The Tied: Possessive Gods, Book Three Read online

  The Tied

  Possessive Gods, Book Three

  Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2020 by Loki

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  1

  Triton

  With a satisfied sigh, I fasten the final binding on my reluctant guest.

  She expected me to be easier to evade. She imagined that she would get away with doing as she pleased. That is not how things work in my realm. Especially not when I am entrusted with keeping this beautiful young woman, who bears pure divinity inside her, safe.

  “You brought this on yourself,” I remind her in response to her muffled complaints. The tie covering her mouth is for both our sakes. It stops her from wasting energy in needless complaints and it saves me from having to hear them.

  Is she comfortable? Possibly not. But this has become an absolute necessity. For her own good. For her safety. For all the reasons in the world besides the one I can barely admit to myself: for my pleasure.

  Lucy, Princess of the Light, is mine.

  All mine.

  I thought this day would never come. I fought against it with all my being. Not because I didn’t want her, but because I wanted her far too much. My desires are not innocent, they are not sweet. They swell and they roar inside me and they demand to be unleashed on this helpless, bound, young woman.

  Long have I tried to put her out of my mind. To respect her innocence and her royal status. I have tried a thousand times or more to distract myself from what feels like an all-consuming desire for this woman whose sweet scent becomes a taste on the water when she spreads her thighs.

  Her rebellion excites me. Her eyes flash and her fiery temper unleashes and it is my purpose to contain her. Protect her. I can do that but one way, with the slithering binds of wound weed, soft and yet strong. They are stronger certainly, than her ire.

  I think she loathes being forced to be silent. Lucy always wants the first word, the middle word, and the last word. Sure enough, in a matter of what seems like seconds, she bites through the weeds binding her mouth.

  That was not supposed to happen. Either the enchainments are weakening, or she is growing stronger. This princess has power, we have all known that from the beginning.

  I watch with no small amount of amusement as she spits the weeds aside and flashes her teeth at me in a surprising snarl. She might have bitten out of the gag, but the rest of my bindings are still in place around her delicious body and they will keep her in place even if I have to endure the sass which emerges from her mouth.

  “You can’t keep me here, Triton,” she hisses.

  “Ah, but I can,” I reply. “And indeed, I will.”

  “No. You can’t. I’m going to break every single one of your enchantments and enchainments. I’m going to eat through an entire ocean’s worth of seaweed rope if I have to.”

  But she can’t reach all of it with her mouth, and unless she grows blades on her skin — an unlikely event, the bindings will still do their work.

  She struggles and the sweet taste of her desire is borne to me on the rippling currents produced by her motions. That is another little secret she has tried to hide and failed. She likes to be bound. She is not a willing captive, but she enjoys it in spite of herself.

  Every time her legs flail, I find myself awash in her need. It is a scent and a taste which makes it difficult to manage my composure. I promised to guard this beautiful young demigoddess. I vowed to keep her safe. I never strictly promised not to bury my cock inside her, but tearing the innocence from my captive innocent is something I am trying to stop myself from doing.

  “Let me go, Triton!”

  “I am not going to let you go. This is for your own safety. I will protect you from everything, even yourself.”

  She is beautiful when she is angry. She is utterly radiant. Creatures of light such as her have particular appeal to me, a beast of the dark. I am king of the ocean. I am guardian of my waters, and all who dwell within them - which now includes her.

  I follow the scent down between her thighs, bending my knee to bring my mouth to that chalice at the apex of her legs.

  “What are you…. oh… oh my… oh gods…”

  Her voice softens into a moan. I prefer it when she sounds this way. Not so strident. Not so angry.

  My tongue bathes her sex, finding the soft folds and charting each of them with little flicks which make her buck and quiver.

  She would spread her legs if she could. She would arch her back and give herself to me, I know she would. I would do more than taste her sex. I would claim it completely. I would drive myself inside her and I would stretch her around me — and she would let me. I can taste her willingness. There is an inevitability in her taste, a promise of love eternal, and happily ever after. But nothing is guaranteed. In this world, as in every world, such happiness is hard won — and I have only just begun to earn it.

  Lucy

  It all started with a broken toy.

  It was my niece Sapphire’s little zapper, the gadget she brought with her when she fled Earth. She liked to slip it into a handshake, or your wine, if you weren’t careful, zap you and then laugh uproariously.

  One day it started vibrating all on its own, zapping things at random. She got in trouble for it more than once, when one or other of us accused her of setting it off on purpose. In the end, Helios confiscated it and we thought xthat was the end of it.

  It was not the end of it.

  Because it was never a toy at all.

  It was a harbinger of a war like none ever fought before.

  A war between the machine intellect of man, and the forgotten gods.

  A war for the ages.

  But not, apparently, for me.

