Triumph Page 6

Theo glowered at him, but stayed silent.

  Mikkel didn’t know about Thalia or Rafe, but he sat on the sofa feeling somewhat like a child, watching as mommy and daddy discussed a divorce right in front of them. Unease pooled inside him, churning away and making his stomach ache with it.

  He wasn’t a man built for anxiety. He wasn’t made that way, so, to be in a situation of that making, no, it didn’t sit well with him at all. Whatever Theo hadn’t disclosed in one of his tsunami-like revelations yet, seemed to drop to the back of his father’s mind though because he turned to Mikkel and murmured, “She’ll need you to protect her. Even as strong and powerful as she is, nothing can protect better than an Ouroboros. Don’t forget that.” There was an urgency in his voice, one that made Mikkel’s eyes prick with tears.

  “I won’t.”

  “Good.” He sighed. “Now, I have to go, son. I need to be on my way. My guys are waiting on me at Nellis.” He climbed to his feet and, feeling like a marionette doll, Mikkel did the same. Ragnor stepped forward and hauled Mikkel into his arms. “I never got to know the man you’d become, but at least I got this. It’s more than anyone else in my shoes has.”

  Then, for the first and last time in thirty-four years, Mikkel felt his father’s lips brush his temple in a farewell caress.

  4

  Theo

  “We should return to Heden.”

  Mikkel, his eyes trained on the motorcycle’s rear lights as his father took off for the USAF base, murmured, “We have things to do on this realm.”

  “Things like what?” Theo scoffed.

  “Like vengeance?” Rafe scowled at him. “Thalia was shot, someone needs to be held accountable.”

  “It’s already been dealt with. Kinnock, Haraldsson, and Stevenson of the Summerford Pack were behind the shooting.”

  Though the group had been silent up until now, allowing Mikkel to process what had just happened, as well as what he’d just learned, that silence among them was suddenly as sharp as a bell.

  “You dealt with them?”

  That Thalia’s voice was stony didn’t bode well. Enough to make him defensive as he murmured, “What did you expect? You didn’t think I’d just let the matter drop, did you? I put my best man on the jo—” He broke off as the realization of exactly who that best man had been until this morning hit him. And when it found its target, it felt like it cut off his damn air.

  “Magda? Magda’s the one you left to investigate?” Mikkel groused.

  Though news of her betrayal had staggered him, it was only now when he realized the true meaning of that. Bereft, he bent over and pressed his hands to his knees. “I-I can’t believe—”

  Thalia, in a gesture far kinder than he deserved, pressed her hand to his back. “Theo, are you all right?”

  “No,” he whispered. “She was my right hand man, Thalia. I-I can’t understand why she…”

  “You told us yourselves that the Fae get bored and lonely.” Mikkel shrugged. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

  “Most people aren’t as intelligent as Magda,” Theo snapped. “S-She was my liaison.”

  Thalia narrowed her eyes at him. “What does that mean, Theo?”

  “It means I used her as a go-between in many ways. Her contacts in some circles were numerous. Without her, she’s… I’m… Fuck.” He sucked in a deep breath, feeling the heavy weight of responsibility fall on him now that Magda had betrayed him.

  “I hope you showed her how much you appreciated her.” The words weren’t exactly cutting, but from Rafe, they didn’t have to have a bite to hit home.

  “Undoubtedly, I didn’t.”

  Thalia, perching on the low fence that sectioned off the yard where toys were scattered here and there from the driveway, murmured, “I’m not predisposed to like her, Theo. I didn’t like her before she turned traitor, and after what she put me through, I’m really not keen on the idea of mourning her. However…” She broke off as she squinted up at the sky. “What Morningstar does, it’s wrong.”

  “What does he do?” Mikkel asked, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Promises them access to the humans they love in exchange for services he needs them to render.”

  “He has them sow the seeds of chaos,” Theo bit off, his mouth curving in a discontented sneer.

  “Well, whatever. I watched him—” She hesitated, then swallowed. “He cuts off their wings. He did it in front of me too.” Nervously, she rubbed her arm. “I-I can’t believe anyone deserves that.”

