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I couldn’t move. I hurt. My heart, body, and soul throbbed. But I was myself.
Above me, the dark energies condensed into a swirling storm of grey and black. A pair of glowing red eyes emerged from its depth. The long-dead god whose power had been sealed, stolen, ripped apart, and then unleashed in the name of love took his first breaths in our world in over eight hundred years. He needed a body. I was supposed to be that body, but I fought, and now he couldn’t gain access.
Brad knelt by my side and rested the casket on his hip. “It’s the only way.” He gestured to the casket. “We have to get Gorm back in. The casket needs blood, right?”
I shook my head. There was no way to get Gorm back into the casket. But Brad already had a knife in his hands. He slit one palm after the other and turned, placing both bleeding hands on either side of the casket. He threw his head back, looking up at the darkness. “Go back into your container! You are no longer needed here.”
The sound of metal grating against steel, nails on a chalkboard, or even a saw cutting through steel… a thousand grating textures combined into a powerful laugh I knew would haunt my nightmares forever.
Forever is a long time.
It really is.
The darkness whipped into a whirlpool that engulfed Brad. A single tear ran down my face as I watched my ex-lover’s body age fifty years in seconds. Behind him, the god took the shape of a minotaur. Dark, cloven hooves connected to the complexed, dense muscle of a man. His leathery skin stretched over more stomach muscles than any one man should have. Although his arms were massive, they were human in shape, unlike his face, which protruded like a bull. A set of wicked, sharp, curved horns poked into the ceiling and dripped with familiar fluorescent-green power.
The god stretched and ran his hands across his new form. He eyed his casket and hovered his hand above it. Goopy, fluorescent-green liquid dripped from his fingers, disintegrating his old prison.
His gaze dropped to me. “I can’t touch you, but you won’t fight what you can’t remember.” He grinned, exposing his bone-white human teeth, and put a hand on Brad’s shoulder. “Do it.”
Brad’s ancient body fought to move. He blinked once. The whites of his eyes turned fluorescent-green and then red as Gorm took possession of his body.
“As you command,” Brad’s simple human tones mixed with the grating of the gods.
Brad creaked as he bent down and placed his hand above the hole in my stomach. Despite the lack of an object embedded there, the dregs of his original spell still laced my essence, making it hard to move. I met my ex’s gaze. For a heartbeat, the red cleared. A ribbon of Ley Line magic shivered against my skin. The red returned with a vengeance, and he gripped the spell and pushed with the new demonic power of his master. Pain like I’d never experienced before split my vision tenfold before my brain checked out.
I woke up in my apartment in Graeagle with no memory of any of it, just a vague need to get away from everything coupled with a deep sense of loss.
I opened my eyes, my real eyes, and stared up. A dark wood ceiling had a white strappy gadget of some sort hanging from it directly above me. “Is that a sex swing?”
“Jay.”
“Love.”
“Wiggles.”
Tyson’s chest rumbled at my back while my legs lay in Rehan’s lap. Lux and Ogden each held one of my hands, rubbing my palms like they had in Lux’s tower. Instead of askingquestions, the four let me breathe and process, each caressing my skin and silently sending me support.
Past me might not have taken this moment. I had my memories back. We had enough information to move forward. But that isn’t who I wanted to be anymore. I needed to process…even if it hurt.
I unpacked everything, piece by piece, and sorted it. I didn’t get mad at myself. I didn’t judge myself. I acknowledge every emotion and let it exist. How much time it took didn’t matter. Only when my heart rate and thoughts calmed did I speak.
“How long was I out?”
“Not long,” Ogden answered. “Less than an hour. Is your magic back?”
Reluctantly, I pulled my hands away from Lux and Og and held them above my head. I cycled through my mates’ elemental powers before calling on my own. My fingers tingled, but no magic came. I tried to check for my mate marks, only to find the earrings in the way. I pulled them off. The crystals were drained of their color and cracked. I put them to the side and pressed my fingers against my mate marks, feeling both Rehan's wave and Tyson’s flame.
“I’m still cursed.” I met each of my guy's faces, and to my surprise, I saw relief. “And still marked.”
“So, our synchronized nutting did feck all?” Tyson asked.
I took a calming breath. “I didn’t say that.”
My inner voice started to speak, and I forced myself to open my mouth. “I was uncomfortable, vulnerable, and not in control. But you asked me to trust you, so I did, and you took care of me.” I hugged myself. “When we all came together, our connection tingled and grew. The curse rewarded me with my memories.”
I met each of my dragon’s gazes as ancient Brad’s words suddenly made sense:I knew you could learn to love, that you weren’t that cold woman who turned from me.
With my dragon’s arms wrapped around me, for the first time in a hundred years, I let tears for myself roll down my cheeks.
