Mona Lisa Blossoming

Chapter One

We were in a private jet winging through the darkness of night, flying to New Orleans. My new territory. I was dressed in a black gown. Full-length, formal. Not my usual style or taste. But at least this one fit me, not like the hand-me-downs from Mona Sera, which had gaped and gathered at my modest bosom. My mother was lushly built. Not so, me. Too bad I hadn't inherited that physical aspect from her. Or maybe it was a good thing that I hadn't inherited more of her traits. Not too nice, my mother.

All I seemed to have gotten from Mona Sera was my black hair, high cheekbones, and a jawline that was both delicate and strong. Oh, yeah. And the Monère blood that ran strong and true and dominant in my blood. A quarter of me is human. The other three-fourths is of another species, from another world: Monère—children of the moon, stronger and faster than humans. And more powerful. We are the truth that the legends of werewolf and vampires are based upon.

Beside me sat Gryphon. He'd been unusually quiet. We weren't touching, but I felt his presence, his power, like a hand pressing delicately against my skin. I turned to look at him, to gaze upon him, this beautiful creature descended of people from another world who had fled their dying planet over four million years ago. His extreme loveliness struck me, as always, like a blow to my chest, knocking the very breath from me. But who needed to breathe when you could drink in the richness of his beauty instead? The midnight blackness of his hair that fell like a silky curtain of darkness, brushing across his shoulders. The alabaster purity of his skin. The startling redness of his cupid-bow mouth. Such unearthly loveliness, such lips, should have only graced a cherub. In fact, the first time I'd seen Gryphon, the thought had whispered in my mind that he was a fallen angel tumbled to Earth, kicked out of heaven. I hadn't been too far wrong. Only their heaven had been the moon.

Haunting sadness swam like a living thing in his sky blue eyes. Sad eyes that had seen too much, done too much. I hated seeing that look once more in those crystalline depths. Feeling my caressing eyes, Gryphon turned to me and I watched the sadness that seemed so much a part of him fade away, and watched something else rise up from deep within to take its place. In his blue, blue eyes, I saw my dream come true. Hot passion, sweet adoration. Love. Everything I had wished for all my life and never thought to have. Gryphon. My dreams made flesh, an arbiter from another world who had come to me, alone and injured by his own Queen's hand, dying. Saving him had freed me from my loneliness and initiated me into my real life.

The memories and the pull of emotion between us swelled and I wondered why we were not touching. I wanted to touch him, feel him, caress that sweet skin, to reassure myself that he was real, not a vision that would fade away. That he wouldn't leave me.

A movement drew my attention away. Ah, yes. Coming down the aisle toward us was the reason why I wasn't touching him. Amber, my other lover. Tall like a majestic mountain, solid with hefty bones and even heavier muscles. Powerful like a massive oak tree, grand and rough-hewn. His beauty lay in his ruggedness, in his battered heart, with his raw strength and even rawer emotions that he normally hid behind a cold wall of reserve, a wall of control—his normal facade. A life-preserving habit that he had honed under Mona Sera's cruel rule, so that one was fooled into thinking that he didn't feel much… until he looked at me, like he was doing now.

I swallowed against what I glimpsed naked and intense on Amber's face, what he allowed me to see. There was nothing cold or reserved about him now. His dark blue eyes had changed to fiery gold, glittering yellow like a bright, shiny jewel; the same color as his name—Amber. The eyes of his beast. They heated and glowed with this extraordinary color whenever he was gripped with passion or power.

I watched him walk toward me with those glowing, molten eyes filled with desire and devotion intertwined, and was torn between running away and throwing myself into his massive arms. He had saved me, brought me back from the brink of death, protected me from a band of kidnapping rogues, and had loved me so. When we returned from our ordeal, the bond between us had been forged strong and true, and I loved Amber now as dearly as I loved Gryphon. My two Warrior Lords. My two lovers. I still hardly believed that I would not have to give up one or the other. That I could keep them both and allow them to share me, as they called it.

Amber lowered himself into the aisle seat beside me, his trim waist and hips fitting easily. Even the great sword he wore at his waist found a space. But his shoulders were so wide, so broad across that we touched. And with that small contact, a sign of relief rippled through us all. The tension between us eased, the strain ebbed. My left hand naturally, without thought, reached for Amber's broad, callused hand as my right hand twined with Gryphon's long, slender fingers. Gryphon raised my hand, brushed a kiss across the back of it, and pressed it to his heart. A courtly gesture that was as natural and graceful as the man himself, triggering a rare fluttering feeling within me—happiness. And being this happy, having things this perfect made me nervous. Why? Because I knew it couldn't last. Not for me.

"The pilot said that we shall be landing soon." Amber's voice was so deep, so dark, so low, it made my spine shiver. "You look beautiful, Mona Lisa," he said, and my name was like a caress upon his lips.

I grimaced. Amber was no doubt referring to my long hair that I had left loose and unbound, and my long formal gown… swirling black lace over black silk lining. One of several dresses I had bought in Manhattan, not because they were to my taste—oh no, not that. Jeans, T-shirt, sneakers, and ponytail were more to my taste, and what Amber and Gryphon had become used to seeing. But the long black gowns were what Monère Queens wore, and that was what I was. A Monère Queen. The newest one.

