41. Jaiyana

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

JAIYANA

M y accountant’s portal spit us out in the middle of the luxury base camp I’d seen online. We found four log cabin-style buildings with picturesque decks baking in the late morning sun. The heat beat down on our shoulders. Although I immediately wilted, my guys turned their faces to the sun and basked.

They looked incredible. It took me precious seconds I didn’t know if we had to pull my gaze away from them. Although glimpses of the Sahara peeked between buildings, the back two and the front of two faced us. At first glance, nothing appeared out of place, so I addressed my mates.

“This means left,” I moved my hand as I spoke. “This means right. Stop. Go. And help!” I jumped up and down, waving my arms.

Everyone but Rehan chuckled. My too-serious water dragon crossed his arms over his chest.

“We were terrible at working together, but we’re working on it, right?” I nodded sharply and didn’t wait for them to agree. “We’ll check this entire place. Do not pass a door without opening it. One person opens the door, while another stands in front of it, ready to defend.” I locked gazes with Tyson. “No one opens another door until we know the room we’re in has nothing in it, got it?”

Tyson put his hands in the air, clearly having no memory of our search in Scalehive.

Although I put Rehan at our front, he and Tyson played a quick game of rock-paper-scissors, and Tyson ended up in the lead.

I let it go. At the end of the day, both would do a good job.

You’re a changed woman, Jay.

Maybe.

At the first building, they followed my instructions flawlessly. Tyson broke the lock and pushed open the door while Rehan wordlessly went in with a glob of water in each palm. Lux entered next, keeping his back to Rehan so nothing surprised the water dragon from behind.

I grinned. I hadn’t told them to do that.

The open-plan bedroom contained two large beds neatly made with white linens. Mosquito netting fluttered, and colorful pictures of lions and zebras dotted the walls. Just like outside, nothing seemed out of place. The small bathroom off to one side was unoccupied, and water still ran from the faucet.

I cocked my head to the side. “You guys did that really well.”

Tyson puffed out his chest while Lux blushed. Rehan took out his ponytail only to put it back up.

“Ah,” Og shuffled his feet. “Last night, I don’t know if they felt it, but when we were all working together, my mate bond changed. I could actually feel everyone. Like their intentions and their, ah, pleasure.” Og turned bright red.

“The connection didn’t go away,” Tyson finished. “Stop making things so fecking awkward, Og. It was synchronized nutting, and we’re making a sport out of it.” Tyson undressed me with his gaze, and I joined Og and Lux in trying to heat the room with my face.

Rehan cleared his throat. “Is the connection normal?”

I put my palms up. “I’m not a shifter, and I’ve never had a mate, much less four. This is new territory for me, but as I’ve said…“

“Magic likes balance,” all three of them said like crazy cultists.

We could have a cult. They already worship you.

Shut up.

I grinned. “It does. With five of us, the connection should be as flexible as I was last night.” But it wasn’t. I didn’t feel a single emotion from any of them. But this wasn’t the time to point it out. “Bradly or someone using my account was here, and we know demon pods dropped. Next building.”

“I go first.” Tyson stepped toward the exit. “I want to check the room first this time, not open a door.”

“Jay put me in that role.” Rehan frowned. “If you light this building on fire, they’ll all go up and probably all of the Sahara with it.

“Then you better stay at my back, Water Boy.” Tyson smirked.

They both looked at me, but instead of giving them orders, I spread my hands. “It’s your call.”

They watched each other for another few seconds before Rehan inclined his head. “We can switch off. I’ll open the next door.”

I pressed my hands together in front of my chest to keep from overreacting to their sudden comradery.

The second building was just as empty as the first. We moved on, stepping to the front of the small safari park. The Maasai Mara National Reserve opened up before us. Miles of tall grass met a bright blue sky shimmering with heat. The occasional single, massive, wide-topped tree dotted the landscape. Under one of those trees stood a herd of elephants with their trunks swinging.

It was a sight to behold.

My dragons’ nostrils flared, and their eyes shifted into their dragon slits. The air around them stilled. They were smelling and seeing giant animals for the first time in their lives. They’d been born on an island with nothing but the occasional squirrel and whatever farming they cultivated. And their lives had primarily been human.

Although I badly wanted them to shift and explore whatever instincts the elephants had awakened in them, we were here for a reason. I whistled and jerked my head.

Four partially shifted dragons rocked on their heels as if forcing themselves to stay in place. Scales rippled. I swear Og’s butt waggled like a cat, ready to pounce. Their dragons must be close to the surface.

I whistled again and giggled. “Mates, heel.”

Tyson snapped out of it first and glared at me before the others slowly took control of their animal instincts.

We searched the third hut, only to find it just as empty.

Nerves tingled down to my fingertips—only one more building.

As we approached the front of the final hut, movement caught my eye around the side. Tyson must have seen it as well because he sprinted forward and disappeared from view, leaving door number four unchecked. Shit. We’d been doing so well. Lux charged after Tyson while Rehan stepped up to the building and busted open the door.

