Chapter 22

" M aeve?" The voice is low, worried

Light filters through my eyelids, and then Aeon's face appears above me. For a moment, my mind is vacant, thoughtless, emotionless.

And then it all comes back, all at once.

I blink once, twice, three times.

I smell something—blood. It's…intoxicating. Ocean brine, hot sand, cinnamon. Saliva floods my mouth, and I feel my fangs prick my lips, and a ripping, vicious snarl rattles my chest and rasps my throat.

"Careful, Iannis." Leonidas, wary. "That's bloodlust if I've ever seen it."

"Yes." His eyes are purple, watchful, brimming with emotion. "You're okay, Maeve. It worked."

Hunger.

Thirst.

Need.

My vision narrows, black obscuring everything around me except Aeon. I can almost see his blood pumping in his veins, and I need it.

Bloodlust is all-consuming—I have no thoughts but thirst, no instinct but to drink. To take. To taste.

"Blood," I seethe, my voice inhuman and dark and boiling with violence.

"Maeve, I know you—" Aeon begins.

It's too late.

I feel my body tense—I feel something hard beneath me…the floor? And then I'm airborne, body lightened as my muscles propel me upward. I slam into Aeon, and the scent of blood is all-consuming—brine and sand and cinnamon. His muscles are firm and his skin is warm and everything in me is starved for him. My legs hook around his waist and my hands claw at his arms and chest and shoulders, and the thrum-thrum-thrum of his blood in his veins is a deafening, delicious symphony of tympani, pounding, pounding, pounding in my ears.

My sex is flooded with the liquid heat of my need, my desperation for him, my mate, my bond. I must taste him, my lust feel him, must know him, must entwine him into my being, my self, my body, my soul.

I lash his throat with my tongue and I feel him tense all over and hear him groan—his cock unfurls, hardens, and presses against my core through our clothing. His hands cup my ass with a brutal grip that has me spasming with arousal, and I taste magic in the air, his magic, Leonidas's, mine, but mostly Aeon's.

I pierce his skin with my fangs and his blood surges into my mouth and fuck, it tastes exactly how it smells—complex and wild and sweet; cinnamon, brine, and sun-warmed sand.

I rip at his clothes as I drink. Hot solid flesh and rippling muscle fill my hands—chest, arms, abs.

"Maeve—"

Sweet hot blood—I'm insatiable.

His prana tastes much like his blood, and I pull at that too, great deep quaffs of his magical essence restoring my ocean's equilibrium, refilling its reserves.

More.

His hands push at me, pull at me, unbutton my jeans, rip at my shirt.

Fuck this.

I coat my body in prana and set it alight; mage-flame licks over my skin and turns my clothing to ash, leaving me naked. A cool shiver ripples down Aeon's body, and then he too is naked.

"Maeve—"

I've had enough blood that I can form coherent thoughts, even if I'm not entirely in control yet—now, I'm in the throes of a mating frenzy like no other, a need for Aeon so potent and undeniable I can't breathe until I have him, can't think until he's inside me.

"What?" I gasp, clutching his cock.

Gods and blood, he's well-endowed. Thick and straight and long, pulsing with heat, rigid and iron-hard, silky skin slippery with precum.

"Are you sure you want this?"

"Want, no," I pant. "Need, yes."

"You said you weren't ready for another mate."

"I'm not." I stroke him, feeling him shudder, feeling his belly tuck in with each slide of my hand down his shaft. "But you're my mate. I know it. You know it. There's no choice. But also…" I force my eyes open and meet his—mine are white-gold and his sunlit Aegean blue. "I want you. I've wanted you since you saved me from the fucking desert. I don't know how my other mates will react, but we'll have to handle that later."

Aeon's eyes burst so brightly blue that I have to squint, and then there's a sense of movement, and a cushion of air beneath us, lifting us. I add mine to it, lightening my body, and we soar upward.

Endless blue sky surrounds us, a few puffy clouds here and there, and a quick glance down shows Prague laid out beneath us, and then I snap a shield around us, obscuring us in a white haze.