  “What does he do with the humans they fall for?” Rafe asked quietly.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied, her voice close to a whisper. “I feel like they’re being stored somewhere. Brought out whenever the Dark Fae in particular has done a good job for Morningstar.” Her hands curved over the non-existent swell of her stomach. “I-I can’t believe that our baby is fated to him.” She shook her head. “It just can’t be.”

  “Your wings say otherwise,” Theo answered, his voice just as quiet. As contemplative.

  “I-I can’t allow that, Theo. I can’t.” Her mouth firmed. “I will not bring a child into this life to… What? Be tied to that monster? No. No!” She stood taller, bristling with an inner fire that he didn’t doubt she’d pass on to their child. “We have to stop this.”

  “Stop what?” Theo asked. “Stop something that has been happening since the beginning of time on Earth? There is balance, Thalia. Balance in all things. You don’t appreciate it. You can’t. But without evil, there is no good.”

  “That doesn’t mean evil has to be fated to our daughter!” she snarled. “I won’t have it. I won’t have him for her. The minute she’s born, we’re in danger. He made it quite clear that he can get close to us. He got to a woman who has been your friend for thousands of years. You trusted her. Implicitly. But he still managed to twist the knife and make her shift sides.

  “The more time that passes without any evident changes to the Fae way of life, the more danger we’re in. Once the baby’s born, your people are going to be looking to her and to us to immediately save them. We’re the prophecy in the flesh. She’s the first child to be born in millennia, and she’s your daughter, Theo. But what if nobody else gets pregnant? What if it doesn’t happen fast enough? Someone will turn and Morningstar will get to them.”

  “We need to take Morningstar out.” The words were flat, cold, and loaded down with an intent that told Theo that Mikkel didn’t have any damn idea of what he was even suggesting.

  “Because nobody ever thought of that before,” he retorted drily.

  “I’m sure they have, but anyone who’s tried before, wasn’t us. They didn’t have our motivation. Thalia is right, Theo. Jesus, we can’t let our kid be that fucker’s mate. I mean, we just can’t. Talk about shit parents. We’d have fucked up before we even started if we carried on with the full intention of allowing her, at some point, to be claimed by the goddamn Devil.” He stacked his hands on his hips. “We need intel. We need to know where he’s based so we can infiltrate and get to him in his lair.”

  Thalia shuddered. “I don’t want to go there ever again.”

  Rafe’s arm curved around her, and Theo watched as she nuzzled into his side. “You won’t have to.”

  Thalia’s mouth pursed. “I want to take him down though.”

  “You can’t do both,” Mikkel retorted. “To kill him, we have to go to where he’s holed up. Surprise attack. Guerrilla warfare.”

  She shook her head. “Not if we bring him out.”

  “As far as I’m aware, Morningstar never leaves his lair,” Theo told her. “And I have intel on him. He stays there constantly.”

  Thalia squinted at him. “No wonder he’s bored then. Caelus. You Fae think you’re bored? Theo, if you’re right and Morningstar never leaves his pit, is it any wonder he makes mischief?”

  “That doesn’t justify it,” Rafe started to say.

  “Not saying it does, but how many times has Theo told us the Fae get bored? An
d when they’re bored it’s a major issue?”

  “There’s a lot you don’t understand,” Theo retorted.

  “I’m sure. Thousands of years’ worth of information,” she said blandly, parroting his earlier words, and making him wince.

  He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. “What’s our next move?”

  “We draw him out. I want to take him down.”

  “What if the baby wants her fated?” Rafe asked, sounding uneasy for the first time. “And she finds out you’re the one who took him down?”

  “When she finds out who he is, she’ll thank me for it. But I want to be the one.”

