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I had never felt as unsteady in my existence. Who would dare to judge me as unworthy?

Soft laughter rained down from the sky, and I looked up from the ice nest. The moon hung there, waiting. I felt a presence, power wrapped in silk and shimmering light.

The Goddess was waiting, too. I had not imagined I could leave my little spy in this state for anything, but the moon goddess called again, the laughter fading. Brother?

My ice could freeze anything, even time. I gathered power and sent it out into the ether, shifting into my dragon form as the moon sparkled at me.

Sister, I greeted her as I flew up into one of her moonbeams. You do not find me worthy of your daughter? A mortal? I allowed my shock and perhaps too much of my offended pride to color my tone.

Her voice was silver bells, but they rang angrily. This daughter is dear to me in ways you cannot fathom, brother. Do not speak of her as if she is lesser.

An unfamiliar emotion washed through me. The same thing I’d felt when I learned I had touched my little spy without her consent. I do not think of her as lesser. She is my hoard.

She was silent for a moment. She is not yours alone. You do not think of her mates as equal to you. If you persist in that belief, you will destroy her. Her own grief was in those words, and in the memory she shared with them. Shadowy forms appeared in the moonlit sky between us.

A kraken taking a human male in his vast tentacles, jealousy and rage in his eyes, before he crushed him.

The moon goddess crying over the human, her tears, blood, and the golden milk that spilled from her breasts transforming him. Giving him a part of her own immortality.

Her other mates turned on the kraken, and he fled to the sea, filled with anger and pride. She allowed him to go, but his absence tore a wound in her soul, and in her power. She gathered her other mates to her bosom and flew over the earth faster and faster, weeping as she circled the world. Until at last, she extended enormous wings made of moonlight and flew out of the world.

Away from the pain and the memories of her mate’s betrayal.

If you do not allow her to take her mates, all of them, she will die.

And I would live forever knowing I had caused it. My pride would be the reason I lost her. As I struggled to accept this information, the idea of acknowledging all of her weak, mortal mates as my equal, I realized why I had not been seen as worthy.

I will allow… No. I will accept the others. I will name them my brothers and… I knew what I had to do. An immortal could not be tied to a mortal, tied to death. But the sacrifice the Goddess was asking was not a small thing, not a ladder of rungs or a pelt. But she had done it, had she not? She had loved deeply enough to carve out her own power.

I thought of the kraken, Lusca. I was already sharing my power with one of her mates. I sighed. And I will share my power with them.

All of them?

Something in her voice gave me pause. How many?

Seven marks, including yours, brother. Seven to heal what Edan’s fire has broken inside her. A soul-deep wound I cannot touch.

Me, Lusca, the Warlord, the seal men... Even in my thoughts, I would give them equal value. Lachlan and Kellin. Who are the others?

When she told me, the world froze even more completely.

How? I wondered. I shivered as she explained, fear icing my wings as nothing else had.

I reached a claw to my eye and felt the tip of my little spy’s needle-tooth. I had no choice. She’d pinned me to the temporal plane with her piercing, green jeweled pin. She’d stolen my heart with her sharp-edged words and soft touches. She was my hoard, and I could never leave her, no matter how many others she claimed.

All I could do was accept.

I am well pleased with you, brother, the moon goddess said softly as she rose, moving away. Take care of my daughter.

I will. I descended to earth, shifted into the form that pleased my little spy, and rejoined her in the nest with Lusca.

His deep blue eyes shone, as if he had been awake somehow. I nodded to him and pressed the tip of my cock to her entrance once more, then allowed time to thaw and begin again.

I sighed down at her now, knowing what had to be done. Fearing it.

But the moon goddess had allowed me to claim her daughter, and her daughter had claimed me as well. I would not break my promise, knowing what the price would be if I did.

I gathered my dragon form in my mind and balanced on the edge of the ice, my talons digging deep into the glossy ice. “I will find her mortal mates for her and bring them here.”