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What is this?
I tried to scream for help that I was being pulled downward into darkness when the vision ended abruptly. And with it went the rage I was feeling.
Above me, I saw blurry faces as I shook violently on the ground. I could hear Rehema screaming my name, but she sounded far away, too far away.
Visions like this, so powerful that they knocked me onto my ass, were rare. I knew from what I'd seen that danger was imminent, not just for me but for everyone. I could feel in my core that we were all in trouble. I had no idea what was coming, when, or what it would be, but I'd been overcome with crippling peril.
I tried to speak, to tell everyone to run, but darkness claimed me before a word could leave my lips.
* * *
Lucian
Icould hear Natalie’s steady heartbeat from outside her house. She’d been teleported home by Rehema, and I quickly followed. She was stable and asleep, no longer shivering as if frozen. I’d heard her teeth chattering when I first arrived.
I closed my eyes as I inhaled her scent that was still clinging to my clothes and took a deep breath, hoping her scent would help calm the storm raging inside me. Unfortunately, it was barely helping.
Why would you give me and Rumir the same mate, Goddess? Why?
Rumir and I couldn’t stand the sight of each other. The Goddess knew that, and yet she chose to make us rivals anyway. He wasn’t a werewolf. How could he possibly be Natalie’s mate?
I knew Rumir only saw me as his mother’s favorite, the son she’d always wanted, whereas he was her true son, a demigod who couldn’t even be called a wolf.
My wolf had howled with rage when I saw the way he’d looked at Natalie.
Natalie was my mate, my other half. Not his!
I palmed my face. Goddess, I was being a hypocrite. Up until tonight, I’d been trying to guard my heart. Although I liked Natalie, I was still looking for an out, a way to escape our mate bond. But I hadn’t fought hard enough to stay away from her. I couldn’t.
There was not much else I could do in that regard. I knew that the more I fought it, the tighter it would get. And then my control would be tested even further.
I’d been secretly doing research to find out if it was possible to break our bond safely, but so far, rejection was the only solution. So I had no choice but to wait until the Goddess woke up, then ask her to explain herself.
I thought I’d be able to protect my heart from Natalie, but already, she managed to burrow under my skin and made a home there. Every time she looked up at me with those bright blue eyes, I’d felt a crippling shame that there was so much I was keeping from her—the things that tortured me at night when I slept, the memories of things I’d done.
I couldn’t hide my past anymore. She deserved to hear the truth and the reasons we couldn’t be together. The last woman who loved me died. And it had been my fault. I’d vowed to never love again, to never again put someone else’s life at risk. I should have told Natalie the truth from the start.
But now, when I could lose her to Rumir. The thought alone was like a blade through my heart.
Why did things have to be so complicated?
I had to talk to the Goddess about this. She needed to return, now.
Rumir and I had always had a strained relationship, and the Goddess had just made it a thousand times worse. He was her son and I, her first creation. Rumir believed the Goddess loved me more than him, and his hatred for me had only grown ever since he’d been old enough to understand who I was.
I didn’t see myself as anything like a son to the Goddess, and certainly not nearly as important to her as her actual son. I was an experiment of hers, a representative of the Goddess herself on Earth. I knew she cared for me, as she cared for all of her earthly children, but being the first was something that had caused me a lot of agony.
I’d survived having divinity poured into a mortal body, but not without consequences.
It took years for me to gain control over my divinity and my wolf. Even now, I still had to be mindful. So I kept to myself and stayed away from anything that might trigger my wolf into taking over. Her grand experiment had cursed me to a life of relative isolation.
I turned my back to the house as Rumir fell from the sky, his feet cracking the earth. I glanced at him as his large dragon wings folded behind him. He walked towards the house and stopped by my side, both of us facing opposite directions.
His bones cracked and shifted as his wings slid into his back, and then we stood there, outside our mate’s home, in silence.
Rumir was the one with the reputation for being a hothead, but right now, I wanted to rip him to shreds.
"I won't share her." He spoke low, and I released the breath I’d been holding. We had to find a way to deal with this. Werewolves were territorial, but dragons were even worse. And Rumir had the blood of both species. “This was either a mistake or a sick joke,” he added.
