Reign of Embers: A Rejected Mates Romance (Fall Mountain Shifters Book 7) Read online

  Reign of Embers

  FALL MOUNTAIN SHIFTERS: BOOK SEVEN

  G. BAILEY

  Reign of Embers © 2022 G. Bailey

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental and formed by this author’s imagination. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is written in British English, therefore some spellings might differ.

  Cover Design by Rebecca Frank

  Edited by Polished Perfection

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Other Books by G. Bailey

  Map

  Description

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Bonus Read of True Light

  11. Bonus Read of True Light

  Her Guardians Series

  Her Fate Series

  Protected By Dragons Series

  Lost Time Academy Series

  The Demon Academy Series

  Dark Angel Academy Series

  Shadowborn Academy Series

  Dark Fae Paranormal Prison Series

  Saved By Pirates Series

  The Marked Series

  Holly Oak Academy Series

  The Alpha Brothers Series

  A Demon’s Fall Series

  The Familiar Empire Series

  From The Stars Series

  The Forest Pack Series

  The Secret Gods Prison Series

  The Rejected Mate Series

  Fall Mountain Shifters Series

  Royal Reapers Academy Series

  The Everlasting Curse Series

  The Moon Alpha Series

  Map

  Description

  Two gods, one stubborn mate, a shadow friend, and a war I can’t stop.

  Choosing love seems impossible.

  Especially when I’m not the only one who wants my dragon king...

  My name is Serendipity Fall, and I’ve unleashed a fallen god who will stop at nothing to destroy everything I love.

  The Wolven gods want me to kill my mate…and I can’t. Not now, not ever. With the mysterious witch lord’s help, I have to find a way to escape them and save Nakoa from my mate.

  Once, a long time ago, a goddess spoke of a prophecy before she was killed…and it’s going to destroy us all.

  This is a full-length reverse harem romance novel full of sexy alpha males, steamy scenes, a strong heroine and a lot of sarcasm. Intended for 18+ readers. Book seven of eight.

  Prologue

  ARAWN THE FALLEN GOD

  “My little witch, singing in her cage.”

  Arawn’s voice echoes throughout the wooden cabin, and my hands freeze on the harp in front of me, my song ending as swiftly as the wind in a storm.

  My heart pounds, not in fear of or attraction to him, but with the fact he is here. I turn and look up at Arawn, stood in the middle of my home. My black hair falls around my white dress, and I push it aside, running my black nails across my thigh.

  Arawn has his magic back, in full, and his body to go with it. I wonder what poor victim paid the price for this. A smile curls my lips upwards as I run my eyes over his black leathers and red cloak with silver dragon clips on his shoulders. This is the male I remember from so many years ago, with wickedly dark eyes and pretty promises from sinful lips. I rise up off my chair and let my magic flow through my fingertips from the surrounding air, the ground below my feet, the flames from the fire and the water running in a stream behind the cabin. I sigh at the feeling of my magic coming back to me after so many years. It’s better than anything in the world.

  “Why have you given me my magic back, Arawn?” I question, holding a hand out in front of me and letting the elements roll around my outstretched fingers. “You told me using my power would risk Draycian finding me.”

  Arawn’s eyes narrow and he takes three steps until he is right in front of me, tilting my head back with a single finger. His touch is ice cold. “Sallette, even after all these years, you are so beautiful when you use magic. I missed seeing the elements in your eyes. I did wonder how Draycian never sensed you in the prison with me. Just a room away. Both of us locked together.”

  His eyes are beautiful too, black everlasting flames. I lean in to kiss him, like he’s always enjoyed when he comes to see me in the fire where he makes himself real but he pulls back, and I narrow my eyes.

  “Why not?”

  “It is time for you to go back to King Draycian and play his perfect little witch until I call,” he demands.

  Freedom? After all this time?

  Even if it means going back to Draycian and pretending to be his. To still be in love with him. I will always have feelings for Draycian, but I was never in love with him.

  “Do you wish for me to kill him?” I question. “Or simply steal his magic.”

  “Focus on the magic and kill him if you must,” he replies. “But do not touch his mate. She belongs to me.”

  Draycian has a mate? How happy he must be...

  “What is she to you?” I ask, hearing an unusual amount of affection in his tone for this female.

  “What she is to the world is more important. She is the key to the power of the Wolven gods,” he smoothly responds, spreading his hand over my jaw. “She will rule us all when the embers fall.”

  I remember the goddess’s last words, just like they were yesterday. I was there when Arawn killed her, not in a jealous rage but because she wouldn’t tell him something. What, I don’t know, but I suspect Draycian’s mate has everything to do with it.