  Now I am an underwater captive, kept by the very god I’ve been crushing on for years. He can’t control me. Nobody can. But he is going to try. I feel his bindings tight around me, his living ties moving with a magic of their own accord, finding the tender, tight spots by which my resistance might be undone, and my capitulation guaranteed.

  His tongue finds the sweetness between my thighs, tastes the bud from which it springs. My head falls back and I call for him in a cry as old as humanity itself.

  “Oh my godddd…”

  2

  Lucy

  Days earlier…

  I don’t need to sleep, but I like to sleep. My mother sleeps. My sister sleeps. So I sleep too. It makes me feel more normal, even though I’m really just lying there thinking amusing thoughts to myself.

  There’s something about the night which brings back a particular kind of thought. All the shameful things I ever did, the mistakes I made, the little moments of gracelessness or embarrassment, they all flood in during the quiet hours of the night. Tonight, I’m remembering the time I went to my eighteenth birthday party buck naked and displayed myself to the assembled gods as if it would impress them. I take after my father. I am tall, blonde, and well endowed, so I suppose it did impress them. It made me an object of godly lust and made certain that Helios and Ra
gnar, my two god fathers, still keep me close in the golden palace to this day, lest I be snatched away by some horny god looking for a golden bride.

  Just as I get to the most embarrassing part of the memory, there’s a flash of light outside the window of my bedroom. I get up to look, and see a shower of sparks against the distant sky. They are ever so pretty. I stand there for what feels like a long time watching them, until a blood curdling scream completely ruins the view.

  It is my mother’s voice. At first I do not recognize it because I have never, in my life, heard that woman scream. It is a sound which finds the marrow in my bones and makes it vibrate. It is a tone of pure terror, and it draws me from the window and makes me run to my parents’ bedroom.

  I find her out of bed, standing in the middle of the room with her face contorted in fear.

  “Entity is here. Entity is HERE!”

  Helios and Ragnar try to calm her down, but there’s no calming her. She’s frantic. I have never seen my mother be bothered by anything. Ever. She is the calmest woman in the world. In the universe, even.

  “Shh! Mother!” My sister, Raine, rushes past me and embraces my mother. She always did know what to do. When I look over my shoulder, I see that Tanuk, her mate, has arrived too. The entire adult family has assembled in my parents’ bedchamber within a minute of my mother beginning to scream.

  “Why are you here?”

  “We’re here because Entity is here,” Raine says, echoing my mother’s words. “Those lights in the sky belong to Entity. They’re here.”

  I have never encountered Entity. My mother fled it when she came here from Earth. My sister became famous among humans for being able to resist the powers of what I am told is a machine sentience powered by captive humanity - whatever that might mean.

  So far, my impression of Entity is that it is, well, pretty. I know better than to say that, however. My family already thinks that I am a simpleton compared to my brilliant, brave sister, so I stay quiet while they settle my mother and comfort her while outside the lights grow brighter and more numerous.

  “We need to leave the palace,” Tanuk says.

  “Absolutely not,” Helios replies. “This is my home. This is where we make our stand.”

  “Entity will take your stand and turn it to rubble. This place isn’t safe. It’s ostentatious,” replies Tanuk.

  “I’m not afraid of a few human sky baubles,” Ragnar growls.

  My fathers are as different as any two gods can be. Ragnar is powerful and dark, all burly muscles and long rough hair. He’s a barbarian from a very long time ago, a guardian against all kinds of nasties. I wouldn’t say we’re close, because we’re not. He loves me, because he is my father, but Raine and I, being identical twins, each took after one of them. I am the daughter of the sun. Some call me the golden princess. Ragnar thinks I am spoiled and indulged, but Helios would never allow him to do anything about it.

  “You should be afraid,” Raine says. “Entity would not be here if it hadn’t calculated the risk and decided it was worth it. This is not a god which might start a war as an act of capriciousness or spite. This is a cold intellect which strikes precisely when it means to in the knowledge it will inflict maximum damage.”

  “I don’t think Entity…”

  BOOM!

  Entity speaks the language of explosions, and joins the conversation with an unholy roar which shakes the ground and fills the sky.

  “Did that hit the fucking palace?”

  Raine swears because of her time with humans. She thinks it makes her sound cool. It kind of does.

  “Yes,” Helios winces. “It did.”

  This palace isn’t just a building. It is raised from his body. In some strange, tangible way, it is him. If they are hitting the palace, then they are hitting my father, and that makes this real.

  I feel an ominous foreboding which makes my innards feel as though they have been turned to stone. I never before tried to imagine what an invasion was like, and yet somehow, even without a single preconception, I find it other than I might have expected. I feel violated to my core. Those things, whatever they are, bright sparks in the sky which seem to multiply with every passing moment, do not belong here. What was pretty at first is now threatening.