  Theo winced. “Isaura built her reputation as Queen on the fact she slayed Mad Aerie, our last sovereign, on the battlefield. It would be fortuitous if Thalia was the one to slay Morningstar. It would set her reign in stone from the very start.”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” Thalia snapped dismissively. “I want the bastard to know that when he’s dying, it’s because of me. He thinks I’m nothing more than an incubator. Well, he can guess again. And while we’re figuring out what to do, and Theo, you’d better share every piece of intel you have on that scum with us, I want to sort out the situation with the fuckers who shot me.” She shot him a withering glance. “How did you deal with them?”

  “I discovered their identities. Nothing more. I knew you’d wish to handle them on your own.”

  She looked satisfied at that. “Okay, I can cope with that kind of interference. Help me, gladly, but don’t think I’m helpless. Those bastards need taking down, and they need to know that, She-Wolf or not, I’m the bitch to do it.”

  Rafe winced. “You’re challenging them?”

  “Damn right I am.” She rubbed her hands together.

  “I guess my telling you you’re pregnant and shouldn’t engage in things like that would get me nowhere?”

  “Exactly,” she retorted. “This baby is the daughter of four warriors—because, honey, whether you like it or not, you’re a warrior. There’s no way in fuck she isn’t going to be into this one-hundred percent.”

  “Think she’ll be cheering you on?”

  At Mikkel’s teasing, she grinned. “I think she’ll do more than that. I think she’ll keep me safe.” When the three males looked at each other uneasily, she just smirked. “Come on, Theo, take us back to our time. Before we can move on and take down a new enemy, we need to take the trash out.”

  Rafe cringed, but Mikkel and Theo just smiled. She could be bloodthirsty, their mate.

  Before he began the process of sifting, Theo asked, “Need one last look around, Mikkel?”

  He peered at the ramshackle property, then murmured, “You said if you’d known what he was, you wouldn’t have brought us here. Why did you say that?”

  “Because I’d have preferred you not to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Ouroboros are nasty bastards,” Theo admitted. “If I’d realized you were half-Lyken, and that the Lyken was of that breed, I’d have left well enough alone.” He scraped a hand over his jaw. “Now you’ve met your father, the spirit of the creature will have awakened.”

  Mikkel’s jaw firmed. “What does that mean?”

  “The older species aren’t like anything you’ve encountered before,” Theo told him heavily. “You meet a half-Lyken now, and they’re the child of a Wolf or a Tiger.”

  “Like my mom,” Thalia inserted. “She’s half-Wolf.”

  “Exactly. She’ll have keener senses. Won’t be able to shift, and won’t be able to protect herself like Thalia would, for example, but she’s stronger than the average human female.” He started shaking his head, aware that what he was about to say was a total understatement. There was no way he could even begin to explain the sheer magnitude of what the old breeds were capable of. “With species like the Ouroboros, even half of that kind of spirit will be invasive.”

  “Invasive?” Thalia scowled. “What does that mean?”

  “You make it sound like cancer,” Rafe mumbled.

  “Because it is.” Theo knew his tone was grim. “Dragons, Phoenixes, Ouroboros… they’re destructive. When they shift, they don’t just turn into the creature, the creature becomes like a vacuum.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mikkel growled.

  “I mean, when they shift, they destroy,” Theo growled back. “The wildfires you’ve been having in the States, because a Phoenix shifted. The floods in Indonesia, the tsunamis in Japan, because a water Dragon shifted.

  “I told you before that all Lykens are elemental. You just don’t know it. Like Ragnor said, Thalia is a She-Wolf. She’s of the Earth. Most Lykens are today. They’re Earth bound, and as a result, safe. But the old species are affiliated with fire, wind, water, and the damn cosmos. That’s a dangerous mix.”

  “You mean to tell me that the storms started in Japan because a Dragon shifted?” Mikkel retorted, his disbelief bordering on the suspicious.

  “Yes,” Theo grunted. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. They’re so powerful, they alter the world around them. That’s why we control them. And that’s why they hate us.”

  Thalia, rubbing her forehead, murmured, “So, because they’re so powerful, even a half of that power in Mikkel will have ramifications.”

  “Yes. We just won’t know what they are until they happen.”

  “Why didn’t he present any signs before?”

