Page 34

Chapter 34

Andy

E very time I thought I had the last problem sorted out, there was another one waiting for me. I had barely had time to begin to process everything we had done. The horrible things I’d witnessed. And participated in. And yet, there was always another concern to be addressed. I was tired of it. Tired of being the responsible adult. It had been days since we saved the realms. I just wanted to hide under my covers and sleep for a few years and let the rest of the world take care of its own damned self. Pretend none of this had ever happened.

But I couldn’t keep avoiding this particular elephant in the room.

“I don’t see the problem,” Aahil said in that droll voice he used when he thought someone was being an idiot. The someone in this case being me.

He was currently lounging on a pile of cushions in the side courtyard, where we’d all had a picnic lunch. He popped a grape into his mouth before continuing. “You are gloriously powerful now. No one can ever harm you or anyone who belongs to you. You’re living the dream. What are you whining about?”

I shook my head at him. “If anyone should understand what I’m worried about, it’s you, you little asshole!”

Zhong patted my arm, attempting to calm me. “It’s okay, master. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

I glared at him. “I fucking lifebonded every last one of you without your consent or your cooperation! That’s not okay!”

He just stared back at me with the same unbothered look he’d been wearing the whole time. It was useless to argue with the gargoyle. He’d wanted me to own him from day one.

I glanced around at the others for help, my gaze finally landing on River. “What about you? Surely you have something to say, River! You’ve only barely begun to get to know all of us and now you’re involuntarily tied to us for the indefinite future. Don’t you think we should see if we can undo it somehow?”

But the shifter was just as unconcerned at the rest of the idiots around me. He grinned at me like a housecat who had just been presented with a giant bowl of milk. “I feel amazing. My luck magic and my time magic are more powerful than ever. My shift is absolutely effortless, like sliding into a perfect new skin every time. So, am I mad that I find myself bound to a goddess of an earth witch and her sexy harem of lovers?” He chuckled. “Um, no. If you try to undo this, I will personally bite you in the ass. In leopard form.”

I chucked a piece of melon at him, but he dodged. Stupid shifter reflexes.

“Dyre?” I asked helplessly, turning puppy dog eyes on him.

But he wasn’t even fucking listening. The necromancer was sitting on the grass a few feet away, playing a dice game with Sky, while Moon braided his long, silky red hair with flowers and sang an off-tune song about gnomes and butterflies. He was completely lost to us.

I sighed. Though I couldn’t really be mad.

The truth was, while yes, I was horrified that I had bonded them all to me without conscious thought or consent, and I was terrified of how powerful I’d become… I didn’t want to undo it. I was now lifebonded to every single one of them. We were all deeply anchored and rooted into each other’s minds, bodies, and auras. It went further than any other lifebond I’d ever heard of. Even what I’d already had with Dyre was changed, deeper, stronger. And we had barely even begun to scratch the surface of what this meant for all of us.

But I didn’t care about any of that. Because deep inside me, this felt right. They were mine. I was theirs. That’s all there was to it.

“Well,” I said on a sigh. “I tried.”

Hasumi leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I told you no one was angry with you, Oleander. Here… feel.”

They put a hand on mine and focused, plucking on the cord that tied me and the water weaver together and amplifying it, like plucking a guitar string, causing an echo of sound. They gave me the ability to share in their abilities, to sense what everyone was feeling. And the predominant emotion from all of them was love. So much love and contentment. And fierce pride and protectiveness over what we had.

My lovers didn’t feel used or disrespected or trapped. In fact, if I did do something as stupid as try to break our bonds, they would fight hard to stop me. Bis patted my leg from where he sat on the lawn beside me. Our familiar bond had been well and truly established now, ever since he had helped Sunny find me in the dark and forge the lifebonds that had saved my life. I didn’t have to ask to know that he thought I was just being stubborn. The sentiment hummed along our link, with a fond, amused undertone.

“Fine,” I said, my voice thick with emotion as I pulled back from Hasumi’s link and the emotions that were overwhelming me. “Fine.”

Aahil winked at me from across the way, threw another grape up into the air and caught it with his mouth. Niamh cupped my cheek and turned my head so she could kiss me, hard and fierce, relaying exactly what she thought about the bond and whether it should stay.

Moon finished braiding Dyre’s hair and ran over to us, making a bee-line for Aahil and his silky red-streaked black locks. The jinn’s golden brown eyes went comically wide for a second, before he hissed in displeasure and disappeared in a harmless shower of sparks that made Moon shriek with laughter.

He reappeared a moment later, hiding behind Zhong. “Keep it away from me!” He called with a shudder.

“ Aahil!” I snapped. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that the fussy little jinn hated children. But still, this was the twins we were talking about.

