Descendant of glory, p.1
Descendant of Glory, page 1
part #4 of Descendant Series
DESCENDANT OF GLORY
Descendant
M. SINCLAIR
Lost & Bound Publishing
Descendant of Glory: Descendant (#4)
Copyright © 2021 by M. Sinclair in USA
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced/transmitted/distributed in any form. No part of this publication shall be shared by any means including photocopying, recording, or any electronic/mechanical method, or the Internet, without prior written consent of the author. Cases of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law are the exception. The unauthorized reproduction/transmitting of this work is illegal. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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The Union of Love & Madness
CONTENTS
Description
1. Fox
2. Nova
3. Nova
4. Cassian
5. Nova
6. Nova
7. Ramsey
8. Nova
9. River
10. Nova
11. Nova
12. Nova
***
13. Everett
14. Nova
***
***
15. Nova
16. Nova
17. Nour
18. Nova
19. Nova
20. Rowan
21. Nova
***
22. Nova
***
23. Nova
24. August
25. Nova
Epilogue
Afterword
M. Sinclair
Published Works
Stalk me… really, I’m into it.
DESCRIPTION
Chaos. Magic. Love.
Three elements to my life that have brought me to this point - traveling to the God realm.
I know we can handle whatever the fates decide to toss our way.
Yet between visiting Queen Titania’s court and learning far more about my demi-gods’ past than I could have expected... I just hope we can retain some semblance of sanity by the end of this.
And what happens when I finally meet the man, the myth, the... well, god, obviously - Set. My father.
What has Isis been hiding from me?
Secrets are unraveling nearly as fast as things are heating up between my men and me.
Let’s just hope that we make it out of the God realm alive, because by the end of this, I know several people who will want me dead.
This PNR slow/medium burn RH contains several dark themes that readers should be aware of: mild dub-con themes in a completely consensual sex scene, swearing (I know, surprising, right?), violence, PTSD, and sexual themes suitable for +18. Additionally, this book does have mature m/m themes that develop over time.
CHAPTER 1
FOX
Fear, uncontrollable and excruciatingly painful, coursed through me like a surge of lethal flood water. A force of nature sweeping my feet out from under me. There was only one person that could summon this type of reaction out of me, this level of panic.
Not even my past, riddled with abuse, could compete with the type of pure and raw fear I felt at the concept of Nova being hurt. Of Nova laying pale and unconscious because…well, because of us. Of course, my gorgeous demi-goddess would deny that, but I knew the truth. All of us knew the truth.
We had made this mess. We were the reason that she was injured.
Without our involvement in her life, she would have never been in the position to go down into the Demonic realm in the first place. Without us, she would have continued to live in a safe bubble of ignorance.
I frowned. Actually, I wasn’t positive that was entirely true, because I had a feeling Nova had felt like there was something wrong with her father long before we showed up. It wasn’t surprising—the woman was brilliant—so eventually she would have figured it out. At least, that was what I was telling myself to feel better. To feel justified that we hadn’t completely destroyed her life.
Standing against the wall, my fists tightened, the air seemed to restrict around me until it was pressing against my chest with enough pressure that I worried it would shatter my ribs. I rubbed a hand over my heart, panic invading my chest in violent, pulsating waves as heat ran across the back of my neck. I felt uncomfortable in my own skin, and my ears were pounding with the sound of my own blood as I considered all of the possible reasons why she had passed out again.
Five minutes.
Not even a full five minutes of her being up after four days of being unconscious, and she had passed out again. I closed my eyes, trying to not think about how pale her face had been when she’d woken up and how her knees had broken out from under her after she’d attempted to make a joke about being in Cairo. Luckily, River had been close enough to catch her.
Why had the Demonic realm affected her so much? Why wouldn’t she wake up? I knew River said she was fine overall, but I could see how worried he was, and fucking Everett looked nearly as pale as Nova, making me feel like it was so much worse than we realized.
She couldn’t die.
She couldn’t fucking die, but right now that was exactly what it felt like.
My panic had been slowly building over the past hour, and I was reaching a tipping point. I was about to lose my shit, so I left. I stormed from the room, drawing in a ragged breath as black spots filled my vision. I heard someone call out from behind me, but I was halfway across our temporary living quarters, needing some form of escape. Even momentary. If I didn’t sort this shit out, I was going to climb on that bed and shake her until she opened up those stunning lightning eyes and offered me a trademark scowl.
I wouldn’t be okay until I heard her laugh again or saw her smile.
There was a lot I could handle. A fucking lot. But Nova being injured? Apparently it was turning out to be quite the trigger for me. The woman had me so fucked in the head, and she didn’t even realize it.