Monère men were a bit primitive in tastes when it came to their women—long dresses, loose hair, and even looser morals, especially their Queens. No doubt they'd love to throw in barefoot and pregnant if they could manage it. Problem was, very few could. The Monère were not a fertile people. It was difficult, rare, for their women to become pregnant. I wondered if it was a natural state to balance out their longevity—they had a typical lifespan of three hundred years—or if it was a condition they had become afflicted with on this foreign planet, their new home. Briefly, I wondered if it was a condition that had cursed me as well.

I'd worn the dress as a concession, one of many I'd probably be making as I entered my new territory for the first time. As the first Monère Mixed Blood Queen ever, I was strange enough as it was. No need not to wear the usual Queen trappings… at first, that is. We'd see about later, after they'd gotten more used to me. They, being my new constituents, the local Monère. And not just in New Orleans. New Orleans, it turns out, is just the seat of my throne. My new province expands far beyond the French Quarter, beyond the bayous with their dark waters of chocolat. Its tentacles of reach sprawled outward like an octopus throughout the entire state of Louisiana and a little beyond.

I looked to the front of the airplane where the rest of my people sat, to what I had thought would be the entirety of people I would rule until Gryphon had corrected my misconception. My eyes softened as they landed upon Thaddeus's dark straight hair, so like mine. Thaddeus, my brother by true blood.

Jamie and Tersa's red hair gleamed like ruby exclamation marks beside Thaddeus; they were the brother and sister of my heart. All three are Mixed Bloods like me—rare, few, and unwanted. Jamie and Tersa's mother, Rosemary, a Full Blood Monère, sat alone in the row behind them. She was a gifted cook who had left her coveted position at High Court to follow me blindly to whatever territory I was assigned. I had been the only one to step in to save her daughter, Tersa, when she was being raped by a Monère warrior. No one else had interfered because it's not against Monère law to rape, kill or do anything your little black heart desired against Mixed Bloods. In fact, their laws were skewed against Mixed Bloods. We couldn't kill Full Bloods.

Yeah, their law sucks. Luckily it had been amended once I became a Queen. I, the sole Mixed Blood exception, could kill a Full Blood. In self-defense, that is. A cold smile touched my lips. Any killing I did would be made to look like self-defense, of course, whether it was or not. Because, no question about it, if I killed them, it would be because they richly deserved to die.

Rosemary had followed me because she believed I would protect her Mixed Blood children, being a Mixed Blood myself. Shrewd woman. She was right. I would do whatever I could to keep them safe. Hard to believe, as I gazed at the stout, dark-haired cook who was as tall as an Amazon, that Rosemary had given birth to Jamie, reed thin and slender tall, and tiny petite Tersa, whose bones seemed as light and as delicate as a dove's. Made one wonder—or not want to wonder—who their human father had been. Redheaded for sure and slight of build. I shook my head, clearing my thoughts. The odd, mismatched mating was not something I even wanted to try imagining.

In the third row sat Tomas and Aquila. With soft brown eyes, wheat-colored hair, and a Southern accent that flowed warm and thick as molasses, Tomas was as straight and true and loyal as the sword he had sworn to my service. Aquila, on the other hand, was an ex-outlaw rogue, one of those who had kidnapped me, in fact. You'd never have guessed it to look upon his very proper and precise person. He was not much taller than my five feet eight. The hair of his neatly trimmed Vandyke beard was crisply straight in contrast to his brown wavy hair. He was older, like Amber. Over a hundred years was my guess. The only one in our little group besides me who knew how to drive… in a jerky "at least half-a-century since he'd gotten behind a wheel" manner of fashion. Aquila's knowledge and grasp of commerce and business was a nice boon for us all, although perhaps not so surprising considering the orderliness of his nature.

Behind them sat Chami, the last and least wanted of my warrior guards. The most dangerous. I had taken him because Mona Teresa, a nasty jealous rival Queen, would have taken him had I not. I'd taken him because he had humbled himself and begged me with his deep violet eyes not to let her have him.

Chami had curly brown hair like Aquila, but with a whipcord lean, greyhound slenderness to his build. The press of his power was like an invisible kiss against your skin, light, barely there. Until he loosened the shield and let you sense the fullness and weight of it. But his real gift was not in the cloaking of his full power, although that was a nifty trick. No, his real power lay in his ability to cloak himself. Actually, not cloak per se, but rather the ability to blend in with his surroundings and background so that he was invisible. Chameleon. He'd been an assassin, killing silently, an unseen hunting shadow, his nature as dark and complex as his gift, his loyalty less sure, although he had stood true thus far, even when we had come up against a demon dead.

My family. My inner circle.

Unknowingly, unconsciously, we had sat in reverse order of power. Mixed Bloods, traditionally—and true in Jamie and Tersa's cases—are not much more powerful than humans. My brother, Thaddeus, and I are the exceptions. But then we are more Monère than human. Our father had been a Mixed Blood, identity unknown. Dead according to our mother, Mona Sera, although I rather thought that she had lied at the time.

Thaddeus was the curious exception in our unconsciously seated hierarchy, which had the strongest sitting in the back to protect the weaker among us. Thaddeus, might in fact, prove to become the strongest of us all with time, if we could grant him that. He was certainly the most unique, even more so than I. Thaddeus, you see, can call down the life-prolonging rays of the moon. He can Bask, something that before this only Queens could do. My brother, Thaddeus, was the men's precious hope for the future. I can see it in their eyes when they look at him… Aquila, Tomas, Chami—all warriors sworn to my service but whose allegiance, perhaps first and foremost, conscious or unconscious, was to my brother. And that's okay. It was my desire as well. I'd rather they see to his safety first. I can look after myself.