Chapter 84 Xerxes
Xerxes
The look on my mate’s face told me she wasn’t entirely sure what our answers would be. Darkness filled her eyes as she looked between the map and us, glancing between Thor and I like we could possibly have any other answer.
Her question about the rest of our lives replayed in my head.
What I knew about the Queens was framed by old stories told by elders, so what I knew likely had been altered by generations of oral storytelling.
I knew the old Queens of my world once lived long lives—longer than the average creature.
Completing the bond would extend her mortal life to match the lifespan of her mates, but it would also extend our own.
But there was something in her expression that had me pausing. “What is it?” I asked, cocking my head.
Ivy ran a hand over her face, fingers trembling.
“You won’t be able to go home,” she sighed, closing her eyes.
“You came here to save your people. You want to protect them. But we won’t be able to be apart, Xerxes.
Once the bond is completed, that’s it. The time we can be apart before my magic gets unstable is two weeks—barely that. ”
My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. Sitting back, the air left my lungs, pressure building in my chest as I considered her words carefully. “I could never return?” I asked, staring into the sad eyes of my mate.
She shook her head slowly. “You could, yes,” she replied, “but not for long. A few days at a time, maybe. I’m…I honestly don’t know much about the time frames. But you couldn’t live there anymore. You’d have to stay here.”
There was a part of me that had known this. Knew that accepting a bond with her would lead to me giving something up. But could I live with never returning home?
It hadn’t been lost on me that I found this place…
easy to live in. This manor, so entirely different to the home I grew up in, yet still reflective of the world my home once was.
There were buildings much like this still scattered around the countryside, no longer stable or viable to live in, just bones of what they might’ve once looked like.
But it wasn’t the building.
Home meant my people—the clans who were relying on me to protect them. The other Primals who had no idea about the war coming to us who needed me.
I thought I would miss the people I grew up with more, and it hurt to realise I didn’t.
The expectation placed upon me to act as their protector, as a warrior, weighed so heavily that it’d been the only thought in my mind when I sought Ivy and the others out.
Maybe the realisation of the bond had clouded my judgement, swayed some part of me without me even realising it.
But here, amongst her other mates, I finally felt like I fit. I wasn’t just the warrior anymore, the one Primals turned to for answers, a body to sacrifice to the thrax.
Here, I felt like I could be an equal. They didn’t pass judgement on me. They didn’t expect more than I could offer.
And yet, I still hesitated over the idea of not going home.
But the elders always said: our home had nothing to do with our location.
It had everything to do with our clan. The Primals were not sedentary creatures.
We had to move often because of the thrax attacks, and only over the last two centuries had we survived in one place longer than a few years.
It was why I had my own land in our city.
“It’s a lot to think about,” Ivy said suddenly. “Trust me when I say I understand the feeling.”
My stomach churned. “You cannot return to your home, either.”
She shook her head, a small smile playing at her lips. “The human world isn’t really mine to call home anymore,” she replied, gaze flickering around the room. “I miss it. A lot. I think I always will. But I could never give this up.”
I nodded, gaze dropping to the table. To the rush of emotions warring within me, making it hard to think straight. “And do you want the bond?” I asked carefully, staring down at the dark skin of my hands. “Would you accept it with me?”
A shaky breath fell from her lips, and a sudden fear hit me: what if she didn’t? She had so many mates, and she barely knew me. It took her months to accept Hawk, but she didn’t have that time with me—with Thor.
“I would accept the bond with all of you again if I could,” she said quietly.
“I know I make it sound like an obligation, like it’s something we have to do.
And in a way, it has become that. We can’t win without being united.
I won’t survive without it…and neither will our realms.” She stopped, so I looked up to find her still watching me—still sad. “It’s a sacrifice.”
“Not at all,” I replied honestly, heart pounding.
My Primal felt that way, too. He clawed at me, begging to be released after days of being trapped.
He wanted to have his mate. It was more than just the instinctive, Primal feeling that came with being connected to my beast. It was something more, born of watching her in the Old World and again in Dante’s cage—surviving it all.
Ivy pressed her lips together, surprise flickering in her dark eyes. “So, you want to accept the bond? Or do you want a little more time?”
“Time is something we don’t have,” I replied, sitting back. “And I don’t need more of it.”
“You’re sure?” There it was again; the surprise in her voice, in her stare. “It means five hundred years if we win this, Xerxes. You have to understand what you’re signing up for. Both of you.” She glanced at Thor, the male eerily still sitting beside her.
I hadn’t even thought about him, how he felt about it. But he’d been drawn to her since the very beginning, her silent protector in the cages. I hadn’t forgotten how he answered her cries in the Old World, the race we’d been in to reach her.
The bear shifter rested his hand atop hers, meeting her stare evenly. I could almost hear his thoughts as if he were saying them aloud, because they were the same words playing in my own mind.
Yes. I want the bond.
Ivy visibly shuddered, her eyes fluttering shut for a moment before opening and swinging around the room. “How many days do we have before the lunar eclipse?” she asked, glancing down the table at the demon king.