Aeon's mouth finds mine and his tongue lashes mine and his teeth nip at my lips, and his fingers find my sex. A touch, a tweak, a twirl, and I'm riding the edge in seconds, gasping his name and clinging to him.

"I need you, Aeon," I whisper into his ear, and he shudders.

I nestle his cock in my slit, and he groans, his mouth pressing against the side of my throat.

He pulls back. "Look at me, Maeve." I meet his eyes. "I've waited ten thousand years for this moment, my goddess, my mate. I won't rush it."

I cup his cheek. "Make me yours, Aeon. However you wish." He searches me. "I can sever the mate-link if you want out. You don't have to do anything you're not ready for."

"I didn't know that was a thing."

His eyes darken. His jaw tightens. "It has only been done a few times that I know of, but it can be done, and I know how."

"You'd do that? For me? After everything?"

"I've felt you across the years, my goddess. I told you, I think I have a touch of the sight because I have seen you. I knew when you were born. I saw your dreams—I saw you and the shifter circling each other in the Dreaming before you mated with him. I saw you and the vampires. I saw you in the Tribunal's mountain. I saw the child you lost. I see the love you share with your mates. I know you, Maeve Sparrow. The weeks which have passed are a drop in the bucket. We will love each other for a true eon—-an astronomical eon, meaning a billion years. I've seen it. I've seen our future. I've seen your belly grow with my child." A pause. "But yes, if it's what you want, I will sever the bond and let you go."

I hold his eyes, clinging to his neck with one hand and caressing his cheek and lips and eyebrows with the other. "An eon, with my Aeon." I thrust down to take him inside me, and my mouth drops open and my lips shudder as he fills me and stretches me to an aching burn. "Does that answer your question?"

He cries out in a hoarse voice as my pussy swallows his hardness and wraps around him, and he buries his face in the crook of my neck and clutches my hips where my thighs bend up to my waist, and he pushes me down onto his upward thrust.

I feel him drive home, our hips colliding, bellies touching, my breasts crushed flat against his chest. The shield is a smooth, cool, semi-solid surface beneath us. Aeon wraps my hair around his hand and yanks my head back and claims my mouth with rough, forceful possession, tongue invading, teeth slashing, a desperate hunger overtaking him. His fingers find my clit and press and swipe and circle between our bodies, sending me over the edge.

I come, hard and fast, quaking and spasming around him; I feel magic flare and taste it in the air and feel it rushing and tingling through me, and then I feel Aeon in my mind, feel him in my soul, feel him in my body. But this isn't the mating bond, not yet. This is something else.

My orgasm, instead of subsiding, only burns hotter, and my shaking turns to near-seizures, and my screams turn breathless, and he's driving up into me and each thrust sends me to a whole other plane of pleasure, ecstasy that peaks and peaks higher and higher with every union of our bodies.

"Aeon!" I whimper, too breathless to even scream, now.

"I…" he groans, arching, thrusting. "I have to let it go now, Maeve. I have to let go."

I bite his earlobe and squeeze around his cock as hard as I can and wrap my limbs around his hard lean body and meet his desperate thrusts.

"Give it to me, Aeon. Come for me."

"No, not—not that. Not yet." He releases my hair and cups the back of my head. "The memory-phage. I have to let it go, now."

"Do it."

"My magic might…flare up a bit."

"I trust you. Let go, Aeon. I can take everything you are."

He takes my mouth again, licking my lips and my teeth and biting and kissing. "No matter what you see, hear, or feel, just remember that you're safe. I've got you."

"I know."

He drives into me, slowing his pace to a lazy rolling thrust, tenderly cupping my nape, teasing my clit. "Let go of your magic. The shield, the wind, everything."

"Did I…did I hurt you with my bloodlust?"

He laughs. "Not at all. It felt amazing." He brushes a thumb across my lips. "Now. Let go of your magic and hold on to me."

I press my face into the hot smooth column of his throat, clinging to him with my arms and legs, letting him fuck me slowly, gently, lazily; I release all magic. The wind subsides and the shield dissipates and suddenly the globe is a plaything beneath us, continents and oceans and polar caps—we're miles high. I feel the icy bite of the thin atmosphere, but it feels good on my hot naked flesh.

