A Fey New World (The Godhunter #32) - Amy Sumida Page 0,1

although it's related to gods; it's a magic thing. Lioness magic, to be specific. I need multiple lovers to keep the lioness inside me happy. Without them, I go nuts and sexually assault the nearest man. But I digress.

Arach had forgiven me, and I promised to never jump through time without telling him. Now, I was back in the God Realm with my other husbands and sort of husband, Viper. I'd given him a ring—a magical gold band that would lead me to him if he ever got abducted again and alert me if he were in trouble—and when I put the ring on him, we'd promised to love each other. So, he was sort of my husband. I just call him my husband now to keep things simple. In short, all was good in Vervain's world once more.

I went to the kitchenette, set against the left wall of the bedroom suite, and started the coffee. I used to be a heavy coffee drinker but I'd switched to tea somewhere along the way. Still, there were days when I preferred the caffeine-brain-slam of coffee. As a goddess, a drug has to be powerful to affect my body even momentarily. The caffeine in tea hardly makes a ripple but coffee will briefly give me a boost. Just enough to wake me up—like a splash of water on my face. And when it comes to coffee, I prefer it sweet with steamed milk. I had a machine that made lattes all in one pot. You poured in the milk and it steamed as coffee was brewed directly into it. When it's poured into a mug, it automatically separates, the foam rising to the top. Presto, a latte! Most of my men, however, are not fans of froth so I had to make a separate pot of regular coffee for them. Silly boys.

As the two pots started percolating, I headed into my dressing room. I usually sleep naked so I didn't have to slip out of pajamas before getting into my underwear. Over the lacy bra and panties I selected, I pulled on a silk camisole, some jeans, and a cardigan. It was late Summer now and mornings could be crisp in Pride Territory even though it never got really cold there. My territory was aligned with Africa so we shared the climate. It would warm up soon and so layers were key. Not that I really needed them. As a Dragon-Sidhe—a faerie dragon-shifter—I could turn up my body temperature with a thought. But I liked clothes and sometimes it was nice to warm up the old fashioned way.

I padded out to the kitchenette, which was right in front of my dressing room door, and found my latte waiting in the hands of a werewolf. A werewolf god, actually.

“Good morning, Honey-Eyes.” I took my coffee, admiring the flecks of green in Trevor's honey eyes that could only be seen when he was that close, then kissed him.

“Good morning, Minn Elska,” he growled in my ear.

Minn Elska meant “my love” in Old Norse. Trevor is from the Norse Pantheon; his father is Fenrir, the Wolf God and Father of the Norse Werewolves. Those honey eyes of Trevor's were slightly tilted like a wolf's, the only indication of his wolf nature when he was in his human body. That and the scent of wolf musk that I eagerly inhaled.

“Should we eat breakfast up here?” I asked.

Pride Palace, home of the Intare, had six floors—if you didn't count the towers, my children's bedrooms, and the basement—and our dining hall was on the first floor. We had an elevator so we didn't have to walk down five flights of stairs but sometimes we preferred to have a private breakfast upstairs before we braved the lions. And that's literal; the Intare are a pride of werelions, about eighty of them, most of them alive. A few were souls, recently returned to us from Duat, the Egyptian Underworld. Even though they were souls, my dead lions looked and felt as if they were alive. However, they were bound to my Intare husband, Kirill, and me which meant that they couldn't leave our territory. Not if they wanted their afterlives to continue.

Kirill had become a god fairly recently—the Lion God of Winter and Death. The magic he'd taken to make himself a god had come from a Russian Goddess so, in a way, it tied Kirill to the Russian Pantheon. But he was also my lion and connected to his