there is no world to keep it?” He shook his head. He’d been around a hell of a lot longer than the people of planet Earth. He knew better.