We're falling. My stomach launches up into my throat, but I don't scream, or feel any fear—only perfect trust in Aeon.

I feel a bolt of energy pulse out of him—and then I see it, a shockwave of magic bursting out of him and racing around the earth at the speed of sound, maybe even the speed of light. It's hard to tell. It's there and gone, a white-blue-gold warping rippling line of magic sweeping out of Aeon and around the planet.

We hurtle earthward.

I cling to Aeon, gasping as each thrust pushes me to a higher plane of orgasmic bliss—each one heretofore unknown, each wilder and hotter and more intense than the last. Wind rushes past us, and we pass through clouds that feel like a cool wash of damp nothing.

And then Aeon roars and his skin burns beneath me, and his eyes blaze with such intense, searing blue light that even with tightly shut eyes I'm blinded. I feel magic detonate out of him. Force my eyes open.

Black thunderheads form beneath us, snarling and swirling and shot through with lances of lightning flashing blue, purple, yellow, white, and green.

We tilt downward and hurtle into the center of the storm, and rain lashes us and wind thrashes us and lightning sears and spears above and below and behind and before, yet nothing touches us, and thunder cracks and booms like a cannonade.

White light bursts and our downward fall is arrested.

Darkness all around, and crushing pressure. Aeon's eyes provide the only light: we're on the sea floor, and jellyfish pulse past and things move in the shadows beyond the eyelight. The sea floor is not sand or rock. Here are structures. A temple looms before us, cast in blue-white stark relief, sending sharp shadows slicing at odd angles away. A house, here. Buildings, everywhere, all kinds, ancient and fully intact.

We float amidst the ruins of the sunken temples of Atlantis, and Aeon makes love to me slowly, delicately, desperately. He kisses me, and we taste brine on our lips, and nothing can touch us. The cold is nothing, the pressure is nothing. There is only us.

Here, we mate in twisting throes, and my screams of ecstasy send bubbles upward, and I cling to him and move with him.

I feel the mate-bond. I feel it building. Aeon touches my clit again and thrusts deep, and I come and come, and white heat shatters through me and light bursts behind my eyes and in my skull. I feel Aeon pull at my mana, my prana, my maya—he presses my thumb to my fang, loosening a cloud of red blood, and he brings my thumb into his mouth, taking my rakta as well, and I follow suit, pulling at his prana and licking his throat and sizing his jugular and drinking his blood.

MAEVE! His voice tolls within me, in my head and my heart and my soul.

AEON !

I am yours, and you are mine. He whispers this in my ear with his voice and speaks it into my mind, and my heart fills with him, my soul floods with him, and I feel him pounding into me with mad abandon, and I know he's about to come.

I squeeze around him and drink his blood and draw his prana and meet his thrusts with my own, and now I feel him stutter, shudder, and shake. Gasp. Groan. Shout. And then he unleashes inside me, a hot wet flood of his seed and my body accepts it and I taste him, see him, feel him.

I see his youth—riding horses and training with swords and strolling through palaces and blue skies and sand and heat and concubines and servants; his mother, a woman with white hair like his and eyes purple like his and brown skin and quick laughter and soft hugs; I see his whole life in a fast-forward blur, snatches of an endless parade of lives. I see him as a warrior, a healer, a trader, a peasant, a fisherman, a tanner, a scholar…too many lives to decipher or enumerate; I see Agana, She Who Wanders The Sky, a strong, lovely, powerful yet strangely delicate woman with a high forehead and deep-set eyes; I even see the gap in his memory, white space of nothing like an eyeblink; I see him fighting and running, wandering and loving, roaming the earth, forever restless. I see him, all of him, through the ages.

The sea shivers and a grumble echoes beneath us.

Atlantis is rising.

The sea churns and froths and bubbles, and all around us Atlantis rises from the depths. The pressure subsides and the crushing dark lightens, and then waves crash and thunder cracks and lightning spears and rain slants in a hurricane wind.

