At the moment, the four of us were enjoying some group time on the couch right after lunch. Bonnie had already excitedly filled in Maggie to the three sets of slutty uniforms for roleplay on order, as well as the stripper pole, and pompoms that had dildos for handles. We already had a principal’s paddle to spank the bad schoolgirls, the paddle had been one of the toys we’d kept from the dungeon.

  Needless to say, my Mags was bright eyed with wanton anticipation.

  I changed the subject, “So, Bonnie and I also talked about our fourth mate. I wonder if we shouldn’t take the matter into our own hands. Not aggressively, but just go see her and see if we’re right that she’s compatible and would bring even more to our core family. If not, then at least we’d know the truth of it and could stop thinking about it.”

  Maggie tilted her head, “That might not be a bad idea. Her mother is an ally of Aphrodite, but she might not have been included in what we believe happened, the goddesses setting us all up. So for all Shannon is concerned she might have just blown it off.”

  “Shannon? Who’s her mother?”

  Maggie grinned, “Nox. Goddess of night.”

  I tilted my head, “Allied with love?”

  Bonnie explained, “My mom and Aphrodite are also night goddesses. Not my goddess’s mantel but her existence, so her and Nox get along. In our shared dreams it’s always nighttime, and the stars are bright above making the endless field of wildflowers beautiful. It’s amazing, but my point is Aphrodite is very attuned to the night by her nature, even as she’s the goddess of love, pleasure, beauty, and fertility.”

  Maggie said, “Plus, Nox is very… sensual too, as a goddess. Not as freely loving as my grandmother, but her mortal lovers tend to be… overwhelmed in her embrace. So they have more in common than just the night as well.”

  “Overwhelmed?”

  Elena said, “You know how I tease you sometimes, until you lose it and give me the good hard fucking I’m after, and kind of lose your mind a little bit?”

  I nodded.

  Elena continued, “Well, for Nox they say that even the lightest touch on a man will drive him to that, darkly so. Even when you lose your mind in the lust which drives me crazy, you’re really still in control of yourself. But for Nox… her men literally lose their minds to the lust, and they will rut her and not be capable of stopping until they… finish.”

  Maggie shrugged, “Point is, her and grandma get along, which is why I sent the invite, at least why I think I sent the invite. Her daughter of course will be half human and nothing like that, though it could inform her sexual desires partly there’s no telling until we find out.”

  “Powers?”

  Maggie replied, “Magic sensitive, so she’s like Elena that way, and her powers probably have something to do with night or shadows, maybe entropy, but I’m not completely sure about that yet. It’s also possible her powers approach yours in potency, even Zeus is said to be wary of Shannon’s mother’s power, and Nox has been around a whole lot longer than he has. She’s one of the primordial deities.”

  “So, are we doing this? Or should we wait until tomorrow.”

  They all nodded, and Maggie said, “They’ll be fine without me for a couple of hours, and it’ll give them the chance to greet and get to know the new arrivals without the matriarch looking over their shoulders.”

  “Where is she?”

  Maggie said, “Last I knew in a B&B west of the city.”

  “Hopefully she’s still there? It’s been almost seven weeks?”

  Maggie nodded, “About that.”

  We all got up and headed out. The CT6-V was plenty large enough to hold the four of us plus one more if Shannon elected to join us. I took a moment to check all our shields as we piled in, and also put a shield around the car. No one had been hunting us for four weeks, but it’d be a mistake to make assumptions.

  Maggie programmed the address into the navigation system while I got on the road. The trip would be a good thirty minutes around the loop and then west. The sky was a bit overcast, and it was humid and hot out, but the car was nice and cool before we’d gone all that far.

  “The weirdest part of this is it doesn’t feel weird at all.”

  Maggie giggled, “Going to collect a mate sight unseen?”

  I nodded, “Something like that, yes. I suppose I have a lot of faith in our goddesses. Still, we should be aware we might be walking into trouble.”

  Bonnie asked, “Baggage like mine?”

  I shrugged, “That’s the likeliest scenario, yes. It would even explain why she hasn’t come, to keep us safe.”

  Elena said, “Hopefully, she’s there.”

  We were about halfway there when some of the cloud cover disappeared, and we continued to chat about nothing all that important. At one point, Bonnie started to discuss their stripper names, which made me chuckle. She was going all in on the fantasies apparently. It was a good distraction anyway, so we didn’t linger too much on the possibility we were wasting our time. It’d been seven weeks after all.

  The small country road off the state highway was empty of other vehicles, which had me extra alert. The less humans around the more likely an attack, but I wasn’t too paranoid or anything. It’d been relatively peaceful after all, and I had the vehicle shielded. There was about a mile to go on the navigation app, and the road had fields to our left and trees and wilderness to our right.

  That’s when we noticed the first sign of trouble, a loud explosion reached our ears. I sent a soul scout ahead to check it out and wavered between the idea of slowing down or speeding up. If she was our mate, and in trouble, we needed to get there fast. On the other hand, I had three newly pregnant mates with me in the car, and for a moment I wished I’d have left them behind.