  I look out the window and I see the lights dancing brighter and bigger in the sky. They are getting so bright that they illuminate the world around us with a horrible light which is entirely unnatural.

  I watch as one ball grows brighter. Much brighter. Then it gets larger. It takes me far too long to realize that is because it is getting closer. It is a bright electric ball of cold fury and it plunges down from the infested skies, to strike my father’s palace right in the center of the grandest dome. There is a sound like a thousand of Sapphire’s little toys discharging all at once, and then an explosion of rock and dust.

  The first projectile does no damage at all besides leaving a faint smear of carbon upon the dome, but there are more to come, a thousand, perhaps even a million more and they begin to rain down with such fury that it seems as though the stars themselves have turned on the gods.

  “I’m getting you all out of here,” Tanuk says. “Stubborn old gods and all.”

  A moment later, we are encapsulated by Earth. We barely all fit in this space which is small and furry and smells like animals.

  “Where the Hades are we?” Helios has to stoop to fit beneath the heavy clods of dirt which make up the roof.

  “My burrow,” Tanuk says. “The only underground place I could think of.”

  He is smiling. There is something wrong with that god. He takes delight in terrible things. He is the sort to smile at a funeral - if death were something we had to contend with in Okeanus. I didn’t think it was, but now I am not so sure.

  “Entity is happily attacking the golden palace,” he says. “Let’s allow it to do so while we get ourselves sorted. That place was never anything more than a bit of rock anyway.”

  “We need somewhere for people to shelter,” Raine says. She’s always worried about her precious worshippers, who are probably the reason this is all happening in the first place. Humans are trouble. I’m half human, and even I know that.

  “They’re fine for now,” Helios snaps. “What about my bloody palace? How did this Entity pierce the barrier?”

  “I’ll tell you how," Ragnar growls. “Three hundred humans is how. We allowed too many in. This place has become profane rather than sacred. We cannot stop the consequences of humanity from following it.”

  And then the arguing starts in earnest. I don’t have a strong opinion on any of this, so I spend time worrying what’s happening to my precious pretty things. I could panic about this war, but I doubt that this Entity is going to have any real effect on Okeanus. We are a world of gods. Entity may have caught us off guard, but how bad could it possibly be?

  At some point, decisions are made. I’m barely listening to what is being discussed. This does not feel like a me problem. Helios and Ragnar and perhaps Tanuk will take care of this. We have three ancient gods here and at least several dozen more dotted around the planet. Or more. Actually, come to think of it, a lot more. On the evening of our birthday party there had to be at least five hundred. Or maybe two hundred. Or a thousand.

  “We could all die…” someone says in a very high pitched voice. It could be Raine. Could be Helios. I’m not sure.

  Nothing has really ever been my problem. I’ve become accustomed to letting others worry about pretty much everything. I am worried about some things though, I guess. Those Entity exploding stars look like they’d ruin a silk gown. And my shoes. What if they get exploded? I’d have to get new ones and frankly, the cobbler elves have lost a lot of motivation recently. A princess asks for a thousand pairs of shoes and suddenly they’re not sure about their professional direction and are considering their options for the future. Thankfully Helios will conjure pretty much anything I want, but he doesn’t have the level of taste I do, so he usually makes som
e golden slippers with wings on the sides. They were cute when I was little, but a grown woman wants a heel.

  “So that’s it. That’s what we’ll do.”

  I start listening again at that point as my father lays their plan out.

  “Raine and Tanuk will gather and protect the humans beneath her shielding power. Ragnar and I are going to attempt to restore the barrier.”

  “I thought nothing could breach the barrier,” I murmur. “I guess Raine must have left some of her magic down there on the human planet.”

  “This is NOT my fault!” Raine declares in the way people do when something is very much their fault. “Tanuk went down there too.”

  “It is probably my fault,” Tanuk smiles quite cheerfully. He does not mind being blamed for things. He seems to enjoy it. I have no idea how Raine puts up with him.

  “Fault is irrelevant now,” Helios interjects. “What matters is repelling Entity. We will muster the gods and goddesses with defensive and offensive capabilities and make short work of Entity’s forces.”

  That sounds encouraging. This will probably be over by tomorrow. Or even this afternoon. I’ve heard bits and pieces about Entity over the years. My mother fled Earth because of it, and Raine and Tanuk and Sapphire were almost killed by it, but that was on Earth. This is Okeanus. Nothing bad can happen here. That’s pretty much built into the whole premise of the place.

  “Lucy.” Helios gets my attention by saying my name. “You will go to Triton until this war is won. Do not fear for us. We have faced greater foes than this.”

  “Uh, excuse me? Why would I go to Triton? Is Raine coming too? And Sapphire?”

  “I just told you, Raine will be aiding us in battle, and Sapphire also…”

  “A ten-year-old is going to help you, but you’re sending me to the depths of the ocean?”