Aeon twists and puts his back to the wet stone steps of the temple, and there we worship each other beneath a frieze of ancient gods lost to history. The hurricane dissolves and the sun shines and warms us, and still we move together in perfect union, loving and writhing and twisting and arching. I cry his name, and thunder rolls out of a clear blue sky, and he whispers mine and lightning answers.

This is more than sex, more than mating, more than mere bonding.

I feel my chest spark with a burning line of sharp pain that steals my breath and I open my eyes to see the star at the center of my tattoo blaze with incandescent white light.

Aeon rolls us so my back is on the now warm, dry stone of the temple steps, braces himself on his hands beside my face, leans down to kiss me, and drives into me relentlessly, still hard after coming inside me, and I've come so many times I've lost count—to be honest, I barely notice the orgasms now, too lost in the wild magic of this moment.

He slashes his hand in front of us, and a black line appears in the air before us, and we're sucked forward into the black void of The Dreaming, and we stream through the nothing and cold and heat and then he slashes again and my breth catches.

We're all together, somehow—all of us: Alistair, Caleb, Aeon, Stirling, Caspian, Phineas, and me. I don't know where we are. The light comes from nowhere and everywhere, a diffuse warm light like an Edison bulb bathing us in a soothing amber glow. There's nothing around us, and it is somehow everything—a gray haze that swirls like fog, and through skirling eddies, I see London and Manhattan and Hong Kong and Paris and deserts and mountains and rolling prairies and pristine white snow lit into a million diamonds by a dawn sun.

"Maeve," Caspian whispers, his lips at my ear. "I thought I'd lost you."

"I know," I whisper back. "I'm sorry. Zirae—"

I'm still wrapped up in Aeon, shuddering at the edge of an endless orgasm, and Caspian nips the back of my neck and licks behind my left ear and then my throat my pulse point, and then he's drinking from me and I'm gasping and whimpering as I feel my mate, my love, my beloved Caspian swallowing my life and filling my soul with his essence.

Caleb is on the other side, nibbling my earlobe and caressing my ass—we're weightless or suspended in nothingness, I don't know and don't care; all I know is that Alistair is beneath me and Aeon is above me, framing me, and Caleb is on my right and Caspian on my left, Caspian drinking and Caleb touching and kissing everywhere his hands and mouth can find; Stirling guides me to sit up, and my hair floats around my head in a weightless halo, an impossibility that I do not question, and now Stirling and Fin are licking my breasts and their fangs are digging in and piercing and they're drinking from me and whispering my name in my mind and moaning as they drink.

Caleb moves behind me and his weight presses on my back and shoulders and his lips touch my ear and he whispers his love, and now magic provides all the preparation I need—he slides into me, filling me to bursting with his impossible cock, stretching me apart with pain that burns so beautifully and becomes purest pleasure as both entrances are plundered by my mates. I taste Alistair's cock and swallow it and his groan of relief is everything.

Aeon slides out of me and Caspian is there, taking his place and Aeon has my hair in his fist and he guides my mouth down Alistair's shaft and there's not enough of me for all of my mates, but damn me if I'm not gonna try.

Fin licks my wound closed at my breast and Stirling does the same, and I fill my hands with them and caress them to straining hardness and everything is in synch. Caspian thrusts in as Caleb pulls out and Alistair glides through my lips and Stirling and Fin push into my hands.

"Mine—" I gasp. "My mates. My everything."

I feel Aeon everywhere, in every movement, every taste of flesh every slide of skin, this place is him, somehow. I open my eyes and meet his and his joy is effusive and overflowing, his eyes blazing with magic and love and awe and contentment—he's in love with me, not just mated to my magic and by the Fates. Watching me be loved by and returning love to my mates is enough, more than enough—it fills him, completes him. He hasn't said it, but I don't need the words from him—I feel them in everything he does, everything else he says.

I'm overloaded by sensation, glutted on my mates. Caspian drives into me in time with Caleb, trading, alternating, and I rise to the cusp of orgasm and together we detonate, Caspian first and then me and then Caleb, and as the men find their release, they unite in their thrusts so I'm filled with them both at once, and they come, and it sends mine into a shattering of climactic ecstasy.