Well, they're sticking together in the pairs they practiced. That’s a start, right?

I’ll take it. But it leaves me the odd one out.

I let out a curse in four different languages and had to pick a team. The building was likely just as empty as the first three. I charged after Tyson and Lux just as a dragon’s roar split the air, sending even the distant elephants charging in the opposite direction.

Chaos erupted in front of me. Demons surrounded Lux and Tyson, snarling and flinging acid into the air. Behind the fight, a fluorescent-green portal snapped shut, leaving behind the impression of possessed brown eyes.

A line of poison streaked toward me, and I rolled before coming back to my feet. I still had no weapons. It hadn’t even occurred to me to take some of Drukpa’s defensive jewelry. Fuck me. I didn’t need shit when I had my magic, and after hundreds of years of not carrying a purse, I just couldn’t fucking remember to grab one.

I reached into the ground and called on Og’s earth magic, creating a club of pure stone, before lighting it on fire.

Fire sword – er club.

We’re a little obsessed with that.

I screamed and charged the nearest demon, madly swinging with all my strength. The club connected with the demon’s side. The demon bellowed and turned, grabbing the bat. I forced Tyson’s fire magic to engulf its entire body, which hissed and bubbled, filling the air with the smell of burning eggs. The demon melted like chocolate and pooled at my feet before bubbling with new life. A hard ball condensed in the center of melted demon and rapidly formed a leafy texture.

For a brief moment, I honestly thought a cabbage was growing out of the dead demon. Magic liked balance, it just fit so perfectly. But my cabbage didn’t stop expanding until it was the size of a small toddler. A football-shaped head took shape over a gremlin-like body. The new demon-gremlin thing flashed hundreds of sharp, pointed teeth at me and blinked it’s too-big black, pupilless eyes.

“What the fuck?”

It lept onto my thick boots and sunk its teeth into my toes. One pointy tooth made it through the layers of leather and socks to poke me.

I swung my bat like a golf club, and the little fucker went flying.

A window shattered at my back, and I spun to face it.

Rehan rolled on the ground, shedding little gremlins like patches of unwanted fur. He stood, and dragon scales replaced his bleeding human skin.

“Og,” he bellowed and jumped back the way he came.

A gremlin streaked out of the broken window and collided with my side, knocking me to the ground. Two more balls of blurred movement shot out. One hit Lux in the back, throwing him into the demon he fought at his front. While the other took out Tyson at the knee.

It was pure chaos and with every dragon for himself. And worse, me and my unscaled magicless ass for myself.

Another gremlin rose out of the demon’s bubbling entrails and leaped at my face. I dropped my club and threw myself backward, bringing up one of Lux’s air shields. The little gremlin bounced off the layer of spinning air, only to hit the ground and come at me again, this time with one of his friends. Something sharp sank into my butt, and an uncomfortable burning spread through my ass cheek.

I turned Lux’s air magic into a spinning disk and sliced at my backside. Blood spurted as I cut the gremlin in half, but its teeth didn’t release my backside. Two more gremlins came at me. I managed to cut the one aimed at my side in half, but the one that hit my thigh bit and held. I wasn’t winning this.

Fuck it.

It had been a joke, but I put my hands up in the air and jumped up and down. “Help, help, fucking help!”

For a moment, I thought no one heard me. Then Lux put his head up and roared swiftly, followed by Tyson’s matching bellow. Clothing exploded, and cybernetic limbs hit the ground as the two shifted into their massive dragons and charged through the demons to get to my side.

Although it kept the gremlins off of them, and me, it also made their attempts to eat and swat at the fast little buggers as effective as flies.

Tyson opened his mouth, intent on destroying everything with his flame, only to close it as if remembering our warning about fire. Although his dragon lips couldn’t form human words, I swore I still heard him say ‘feck.’

The entire side of the hut exploded at my back. Unlike the first two huts, the third was a kitchen and dining area. Water pipes gushed from the broken wall, and tiles littered the ground. Someone had thrown a table against what looked like a weapons rack filled with large rifles.

Rehan and Og, both covered in their scales, ran towards me. Earth magic streamed out of Og’s fingers. The ground rumbled as he churned the entire battlefield, burying living and dead demons under layers of dry dirt. Rehan didn’t slow his charge toward me. In one too-smooth motion, he lifted me off the unstable ground and into his arms.

“We aren’t running from this!” I thumped Rehan’s scaly shoulder. “Bradly was here, so we need to know what he was doing. Work together. We can do this.”

Rehan’s dragon-slit eyes wavered before he nodded. “Work together.”

He set me down and helped me pull teeth out of my ass and thigh. Blood dribbled down my pants. Lux and Tyson darted toward me and shifted into their scaled human forms. Og joined us, his gaze still on the battlefield where gremlins and demons were digging themselves out of the dirt.

“Would the thick clay we made hold them?” Rehan asked.

