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What Axel had been broke over us slowly, the memories like the gentle fall of rain.

All too often, the me of the past failed to recognise the bond between us, relegating him to companion, friend.

He’d loved me throughout, walked by my side in my every incarnation, often being the one helping me to find the others, leading them to me with a ready smile.

As my teeth sunk into his lip now, marking him, needing that sharp taste of his blood in my mouth, in preparation for what was to come, all that was going to come to an end.

“You gonna claim me, greedy girl?” His expression was part challenge, part desperation, his thrusts getting deeper, harder, his hands gripping me tight. “Gonna claim all of us. You’ll never feel empty again.”

I knew then he didn’t just mean sexually, because I could already feel it.

Our bodies were fading again, the light inside his chest so big and expansive, it shone on anyone and everyone who wanted it, lighting them up just as bright as he was, because that was Axel’s gift.

He craved experiences, pleasure, life, but most of all, love, from anyone open enough to give it to him.

For just a second, I warmed myself against the fire inside him, letting it make my own flare brighter, our eyes going to the ceiling as it all spiralled up, up, beyond the shrine, the sky, the stars themselves, spreading thinner and thinner, making animals’ heads jerk up to note our passage.

“Fuck, gonna come…”

Our awareness coiled back down, and the venom that coated my teeth burned my mouth as I turned his head away, placing a gentle kiss on the cords of his neck, holding him still, waiting for the moment when our bodies broke before I sank my teeth in.

The connection with Shaun had been all light, but with Axel, it was heat.

He rushed in, burning everything in his wake, singeing and leaving his mark.

This was the healing fire at the start of the dry season, burning up the dross, returning the nutrients to the soil, allowing regrowth.

He burned through my insecurities, my fears, my tired little life before I came here, until there was only this.

I returned to my body right as my spine turned to flame, my body pulsing around him. His eyes filled with tears, happy ones, as his cum jetted inside me, marking me in a way that would need frequent reapplication.

“Easy, princess,” he said when we finally pulled apart.

I could see why, I was beginning to wobble now, falling down on my knees, the light inside me burning too bright, making my skin feel too tight, but I was raised up again, by my shy Shade. Not in the shadows anymore, he drew me to him without absolute certainty.

“You see it now,” he said when our hands linked, and I did.

Often ignored and pushed away by the more egocentric versions of me in the past, there was a reticence in him, but it was equally matched by a deep knowledge.

He had often been at my side as a seer, an advisor, and so there was a hesitancy in his touch right now.

He wanted this, that blazed pure and true from the light in his chest, but he’d always wanted it and rarely got it.

I moved closer, digging my hands into his thick hair, staring into those strange amber eyes before moving forward slowly, gently.

So he could see me choosing him, making an offer, making a connection, and he would have to decide if he would accept.

He did, of course he did, his mouth slamming down on mine as he wrapped his body around mine, falling back on the bed, leaving me to ride him down.

Part of me liked this, this bounty spread before me, all hard muscle and even harder cock, and I intended to admire one while putting the other to good use.

I stretched his arms out on the bed in a position of complete surrender, and he held that when I began to move.

First raining kisses down on that satiny bronzed skin, then shifting to grasp the base of his cock, his lips falling open as I notched the head against me and then sank down.

“Fuck…” he hissed. “Fuck, Bec, my goddess. So good. Goddess, so good.”

And it was. I moved with a loose-limbed grace I’d never experienced before, riding him in long fluid strokes, feeling that thick cock pierce me deep, a great flare of pleasure and light building on every stroke.

When I opened my eyes, the room was streaming with light, coming from him and me and only getting brighter the faster we got.

There was that moment, just before you came, where the certainty of it hit you and all you could feel was a beautiful pleasure that threatened to go on and on before you came crashing back down to earth.

When it hit us, when my fangs were bared, when my mouth burned with the need to mark him, when his head turned to one side, surrendering, offering himself to me, we were spiralled up and out of this body the minute my teeth buried themselves into his skin.