I wrenched a hand through my hair as I shook my head, muttering a curse. This was what Ramsey had been talking about.
Nova wasn’t like us.
She was stronger than us. More powerful than us. She was special. Because of that, the woman was going to face risk after fucking risk, and seeing her going through shit like this was enough to make a man go insane. I had no grasp on how I would handle it once the situation escalated. When the threat to her wasn’t an overuse of power or passing out, but something that brought her as close to death as possible…and maybe that was what had me panicking. Because I knew without a doubt it was going to get worse.
I couldn’t stop our path forward though. I couldn’t cage her. Lock her up. I couldn’t stop her from going to the God realm. All I could do was try to protect her, and right now I felt like I was doing an absolute shit job at that. It made me want to rip out someone’s throat.
Moving through the luxurious living space we had rented, I reached the doors of the stone balcony that overlooked the metropolis of Cairo. Throwing open the glass door, relatively impressed it didn’t shatter with the force of my movement, I pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Inhaling a breath of hot desert air, I lit the tobacco stick and brought it to my lips, the familiar movement relaxing me…to an extent.
This was completely fucked up. All of it.
I had spent my entire childhood feeling out of control, my fate and my pain in the hands of a woman that hated Cassian and me. When we had finally escaped, I’d promised myself to never again be in that position, where I felt out of control. Where I felt like I couldn’t direct the path we’d take moving forward.
Except with Nova, it was unavoidable to feel out of control, and I had walked into the chaos willingly. The draw she had on me was something I’d never experienced, and because of that, feeling helpless to heal her or control this situation was just highlighting how invested I was in us.
I didn’t have panic attacks normally, but I was pretty sure that was what I was going through right now. If Nova had been awake, she could walk me through it. I needed her soothing, sexy voice and her confident energy. I needed her grounding touch. An ironic contrast, considering the woman was the embodiment of discord.
Damnit. I needed her. I hated seeing her sick or injured. That wasn’t Nova. Nova didn’t get hurt. It wasn’t possible because she was so incredibly strong. I didn’t think she understood how much her strength radiated and changed those around her. It wasn’t until she was unconscious and needed strength from others that I think everyone realized how much we relied on that. How much we relied on her, needed her.
We were needy motherfuckers. That’s what I was saying.
We needed to be stronger for her. We needed to do more.
My hands shook as I muttered a series of curses under my breath, trying to shake myself out of this bullshit. This sucked. This was the problem with my not so minor case of anxiety. You know, the one that I hadn’t yet admitted to fully. The one that tended to affect every element of my life, demanding that things had to be exactly how I expected and the underlying sense of dread that if something wasn’t, it would cause a chain reaction of much worse events.
Yeah, that one.
It was easy to hide, to be fair, so I didn’t ha ve to admit or confront it often. I was violent, temperamental, and chaotic as a person. No one expected me to need such a level of control in my life, the one my anxiety and compulsive disorder demanded, but what they didn’t understand was that it wasn’t about me. It was the world around me and others that I needed order in. If I could predict what others would do, then I could avoid ever being hurt, like how my grandmother had constantly surprised and berated us with attacks.
Never again.
Nova was well aware I had a problem. She had seen through my bullshit since day one when she had messed with stuff up in the attic back at the house just to test me. Shockingly—or not so—it worked perfectly.
In a way, it was a special kind of hell that I was going through, being in love with the embodiment of chaos. I couldn’t control Nova, even if I wanted to, which I didn’t. Something that made no goddamn sense. I could control the world around us, though, and I craved that.
I wanted us to be in a world where she could do everything from bringing an apocalyptic storm down on a city to sitting in our back yard, relaxing. She deserved that. Hell, I even deserved that after all this bullshit. But I didn’t think we would be getting that peace any time soon.
When the door of the balcony opened, Cassian’s energy bumped against mine in a familiar greeting. I didn’t look up or stop pacing along the top of the balcony wall, my eyes tracing the substantial drop several stories down, the concept of falling barely fazing me. I was far too caught up in my own headspace.
“Fox.” Cassian’s voice was completely void of emotion. I appreciated that.
“I know she will be fine,” I bit out quietly. “I don’t need you to tell me that. I just need her back. Back to normal, back to Nova. I hate seeing her hurt, especially because of us. We aren’t supposed to hurt her, Cass. We are supposed to protect her.”
My twin was quiet for a moment before sighing. “I don’t disagree with you. I wasn’t going to say any of that though. I was coming out here so we could figure out a way to keep this from happening again, assuming this is because she’s drained due to overexertion or that fucking realm.”
“How?” I demanded, my brow dipping. Was there really a way to keep this shit from happening? If so, I was one hundred percent onboard for that, no matter what we would have to do.
