I have no idea what Amelia said to Ryder when I was in the gas station, but I came out to a completely different wolf. He had been an asshole the entire trip, but he was suddenly speaking in full sentences and even cracked a joke or two. Turns out, he and Amelia shared a love for 80s rock music and a horrible singing voice. We’ll just say that their duet to Carry On My Wayward Son would not be making it on CarPool Karaoke anytime soon. The 180 that our roadtrip suddenly took was so pleasant and fun all because of whatever the conversation was between Amelia and Ryder that I knew that I would have to reward her. We decided that we would camp out under the stars tonight. Here in the southern part of the US, it rarely gets to the point that we werewolves are cold, even in the dead of winter. And with the heat wave that had taken over during this part of mid-spring, it was perfectly acceptable for us to be camping. As we go further north, that same action is going to seem somewhat
“Where the hell are they?” Thor growls beside me. “We’ve been waiting for an eternity.” I put my hand on his thigh to calm him. He’s never been the most patient of gods, unless it’s when he’s hunting. Or in the bedroom. Or under a waterfall like last night. Or hell, under the table like it was at breakfast this morning. Ok, he’s patient with hunting and fucking. The thought brings a blush to my cheeks and he notices, his eyes immediately darkening and a wicked grin climbing onto his face. He leans into me, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. “What are you thinking about, elsker (lover/soulmate)?” I whisper back, trying to keep my face pleasant and blank for the gods and goddesses around us. “Something wholly inappropriate for meeting with the hosts of heaven.” He gives a chuckle that I can feel all the way down to my core. It’s at moments like these that I am thankful that gods don’t smell a female’s arousal in the way that my wolves can. That’s all they would ever s
“I fucking hate him!” I nearly scream as I throw the vase of black roses that he sent to me. “I can’t stand how he touches me or his fetid breath against my lips. I just want to fucking kill him!” “I know, Nyx, but you’ve got to wait. You know that isn’t his fate. You aren’t able to kill him. None of us are. We have to wait for the archangel to come.” Persephone tries to calm me. Since gaining my powers, Lucifer has loosened the reins on me. As his mate, I can’t be away from him for too long without feeling the effects. You would think that would make our matebond stronger. You would be wrong. See, with gaining my powers, I also figured out what my wonderful mate had in store for me. And we’ll just say that using me to create a child just so he can kill it with the same blade that he used to kill me so that he can absorb the child’s powers isn’t all that endearing. Problem is, in order to save not only me, but humanity from the fate of Lucifer becoming all powerful,
Hermes and I have made up. I’m one third of the way to getting my mates back. Honestly, I had thought that my apology to him was going to be the trickiest. Turns out, just being honest with him was all that I needed to do. Well, that and a good fucking. Men are simple. I’d be the same way. It was just that I didn’t really know him, I had just freaked the fuck out on him. So, it made trying to fix things harder. And I went on a walk with Alex last night and apologized to him. We also had sex out in the woods. I’m telling you, men are just easier. But now, I have the more difficult apology to get through. I have to apologize to JoJo. For fucking up in the exact same way that I fucked up with her and risking our matebond. Again. Because of how hard this is going to be, I had Hermes and Alex help me. I don’t know a lot about Valhalla, having not been here the entire time they were. What I did know of the castle was the huge room that we are in with its ginormous balc
“Alright. Let’s run through it again,” I say to Freya. I’d already gotten a new pot of dirt and a seed pushed inside of it for the Earth challenge. The hose to fill the pool, a pot of matured white-tufted dandelions, charcoal bricks, and an ingot of ore wait outside the door for each of their turns to be manipulated and changed. “Are you fucking serious, Nate? We’ve done it four times already!” she whines. “And we’re gonna do it a fifth. Let’s go. Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, and Metal. In that order,” I tell her. She just stares at me incredulously, like I’m not speaking English. “Frey, you have to be able to use all of these spells on command, whatever order they say, whenever they say it. You have a start date for your trial, but that doesn’t mean that they plan on having you do them all at once. It could be back to back to back or there could be days in between. They could have you working with training the acolytes and then have you do all five trails at one time.