He gave moon a disgusted look as she darted around Zhong and tried to grab the bright red fabric of Aahil’s harem pants. “No! Get your sticky little fingers off the silk!” He danced away to shrieks of childlike laughter as Moon joined in the one-sided game of tag. “Witch! Oleander! Call off your urchins or I will set them on fire.”

I barked a laugh as he started shooting little fireballs at the kids in an attempt to keep them back. But they weren’t afraid of him. They knew the fire wasn’t real. They just deflected the weak sparks with their own incredibly powerful magic and continued the chase.

The laughter died in my throat when Dyre leapt to his feet and crossed the courtyard in three long strides. He flicked his fingers and an impermeable shield formed around the children as he stormed toward Aahil. “What have I told you, jinn?!” the necromancer demanded, his deep voice full of fury. “If you harm so much as a single hair on their heads—” He loomed over the smirking jinn, one hand raised, and fury etched into every single line of his long, lean body. A sickly green spell flared to life in his palm, and I shot to my feet. Goddess, he was going to kill Aahil for real.

“He’s only playing with them, Dyre!” I shouted, afraid to get too close and get caught in the crossfire. “He wasn’t serious!”

Aahil’s head snapped toward me, and he huffed. “I absolutely am serious! Children are disgusting little nuisances. What kind of sick sense of humor made the gods cause you humanoids to give birth to these half-formed things ?!”

Niamh shook her head. “He really wants to die today,” she said as she came to calmly watch the show.

“He does have a point,” River drawled as he slowly stalked around us and toward the standoff. “It is interesting how elementals and some others spring fully formed from nature, while the rest of us must be messily birthed and grown. Fascinating, if you think about it. Such variety in the life around us.”

I rolled my eyes. Was now really the time for a dissertation?

Ambrose vanished in a cloud of shadows, reappearing between Dyre and Aahil. “My love,” he told the necromancer. “I understand how much you care for the children. We all do. But you know nothing the jinn says or does can ever be taken at face value.”

Dyre clenched his fist, extinguishing the necromantic spell he had held, but his cold violet gaze still pinned Aahil in place. “This is your last warning. Do not even joke about harming them, or you will answer to me.”

Aahil’s posture melted and he gifted Dyre with a taunting smirk. “Are you threatening to punish me, necromancer?”

Dyre’s face flushed bright red—something he was only recently capable of since bonding to all of us and having his soul restored—then he turned away with a huff. Striding past the children, he dropped the shield around them and muttered a gruff “don’t antagonize the jinn. He has problems with his brain.”

The twins looked at Aahil with wide eyes. Damn it, they had only just begun to loosen up and now they were wary again.

I opened my mouth to correct whatever nonsense Dyre had just planted in their heads, but the words froze in my throat when the entire pocket world shook. Something big was just outside our shields, and it wanted our attention.

Bis scrambled up my pantleg, then up my t-shirt, perching on my shoulder with a little peep of dismay. “They’re back,” he whisper-shouted in my ear, giving my hair a tug for emphasis, even as he opened up the link between us and prepared to help guide my magic.

“Ouch,” I complained, lifting a hand to try to loosen his grip on my hair before he left a bald spot.

But he was right to be afraid. I could easily sense what he could, with my enhanced powers. We had visitors of the interdimensional kind.

Oleander Lovell , the voice of the cleaners rang in my head, and I reached out along my bonds, making sure everyone could hear this.

“Oh. Hi again,” I said with a cheery voice and a wave that hopefully hid how badly I wanted to pee my pants right now.

They had been drawn to the pocket world before. It was their job to clean up the void. They fed on anything that didn’t belong—which included us and our makeshift sanctuary. They had agreed to give us time to safely return home. Apparently, our time was up.

Shit.

I knew we couldn’t stay in the pocket world forever. For one, we had to go out and bring back resources all the time. And for another, the energy here just wasn’t able to sustain us long-term. But even with most of the unrest resolved back in Magea and Planus, I was still reluctant to try to put the Lovell mansion back where it belonged.

It wasn’t a skill issue. I was sure I could do it. But… we were, unfortunately, celebrities now. The big scary goon squad that the SA and other governing bodies could threaten to unleash if anyone else ever got the idea to abuse people or start a war again. We needed to stay out of the public eye. For our sanity, and for everyone’s safety.

We hadn’t discussed all of this. It was one of those things I’d been avoiding. But apparently, time had just run out.

“Look,” I said, holding my hand up in a placating gesture toward the beings in the sky. “I know I promised we’d get out of here eventually, but… we need more time. We can’t leave yet. We’ve… there have been a lot of things going on in the other realms that we needed to settle, and…”

We are aware of your contributions toward restoring order, the voice informed me. You cannot stay here indefinitely. It upsets order. But you are valuable creatures. We would like to propose a… deal.

And when all-powerful intergalactic entities proposed a deal, you took it.