“No.” I wrinkled my nose. We needed all the little gremlins in one place and, ideally, as still as possible. “I’m going to pull them all to me. As soon as I have them, Lux will make the air thick to slow their movements.”

I made eye contact with Lux, who frowned but nodded.

A little pack of the gremlins looked ready to jump us, and two of the remaining demons fully dug themselves out of the churred earth. We had to act now.

I charged back into the fray of poison and gremlins.

“You want me, come and get me!” I yelled, pulling all four elements into a glowing ball in front of me.

Like moths to a flame, the gremlins and demons streaked toward me. The first one hit me in the chest, and the second my back. Unlike my dragons, I couldn’t stay standing, so I dropped to one knee. Something bit into my calf, and I screamed in pain. The ball of my mates’ elemental power exploded in my hands, sending a cascade of colors into the sky.

The air around me turned heavy, exactly as I asked, slowing everything. The remaining not-gremlin-demons trapped in Lux’s air magic melted, just like the one I hit with my fire club. I paused; these were the same demons who had just unburied themselves from Og’s earth magic… which hadn’t turned them into goo. I put that fact aside.

Once again, textured cabbages grew and turned into little gremlins. In my fascination, I forgot to protect myself. In stop motion, a gremlin head-butted my left eye.

I swore.

I tried to bring my hand up to push it off, but in slowing the gremlins, I’d put myself in the same trap. My next breath felt like sucking cotton, and my lungs strained. Lux’s thick air magic made it hard to inhale.

Yeah. Maybe using yourself as bait was not a good plan.

In comparison, just beyond the gremlins, my mates moved comically fast, darting in and out of the thick air to cut down the little monsters like whack-a-moles.

They’re working together, so it worked?

The pressure around me popped, and the air returned to normal. Bodies fell like rain around me. I sucked in a harsh lung full of sour-tasting air. I’d been trying to punch a demon, and my arm suddenly moved so fast I impacted the ground and split my knuckle. The gremlin claw still hanging out of my bicep jostled painfully.

A new gremlin grew out of a pile of demon goo, and Rehan stomped it down before it had a chance to live. The ground to my left shook and then caved in. Tyson stepped toward it, fire flickering across his hand.

“No, wait.” I held out a hand.

Og dropped his scales, except for a pair of shorts protecting his vulnerable bits, and pressed his hands to my arm. His green healing magic sunk into my skin.

“Why?” Tyson asked as the demon’s hand rose above the dirt.

“Because it’s still a demon,” I said. “Tyson’s fire magic and Lux’s air magic reacted with the demons, and they became something else. But when Og’s magic churned the ground and buried them, they dug themselves out as demons.”

Tyson narrowed his eyes.

The dry white bone of the demon’s skull poked out of the ground, followed by the lines of Gorm’s fluorescent-green magic.

I looked at Rehan. “Douse it.”

Water drifted from a broken pipe, spilling onto the ground from the half-demolished kitchen building. Unceremoniously, the water dragon doubled its size, formed it into a ball, and dropped it on the demon’s head. The now-wet demon continued digging its way free, completely unfazed.

Although I wasn’t fully healed, the smarting from my wounds had turned into a dull throb, thanks to Og.

Still down on one knee, I brushed my fingers against the churred earth. “Og, crush it.”

Og pursed his lips but brought his hands together. The ground under us shook. The demon let out a hissing wheeze and quivered before its head popped off. It flew a few inches off the ground and landed, magicless, at Tyson’s feet.

“Gorm was here,” I stated, remembering the closing portal and possessed brown eyes at the back of our battlefield. “I don’t think he saw me, but he saw Tyson.”

“Then he fecking ran,” Tyson said, grinning like he’d chased off the god himself.

Something didn’t feel right about any of this. I hated to say it, but we won too easily. We’d obviously sprung a trap. Had it just failed? Or had Gorm gotten what he wanted?

Rehan offered me a hand up, and I took it.

“Demons are susceptible to pure elemental magic.” I didn’t voice my doubts. “Gorm’s trying to cure them of their weakness, and it looks like he’s figured it out for air and fire.” I didn’t look at Lux or Tyson. Tyson might not understand the implication that his father was working with Gorm, but Lux would be too aware of his father’s betrayal. “He can come on and off the island at will, which means he’s either taken control of the shield or built a second portal to get through it.”

“We need to go back,” Og said. “Ideally, before he implements any of his experiments. Gorm has to be hiding in fire territory.”

I nodded in complete agreement. “But first, I need to give you a crash course on demons and gods. I will not let you go into another situation blind.” I fixed my gaze on Masai Mara. Our fight had cleared out any visible big game, but that didn’t mean dragons couldn’t find more. “The four of you need to indulge your dragons.”

They are a team.

We are a team?

My stomach twisted.

Their bond is growing without me. I have to be ready for every possibility, and that means giving them everything to build a bright future.

I waited for the little voice in my head to doubt me, but she stayed quiet.

Being happy was never that simple.