  I hadn’t exactly planned to drive into a battlefield, and what were the chances of that? The level of coincidence was beyond belief, but we could figure that out later. Flashes of intel appeared in my mind, snapshots of what was going on.

  The B&B was a small white mansion, and outside of the name plastered on the large sign and the small parking lot with ten spaces it looked just like any other small mansion. There were a lot of trees, bushes, and even walking paths, not to mention a small lake out back. It was tucked not all that far in from the small state road in the wilderness.

  More than a few of those trees were on fire.

  There were four blond assholes flying around with bright yellow auras, and they were shooting beams of coherent light or energy that made anything they hit explode.

  It was also the first glimpse I got of Shannon. She looked to be my age, five feet and seven inches, with long midnight black hair and gray eyes. She was sumptuous and curvy with heart shaped double D cups and a supplely juicy heart shaped ass and long toned legs. Her very thin waist made her hourglass figure closer to waspish, thanks to her huge tits and wide hips, and she had lovely dark tanned skin. Her face was remarkably beautiful, even among my new world where the gods’ beauty seemed to be passed to their children and grandchildren. It was a classic beauty, strong cheekbones, perfect nose and full lips.

  She was also in the middle of the mess and the target of the four assholes. Her power was obviously shadow or darkness related. Shadows swirled around her body intercepting the light blasts, those she wasn’t able to evade at any rate, which caused the loud explosions and was setting shit on fire. Another flash of intel showed me that she was hardly all defensive, as darkness reached up to swallow the four men, but they dodged as well.

  I pulled over on the side of the road by the driveway, maybe fifty yards away, hopped out of the car and took to the sky. My ladies followed at a run while I summoned up enough souls to create my three-tier shield and three weapons, one, five, and one soul layers for each.

  The blades shot ahead, each aimed for an asshole’s chest, but they dove toward the forest in a steak of light and evaded the sword’s vision. They didn’t even hesitate, which worried me, it’d been so fast it was almost like they’d been expecting me to crash to their party.

  Shannon, my future mate maybe, glared up at me with a scowl, “This shit is your fault!”

  I lowered down to the ground, “My fault?”

  She snorted, “They never would’ve found me otherwise,” and turned her head toward my three mates, the shadows still flowing and changing around her. She looked amazingly hot, and possibly a bit terrifying. That second one was no doubt partly because she looked really pissed off, at me for some reason.

  “What’s going…” I trailed off as she held a hand up and tilted her head.

  I heard it then too, the sound of helicopters approaching. I looked over to Bonnie with the obvious question on my face, and she gave me an exuberant nod and grin. Apparently, Shannon was one of our mates then, or at least she could be.

  She frowned at me again when I wrapped her in armor.

  “There’s a reason I avoided coming to you, but we don’t have time for that right now.”

  “How is this our fault?”

  She scowled, “They’re here, you’re here,” she said angrily, like that explained a damned thing.

  My swords found the three helicopters approaching from multiple directions, and they all had mounted missile launchers. I sent my blades racing toward them, but the four assholes popped up out of the forest and fired their beams at the weapons. It was a huge power drain, the outer single soul layer was destroyed, but I managed to maintain the five-soul layer. My mind wavered as the men turned and shot that shit at us and we all flew to the side quickly with a thought.

  I re-tasked my blades to go after them, and they disappeared into the forest again. It was annoying and frustrating, like they knew what I’d do before I did myself.

  Then things really went downhill, before I could go after the helicopters again. I’d made the decision to take them out, no matter what those assholes did to distract me, but the thought never quite got there before several things happened at once.

  Explosions started to strafe the ground in our direction in a deafening roar that had my ears ringing, and by pure reflex I shot up into the sky dragging my four mates with me. Which is when the assholes popped back up and fired at us, and two missiles were launched by all three helicopters. I sent the blades for those latter, completely confused and overwhelmed but I had to start somewhere.

  I was really confused about who these people were, how the ground was exploding on its own, and who the beam firing assholes were, but I had no time to figure anything out.

  The beams seemed to move at the speed of light, and there was no dodging it at all as they hit the four of us, and large explosions were set off around us. Which blinded me to the missiles. I got the visual of them from my scout, but not fast enough to dodge, and all six missiles exploded around us adding even more concussion waves and explosive to the mess. My power was draining fast under it all, not time to panic yet, but I was already down to just over eighty percent.

  To add insult to injury, that’s when I heard the loud screech of anger and rage, and as the fire started to clear so I could see around me. I saw the last Fury that could come to the living plane swinging her sword at me as she pumped her wings hard for leverage. The sword hit me right on the neck, and the drain was staggering as I lost ten percent of my power and spun wildly toward the ground, which was still exploding.

  I felt completely overwhelmed, but on the good side the helicopters only got off two more missiles before my blades took out their rotors. More power drained as I hit the ground and it exploded around me as I flew back up. My blades were flying back as I lost another five percent from the four assholes hitting me and my mates and those shields absorbed that power.

  Shannon was having trouble hitting the flitting assholes, and so was I as they flew faster than our shadows and blades. Elena’s water wasn’t much better that way.

  Bonnie had no such trouble. Her attacks moved at the speed of light too, as she did that energy attack. But unlike the son of war they didn’t just die, they had energy powers as well and absorbed the first couple of hits.

