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At least the blond warrior was mostly silent. He didn’t mind going on a quest withthatone. But Ere was a whole different proposition.
The irritating male chuckled with delight, as if Kai had said something particularly witty.
“Oh, you’re not the only one!” he chortled. “But lucky for you, I’m only Sorin’s Bane. I share my effervescent personality more judiciously with others.”
“Thank fuck,” Kai mumbled beneath his breath.
“Come on,” Ere coaxed, unfortunately keeping up with Kai’s pace on the steed that Sorin and he rode together.
“Tell me what happened. I thought you were gone forever at the end of the twin goddesses’ war. Isawyou perish. And yet, here you are.”
“So are you,” Kai pointed out.
“Well, okay, I can go first if that helps,” Ere volunteered.
As long as his chatter stalled the need for Kai to divulge, he didn’t care. He would have preferred silence, but there was a tiny part of him that was curious about Rai, now Erebu.
He’d never admit it though.
“After I died taking the Twins down with me, I was reborn thousands of years later as a Pure One.”
Ere tilted his head and thought about it.
“I suppose I’m not one hundred percent Pure. My sire is the legendary general of the Pure Ones, Tal-Telal, the Demon Warrior. And my mum is the Dark Princess, Ishtar Anshar, Heaven’s Brightest Star. Biology doesn’t really matter though, since it’s the soul that determines Pure versus Dark. I guess I have a Pure soul, since I keep getting revived after close encounters with death.”
Sounded likeErestruck the jackpot, as humans put it, Kai thought. His rebirth was like the beginning of a fairytale.
But, then, the male continued.
“’Course, given that the Pure and Dark Ones were bitter enemies at war, Ishtar couldn’t keep me, and apparently thought I hadn’t even survived the birthing.”
He waved a hand flippantly as he hastened to say, “Long story short, I ended up as a tool, the Creature, of one of the evilest demonesses that ever existed, called Medusa, for many millennia. And only recently ‘saw the light.’”
Even Kai, who wasn’t at all attuned to the feelings of others, could sense the gruesome details of the story that Ere chose not to tell.
His heart kicked strangely in his chest, as if his dragon brother’s untold pain affected him too. He tried to shrug it off, tried to pull his metaphorical wings around himself to ward off emotional bombardments.
It didn’t work. He cared.
A surge of long-forgotten, instinctual protectiveness blindsided him. He didn’t acknowledge it in his own mind, and certainly wouldn’t voice it. But he knew that while he was accompanying Ere on this quest, anything that tried to harm the male would have to do so over Kai’s dead body.
He felt Sorin’s gaze upon him and briefly met the warrior’s eyes.
There was a silent, mutual understanding. Kai gave an almost imperceptible nod.
He approved of Ere’s chosen Mate.
“But I kind of died a few years ago battling another one of the evilest demonesses that ever existed,” Ere continued with casual nonchalance, as if none of it mattered.
But Kai could tell that it did. It mattered a great deal.
“I think she was actually the Dark Goddess reincarnated, sent down to the mortal realm as punishment for her transgressions into the body of a fox spirit at first. Until she amassed enough power to become a manmade dragon. The Hydra.”
Here, Ere shuddered dramatically, though Kai could tell that not all of it was theatrics.
“Anyway, I fought her and we KO’ed each other. I don’t know what happened to her tainted black soul, but I managed to bargain my way back to the living by agreeing to fulfill the Jade Emperor’s quests.”
Ere grinned brightly at him, as if the blinding brilliance could mask the shadows that lurked in his eyes.