As Caspian finishes, a pulse of power bursts out of me—familiar, wild, potent.

It comes from my womb.

My eyes fly open and meet Caspian's; no words are needed. Bloodtears fill his eyes and trickle down his cheeks.

Time ceases, or has never been.

Phineas is beneath me, driving up into my sex, and Stirling is behind me, and everything else falls away but them—Stirling's calm cool depths and Phineas's wild strength. I feel them both in my soul and my heart and my body all at once and our whispers of love are silent and spoken and we twist together in the haze of everything and nothing everywhere and nowhere.

Magic washes and now it's just me and Alistair, as it is always with us. His sweet soft manner and kindness and intelligence fill me, and there are no words with him either, as no words are necessary with anyone—my mates all know me and this place reveals all.

I open myself as Alistair and I writhe together, and I show them all where I've been and what's happened—I give them access to my mind and everything I am—the fight with Zirae and the cuffs and the timeless time wandering the desert alone, and Aeon finding me. Our journey. Leonidas. Everything.

Alistair releases with a quiet gasp, his cheek against my ear.

Aeon has a bondmark tattoo as well. A blue line of ink, the blue of his eyes when they blaze with magic, running from the middle fingertips of each hand up his arms and down to his chest, to the star that all of us have, now filled in.

Wind blows.

A blue sky arches overhead.

There's grass beneath me. Sunshine.

Alistair's stomach is my pillow. Fin's head is on my left breast, Stirling on my right. Caspian lays beside me, our hands linked. Caleb lays perpendicular to me at my feet, my feet on his chest, his hands massaging and kneading. Aeon rests his head on my naked lap.

I feel and smell clean, as if I've bathed. I'm deliciously sore all over with reminders of our love.

But yet, we've been here in the grass forever, it feels like. Making love in a field, beneath the endless blue sky, cooled by a long breeze, warmed by the sun.

Laughter rings out somewhere.

I look down at Aeon. "Where are we?"

He smiles lazily, cockily. "Central Park."

"As in Manhattan?" I blink at him.

"Yes."

"How…wait, before how —where were we?"

He shrugs. "Hard to explain. A place I discovered…oh, about the time when the Christ walked the earth. It's a pocket between The Waking and The Dreaming. Out of time, out of dimension. It's a strange place, hard to access. I couldn't do it until I released the memory-phage."

"It's done then?" Alistair asks. "The glamour that erased memory?"

"Yes. It's done. It didn't erase memory, it just…blocked it. Changed it. It's not exactly a phage, more of a bastard version of one that doesn't devour memory, only consumes and holds."

I roll my eyes. "Your stories always have one more dimension to them that you didn't mention the last time."

"Old habit," he answers. "I may not tell the whole truth all the time, but I never lie. But, I will promise to do my best to tell the whole truth."

"I'd appreciate it. Lying by omission is still lying, in my book."

"Noted," he says, his voice wry.

"We cracked the energy problem," Caleb says. "Well, Elias and his team did."

"It works?" I ask. "Tell me! How?"

He just chuckles. "Elias will have to explain it. It's beyond me. Some clever combination of engineering and magic."

"And plumbing?"

He presses his thumb into the arch of my foot. "Almost there."

"And the Mortal Federation?"

A long pause. "Down, but not out," Caspian answers. "We drove them out of Manhattan, but they're still out there. Their numbers are way down—it turns out most mortals, once they are shown the truth, don't hate us. They're just afraid. Once they see that most of us aren't interested in harming anyone, the problem goes away."

"The damage is done, though," Stirling says. "Governments all across the world have collapsed. Infrastructure is crumbling. The world is watching how we set up the Enclave."

"Unfortunately, Stirling is right," Alistair says. "Things will not ever go back to anything like normal. We are responsible for establishing a new normal."

I glance down my body at Aeon again. "Did you actually raise Atlantis, or was that, like, a fever dream?"

His smile is amused and arrogant. "I did."

"Why?"

