Max couldn't breathe as those words struck him like a blow. She'd never said that to him before.
Not once.
Honestly, there had been times when he was rather sure she hated his guts. Times when he'd have sworn she wanted to take that sword and run him through with it. Or cut off a part of his body he was rather fond of.
Teasingly, she placed her hand to his chin so that she could work his gaping mouth for him. "I love you, too, Seraphina," she said in a feigned masculine voice.
He laughed and kissed her marked palm. "That I definitely do. You just caught me off guard with your reaction."
Gathering her in his arms, he held her as Artemis's handmaidens threw open a door and ran screaming into their room with demons chasing after them.
Yeah, this was even worse than they'd expected. How the gallu had gotten here, he couldn't imagine. They shouldn't have had any access to Olympus.
Yet here they were.
Acheron ignored the maidens and rushed to a room on their left. Max led Sera after him while the others went to help Artemis's servants and the other gods.
Seraphina had never seen anything like this. It was worse than any dragon attack she'd ever been in. The gods were fighting, yet the gallu were fierce.
As soon as Acheron opened the door on their right, they saw that Artemis had been locked in her bedroom with her granddaughter, who had Sin's coloring, but was the spitting image of a micro Artemis. Remarkably, the girl was fiercely calm as she held on to her grandmother. It was as if she knew Artemis would never allow any harm to come to her.
But the most shocking sight was the Malachai demon who protected them both. In full demon glory, he wore his black battle armor and had his wings spread wide to provide a barrier between them and anyone or anything that came through the doors after Artemis or Mia. His red and black skin swirled over a handsome face and perfect body. But for his demonic appearance and bright red eyes, he'd have been exquisite.
At Sin's entrance, he allowed the Sumerian god to run behind him to see to his daughter, who released Artemis to fall into her father's arms. When they followed after Sin, the demon faced them with his sword, ready to battle.
Until he saw Acheron.
Acheron drew up short as if waiting for the demon to attack him.
Instead, the Malachai inclined his head. "We tried to teleport Mia out when it started, but they have the whole place locked down. I'm amazed any of you got in."
Acheron manifested his staff. "I don't use the standard channels. I have my own access point."
"Glad to hear it. Can you get Artemis and the baby out?"
Sin cupped Mia's head with his hand. "Nick's right. I can't teleport out of here with her. We're locked in."
"Great," the Malachai mumbled before he narrowed his eyes on Max. "Hey dragon, want to help a brother out? I think together we can route them out of here."
"Right behind you, kid." Max turned into his dragon form. He hesitated. "You want to join us or stay?"
Seraphina frowned at the question until she realized that Max had a saddle on his back. While she'd heard of war dragons and their riders, she'd never seen one. "Are you sure?"
"There's no place I'd rather you be."
The thought of riding a dragon terrified her. But she knew Max would never harm her, and her curiosity rose up. How different could it be than riding a horse into battle? Just a little larger horse, really.
Okay, a much larger horse. Still ...
Swallowing her fear, she forced herself to climb up his wing and into the saddle.
"You ready?"
She secured herself to the saddle and braced herself for flight. "Ready."
The force of his lift stole her breath. No wonder the saddle had such a high back to it. Winds whipped at her as he followed after the Malachai and into the battle. His massive wings were swift and he could seriously maneuver in spite of his gigantic size.
As could the Malachai.
Together, they rained down blasts of fire onto the gallu. The fighting out here was ferocious. Between the gods and the demons. For her life, she couldn't understand why the gallu were attacking the Greek pantheon. And as they battled, she began to realize why Maxis had placed her on his back.
From up here, she couldn't reach anything. Nothing and no one could get near her. A part of her was irritated. The other was charmed by it.
Until he banked hard to the left. She grasped the saddle to see what had caused it.
Artemis had come out of her temple and was firing fierce and fast at the demons with her bow and arrows.
The Malachai laughed at her fury. "I think someone's a little upset they dared to threaten her granddaughter."
