Page 21 of Owned By Four Alphas

Ronan growled, his claws scraping against the earth in frustration. “I have no idea. She’s the daughter of a bloody god. We’re four of the most powerful beings in the five realms. We have a duty to unite the land and keep its people safe.”

He stopped, lifting his head up to the sky in something close to resignation. “How are we supposed to do it with things as they currently are?”

Malek crept forward to sit beside Ronan, lifting his head to the cool breeze of the morning air.

“I think we try and do it the best we can.”

Chapter 9 - Selena

She was in the forest again. She was coming to recognize each individual tree, the way the branches spiraled up, the vibrant greens of each leaf. She knew the way, too, through the bracken, towards the sound of water flowing over rock.

And he was there, as he always was, sitting by the stream with a sad smile on his face.

“Father!” she shouted as she moved towards him, her limbs slow and hazy. “Father, I think I’m getting closer! I think I’m beginning to understand!”

“Understand what, child?” he asked, his voice like the cracking of stone.

“Why I keep seeing you, in my dreams,” she said, fighting to get closer to him, “I think you’re still alive!”

When the fire hit, she was prepared. It was always the same roaring, blazing inferno capturing the world in a miasma of pain and fire, before it was gone again in the blink of an eye.

“If I’m still alive,” he said, “then why aren’t you looking for me?”

“I am looking! I promise, it’s all I’m doing!” The edges of him were growing thinner, wisping away into the air. “No!” she choked, reaching out a hand, “No, I need you! You need to tell me what to do!”

“You already know what to do, my child.”

She bolted up, the dream fading from her as quickly as it came.

She was alone.

Rubbing her bleary eyes, she looked around. She was in the library still, and the sun had disappeared over the horizon, leaving the room lit only by the roaring of the fires. She glanced down, guiltily smoothing her hands over the crumpled papers littering the desk she had just fallen asleep on.

Castien was long gone by the looks of things, his half of the desk neatly tidied into stacks of books and labeled piles of paper. She turned her head. He’d even laid everything out in alphabetical order, by the looks of things. She looked back to her own half of the desk, with scattered half-torn papers, ink stains, and precarious piles of books.

Oops.

Ah, well. There was no wrong way to research, she supposed. And being queen had to have some perks.

She stood, stretching her arms over her head, her spine cracking. Her stomach was getting rounder every day, and her body wasn’t thanking her for the hours spent hunched over a desk. By the estimate of the healers, she had about four months to go before she gave birth. Already the nursery was prepared, tutors were on hand, and there was a whole army of midwives ready to assist her at a moment’s notice.

Kaelen thought of everything.

She groaned, walking slow circles around the desk to try and get the blood flow back into her legs. At least he didn’t mind her being alone in the library, although he had made a show of reducing Castien into a quivering mess with various threats and shows of dominance.

She had only rolled her eyes. Omega males were rare, vanishingly so amongst shifters, and Ronan and Kaelen didn’t quite know how to handle the nervous librarian. They were more common amongst humans and the Fae, so Elian hardly saw himas any kind of physical threat. Only an intellectual one. He’d gotten increasingly territorial over her magical lessons until she’d had to quite literally get Malek to drag him out the library to give her some peace and quiet to focus.

Malek just took Castien in his stride, as he did most things.

Growing up as she did, with only three or four precious books to her name, Castien was an absolute gift from the gods. He was an expert in all things indexing, coding, note-taking, and referencing, and gladly taught her everything he knew about the magnificent library. It had been just over a month since she had accidentally exploded the statue during the Winter’s End feast, and she had made great strides in understanding how god-magic worked.

Too bad she was no closer to controlling it. Or to reaching her father in anything more than dreams. In fact, over the past few days, she was beginning to suspect she was approaching a dead end.

But with each vision of him, each message, she grew more and more certain. The priestesses had once told her that there were some who believed the Forest God never died, merely gave up his magic, and Selena was beginning to think there was truth to their words.

She was determined to find out. Because with every bout of accidental magic, every rumor of her continual failure, every frustrating minute spent not knowing what she was supposed to do, she grew more and more certain that finding her father was the answer to everything.

A sudden crash, suspiciously like a stack of books tumbling over, startled her out of her reverie.

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