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“Vision, even for a dragon, is woefully unreliable. What you can see with great clarity may not be real; what you cannot see may be the ultimate reality.”

— T.A. Barron

Well, now he knew:

What happened when a Pure soul gave all of themselves in love to another…but didn’t receive the same depth of love in return.

A part of him felt the danger before it happened, as if he was balancing on the edge of a precipice, and what lay below remained perilously unknown.

How long and hard would he fall? Were there jagged rocks at the bottom? Would there be a bottom?

Or would love returned ultimately catch him and lift him up?

As he released his seed inside of Lizzy, knowing what she wanted from him—what she demanded from him—he’d known he was taking that leap. Taking a risk.

The biggest risk of his life.

And though his heart and soul hadn’t yet been shattered on jagged rocks, he was still falling. Still uncertain that she would ever catch him.

She didn’t truly love him.

Not yet.

He also realized as he tried to distract her with a searing kiss that this was always how it had been with her first two incarnations, when she’d been the Pure Goddess and when she’d been Lilith. The almost-love she gave him had been enough to Sustain him for decades before the Decline finally set in.

With the Pure Goddess it had been gradual, a slow erosion that was accelerated by his physical wounds from fighting her battles with other gods. With Lilith, it had been sharp and devastating when she turned her back on him after the Dark Queen Ashlu Claimed him as her Blood Slave.

The only time he’d felt all of her love, unconditional and unfettered, was for one night during her last incarnation before this current one when she was Seven. Thirty years ago in Bangkok.

Now, even though Lizzy’s sweetness and affection soothed the serrated edges of accumulated anguish, heartbreak and loss, he could also feel that she wasn’t ready to take the leap with him.

For him.

Not yet.

She moaned into his mouth, grabbed hold of his face with both hands and deepened their kiss, wrestling with him for control. She ground and squirmed against his cock, trapped between their bodies, seeking more friction, demanding wordlessly that he soothe the empty ache inside her.

Fill her.

Take her.

Release more of himself into her.

He wanted to.

So badly.

His body was made to Nourish hers. Made to please her, fulfill her, give her joy. Give her everything, even if it destroyed him.

He’d made this choice twice before, and he’d died for it both times. He’d willingly die over and over again for the one chance to make her truly his. He believed in her. He just had to give her time to believe in him too.

And to believe in herself most of all.

Breaking their kiss, he settled them both on the flatbeds, holding her close. Face to face on their sides, he wrapped his naked body around her clothed one, his leg inserted between hers, the hard root of his sex notched snugly into the juncture of her thighs.

It wasn’t enough for her, and she mewled in complaint, her hands clawing into his hair, bringing him back to her for a devouring kiss as she humped his cock through her pajama pants.

Deftly, he shoved her pants and underwear down enough to bring them skin to skin, so she could grind her wet, naked core against his heat and hardness. Her movements were jerky and desperate, seeking that perfect pressure, her juices coating his entire length.

He took control of the kiss and her hips then, giving her what she sought. The relentless plunge of his tongue in time with the voluptuous undulations of his hips below, rocking steadily against her, grinding his thick length between her pussy lips and sliding against her pearl from root to tip with each hard stroke.

“Ben…” she gasped into his mouth.

“Ben, Ben, Ben…”

She seized suddenly on a long wail, splintered apart in his arms, her entire body quaking, her core convulsing like a grasping mouth against his cockhead, clenching around emptiness, trying to suck him inside.

Never one to deny her pleasure, he thrust a couple of inches inside that hungry mouth, just deep enough to press against her swollen knot from the inside as she clamped around him hard, the fullness of him triggering another, deeper climax that left her breathless.

Ben ground his teeth and clenched his jaw against giving in to his own orgasm as her body demanded. As it sucked on his cockhead voraciously, starving for his body’s answering release.

Giving her more would only hasten the Decline, if indeed the clock had started ticking. He had to buy more time for both of them. He wasn’t afraid of dying for his love of her, but he certainly wasn’t going to go without a fight.

He was an infinitely patient man. He’d waited tens of thousands of years. But enough was enough.

This was it.

He was going to win her once and for all.

When she finally subsided, simply fluttering around him now in small, delicate tingles, he slowly pulled out of her despite her sleepy protests.

“I’m here, baby,” he murmured beside her ear, pulling her underwear and pants back over her, but notching his undying erection against her again.

She curled around him, squeezing her thighs around his, pressing their groins as closely as she could despite the thin layer of fabric between them.

“Want you inside me,” she slurred, already mostly asleep.

“Mmm,” he answered.

Not a no, but not quite a yes.

But it was enough to satisfy her for the time being, for her breathing deepened in slumber and her body slowly unclenched against him, soft and warm.

The Dream ring glowed and heated around Ben’s middle finger, the burn of it making him hiss.