Max nodded. "But it gives me a thought."
"What?" Sera asked as he flew away from the Malachai, toward the main temple on the hill.
He skimmed over the demonic horde. "Look at the number of demons here."
"There are a lot of them. Your point?"
Max hovered just out of the battle frenzy. "Want to do some recon?"
"Depends. If we have to fight, are you going to let me touch the ground?"
He turned his massive dragon's head around to look at her over his shoulder. "You caught that, did you?"
She lifted her legs that were a mile or so above the ground. "Hard to miss."
He flashed her an unrepentant grin. "Fine. If there's fighting, I'll put you down for it."
"Very well, then. Lead the way, my dragon lord. Obviously I will go wherever you take me."
Maxis pulled out of the fighting and attempted to leave Olympus. At first, he couldn't. Something had him blocked. But his mother's heritage allowed him to bypass the gallu magick and find a back way through it in spite of whatever they'd put over the place to keep the others from coming in or leaving.
Determined to get to his brother's Tablet, he carried her down to Irkalla. While he hadn't seen Kessar among the attackers on Olympus, he knew that the majority of the gallu demons had to be there and not in their hidden realm where they'd been earlier.
Which meant he had a shot at getting the Tablet while the gallu fought against the Greek gods and others.
He hated to back out of the fighting, but this was much more important. The Emerald Tablet was as much a threat to their safety, if not more so, than the demons they were battling. This was their best chance to get it back.
At the entrance to the ancient nether realm, Max stopped and allowed Sera to dismount. He manifested his own armor and weapons. He paused as he caught the curious frown on her face while she watched him. "Hard to sneak about in caverns in a dragon's body."
"True. You do take up a lot of room." There was an impish light in her hazel eyes that was so incredibly beguiling. He remembered now why it'd been so hard to leave her. Why he'd carried her to a private room that night they'd first met, instead of sending her on her way.
He'd always been so discriminating about the swans in his life. Never had he taken a human lover. Humans had never appealed to him in any way. He'd been so selective and sparse in his lovers that his brothers had often mocked him for it.
But the night Seraphina had come into that ancient drinking den with her sister tribeswomen, he hadn't cared what she was. Her bold touch had electrified him and her lips had awakened a part of him that he hadn't known existed. That alone should have warned him that they were destined to be together.
That the Fates had decreed her as his.
Now ...
He dipped his head beneath the crest of her helm so that he could capture her plump lips and drink her in. As always, she answered his passion with enough heat that it made him curse this mission and the fact that they didn't have a single minute for him to strip that armor from her lush body and savor her the way he wanted to.
But later, he would make damn sure that she knew exactly how much he still craved her. Deepening his kiss for one last taste, he pulled back with an irritated groan and forced himself to attend to the most pressing matt
er.
Which unfortunately wasn't the aching need in his swollen groin.
Seraphina felt the absence of his body heat like a physical blow. Her senses were still reeling and unfocused from that incredible kiss. And as she watched him walk in front of her, she had a hard time staying focused on anything other than how undeniably sexy he was. It was much easier to fight with him as a dragon.
No man should look that fine in the flesh.
Biting her lip, she used the pain to focus her thoughts on something other than the way his armor clung to his muscles. The way he moved like a lethal warrior.
Stop it!
She shook her head to clear it. Have you any idea where we're going? She sent her thoughts to him.
Yes and no. I'm tracking the Tablet. But no, I don't know the layout here.
You fake it well.
He laughed silently.
She didn't know why she allowed him to charm her so. He was completely irresistible. And she remained quiet as they snuck through the nether realm, so as not to distract him from his task. It was incredibly dark here. Eerily quiet. No wonder the Sumerians had always described this place as drab and bland.
The dead here decayed into nothing just as they did in their graves. And the only good thing she could say was that they didn't punish their dead. But neither did they reward them for a life well lived. They merely existed here until they faded away.