After the bout of morning sickness, I was hit with a wave of exhaustion so deep that I could barely keep my eyes open. Lucifer was extremely concerned, but Persephone said that it was normal, especially in the first few weeks of pregnancy. Being pregnant as a goddess is different, faster, than the pregnancy of a human. Instead of being pregnant for 9 months, the baby will take less than half that time. That means that in four short months, this demon child of Lucifer’s, this child that spells out not just my death, but the death of life as we know it, will be born. It puts a definite timeline on when my friends, my family, and my true mate have to get their shit together and kill this asshole. And for Nathan to kill me. I feel bad for the child that is growing inside of me. It never stood a chance. Lucifer has always been planning to kill it to gain its power. I never wanted it. And the world needs it dead no matter what. If I didn’t know what horrible potential it holds t
Waking up this morning, I hadn’t realized what a momentous day that this would be. I mean, I knew that it would be the start of my High Priestess trials. I had a fair idea that the trials would all take place fairly quickly since we’re at war with the biggest, baddest evil out there. I had even prepared for the fact that I would probably be doing all of them today. Nate had prepared me for that really well. Nate… Maiden’s keys, that male has me wrapped around his little finger. It’s like I can’t get enough of him, and he surely hasn’t been able to get enough of me. He brought me back to his rooms last night after I had recovered from all of the trials he had me complete and basically worshiped my body. It was like he couldn’t get enough. Thank Selene that I can’t get pregnant, since we aren’t mates. I was woken by an incessant mental poke for someone trying to mindlink me. For it to wake me up like this, it has to be from either a family member or an alpha wolf. And by t
I feel like I’m experiencing deja vu from when Nyx was first taken. Here Nathan is again, refusing to leave the coven library as he tries to find a way to get Nyx back again. When Freya came back and told Nathan that she had seen Nyx on the Astral Plane, it was like he had been hit by a brick. His face was ashen and he sank to his knees right there in the ceremony room. But when Freya told him that he would still have to kill Nyx and that Nyx had enabled her Freya and Nathan to have a pup…it damn near broke him. It watched my pup, a strong, stubborn, brave male, curl into himself and break down in sobs that were so heartrending that everyone around us felt his pain. I think that Nathan had pushed away all thoughts of Nyx out of necessity. He knew that the next time that he saw her, he’d have to kill her. So, he allowed himself to be caught up in Freya. Nothing that I wouldn’t expect, given what’s been going on between them. And I think that he truly cares about Freya and wa
So much pain. Those fucking angels! They killed my mate. They killed MY CHILD! And then they tried to kill me. I had enough power left within me in order teleport away from them to the edge of Tartarus. But I was bleeding heavily from a wound that eviscerated my stomach and just missed my heart. Otherwise, I would have died right then and there. I used all the power that I had left to make my way through the cyclopses, the hydra, the river of fire. And then I make my way down the labyrinthine walkways, looking for my first love. Only she will have the power to heal me. Only she will have the power to bring me back to what I was before. I don’t know how long it took for me to get to her. How much blood flowed from my body. How much pain I felt. How low I had to get. I laid on the ground, covered in dirt, dehydrated, and weak. And then I feel someone push me with their foot.
It’s so hard to believe that the war is over. All of that build up and fear for just one, admittedly epic, fight? I guess I just never realized how much war is about waiting for something to happen. Hermes says that it’s really like that, but it’s still hard to believe. The angels are all up in a tither worried that they haven’t been able to find evidence of Lucifer’s body being gone. We haven’t heard anything from their god, so I’m assuming that he’s not worried about it. I mean, it’s been two weeks and nothing. Gabriel has even come to Jacob and said that he can start the process of detaching from the Christian god and giving up his powers. Though, halfway through Gabriel’s instructions on how to do that, Michael showed up and basically begged Jacob to remain a Throne for another six months. Just in case Lucifer came back. After meeting with Maeve, Dougal, and Win, the results were mixed. Maeve hated being a Throne.