She would have more dreams, he knew. They both would, for they shared the same dreams. They were always blurry suggestions when they began, but over time, the images and sounds became clearer, more real.

Not so much dreams as memories…

Lizzy was in an opulent chamber constructed of ebony, onyx and white sandstone.

It was so unlike all of her other dreams thus far. And so very detailed and explicit.

So real .

For some reason, she felt extremely uneasy, as if her stomach was filled with stones, and a large one was even stuck in her throat, cutting off her airflow, making her breaths come in short, aborted gasps. Making her heart hammer against her ribs like prey anticipating danger.

A heavy, dark sense of dread pervaded her entire body. Weighed her down like anvils.

“Don’t dilly dally, human,” someone said, giving her a shove that almost sent her sprawling to the ground.

“Our Mistress will be here shortly with her new slave. Make preparations.”

Lizzy was confused. She didn’t know what preparations needed to be made. Thus far, her dreams didn’t have other people, only him .

And even though she tried to see who was giving her instructions in such a bossy, disdainful voice, she couldn’t really make them out. There were a few shapes moving around her. Women, she guessed, by their size and gestures, their dulcet tones.

But besides the one order and shove, they merely flowed around her like water, going about their business, mostly ignoring her. She tried to stay out of their way, for they were clearly busy “making preparations.” Apparently, they were servants for the “Mistress,” and she was one of them.

How strange.

She’d never had a dream like this before. The sense of dread increased even as her curiosity was piqued.

She felt compelled to watch. She couldn’t make herself wake up if she tried.

She was able to make herself inconspicuous by backing into a shadowed corner. The chamber looked like something out of a movie set of the Mummy or Indiana Jones . Something her archeological 3D renderings might embellish, based on what artifacts she and her colleagues could find and cobble together to give an indication of what their original glory might have been.

But these were not 3D renderings on a computer. This whole place was real . And somehow, she knew that this was not simply a dream.

This was a memory.

She’d been here before.

While her surroundings, with the ornate columns, sconces and torches, stone ground, and hefty, elaborately carved furniture were detailed and so very solid, so real she could have sworn she was awake right now, the half dozen or so people that flurried about the chamber were blurred. She couldn’t really see the details of what they were doing, other than “making preparations.”

They seemed to be organizing things, straightening what looked to be a gigantic platform bed in the middle of the room. They rushed to and fro carrying objects. One woman brushed directly past Lizzy holding a long, bejeweled dagger on both open palms like an offering.

It looked ceremonious.

Her apprehension kept growing with each passing moment.

At last, the movements stilled. The others took their places, making themselves as inconspicuous as Lizzy did. She couldn’t see them any more from wherever they’d stationed themselves, but she knew they were ready to “serve” at the slightest notice.

A breath-held silence descended upon the chamber as gigantic double doors drew open from across the room. In swept the most beautiful woman Lizzy had ever seen, even though she couldn’t see her features clearly. Just being able to glimpse the outline of her voluptuous curves, the glossy sheen of her dark, wavy hair, her graceful bearing and queenly presence, she knew .

This was the Dark Queen Ashlu.

Behind her, three large men led a fourth man into the chamber in chains. Lizzy could see none of them clearly, only that the fourth man was the “slave,” and that he was here against his will.

He didn’t fight them, though she could sense that every muscle in his naked body was tensed to do so. She knew as well as he did that it would be useless to fight. She could have sworn she even heard his thoughts in her own head:

I must submit…cannot let Titi and Lilly be hurt…I must not fight it…I will survive this…I will find a way to go back to them…she will tire of me before long…I must endure…

Lizzy’s heart broke into jagged pieces as she heard the prisoner’s inner-most thoughts. As he tried to face a dire fate somehow almost worse than death.

Yet…

Another part of her, the part that wasn’t her dream consciousness but the consciousness of the body she inhabited, the actual player in this memory, seethed with a cold, endless darkness at the sight of the prisoner.

There was love and pain beneath the darkness, Lizzy felt that too. But there was also vengeance and blind rage.

As if she somehow blamed this man for being taken prisoner. As if it was his fault for what the Dark Queen did to him now—

Kneeling before him as he stood chained to the ground, his arms and legs bound to iron posts on either side, spread apart. Vulnerable to her in a way that he couldn’t bear, that his entire body rebelled against. While she used that long dagger to open up his internal iliac veins from lower abdomen to groin.

Lizzy watched transfixed and horrified as the Queen licked her Mate’s blood from his body. Licked and sucked all along his most intimate skin, while sinking her Dark One fangs into him, injecting his bloodstream with her venom, a unique marker that staked her Claim.

She could feel vicariously what he felt as this raping of his body went on.

How every vein became infused with a scalding poison that burned him like acid from the inside out. How, even as his body racked with uncontrollable shivers and quakes from the undiluted pain, the vampire bitch commanded his sex to rise, to obey her will.