The male shook his head. “Five for the one that will come over Avalon.”
“Then there are only five days remaining to complete your final two bonds,” I said. “Can you do that?”
Ivy’s cheeks flushed red, the sight making my heart race. “You mean, five days and sex? Sure. Definitely doable.”
Beside me, the vampire cleared her throat. “You must consider the fact that you have passed out twice now from attempting to bond. You need at least a day’s rest between them.”
Ivy scrubbed a hand down her face and groaned. “It sounds so loveless,” she muttered, staring at me between her fingers. “I’m sorry.”
I crossed my arms and watched her, heart skipping a beat. “Why are you sorry?”
“Because it’s not really romantic.” She dropped her hand, glancing at Thor. “It’s being treated like a chore.”
“It won’t be much of a chore when you have to go into the forest and I have to hunt you down,” I replied, cocking my head.
I’d never taken a mate—not as a fated mate, and not in terms of breeding, either—so I’d never partaken in the ritual of mating like those my age and older.
Sometimes the males were the hunters, sometimes it was the female.
But this was my ritual, and I’d always wanted to be the one to hunt my mate and take her in the way of Primals.
The colour of her cheeks deepened into a fiery red. “Oh.”
I nodded once. “I need to mark you as a mate, right?” She responded with a nod. “Then my Primal will need to be unleashed. Unless that…upsets you.”
For a moment, she chewed her lip. But by the scent of her desire perfuming the air, she was thinking about it.
Her scent alone had my Primal battling me for control. I felt the ripple of a shift coming, and it took all my strength to not allow him free. But my cock stiffened as she dropped my stare.
“The whole knot thing…that has to happen, too, doesn’t it?” she asked carefully. “With the whole…breeding aspect?”
“Yes, even though you’re already pregnant. The knot will happen regardless,” I replied, though I wouldn’t know.
I’d never given anyone my knot before.
So she would be my first—and my last.
There was something comforting about that, and it deeply pleased my Primal.
Ivy shifted, but eventually nodded. “Okay. I can be prepared for that. I think,” she murmured.
“You took my cock fine, wife. And although I might not have a knot like the Primal, you handled my swell with no difficulty,” the demon king said, grinning from his position at the end of the table.
If looks could kill, I had a feeling the ancient male would be ash under her dark stare. “That was unnecessary.”
The male shrugged lightly. “Have you struggled with any of your mates?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then you will have no problems with him.” The demon leaned forward, eyes burning like embers flickering free of a fire. “And we can all tell you enjoy the idea of taking his knot.”
Ivy’s jaw ticked, cheeks burning. Somehow, the scent of her arousal grew from his challenge, and it took even more effort to not allow my Primal out.
I had to clamp down on every instinct I had when her eyes swung to mine. There was a deep consideration in them, an understanding.
My hands formed fists on the table, nails digging into my palms as I watched her come to some kind of understanding.
“Okay,” she murmured, standing. “I can’t run, so you’ll give me a head start, right?”
My breath escaped me in a rush as the shift ripped at my insides. “For as long as I can hold back my Primal,” I replied tightly, cock pulsating in my pants, “yes.”
Ivy looked around the room for a moment, shrugged, and went to the door. “Better to do this now than wait,” she said, before throwing open the door and slipping outside.
The demon rose as well. “We shouldn’t watch,” he said, “but it perhaps would be better if we were within earshot if anything happens.”
“Yeah, because we need to listen to our mate take a knot,” the wolf muttered, pushing out of his chair, glowing eyes swinging to meet mine. “You good?”
I gritted my teeth and nodded. “My Primal is…clawing for control,” I ground out. “But she doesn’t move very fast.”
Adrian snorted. “She’s pregnant with twins and doesn’t have her magic. You’ll need to give her time to make it to the trees. I love her, but running is not her strong suit.”
Rowan moved to the window. “Well, she made it down the stairs. I’ll let you know when I don’t see her.”
“Why are you helping?” I asked, staring around the room.
There were mate circles back home, but the relationships between the circle were…
formal. They shared a mate out of necessity more than anything.
They had to like one another for it to work—not necessarily be involved, but they had to have respect, and that took many, many years to achieve.
From the window, Rowan said, “Because she’s our mate.”
“She also will give a very long, very passionate speech eventually about our ability to get along,” Adrian added.
“Yes, once all of this is over, there will be family nights where we will need to not fight—for her sake,” Maeve said, glancing down at me as she rose from her chair. “If we don’t, then it stresses her out. Makes her worry.”
“And we don’t need her worrying about our ability to respect one another as her mates,” Elias finished.
Before I could utter a response, the door to the patio opened. “She’s out there, Primal,” Rowan said, turning to me. “Go find your mate.”
The shift happened before I could stop it, ripping apart my body and turning me from man to beast. Flesh was replaced with the thick skin of my Primal, hair sprouting along my arms and legs, limbs lengthening—teeth sharpening.
In a matter of moments, I was outside, and the hunt began.