  I couldn’t watch, since I was busy with the damned fury. The last one, the one whose body hadn’t been destroyed back when my father was trying to kill me two months ago. Fortunately, it’d be decades yet before the other two furies had bodies again. I danced around her, far nimbler and in control of my power than last time I’d fought the bitches. As my three blades converged on her instead.

  The missiles exploded around us, blinding me again, but I was ready for it and kept us all moving in a pattern to frustrate the Fury.

  Then a powerful explosion hit Elena from above, hit the top of her shield. It only took a few percent, but it was when I realized the truth about the explosions walking across the field below. There must’ve been a damned AC-130 gunship flying miles above us shooting explosive rounds. It’s just none of them had hit us directly before then.

  What the fuck was going on?

  The Fury managed to parry one of my blades as those last missile explosions cleared, but the other two hit her back and neck. She screeched in fury as the blades whipped around.

  Shannon screamed, “Drop your shields now, dumbass!”

  I looked at her in disbelief. I also got the impression that wasn’t the first time she’d asked, but I’d been a little busy with the battle.

  She glared at me and pointed, “Do it! Six more helicopters and monsters.”

  I stared where she was pointing, and there were six more helicopters, as well as a few more glowing assholes and whole truckloads of flying monsters. Winged lions, air nymphs, flying snakes, and about twenty Empusa. I was also at about twenty three percent power, and we still had an AC-130 raining hell on us, a Fury, and three of the four glowing assholes firing beams of energy at us. Not that the fourth was dead, but Bonnie had managed to take him out of the fight.

  She rolled her eyes, “Trust me, it’s interfering with my power, we don’t have time for this.”

  The five of us shot for the woods at a thought, taking a page from our enemy’s playbook, as soon as we landed, I dismissed all my souls and felt vulnerable and naked without that protection. But I chose to trust my newest mate, potential mate. She seemed really hostile though, actually.

  Then her shadows surrounded us, and the world went out. Sound and light disappeared, as did the feeling of the humidity and wind on my skin, and the scents of the forest.

  Chapter Four

  It was a really odd sensation, all of my senses seemed cut off for several seconds, then I could see again. The five of us stood in a copse of trees, with a dome of darkness above us.

  Shannon sighed, “That was stupid.”

  “Which part,” I growled back.

  She grinned a little darkly, “All of it, actually. We’re safe for the moment. My power is hiding us all, and we’re all the way on the other side of the city, out in the rural area to the east.”

  Maggie shook her head, “What are you talking about?”

  Shannon rolled her eyes, “That was a trap, for all of us. Though I wasn’t expecting Ares and Hades to get involved.”

  “Start from the beginning, and is it safe to be throwing around their names?” I asked.

  Shannon said, “Yes, even the gods can’t hear us while I’m shielding us. Apollo doesn’t like my kind. He assiduously hunts the sons and daughters of Nox. I suppose Zeus doesn’t care for us much either, my mother makes him nervous, so he doesn’t stop him. You know Apollo is a sun god, but he’s also the god of seers and can see the future himself.”

  We all nodded.

  Shannon grimaced, “That’s why he hates us. He can’t see us, and more than that he can’t see the changes we bring to his seen futures. He must’ve figured out through other means our goddesses conspired to set us all up to build a strong alliance through family.”

  “Wait, so you knew?”

  She nodded, “I stayed away so I didn’t bring trouble to your door. If you were me, would you cause the deaths of several mates even if you hadn’t met them yet?”

  Bonnie shook her head, “We’re stronger together.”

  Shannon waved that away, “Maybe, but you were safe without me around, and he can’t track me. The reason he found me today was because you decided to come get me for some reason. I can only guess Ares and Hades have grudges against you, I suspect he recruited their assistance to take us all out.”

  “How would he have known where we were going?”

  Shannon said, “Because your future disappeared from his vision, and he’d have seen that a while ago. He’d have seen the decision that brought you to my hiding place. He’s had weeks to plan this no doubt, which is why it was so effective. The only thing he got wrong was the timing on the main force, if they’d been coming in two minutes earlier, then we’d have been overwhelmed.”

  Maggie asked, “So what was your plan, to hide for the next two hundred and eighty years, and give up your future and mates?”

  Shannon’s lips twitched, “Actually, yes. It sounds so sad the way you said it though.”

  I snorted.

  “Well it’s too late for that, I think. And yes, Hades has issue with me for not coming to his heel and leaving the mortal world. We also managed to piss off Ares a month ago when dealing with Bonnie’s stalker. Maybe Apollo formed some sort of alliance, he helps kill us, and they help kill you.

  “It also explains why my father hasn’t attacked me for the last six weeks. He didn’t give up, it was probably just the moment when Apollo made the deal with him, and he was willing to wait that long to catch us all together.”

  Shannon looked at me suddenly and narrowed her eyes, then snickered, “Me, the shield around me. You could’ve kept all of yours,” then she started to laugh hard, “Thanks for trusting me though.”

  I ignored that, feeling more than a little stupid, and changed the subject, “Why didn’t you tell us, or warn us to stay away?”