A parent should never have to bury their child. Ever. Even though Nyx wasn’t of our blood or even of our species, she was just as much our child as Jared, Summer, and Chris. Even though she was only with us for a less than a year, she was our pup. And this is the worst pain that I’ve ever experienced, aside from the pain of losing Charlie. I stand with Kayla, Brandon, Jared, Summer, Rowen, Chris, and Esteban. Little Lilianna sits on Chris’s lap, the two year old not understanding what is happening. Neither do the triplets, Nixon, Natalie, and Nolan. Each are sitting with the parent that they seem to gravitate to the most: Nixon with her little hands trying to wipe the tears from Kayla’s face, Natalie in my arms and giving me hugs and kisses to try to comfort me, and Nolan sitting stoically in Brandon’s arms though he has his hands wraps around his father’s fingers. No, our pups don’t know what has happened, but they know that something is wrong. Nathan stands on Kayla’s othe
I immediately know when Lucifer has been slain. We all do. There’s a power in the air that just dissipates. It’s there one second and then it’s gone. And then the enemy either surrender or run away, dropping their weapons as they go. Oh, there are a few die hard proponents of what Lucifer was trying to do, but they don’t last long. They are quickly overrun by fae, witches, wolves, shifters, supernaturals, or angels. Within an hour of Lucifer’s death, all of the fighting is done and the medics have flooded the field. Gods and goddesses either heal right there on the field or teleport those that need immediate medical attention to the surgery tents. Arya and I quickly turn to the Elite and pups’ mates, and our friends. “Summer! Jared!” Arya says, looking up from healing a nasty bite to Tomas’s leg that is already showing signs of infection. “Here!” Summer shouts out in a pained voice. I turn to see
All three of us see the Morning star leaving the palace and stepping onto the field with the angels and we know that time is running out. We have to hurry and get to Nyx and sever her bond with Lucifer so that he is weak enough for them to kill him. No one else seems to be guarding the castle, at lest not on our side. I can see that demons and gods are getting into ranks and preparing to get onto the battlefield. The problem is, they’re too slow. The angels are already hear. They have breached the walls that surround the castle, their armor and very skin gleaming, their swords and battle axe’s, and spears coated in the multiple colors of blood that each of these evil beings possess. “We need to get inside while they’re all occupied,” Rowen says as we run towards the gates. “And before anyone comes in as reinforcements.” “Anyone see how to get the gates open?” Alexander says, his eyes rapidly taking in the structure in front of us.
The second that we make our way through the gate into the Underworld, we’re all ready to start fighting. I mean, that’s the logical thing to do, right? Problem is, we seem to have gone into a gate where there are minimal guards. Like, this gate seems to have been forgotten completely. There's two there and they were taken out by the blast that opened the gate. Either we got really fucking lucky. Or we’ve walked into a trap. Angels pour into the hole behind us, creating a perimeter to keep us safe from behind. No, they won’t be able to stop Lucifer, but they are cannon fodder that will slow him down. Yeah, that sounds really fucking shitty to say it like that, but they knew the score when they were assigned to the role. It is what it is. From the gate, I can see Hades’s palace, where Lucifer and his new queen, Nyx, have been staying since they were kicked out of Valhalla. We’re coming in about five miles to the south and three miles above the palace. The gate is in
It is killing me to wait here with the gods while my mates are all in three different spots right now. I’m so agitated and distracted by this fact that my winged shoes are making me float about a foot off of the ground. Josefina is with her parents, fighting near the front lines. What I hate is that she doesn’t have any powers to fight with. She’s just got her strength and skills as a warrior and a wolf. Thank fuck that the wolves take fighting seriously, so she has a ton of skill. But that only helps me feel just a little bit of relief. She is definitely the mate that I’m most worried about. But then there’s Alexander. He and his twin are escorting Nathan to get to Nyx so that he can kill her and the child in her stomach. Hecate had told us that Nyx is in labor starting this morning. So they have to get to her quickly. Of course, that means finding the right time to get past the enemy army ahead of the rest of our allies and then fight whoever Lucifer has guarding the
The contractions had been happening off and on for the past two days. “Braxton-Hicks,” Persephone assured me. “It’s just your body’s way of getting ready for birth. It can happen for a long time before you actually go into labor. I really wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.” But I knew better. I could feel this evil thing’s elation as it could feel me preparing for birth. It had been tossing and turning in my stomach, moving into position for birth. So when I woke in the wee hours of the morning today, feeling strong achy bands of pressure all around my stomach. I let out a wheezy, breathy screams as the feeling took my breath away. I had been laying on my left side, my head pillowed on Lucifer’s arm, his other arm keeping me pulled into him. When I had woken in pain, it woke him up as well. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” Lucifer asks, his eyes are wide, but his voice is laced with aggression and protectiveness. He had moved over top of me, caging me against t
The screeching sound that comes from above us sounds like a combination between the howl of a wolf, the cry of some kind of bird of prey, and a woman’s scream. We look up and there are seven of these…things. They have the body of a woman, looking heavily pregnant and near giving birth, talons for feet and wings like a giant eagle, and the head of an enormous rabid jackal. But the belly is actually full of the babies and men that they’ve eaten. They are wearing what looks like a skull bikini, a skull covering each breast and her vulva. It’s fucking weird and looks very uncomfortable. In their hands, each carries one knife made of fire and another made of ice. The Lamashtu. The seven aspects of the Mesapotamian Goddess of evil. Think Hecate, but in seven different bodies instead of sharing the same body. And when I say that she was evil, I mean EVIL. Evil just for evil’s sake. One of the few goddesses in all of the various pantheons who didn’t have a reason to be evil. S