She could hear his internal screams of rage and despair as he tried to fight her control over him. He would have clawed out of his own skin if he could have. And if he hadn’t been restrained so tightly, he might have broken his own arms and legs to escape her.

To escape this torturous hell.

And then, as if he sensed she was there, he jerked his head in her direction, his agony-filled eyes searching the shadows and unerringly landing on where she stood, half hidden behind one of the stone columns.

Lizzy was crying inside. Dying inside, to see those beautiful eyes—Ben’s eyes—filled with such undiluted pain and shame.

Everything else faded to the background. She was distantly thankful she was no longer aware of what the Queen did to her Mate. A part of her knew, but that wasn’t what she focused on in the moment when their eyes met.

She only wanted him to focus on her . To focus on hope. To know that she lov—

But no.

No, no, no, no, no!

That’s not what she conveyed at all.

Dream Lizzy, this memory that she inhabited, somehow overrode her consciousness. This… Lilly …simply stared blankly back at her Mate. Instead of understanding and strength, shared grief and courage, Lilly’s stare held nothing but vengeance and hate.

She blamed him for being taken. For going with the Queen’s guard willingly so that his family wouldn’t be harmed.

She blamed him for being chained. For the unbreakable hold the vampire queen now commanded over his body through the venom in his veins.

I knew you never loved me , Lilly seethed telepathically.

I knew you would betray me.

No… his eyes denied, filling with blood and tears. With all the pain and heartbreak he could no longer contain.

You are worthless, Lilly’s eyes speared into his, holding his soul prisoner as much as the chains did to his body.

You are beneath me. I should have known you would never be strong enough to partner a god . And when I get my godhood back, I will never fall for the likes of you again. I will destroy these paltry Immortals playing at power. I will show them all what true power is.

True power has no weakness.

I should never have let myself be weak with you.

For you.

You are nothing but a vampire’s whore.

Lizzy tried to stop the thoughts from telepathing from this consciousness she inhabited. She tried with all her might. But there was nothing she could do.

The venomous thoughts struck Lilly’s Mate like physical blows. Dealt him mortal wounds. Made him bleed and caused him far deeper pain than anything the Dark Queen was doing to his body.

She saw Lilly’s Mate— her Mate—recoil and shudder with each hurled invective. Saw when all hope drained from his once clear, joyful, light-filled green-blue eyes.

Now, they no longer held any light, the brightness of his soul extinguished like a blown-out candle in the darkest night.

Lizzy squeezed her eyes shut and screamed.

Screamed and screamed and screamed.

Wake up…

Wake up…

Wake up!

“Lizzy, wake up.”

She came to on a gulping gasp, as if she hadn’t breathed for far too long, held under by an unseen force, in a nightmare she couldn’t claw out of.

Lizzy jack knifed straight up, conking her head against Ben’s.

“Ow!” they both exclaimed at the same time.

Lizzy was fairly certain her head hurt worse than Ben’s because—good lord!—did he have a titanium cranium?

“Are you alright?” he asked with concern, both hands holding her shoulders to steady her.

She wished he would pull her into his arms instead. The awful aftershocks of the nightmare still made her heart pound and her head hurt, and not just from bashing it against his skull. Her chest felt caved in, as if her own ribs were digging into her innards, making her bleed where no one could see.

God! That was the worst nightmare she’d ever had!

All her dreams had been so beautiful and comforting thus far. Familiar and safe. He had wrapped her in warmth and security, reassurance and affection. Even when they didn’t make love in the dreams, he’d always embraced her with his calming, unconditionally loving presence.

Lizzy had always been well-loved. Not only by the best parents in the world but also by her mystery man. He’d been her best friend, her confidante, and also her most heartfelt hopes and dreams.

It’s like she wished him into being. He was so real to her, so specifically made for her, that she’d eschewed real world relationships because real men couldn’t begin to compare.

But the nightmare just now… And the dream before this one…

She remembered them so vividly upon waking. If not the details of the scenes as they played out, then the broad outlines of what occurred.

She wanted to cry. To bawl and scream. She was still gulping for breath and shaking, despite the firm hold of Ben’s hands that steadied her.

She peered up at him through her tear-beaded lashes, her vision blurry with them too.

Why wouldn’t he hold her close? Even though he held her steady, it felt as if he was also holding her apart from him.

And, he was already dressed, kneeling on one leg beside her flatbed.

“Ben?” she whispered tentatively, feeling uncertain and terribly regretful. As if she’d done something horribly wrong.

As if she’d hurt him unforgivably.

But…

It was just a nightmare…right?

His eyes were shadowed by the thickets of his lashes as he gazed back at her, his thoughts hidden. There was a tightness in his expression that she’d never seen on his face before. He’d always been so incandescently bright, like the sun and moon and stars combined that made her world go round.

