His hands fisted at his sides. Defeat was not something he allowed. Ever. No, he would rather die. A warrior won. Always. No exceptions.

Broderick sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face, his expression grim. "We need sex, Valerian, and we need it now."

"I know." Unfortunately, the three exhausted humans sleeping in his bed would never be able to handle all of these lust-hungry nymphs at once.

He could send a handful of soldiers into the Outer City to capture sirens—a race of women who reveled in sex just as the nymphs did. Dangerous women, yes. Women who lured, seduced and killed. Well, tried to kill. But they were wonderfully satisfying to tumble, completely worth the risk.

However, the few times his men had entered the city in these past weeks, females of every race had remained well hidden, avoiding the nymphs as if they were hideous, foul-smelling demons. None wanted to find themselves enslaved to a nymph's dark, sexual hunger, losing their very identity, wishing only to please their lover. An inevitable outcome. Even for mates. Those females, whomever they happened to be, wherever they happened to be found, were treasured, but they were still enslaved.

"I can smell the humans on you, and it's making my own need all the more intense," Dorian said. With his obsidian hair, godlike features and mischievous sense of humor, women of every race usually flocked to him. There was nothing mischievous about him now, though. He radiated jealousy and resentment. "I'd kill you if I had the strength."

More guilt swept through Valerian. He had to make this right. As much as he hated to admit it, there was only one true solution to this predicament.

"Do you still wish to travel through the portal?" he asked, bracing his hands behind his back. Since discovering the strange, upright pool in the caves beneath this palace—the very pool the women had used to travel from the surface world to Atlantis—his men had begged to enter it so many times he'd lost count. Each time his answer had been the same: Gods, no. His friend Layel, King of the Vampires, had told him that Atlanteans could not survive on the surface for long periods of time.