“Fuck.” Wynn watched the woman with rainbow hair disappear through the yellow portal leading to some point in the human world. He’d been summoned to the place-between-places by Darkyn shortly after lying down to sleep. Instead of the dream about her trying to kill him, the goddess herself had disturbed his sleep.
As much as he hated the unpredictable, he found himself unusually intrigued by Karma’s defiance and the spark of fire in her eyes. Interacting with her roused long dormant lust and derailed his train of thought to the point her plight was all he had thought of in that moment. Fucking her would be an experience unlike any other. With her lack of inhibition and passion, she’d never leave his bed.
Wrong, he told himself, irritated for being taken in by such carnal thoughts when he had more important things to do. He hadn’t expected this interaction to affect him this way. He’d spent his two Immortal lifetimes focused on his duty and his hidden agenda. Karma shifted his attention with her presence, to the point he thought of nothing but her.
Their bond was unbreakable and foreordained. All the research he’d done since discovering her name on his body had only reinforced this fact. He’d taken satisfaction in learning his daughter was mated to Fate, a deity Wynn had struggled to manipulate. In that circumstance, the mating bond had worked in his favor.
But Karma? And now? The timing had Fate’s name written all over it. Wynn never expected the god to throw this card into the mix, especially when this card was Karma, a beautiful woman with no impulse control whatsoever. She’d been horrified when he described what Darkyn would do with his favors, which only made Wynn more concerned.
She really didn’t know what she was doing. He had exaggerated the worlds ending but began to think he hadn’t been that far off. One wrong deal, with the wrong deity, and Karma could decimate the fragile balance among deities, Immortals, demons, and humans.
She was breathtaking – and dangerous. Wynn wanted nothing to do with her but suspected if they met again, the primal nature of their bond would compel him down a path he had no intention of following, if he could stop it.
At this rate, if she continued to pursue this course, he’d spend his time ensuring she didn’t back herself into a corner, wind up dead-dead, or cause the destruction of the worlds. Several weeks ago, he had predicted she would go to Darkyn, because she had no other alternative. That she’d finally decided to confront the demon was a warning sign. She was becoming erratic in addition to desperate, and that could jeopardize Wynn’s plan.
Let her fuck up her own life, he thought and tried to convince himself this was the wisest course of action. The only problem: she was likely to drag him down with her. Their fates, and their souls, were inextricably bound. For now. Until my plan is complete.
“Checkmate.” Darkyn’s voice came from the portal to Hell. He stepped into the foggy, cool place-between-places.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Wynn replied.
“You let your children make deals with my predecessor and me and never once tried to interfere,” the observant demon said.
“They needed to learn. I’m focused on the long game.”
“It’s never just a game with you.”
Wynn looked away from the portal Karma had gone through to Darkyn. He didn’t answer. He’d mastered the ability to deal with powerful deities without directly challenging them, and without losing control of his position in the situation, either. His appearance of deference encouraged others to assume they had more influence than they did, and gave him the advantage of subtle manipulation of his opponent’s ego.
This skill, too, was one Karma didn’t have the capacity to learn.
“You definitely wouldn’t waste a favor on just anyone,” Darkyn added. “I already know, Ancient.”
“The Dark One tell you?” Wynn asked softly, revealing the secret he suspected no one else had figured out.
The giveaway: He’d been able to read Darkyn much more easily than he normally could a deity. Adept at reading information others didn’t want revealed, Wynn had picked up on Darkyn’s secret the moment he stepped into the place-between-places. Wynn didn’t know how Deidre had become the Dark One and he didn’t care. It gave him some leverage, in that Hell had a potential vulnerability he could exploit one day.
Darkyn smiled coldly. “I am content letting my queen rule,” he said. “Are you?”
“I have no queen.” Wynn touched his wrist once more.
“Then open Hell to her and allow me to do what I do best.”
“As you wish. When I have no use for her, I will.”
“I’ll be first in line.”
If Darkyn hoped to elicit a reaction from Wynn, he failed. Wynn bowed his head and turned away, retreating through the portal back to the human world and his chamber. If anything, tossing Karma into Hell was sounding like a better idea by the second.
Darkyn was right. Wynn had been forced to use one of the very rare favors granted by Hell to ensure Karma never had the chance to make a deal with Darkyn. Wynn hadn’t planned on losing any of his favors.
He hadn’t planned on her.
Whatever was happening to him, it was quick enough to catch him off guard and strong enough to destabilize him beyond his ability to self-correct. It was deeper than instinct – a compulsion whose source was his very soul. He hated being out of control, and he was no closer to determining what to do about her than he had been the first time he laid eyes on the mark.
Wynn unwound the bandage on his arm. Karma packed a punch. She hadn’t been toying with him all those weeks ago; she meant to murder him.
Amidst the scars remaining from his first encounter with her was the Immortal bonding tattoo with the word Maat at its center. Her brother had chosen her name, Wynn knew from his journals. The Egyptians had named their god of destiny after him, and he’d named his little sister after one of their gods. Fate was known as Shai. Karma as Maat.
Because Karma outranked Wynn on the scale of Immortals and deities, her name had appeared on his body rather than his name on hers. The mating tattoo consisted of her name, binding words written in a tongue from the time-before-time, and a few decorative flourishes. Lining the inside of his forearm, the bright red mark was impossible to miss.
Karma hadn’t stopped mid-kill because she wasn’t able to do it. She had stopped because she saw what was in his soul: the discovery of her mate – among many other potential secrets that had been hidden for millennia.
Technically, it was up to her to claim him. But Wynn had a feeling she wasn’t going to, and they’d both end up in Hell in some serious shit. Mates were weaknesses, and he couldn’t afford a weakness now.
“Fuck,” Wynn murmured again. He replaced the gauze around his arm and lowered it.
He wasn’t about to display the mating tattoo publicly until he had a plan to handle Karma and the bond.
He didn’t have time to chase the young goddess around, no matter how pretty and spirited she was – or what the Immortal and deity codes mandated about mates. She wasn’t the first woman he’d been attracted to. His history was littered with torrid affairs that never lasted, including those with the seven different women who bore his children.
None of them had been his foreordained mate or aroused his need on a primal level he’d never experienced with anyone else. Walking away – or killing – the others had required little effort. He began to believe walking away from Karma wasn’t going to be possible. He’d ridiculed every other Immortal or deity he met who was stricken with the mating bond. Unfortunately, he had begun to understand them.
Wynn stretched out on his bed and stared at the ceiling far above.
Karma was a hurricane, one that had burst into his life when he was close to reaching his goals. The last thing he needed was to be swept out to sea, or rendered ineffective and vulnerable, by a reckless goddess who thought with her heart and not her head.
He needed to move in front of the storm headed his way and redirect it before his plans were destroyed.
Wynn folded his hands behind his head, staring into the darkness, pensive.
Was it possible to stop the storm, or was he in denial? He didn’t know – and that worried him most of all.