  “True power?” I whisper what the goddess promised on her deathbed.

  “Yes,” he purrs. “Soon, nobody will be able to stop me in this world. Everything is working towards my plan. I had such time to plan, locked away for so long.”

  “We shall rule together, like you promised me,” I say with a smile. He and I have talked about this many times, even when he woke me up from my deep, never-aging sleep after he finally escaped his prison. We were both locked away, though my sleep was by choice as I waited for him. We have been kept from the world, and now we are back. Nothing is going to stop us. I place my hand on his shoulder, running my palm down his chest and to his trousers and below. He grunts as I stroke him, and he softly runs his hand through my hair.

  “Of course, Sallette,” he groans through his teeth. I remember the first time he touched me like this, thousands of years ago. I was with him for so many years. He loved me and, in a way, I loved him for saving me from a life with Draycian. We were never good for each other, and we both knew it, but Draycian was power, and I didn’t want to let that go. Arawn is different. I love him. I soon realised that Draycian was never going to make me his queen or anything more than a lover. He was waiting for his mate, and he would wait for her forever. I was nothing but a mere distraction he lusted for, never really loved. He used me, and Arawn loved me.

  I know he felt guilt over my death, or pretended death at least, and I w
ill use that to get back into his castle and feed off his magic without him ever noticing.

  I touch the topaz necklace resting between my breasts, a gift from my ancestors. I can take magic from anyone while I wear it, and Draycian will never see it coming. He doesn’t know the old ways of the witches.

  Arawn drifts his hands down my neck to my bare shoulders and down my back to my thighs. He scrunches up my dress, pushing it up and picking me up in his arms, pushing my back against the wall. Right before he pushes into me, he bites down on my neck and growls my name for all the elements to hear.

  Our future begins here.

  Chapter

  One

  “I know who you are.”

  My statement makes the room freeze, and I can’t move anyway. From shock or something more, I don’t know, but my legs don’t feel like they can even hold me up. My heart pounds as I take in the stunning witch from head to toe in Dray’s arms. My mate’s arms. Draycian is my mate now—the marks all over my skin claim this—but our bond is new and unclaimed.

  He saved my life...when he couldn’t save hers.

  But here she is. Sallette, his dead lover. Dray immediately lets her go, and she turns on her bare feet to look at me. I only know two witches, Tarrent and Devika, and they never came across like she does. I can feel her magic, like vibrations in the air, and it feels wild, old and untamed. She walks over to me and tilts her head to the side, her bright blue eyes sparkling like the sea. Dray follows her over, his skin paler than I’ve seen him before, and his eyes are wide as he looks at her.

  “Then I am at a loss as I do not know who you are?” Sallette questions, her voice like silky ribbons brushing across my skin. I can’t think about anything, let alone say another word right now.

  Dray’s lover is alive. What could that possibly mean for us? I thought when he saved me that we might have been starting something, because I’ve been lying to myself for a long time about how I feel about him. Maybe fate was right, but what the hell is Sallette doing here, alive, if fate wants us together?

  “This is my mate, Queen Serendipity Fall,” Draycian introduces me, and I look up at him, finding his eyes on me, and they soften for a second.

  Why does it hurt so much that she is alive?

  “A pleasure,” Sallette replies, pulling our attention back to her. Her white dress falls to her knees, and in the middle of her chest is a strange topaz necklace on a gold chain. The topaz is shaped like a flame.

  It looks so familiar, but I’m not sure where I’ve seen it before.

  “Where have you been all these years? You are meant to be dead,” Draycian questions, crossing his arms, his voice dropping, and pain laces his words, cutting through my own chest. “I saw you die, and I couldn’t save you.”

  She walks to him, placing her black-nailed hand on his arm, and he doesn’t push her off.

  He doesn’t push her away.

  Sickness rises in my throat as my wolf growls low, a little of the noise escaping my throat. Neither of them notices. “He didn’t kill me, my dragon. He sent me through a portal, and he’s kept me locked up all these years, in and out of sleep to preserve me. I’ve always wanted to come back to you and my true home, but I couldn’t escape.”

  Dray growls, the sound frightening enough to shake the walls. “He kept you all these years?”

  “Yes,” she sweetly replies, her eyes wide. “He was always besotted with me. I think he thought eventually I’d fall in love with him, but I wasn’t going to break that easily. Not when I knew I could come back here to my real home. He appeared two days ago and let me out and didn’t follow me. It took me some time to raise enough power for a portal here, and I’m worn out now.”

