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Hugh’s father had known the time was coming, so he’d sought out others descended from Chaela to ensure that his son would be powerful enough to guide the goddess back into the world and serve her.
    Hugh nodded as his blood heated and he heard the goddess calling to him. Closing his eyes, he inhaled several slow, deep breaths and let them out, trying to calm the excitement coursing through him. He was close, so very close now, and nothing could stop him in his quest.
    Chaos would reenter the world, throwing kingdoms and their rulers into confusion and disarray. Chaela would rule as she should have eons ago. Hugh would be her right hand, as one of her blood and her rightful consort. Together they would control everything in the human world. No one, nothing, would be able to stop them.
    He opened his eyes, and the flames appeared before him. He spread them across the width of the chamber, like a wall. Heat built, and his skin grew hot, but he forced the fire out of his body and into the flames.Everything in the chamber disappeared as another place opened before him.
    And out of that dark emptiness, she floated. Sometimes she appeared in the shape of the ancient flying beast; other times she took human form. Though he was tempted to fall to his knees before her, he remained standing, his power holding the portal open. She came close, but she could not enter here or leave the realm where she was still imprisoned.
    â€œMy faithful servant,” she whispered. “Hugh.”
    â€œAlways yours,” he answered, feeling her nearness and the surge of heat and power in his blood whenever he was in her presence. He walked closer to the wall of flames and held out his hand, penetrating the barrier as he could. Knowing what would happen, he prepared himself for it.
    So much power! So much strength! So much pain!
    He clenched his jaws together to keep from screaming at Chaela’s contact. The touch of her fire seared him to the soul, and the intensity began to burn his skin away, but he forced himself to remain still under the pain and anguish of it.
    The rewards would be so great and worth every second of agony he suffered at her touch. The pleasure that came from such agony coursed through his body.
    Images filled his mind, and words raced through his ears, circling in his thoughts and overwhelming him. His cock stood and hardened and throbbed as though his body readied itself to join with a woman.
    She did this to him. The pain and fire did this. His heart beat so fast and strongly that he thought it might burst. His lungs burned with every breath. His muscles pulsed and strengthened with each second. Then hefell to his knees, crying out loudly, but he never removed his hand from inside Chaela’s wall of fire. Completely in her power, controlled by the pain and the promise of ecstasy and release, he waited as she told him all she wanted him to know.
    Seconds or minutes or hours passed. Hugh was not certain how long he remained kneeling before her, burned and burning within and without and overwhelmed by all she shared with him through their link. Then, in an instant, she released his hand, and he fell to the floor, spent in every way and yet invigorated by this exchange. The flames surged around him, singeing his skin until he climbed to his feet and called them under control. Peering through them, he realized that the portal was closed and the goddess gone.
    â€œChaela, my goddess,” he said, bowing deeply in homage.
    â€œMy faithful one.” Her whisper filled the chamber once more, sending waves of shivers through his heated and burned flesh. “It is time to claim all that is mine.”
    He could not contain his joy. For years he’d waited and watched and learned and prepared for this moment, the time when he could unleash his powers and gather his minions to seek out those of the other bloodlines and use them to open the doorways to the goddess’s prison world. Use them and then