How completely tragic. What a dreary, awful place to be sent to for eternity.
Suddenly, Max paused.
Sera tried to peer over his shoulder to see what had his attention, but he was too tall for that.
Wait here.
She wanted to argue, but knew better than to try, so she nodded and stayed put. It was probably for the best. This way she could watch the darkness for someone sneaking up on them. Not that she could see them in the darkness.
But maybe they'd be heavy breathers. Make her job easy.
Not have bathed for a few days ...
A few extremely long minutes later that felt like an eternity in hell, she felt a presence behind her. She jerked around, intending to punch the culprit and run.
"It's me," Max whispered in her ear. "I got the Tablet."
"Don't do that!" She lightly flicked her fingers against his stomach to let him know how little she appreciated his startling a hundred or so years from her life.
He opened his mouth to speak, then went completely still as a voice cut through the darkness with an eerie, deep resonance.
"Well, well. I knew if you thought our numbers were down you'd come. And here Nala thought I was a fool for telling her that."
Gasping, Seraphina flinched as someone lit a torch in the darkness. Then she wished they hadn't.
Oh dear gods.
They were surrounded by gallu.
15
Max cursed under his breath as he saw Kessar in the blinding torchlight. An effing trap ... and he'd walked right into it. He should have known the Tablet wouldn't be so easy to find and grab.
How stupid am I?
Well, that didn't bear thinking about right now. Worse, he'd known the demon wasn't an idiot. That he'd only have one shot at this and that would be it.
And I blew it.
Good going, jackass.
Not only had he killed himself, he'd killed Sera, too. Yet he refused to be a part of her death. One way or another, he would get her out of this, at least.
Praying for a miracle, he swung around on Sera and gently pushed her into the shadows, hoping this worked, since he was the bigger target they were after. Then he ran, drawing the others away from her location. Okay, not the brightest plan ever, but luckily they were pretty stupid and ran after him with everything they had.
What he didn't expect was for Sera to run after him, too. And when she turned into a dragon and picked him up to fly him above the demons chasing them, he couldn't have been more stunned.
At first, he hadn't even believed it was her. But as he looked over her beautiful red scales and the talons that held him, there was no doubt.
His dragonswan had saved him ... as the dragon she hated.
Unfortunately, she couldn't travel far in that form. The walls of the cavern narrowed so much that she had to set him down and return to being human or risk losing or breaking her wings.
"Impressive," he said in an awed tone.
She flexed her arm as if assuring herself that she was "normal" again. "And what you did was wildly stupid. How have you managed to survive for so long?"
"No real idea." He checked to make sure he still had the Tablet with him, then felt along the glassy walls, trying to pick a way through the domain toward an exit or at least some light. Not even his powers could detect anything. It was so frustrating to be this completely blind.
"Do you still have the Tablet?"
"Yeah. Not that it seems to be doing us any good. And if Kessar captures and bleeds me, it'll be a lot worse. For everyone ... especially me."
Sera considered that. "He used the Tablet to awaken my tribe. Can you use it to do the same?"
Max hesitated. "How do you mean?"
"Can you reverse whatever he's done to my tribe and free them again?"
He wasn't sure he liked where her thoughts were going with this. "Yes, but I fail to see how that could be helpful." Especially since the Amazons and Katagaria wanted him even more dead than the demons did.
"If you free them, we can drive back the demons, and I'm thinking Nala will know some way out of here."
"Even if she does, I doubt she'll help you and I know she won't help me. I'm the dragon whose head she wants to mount on her wall."
"I think I can persuade her."
"I'm not sure I want to bet my life on this."
"You have a better idea?"
"Fight our way out."
She scoffed at what he considered an almost legitimate, if not sane, plan. "You think that'll work?"
"Did I throw logic at you? No. Why do you want to be mean to me like that?"
She laughed at his teasing tone. "I'm serious, Maxis. I can get them to help us and fight them."
"And if you're wrong?"