  “Because Ragnor was right. These species need to be tended by their parents. If you’d never met him, you’d never have been triggered. And that was why I was regretful. I can’t go back in time and change that.”

  “You shouldn’t wish that anyway,” Thalia stated, placing her hand on one of Mikkel’s arms and the other on Theo’s chest. “We’re on a path that wasn’t set by us. For whatever reason, we needed to know that Mikkel is Ouroboros. Now we know, we can adapt.”

  Theo shook his head. “There’s no adapting to this kind of information. It changes everything, Thalia. You just don’t know it.”

  “No, I don’t. And only the fact you’re so freakin’ old means you do. We’ll keep this information under our hats—”

  “I can’t. I have to tell the faction in charge of controlling the old—”

  “No!” she barked. “No. You do not do anything of the sort. Mikkel is ours. We will protect him. We will control any weird urges that suddenly arise because of what happened today. He will not be policed by anyone other than us. Do you understand me?”

  Theo narrowed his eyes. “I have a duty to—”

  “Your duty is to us. To this bond. Nobody else.”

  He ground his jaw, then Mikkel murmured, “You already let us down once today, Theo. Don’t do it again.”

  Thalia scowled. “What are you talking about?”

  “He kept your abduction from his mother because it would draw politics into the situation,” Rafe told her, his tone quiet, but still loaded with disapproval.

  “I have more responsibilities to consider than you three are aware of.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Thalia snapped. “You’ve kept us in the dark. We’ve been in Heden for months, and all you’ve shown us is what you wanted us to know.”

  “You had to learn how to defend yourself. That was my principal concern,” he spat.

  “Yes. But what about Rafe? What about Mikkel? Rafe is a smart man. He’s a fucking surgeon. He’s been whiling away his days reading the most boring crap you can imagine, and you don’t think he could handle the stuff you’re dealing with? What about Mikkel? You don’t get to be the head of a Special Forces unit without being good at your fucking job. He’s a tactician. A strategist. Why the hell haven’t you been putting him to use?”

  Feeling his cheeks stain with color, he ground out, “It was Fae business.”

  “And upon this child’s birth, I am to rule the Fae. With my mates at my side. Who better to be aware of this Fae business,” she mocked, “than them?” When he didn’t reply, she murmured,
“You made a mistake. We all make them. But we have to learn from them. Magda betrayed you today. What does that prove? That the only people we can trust are here. In this circle.

  “You make use of us, Theo. Do you hear me? I have no idea of the responsibilities you have, because you didn’t share them with me. But I’m a daughter of leaders. They kept me in the dark for a decade, and would have carried on for decades more if Bahkir the Elder hadn’t come to my aid.

  “Are you going to do the same? Hide me away from what I need to know? Or are you going to make use of me? Like they should have? I’m an aberration, but, you know what? So is Mikkel. So is Rafe. You’re stuck with three mates who aren’t what they seem. We’re more. More than anyone can even imagine. And if you don’t take advantage of that, then you’re a bigger fool than I can even say.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Now, process that, or don’t. But take me to my era, I have shit to clear up.”

  ****

  Thalia

  The revelation that Theo had considered politics over her didn’t annoy Thalia. Not as it did her mates. They’d been bristling when they’d made that particular revelation, but as she’d told Theo, she was the daughter of the TriAlpha. She knew the importance of politics.

  She just didn’t know the importance of his politics, because he’d failed to disclose that to her.

  He’d not even taken them to Trierna, his faction and home.

  In the months of their stay in Heden, they’d never traveled further than the healing waters where they’d cemented their bond. Aside from that, they’d been in the palace. And as the palace was huge, contained many entertainments, and housed thousands of people, it hadn’t been boring.

  But when Magda had told her, even though it was a lie, that Theo wanted her to see his house in Trierna, and that his quarters at Isaura’s palace were simply where he stayed when he wasn’t at his own residence, she’d realized how much Theo was keeping from them all.

  Well, the time for that was over.

  Traveling through another vortex had totally messed with Thalia’s to-do list.