  “Why would Arawn just let you go?” I question, clenching my fists at even the thought of him. He spent years pretending to be my friend, tricking and using me when I didn’t know any better. I should have known better, and I hate myself for falling for his pretend love.

  “He is a fallen god, time is nothing to him, and he never told me why he let me out,” she replies to my answer, never looking away from Dray. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed my home.”

  The urge to rip her hand off Dray swallows every other thought, and I push it down, telling myself that he is just in shock and not still in love with her.

  By the fire, I hope he isn’t.

  Everything seems to crumble down inside me, and I can barely feel anything other than an empty sense of numbness that not even my wolf can push through in her anger. Everything is going so wrong, and I’m not sure how to even breathe right now.

  Sallette lets out a sigh just before she collapses, and Dray barely catches her before her head hits the floor. He effortlessly picks her up in his arms, and something about seeing him holding his ex-lover like that makes acid burn up in my throat.

  “Serei—”

  “Yes?” I coldly cut him off, and his eyes swiftly turn to surprise.

  “You’re jealous,” he points out.

  “You’re the one that mated us.” I pause. “In fact, I don’t want to talk about this as you hold her in your arms. I’m sure you’re so happy to have her back.”

  “Serei, I am glad she is alive, but we will talk about this,” he firmly states, his eyes blazing gold.

  I can barely hold back the tears threatening to fall from my eyes. I clamp my hands down on my thighs, my fingertips brushing my dagger, and the connection to my family from that grounds me. “You should be resting, sweetheart.”

  “I’m fine. Don’t you have someone else to look after?”

  I regret my bitter reply almost instantly. Dray has looked after me, saved my life, and cared for me more times than I can count.

  He looks between Sallette and me. “I need to find her a room to rest in and call a healer. I will find you after.”

  I glance at them both and notice how much of a perfect couple they look like. I will never be her. “Why don’t you put her in your room, you know, with a framed portrait of her in front of your bed?” I suggest and walk away.

  “Serei!” Dray growls, but he doesn’t come after me, and I’m glad he doesn’t. I need some fresh air and to sort out my own thoughts that have been derailed by Sallette turning up. I stop outside the throne room, resting my head against the wall by the door and taking several deep breaths.

  “I know you’re there. Wolf senses and all,” I mutter, lifting my head and looking into the deep, dark shadows.

  Devika walks out, dressed in dragon leathers and a sweeping black cloak. The dragon leather suits her far more than it ever did me. “Your awareness has gotten better.”

  I chuckle. “Some things I didn’t see coming.”

  She leans against the wall next to me. “So that’s his ex-lover?”

  “Yep,” I sarcastically answer, wishing it weren’t true. “Back from the dead just in the nick of time. Just as I start to wonder if a fated mate is something I actually want. If he is—” I stop and shake my head. “It’s just shit. All of it.”

  Devika places her hand on my arm. “Arawn let her go for one reason: to stop you and Draycian. I’m not a big fan of the dragon king, but fate can never be stopped.”

  “She’s a witch, like you,” I say, needing to change the subject from Dray and me.

  “I suspect she is an ancestor of mine. Distant relation, perhaps. Her blood scents like mine, which is a problem because there are only two of us left: Tarrent and me. If she’s from my mother’s side, where every female in that family went crazy, other than me, it’s better. If she’s my father’s side, it makes her a royal, and that is a problem for us,” she quietly tells me. “I will need to talk to her and Tarrent at some point.”

  “I’ll ask,” I say with a sarcastic smile. “Where are Nimmy and Sophie? What about Leucos? Isn’t he meant to be guarding you?”

  “Nimmy went to the wolves’ pack with Apollon as a guard. Your mother invited her,” she tells me. “And Sophie is hiding somewhere. As for Leucos…” She pauses and looks
away from me. “He is a good male and gorgeous, but I want fun with someone that isn’t there to harass me in the morning. In truth, I don’t know if that’s even what I can handle at the moment. I miss the person I used to be before the mansion.”

  “You don’t have to be anyone, Devika. Any male interested in you can wait for whenever you want them. I think you’re amazing,” I gently say, and she nods but clearly doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m sure Sophie will relax the longer she has around us and when she feels safe. “And good for Nimmy. Next question, where is your brother? I need to speak to him about something.”

  Trust the witch lord.

  The Wolven god’s words echo through my mind, and I know if anyone can help me get out of the demands of the Wolven gods, it’s the tricky witch lord. I need to find him and ask for his help, and to just tell someone about all of this. It’s too much. I have another favour, one I can only trust him with, and I’m not sure if Tarrent will even help.