Page 13 of Three's A Wrap
“I’ve been called many names, my Chloe, and you can call me whichever you would like, but I am most known by the name Ausar,” he says, with a bow.
I can't help but notice his biceps ripple beneath his shirt as my jaw drops.
“Umm, where are we?” I ask, trying to peek around them to the window.
“Bermuda,” Sebastian answers with a wink, leaning back against one of the columns of the canopy bed.
A memory of Ausar saying that before I blacked out comes to mind. “Blow me to Bermuda?”
“Exactly,” Sebastian grins.
“We’re safe here, as this place is where I would travel to seek solitude before my imprisonment. May I see your arm?” Ausar asks, and I hold it up for him to see. He frowns, but doesn't move to touch me, only shakes his head. “It should’ve never happened this way. The bracelet should never have hurt you”
“I’m fine. Sebastian healed me up while we were in the tomb,” I say, showing them my unblemished wrist and giving them both a smile.
“What he’s trying to say is that we would never want to hurt you, Chloe,” Sebastian says, crossing his arms over his chest. “The magic wasn’t supposed to do that.”
I smile to myself a little as I watch Ausar do the same, sitting on the mattress while leaning against the opposite bedpost to talk with us.
I realize it could be like this always. These men are my mates.
“I’m sure you have lots of questions for us?”
I nod and try to think of where to even begin.
“We should start from the beginning, so she knows everything,” Ausar interjects.
I give him a grin and settle back into the pillows, pulling the blanket cozily over me. I wish I had popcorn. “Yes, please. I’d love to know all about you both.”
“Go on then, let’s hear the story,” Sebastian says, climbing onto the bed to lay his head on my thigh.
“Eons ago, my ancestors arrived on your planet and eventually came to rule Egypt.”
Oh my gosh, he really IS alien.
“Eventually that task fell to my family for some time. My sister was a beautiful and sweet-tempered soul who only wanted to love animals and help the unfortunate, until my father regrettably bartered her to a monster. My father was a good man and saw that the neighboring kingdoms to the south were slowly being overrun. A warlord from a far land came to Egypt, seeking to overtake those who couldn’t protect themselves, but he made it known that he wanted Nefertiti, my sister, as a wife. My father, in my absence, bade my sister marry him.”
“What happened to her?” I murmur, knowing it won’t be a fairytale if that’s how I found him.
“My father was easily influenced, and his advisors urged him to broker my sister’s marriage behind my back in the hopes that the bloodshed would end. Once I discovered what they'd done, I traveled to the warlord’s stronghold, expecting to find and return her home. Instead, she turned on me the moment I arrived. In the short time after her marriage, she had met a powerful sorceress, the warlord’s head adviser. She’d twisted my sister and turned her from sweet to cruel and vindictive. Nefertiti locked me away in that tomb, cursing me,” he says, his head hanging in shame.
“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry,” I reply, unsure how anyone could be that cruel to a sibling. I barely tolerate my family most days, but locking them in a tomb forever? That’s a new level of cruelty.
“And there I stayed until?—”
“Until me, which I’m sad to say didn’t help matters,” Sebastian cuts in. “In 1882?—”
I gasp, and both their attentions snap to me. “Sorry. It just hadn't fully clicked how old you guys really are,” I mutter, feeling strange and very much like an infant with only thirty-one years under my belt.
“Over five thousand,” Ausar says, with a shrug of one shoulder.
“I’m a youngster in comparison, only a hundred and forty-three,” Sebastian says, bouncing his brows.
I give a laugh, and they both smile in response, forcing me to tamp down the thread of desire that rears its head.
“I was hired by a wealthy lord to excavate a burial site in Egypt,” Sebastian admits, raising his blonde head from my leg.
“Then how were you guys still down there, Sebastian?”
