Sunny: Mona Lisa Blossoming

To describe the full catastrophic effect Hurricane Katrina wrought upon New Orleans is beyond the scope of this story, and this author's ability. The story only briefly mentions the great devastation this city suffered and continues to recover from. My heart goes out to all whose lives were affected by this disaster.

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.