Psycho Gods （Cruel Shifterverse #6）
Jasmine Mas
Warning
They are true enemies. This is war. It is excessively violent. This is a reverse harem. Everyone’s a villain.
There are some intense situations in this book that might be triggering for some readers. If you are concerned please refer to the trigger list on my website jasminemasbooks.com, click on the black “Trigger” tab at the top right of the page for the list.
Please beware, the last chapter of the book might cause you to laugh so hard that you cry :）。
“The effects of unresolved trauma can be devastating.”
—Dr. Peter Levine
A regular person can survive only three hours without warmth.
Into the Stars
All myths are rooted in some truth.
This series is about different planets connected by black holes.
Aka, realms attached by portals with inhabitants you’ve heard of in myths and dismissed as fairy tales.
There are politics, deceptions, and secrets on the macro scale. And they vary from realm to realm.
In the human realm, the inhabitants learn they live in an anarchic system, that there is no supreme authority over different countries.
They’re wrong.
The High Court secretly reigns sovereign over all the worlds. “Realm-Wide Peace” is their motto.
Monsters enforce this peace. A next-to-impossible task because wealth corrupts, but power destroys.
And among the hundreds of planets with sentient life, a few special individuals possess power on the nuclear level—more energy in their cells than an atomic bomb.
The truth: Most individuals go their entire lives without knowing or caring about the other realms or the creatures within them. They live in bliss.
In this series, ignorance isn’t an option for our main characters.
Through birthright or circumstances, they’re players in the macrolevel game.
Now all they must do is survive.
Part One
Clinomania
The games of the gods will corrupt your head.
Those who survive—were already dead.
Chapter 1
Aran
FATHERS
Clinomania （noun）： an excessive desire to remain in bed; morbid sleepiness
I stumbled down the empty black marble hall of Elite Academy.
My footsteps echoed loudly.
Orion ran silently behind me. He was my escort because of the bond sickness. My silent shadow.
Crack. Lightning struck the walls, and electricity made the hair on my arms stand up as white spots danced in my gray vision.
I slipped on a patch of ice and barely kept myself upright.
Stained-glass windows mocked me—maroon was splashed across gruesome battle scenes; slain soldiers clutched their swords as their souls were taken into the valley of the sun god.
My stomach churned because the Legionnaire Games were over, and I was going to war.
Soon, I’d be the downed soldier in the window.
It would be my blood.
Today was the day we left the academy for the realm overrun with ungodly. In a few hours, I’d RJE to a military base and become a war leader.
I felt sick.
Ice crackled, spreading across my fingers, then slowly crawled up my forearms, and I curled my hands under my armpits.
I looked back over my shoulder.
Shivered.
My teeth chattered from the pervasive chill that was emanating from my bones.
There was a path of cobalt ice coating the marble floors behind me, and as I zigzagged across the hall, the ice snaked and followed me.
Orion stared at it with shocked wide eyes.
Pressure built in my empty chest.
I wanted to scream.
I’m just an angel. I know what I am—I’m just an ordinary angel.
The pressure in my shoulders from my retracted wings told another story, and I grimaced because everything was falling apart.
I’d stayed up all night, twelve hours of straining with my wings spread wide, and I hadn’t risen an inch off the ground.
Nothing had happened.
I couldn’t fly.
Then I’d envisioned an angel’s ice sword forming in my hand, but yet again—nothing.
Instead, as if mocking me, cobalt crawled along my fingers like gloves and spread across the ground with every step I took. I had zero control over it.
The ice was useless.
I was useless.
It was simple: angels were powerful, and I was weak.
My footsteps echoed louder as I sprinted down the marble hall toward Lothaire’s office. A servant told me that my vampyre/tormentor/commander/sire wanted to speak with me.
Lovely.
Does he know what’s wrong with me?
When I got to Lothaire’s office door, I went to open it but stopped. Frozen with numbness, I watched ice spread from my feet and crawl up the wood like an infection.