A shrug. "When I released the memory-phage, my magic returned to me all at once in a rush. It was a lot like holding a rubber band stretched out and then letting it go. It snaps back, yes? Same thing. I wasn't maintaining a spell that continuously ate memories; I was holding their memories at bay. Or, if you'd like to be pedantic, I was holding the information at bay rather than their memory's ability to remember our existence. The energy used in holding all that information at bay had to be redirected. I felt raising Atlantis would be better than leveling Athens or something, which was the other alternative."

I decide to address the elephant in the room. "I'd just like to say thank you to all of you for being so understanding and accepting of what happened with me and Aeon." I look at Caspian. "You in particular. I didn't go looking for anything."

Caspian only smiles. "I know. It was weird—you vanished into that portal or whatever it was, and we all knew it was Zirae. There was the fear that something had happened to you—meaning, the worry that you'd died. But we'd have felt it if you had, and we didn't feel that. Losing a bonded mate is not something you can mistake. So it became an exercise in trusting you. We knew— I knew—you'd come back in one piece. And then, suddenly, we were all transported into that pocket realm or whatever it was, and…" he frowns. "It's hard to explain. But the moment we saw you and Aeon, we understood. Even before you opened your memories to us, we understood. Or at least, I did."

Stirling tilts his head to kiss my sternum. "The fact that there was no bond-sickness sort of explained things, in a way."

"So, you're not jealous? Or upset?"

"It was mostly the timing, with Caleb," Caspian says. "I was bond-sick and forced to feel your pain and everything you went through without knowing what was happening and being unable to do a damn thing about it, and then you were feeling pleasure and it turned out to be the very person who, as I understood it at the time, had captured you and turned you over to The Tribunal. So, it wasn't about you taking another mate—it wasn't jealousy. It was who, how, and when. This, with him?" he indicates Aeon. "It's different. So no, no jealousy."

"She resisted it until there was no other choice, until the magic of the mate-bond took over," Aeon says. "She was worried about you all. She didn't want to and refused to do anything that would hurt you. You were all she thought of."

"And just so everyone is on the same page," I say, "I'm pretty sure Aeon is the last one. Six mates is…a lot." I laugh. "Not that I'd trade any one of you for the whole fucking world."

Alistair runs his fingers through my hair. "We should talk about the other thing that happened."

Caspian rolls to his side and reaches over Stirling to place his palm on my belly. "I didn't imagine that?"

I rest my hand on his, smiling at him with tears welling. "No, my love. You didn't. I conceived."

He looks at me for a long time, his face carefully blank. And then, very slowly, his expression crumbles and bloodtears trickle down his cheeks. "After…" he swallows hard, sits up and wipes at his eyes with the heels of his palms. "It was too hard to think about, but I…when I felt them do to you what they…what those fucking bastards did, I…"

I dislodge everyone and move to sit behind Caspian, straddling his hips with my thighs, crushing my breasts to his back and wrapping my arms around him, resting my cheek on his nape. "Tell me, my love. Let it out."

Fin takes one of his hands and Stirling the other. Caleb leans toward him, thunking their foreheads together with his hand on the back of Caspian's neck; Alistair rests his hand on his shoulder, squeezing.

"I was just starting to wrap my head around the idea of being a father." He sniffs, and his shoulders shake. "My mom. She was about my age when she had me. And I was just…I was thinking about her and wishing she could be here to meet her grandchild. I was just starting to…not be scared of failing, starting to really want it, you know?"

"I couldn't think about it," I whisper. "I mean, there was so much happening anyway, but really, I was terrified. Deep down, I was so fucking scared of being pregnant. I'd just become immortal, and I just…I wasn't ready. But I would have been. I just needed time to accept it, to think about it, to feel it. I didn't get that. It was taken from me." I let my blood- and prana-tears fall. "In some ways, I didn't know how strongly I felt about being pregnant until it was taken away from me."

"It's a good thing you destroyed them all already," Aeon says, "or I'd raze that place to ashes and salt the earth where it was."

Caspian takes a deep breath, holds it, and then lets it out slowly and shakily. "It's going to be different this time around."

"Yes," I whisper and kiss his back. "It will be."