Somehow, instead of a cloudy expanse of light, we were back in Oemis.

“I was the one that worked out the way to do it,” he said, looking back over the plaza, to the dais, where the massive statues of the Great Wolves stood. “I was so in love with Branwen, even though she barely gave me the time of day. I wanted her to. I wanted her to see me.”

The plaza filled suddenly with heaps of people, all cheering and singing, the crystals humming in response. Then they stepped up, Fearn and Branwen, prepared to relinquish their power.

Except they weren’t.

“Lonan, there was something so…magnetic about him. No one could say no to him, not even the gods themselves.”

We watched Jaya and Lonan be led towards the dais, ready for the transfer of power.

Fearn went first and there was an extra element to the customary ritual.

He reached into himself, bringing out a handful of light, the one we all carried within us gifted to him by the god, this one a flickering red, but when Lonan stepped up, when Fearn offered it to him, I could see there was so much more to that.

He literally gave Lonan his heart, his body weakening, shaking, cries coming from the crowd as they saw the former conduit begin to falter, then fail.

He gave too much, something Lonan saw with a feral smile, knowing what effect he had on others and welcoming the other man’s sacrifice.

He took it, everything Fearn had to give and then some, glutting himself on the other man’s power, then stepping over the other man’s body to take his place on the dais.

“Every single one of us are conduits for our Tirians,” Shade explained.

“But some of us are conduits for so much more. How did the Tirian come to be in our world? Where did the crystals come from? Why did they contain our spirits? No one’s ever been able to answer that, but I wanted to.

I spent forever, plumbing the depths of the Oemian libraries, reading every account, every theory as to how we came to be, how our twin souls inhabit those stones.

My working theory was that the gods were just a more evolved, stronger version of the pure Tirian spirit, that by detaching ourselves from the limitations of our human forms, by using the power of the crystals, we could amplify what we were and become gods ourselves. ”

We watched Jaya hesitate, then step forward when everyone looked at her expectantly, and while a green light surged in Branwen’s chest, she did not hold it out for the other woman.

Instead, she lured her onto the dais, then closer and closer, as the crystals, the crowd began to sing, the light growing and growing, an answering white one flaring in Jaya’s chest, ready to accept the goddess’ grace.

But there was no grace in Branwen, no sense of something more than herself, except perhaps her selfish need for Lonan.

She craved him like a drug, her focus split between Jaya’s mate, now triumphant and standing on his dais, the red light there flaring deeper, darker, more intensely scarlet with each step Jaya took.

He stared across at the other dais, ostensibly watching the ascension of his mate, but which mate?

Jaya grew suspicious, frowning as Branwen made no move to come closer, just standing there, pulsing with stolen power, a power she had every intention of keeping.

And augmenting with Jaya’s.

Jaya stopped just short of Branwen, the ritual she’d practised so long not going to plan while the eyes of the whole city were on her.

Then Branwen had smiled, that beatific smile of a goddess, and Jaya had felt a flush of relief.

It would be all right, everything would work out, they just had to get through this, and then she could get her head around becoming the conduit, Lonan at her side.

There, that last flare of power that came with that certainty, that was what Branwen had been waiting for.

Her hand snapped out, not to give Jaya her power, but to take the other woman’s.

That grin turned into something toothy and vicious as Branwen’s hand slapped down over Jaya’s chest, and the green light in Branwen’s turned dark as she appeared to suck the power from the other woman.

“I didn’t know,” Shade said. “Or that’s what I told myself.

They were so beautiful, so vital, it didn’t fit with our beliefs that either of them could look as they did, carry such power, and misuse it.

Oemis had been a utopia, a sanctuary…” His eyes met mine as we both saw the echoes of the past in how Sanctuary had been created.

“But that creates a vulnerability. Everyone can choose to be good or evil, to abuse or to raise up. Walking around seeing only peace and love or only evil blinds you to everything else.”