My brother didn’t respond at first, clearly caught up in his own head for the moment, so I continued to walk back and forth. I have no idea how long the two of us stayed like that, time passing in what felt like short bursts and slow, long-winded periods of torture. The air was subtly chilling as evening approached.
How had it only been less than four days that I’d been buried inside of Nova? Feeling more connected to her than I ever had with anyone else, despite being in a sadistic, circus-like torture show? I nearly groaned thinking about how good she had felt wrapped around me, my cock pounding into her as I caught each and every moan and cry that fell from her lips.
I wanted that again. I wanted to feel that close again.
I needed Nova. I needed her to be okay.
My cock pulsed against my jeans, thinking back on how fantastic she looked, bouncing up and down on me as her nails dug into my skin. Visions of her coated in blood as I fed from her, drinking her life force, played across my brain. I wanted to devour the woman and feel her brand against my skin, under my skin, on my very soul.
Nova was it for me.
I’d gotten over the surprise of realizing that I was in love with her, and with that acceptance came a determination to do whatever I needed to to keep her in my life. There would never be anyone else for me, and sleeping with her only forced me to come to terms with that faster than I would have normally.
The moment she woke up, I planned on telling her just how insane I was over her. That I wanted to have every single inch of her, possess even the parts of her that she didn’t realize she had to give. I wanted to taste her. I was going to have her coming so goddamn hard that she would feel like she needed to pass out again.
This time for a far better reason.
“It’s only going to get worse.” Cassian grunted, and I glared at him. “It’s true, Fox. We are about to go to the God realm—”
“You are not helping,” I hissed out.
“I am just talking through this shit.” Cassian flipped me off, and I grunted in understanding, tossing him my pack of cigarettes and lighter, his hand darting out to catch it. I felt bad for humans, if we were being honest. They were unable to enjoy so many Earth realm vices without consequences. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine living life like that, being so fucking delicate.
“You need to calm down,” Cass said after a minute. “I can feel how worked up you are.”
I ignored him, not willing to go down that rabbit hole of talking about my anxiety with him. We were both aware it existed, but we didn’t talk about it often, if at all. Mostly because he knew exactly how it had developed.
Every time that my grandmother would punish us for something not being how she wanted it. Time and time again, I would learn the hard way what happened when something wasn’t how it was ‘supposed’ to be, and that wasn’t even including her choice to sometimes surprise us with punishments.
So in order to gain some semblance of control in my chaotic, miserable life, I began finding a way to ensure things were exactly how I wanted them. Hell, it wasn’t that I was even particularly organized. No, life could be chaotic and messy, as long as it was in a way that I wanted it to be.
Fucked up, right?
Cassian and I didn’t need to revisit those memories, especially today.
“What the hell is going on with you two?” Everett appeared at the balcony door, looking annoyed. Honestly, I was just shocked he’d left Nova’s side at all.
“What’s wrong?” I exhaled smoke and laughed. “What’s fucking wrong is that Nova is passed out again, looking like goddamn death because of us. All of this, Everett, is because of us. Because we are in her life in the first place.”
Everett regarded me for a minute, still looking pale as death and a bit out of it before shaking his head. “Fox… Man, I’m not going to tell you to calm down, because you don’t listen to jack shit when you’re like this. I’m also the last person to talk about keeping calm, but this would have happened anyway. Ramsey would have found Nova—”
I appreciated his attempt at being calm. It wasn’t helping.
I jumped down from the ledge and growled, interrupting him. “If she had never used that power surge to kill that fuckface fiancé of hers, it wouldn’t have happened! At least not as soon!”
I was determined to keep the blame exactly where it belonged. On us…on me. Like the masochist I so clearly was.
“Betrothed,” Everett bit back. “Not her fucking fiancé.”
“As if that matters,” I snapped out.
“Oh, it matters,” Cassian muttered, exhaling on his cigarette.
I actually didn’t completely disagree. The memory of her wearing his ring on her elegant finger had me seeing red. I blinked it away, not allowing myself to continue that particular thought pattern.
“She was living under the roof of a serial killer,” Everett pointed out, looking exhausted with my shit. I didn’t blame him. “You can’t control everything, and especially not this, so chill the fuck out. Maker. You and River have some serious problems, and I am supposedly the one with issues, right? Somehow, some way, this would have happened. You can’t change that, and you can’t change the present, so let it go and stop being such a bastard.”
The door slammed shut, once again not breaking, as I sank down against the stone ledge of the balcony. He was right; I knew it. It also made me realize just how selfish I really was, because despite believing that we were the cause of the problem…the idea of never having met Nova was inconceivable.