But now, he looked subdued. Opaque. As if he was purposely holding himself back, dimming his light.

“We have to go, Lizzy. I received warning that others are coming for the treasure. We must get to the egg first. Zai and Sin are already headed to the cavern.”

She searched his face for a moment longer before quickly getting with the program. She dressed in a hurry and followed his lead out of the inn.

He grabbed her hand as they ran. It was still dark out, perhaps an hour or two before daylight would peek over the horizon.

In the stealth of night, he shifted when they were far enough from the inn. He became the winged angel, gathered her up in his arms, and flapped his gigantic wings to pick up speed.

Soon, they approached the cluster of koga sculptures where they’d met up with Zai and Sin the day before. Except, instead of flying down to the shrine, Ben landed on a rock ledge that looked like a diving board above the dark, churning waves below.

“We will go by water,” he said, putting her down but keeping an arm around her waist to anchor her to his body.

“It will be cold, and your diving skills will be put to the test. I need to ensure that Zai and Sin won’t get ambushed from the tunnel beneath the sea. Just keep hold of my hand. Don’t let go. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Lizzy gave one firm nod. She trusted Ben with her life.

It seemed na?ve and stupid to trust someone so much after just a few days, but there it was. From the moment she met him, she’d felt an undeniable, inexplicable connection. And everything he’d said and done since then only made her faith in him grow stronger, more immutable.

He took a deep breath, keeping their gaze locked, and she mirrored his action, filling her lungs to capacity with bracing, sea-salty air.

Then, he took a diving leap right off the ledge, clutching one of her hands as she dove with him, head-first into the pitch-black sea.

They cut into the waters smoothly, like seasoned Olympic divers, Lizzy silently congratulated herself. And it wasn’t as cold as she would have thought.

But then, Ben’s hold on her hand might have something to do with it. His palm where they connected radiated a soothing warmth to hers, up her arm and throughout her entire body.

She opened her eyes beneath the water and saw that his entire body glowed, and by extension, she did too.

And that wasn’t all—

He’d turned into a real-life merman!

Her mouth opened involuntarily on an awed gasp as she took him in:

His upper body was naked, all the way down to his lower abdomen where shiny, golden scales covered the rest of him, including a hefty bulge at the juncture where his legs would have been.

Instead, his legs became a long, muscly, scale-covered fishtail, with fins at the end that looked harder than steel. Subtle gills flexed along his neck and where his ears should be. More scales lined his shoulders and upper back, almost like armor, but tattooed into his skin.

And she realized that he wasn’t naked at all. His body where the thicker scales didn’t cover him was overlaid by a fine sheen of transparent yet metallic microscales. She could see clearly his musculature beneath it, as if he wore nothing at all, but the way those scales glowed and glistened over him made her absolutely certain they were nigh impenetrable. Like a forcefield.

It had only been a moment that she gawked in admiration and awe. He answered what must have been a gobsmacked look on her face with a close-lipped grin.

Then, he began to undulated his entire body in a way that shot them rapidly through the water like a torpedo.

(And reminded Lizzy of how graceful and powerful those undulations could be in a different context).

As if he heard her thoughts, he looked over at her with a knowing glint in his eyes.

She looked back boldly, even though her whole face felt as hot as the sun at being caught “red handed” again.

Inside, she rejoiced that the shadows in his eyes had receded for the most part. If letting her inner harlot out more would take Ben’s mind off of unpleasant things, Lizzy was happy to oblige.

Though, she didn’t even know she had an inner harlot until she met Ben.

Ben did all the swimming, it turned out, while all Lizzy had to do was hold onto his hand. Even that wasn’t really her doing. His grip on her was unbreakable, though he strangely didn’t hurt her either. Before her lungs started protesting the lack of air, they arrived at the underwater entrance to the cavern.

Here, Ben turned to her, briskly drew her close and sealed their mouths together, breathing into her.

Immediately, Lizzy’s chest filled with pure oxygen, making her lightheaded. She couldn’t resist deepening this sharing of breath into a kiss, attempting to convey without words what she felt for him, trying to chase away the dark remnants of that terrible nightmare.

He let her have him for a heartbeat, let her soothe him and herself.

I’ve got you, sweetheart , she thought she heard him say in her mind.

No matter what, I’ll never let you go.

But surely, it was only a figment of her imagination. Her wishful thinking that she heard these words.

Nevertheless, she let them comfort and reassure her before he broke away with a lingering look. A small smile.

Be brave, Lizzy , that smile said.

Fight for me. Fight for us.

She didn’t really know what that would entail, but she promised him with her eyes that she’d try.

She’d do everything in her power to deserve him. To win him and keep him.

She had to try.

She smiled back and gave a firm nod.

A promise.

And together, they swam into the tunnel.