"I'll build you a nice funeral pyre."
He let out a short laugh. "You are all kinds of not funny."
"Do you have a better option?"
"Sadly, no. At least nothing that wouldn't get me slapped for proposing it." He let out a long sigh as he heard the demons closing in on them. They had to decide and move fast or they'd be captured again. "All right. We'll try this your way with your tribe. But if I get eaten or speared to death ... I will not be happy."
She took a step, then paused. "Any idea where the demons might have taken my tribe?"
He groaned at her question. "None."
Before she could speak, he pulled her behind him and began hammering the demons with fire again. It terrified her how close they'd come to them while she'd plotted an escape. Had he not been paying attention, the demons would have had them. As it was, they screamed from Max's attack and fell back, into the darkness.
Max pressed her forward, deeper into the nether realm he wasn't completely unfamiliar with, wishing he had another way out. Worse, the smell and sight of the damp cavern dredged up long-buried memories he didn't want or need at this particular time.
In the back of his mind, he saw Dagon as the ancient god walked between their cages, trying to decide who to use next in his inhumane experiments. The young dark-haired prince who took after his father and not his Apollite mother trailed after him.
"I want to be a dragon! You have to make me one! You promised!"
Dagon had glared at the prince. "Stop whining, Linus. I'm doing the best I can. You saw what happened. The last Apollite I merged with a dragon exploded into gory pieces. You really want to risk that?"
Linus had expelled a frustrated breath and stomped his foot like a petulant child. "It's not fair! I'm a prince. Second in line to the throne. I should have my choice of animals I want to me
rge with!"
Dagon had passed an irritated glare at the younger man. "You're lucky your father's half sister is a goddess whose devoted husband is willing to do this shit for you. So instead of bothering me with your insipid complaining, you should be saying, 'Thank you, Uncle Dagon, for doing everything you can to save my life and for not merging me with a hyena or a donkey.'"
"You wouldn't dare!"
Dagon turned on him with an evil smirk. "I'm a god of black magick and possessed with a wicked sense of irony and hostility, you really want to push my patience, boy?"
Linus had wisely backed down and left Dagon to pull a lion from its cage toward the room where he performed his grotesque experiments.
Alone, the prince had drifted to Max and Illarion. His gaze tinged by insanity, he'd stared in at them. "You can understand me, can't you? I know you can. I want to be a dragon, too. Like you. To have your power and strength. Imagine what we could do together ... the power of a dragon and the bloodline of a divine prince. We could rule this earth and all the kingdoms and peoples. Then we'd show my father and brother who the real heir should have been...."
As he wandered off, Illarion had glanced over to Max. Are you going to tell the god what his nephew thinks?
No. Let Dagon merge him with one of us. The best thing that can happen for this world is that Prince Linus explodes and dies. Preferably in a great deal of pain.
Maxis! You can't do that. We're supposed to protect human life.
He's not human, Illy. He's Apollite and he's insane.
Even so, I think we need to tell Dagon.
And I think we should stay out of it. No good has ever come from drakomai meddling in the affairs of gods or man. They dragged us into this, and we need to extricate ourselves as quickly and cleanly as possible.
But true to his most irritating nature, Illarion hadn't listened. He'd told Dagon of the prince's illustrious plans. And to protect his nephew from them, Dagon had lied and told Linus and his father that he didn't want to risk merging the prince with the dragons. Rather, Linus's elder brother, Eumon, had been crossed with them, and Linus with the wolves.
An even more dangerous concoction and not the safer alternative Dagon had imagined. Since the merging heightened the essence of both species, it'd taken the ambition of the Apollite prince and crossed it with the extraordinary cunning and bloodthirsty ruthlessness that marked the wolves.
By trying to save his sons, Lycaon had damned them all.
Thus proving that even the gods and kings could be stupidly blind when it came to family and wanting to do their best for them. Feelings forever got in the way of common sense and blinded the most intelligent of beings.