Chapter 22 Aiden
AIDEN
Wyatt had showered and waited up for us, and he was extra surly when we finally trudged into my living room.
“About fucking time,” he griped. He was sitting on the couch, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his eyes slits. “I can’t believe you left me here while you got to go tear apart those handsy little fucks.”
“You know exactly why we left you,” Heath retorted. “Besides the fact that one of us who is not a python needed to watch over Clara, how long did you have to stand in a cold shower to get your bear’s rage under control?”
“An hour,” he muttered. “And I texted all of my sisters to tell them they aren’t allowed to go on dates with males, or someone might die.”
Willow, who was seventeen, was too wily to let Wyatt catch her on a date with anyone. Winona was fifteen and learning from her sister, and no doubt that knowledge would later be passed down to Wendy and Winnifred, who were twelve and thirteen. Wyatt was going to have a lot on his hands.
“Is Clara sleeping?” I asked.
He nodded. “Like a baby. With her big scary brothers and her new best friend Avery on the case, she calmed right down.”
My lip twitched at the mention of Avery’s name, and Heath was no better. Wyatt’s suspicious gaze pinged between the two of us, and then he was on his feet, prowling toward my brother.
He sniffed the air in front of Heath, and then a mean smile spread across his face. “Why does our fearless leader reek of sex?”
I stifled a groan. If we weren’t about to have to deal with my asshole father, I’d be in the shower finishing myself off to the memory of Avery’s sweet moans and delicious screams. Tutoring her was going to be a special form of torture after tonight.
One I deserved.
Heath stared Wyatt down, unrepentant. “Avery jumped in front of two Prime beasts for my sister, so I got on my knees and thanked her for it.”
Wyatt shut his eyes and groaned like he was in horrible pain.
“Fuck you, Heath. I cannot believe after all the bullshit you’ve been spouting about keeping our distance from her, you are the one who caved.
” He opened his eyes and pointed at me. “Both of you. I know you didn’t just sit on the sidelines, Aiden. ”
I met his accusing stare. “I held her. Got to feel her shake in my arms while she came all over Heath’s face. Happy?”
“No,” he growled. “I won’t be happy until I’m bathing in that girl’s cum.”
“Right. Great.” I threw up my hands. “We’re all fucked for her, but our situation has not changed, as the events of tonight have so clearly demonstrated.”
The fight went out of Wyatt, and his shoulders slumped. “Fuck your fucking parents. I assume they know where Clara is by now?”
Heath pulled his phone from his pocket and stared at the screen. “I have five missed calls from Holden, two from Stephen, and one from Mom,” he said. My phone had been buzzing incessantly in my pocket, too, but I didn’t care to check it. “So, yes. It’s time.”
Wyatt nodded. The three of us padded quietly through the kitchen and into the small sunroom I used as my home office. Clara was asleep upstairs, and hopefully she would stay that way through this call.
I sat behind the small wooden desk I’d shoved up against the windows and opened my laptop. Heath took up a power stance behind me, his arms folded and his jaw tense. Wyatt flopped into one of the armchairs by the wall. He’d listen but wouldn’t be on camera.
The ceiling fan whirled quietly above us.
I took one fortifying breath before I hit the video call button, and my dick stirred in my pants as I caught the faint scent of Avery wafting off my brother.
I tossed him an annoyed look over my shoulder.
He licked his lips and winked at me, the asshole. Wyatt grumbled at us both.
It all blinked right out of my brain as my dad Holden appeared on the screen.
Holden Blackwell looked a decade younger than his fifty years, as age took longer to wear on the most powerful of our kind.
He was broad, grizzled, and wore his dark brown hair long—a point of pride for lion shifters.
He had a permanent five o’clock shadow, and his hair had only just started to dapple gray at the temples, all of it adding to his air of distinguished and dangerous power.
There wasn’t an ounce of exhaustion or worry on his face even though his only daughter had been missing for several hours tonight.
The depthless voids that were his gray eyes focused on me like lasers through the computer screen. “Aiden. Heath. It appears you’ve finally deigned to return my calls.”
“We had a problem to deal with,” I replied evenly, sounding bored even though I was anything but. “You’re welcome, by the way, for cleaning up a mess that you created by forcing Clara to go out with two teenage perverts with embarrassingly little control over their animals.”
He waved a hand. “I’m certain you have all overreacted. Clara fleeing like a scared child. The two of you attacking the boys like they were common criminals. Ridiculous, all of it.”
I clenched my jaw, and Heath blew out a frustrated breath behind me.
“This is a sign that Clara isn’t ready for this, Dad,” Heath said with impressive patience. “So call off the auction for her bond.”
“As I have told you numerous times, son, this is not an auction,” Dad bit out. “How uncouth. We are procuring a bonding for our precious daughter that will be most advantageous for her and for this family.”
“Against her will,” I snapped. “She’s a child, Dad.”
He scoffed. “The legal bonding age is seventeen, which you know, and that’s mere months away for Clara.
The fact that you two continue to coddle her doesn’t make her a child.
She is a latent female and my daughter. She has a single purpose in this privileged life of hers, and she will fulfill it. End of discussion.”
Heath leaned over my shoulder to glare into the camera. “Keep it up, Dad. Next time one of her dates puts a hand on her, I will tear out his throat, and I’ll leave you to deal with the consequences.”
Holden sighed and pinched his brow. “I am both disappointed in your attitude and yet so damn proud of the Prime you’ve become, Heath.
You and your brother have created an outstanding quad that will ensure the Blackwell legacy remains as powerful and revered as it always has been.
” He leaned back in his chair and gave us both a pointed look.
“That is, once you decide to actually choose a bond from that school’s veritable buffet of females from quality bloodlines, whom I’m certain are throwing themselves at you night and day. ”
“We’ll bond on our own time, Dad,” I said wearily, as I always did. He didn’t need to know the urgency we felt around the search for our bond because it had nothing to do with his fucking legacy.
“Yes, yes, you are all focused on your noble quest to become Guardians,” he replied with a flippant wave of his hand.
“I wish I could call it a waste of time for males of your pedigree, but I can’t argue against the prestige that can be gained as highly decorated soldiers in the Guardian force.
With that and the Blackwell name, there truly are no doors that won’t be opened for you in shifter society across the entire country. ”
Because the Guardians’ role in the safety of our community wasn’t a thing he valued. Our parents hid behind the expensive wards surrounding their estate in the Hills, and I doubted any one of them had laid eyes on a wraith in over a decade.
“We appreciate your full-throated support of our life choices,” Heath said, his tone flat. “And I will insist, yet again, that Clara deserves to make her own life ch—”
“Also, what’s this I’m hearing about a female being allowed into the Guardian training program?
” Dad asked, spitting the word like a curse.
Wyatt’s attention snapped to the computer screen, and it was only our many years of practice that kept all traces of emotion from my face and my brother’s.
“Arthur Mahoney called me the other day to complain about it. According to his son, it’s an embarrassing farce. ”
“Sounds like sour grapes to me, Dad,” Heath said with a careless shrug. “Kace Mahoney’s trio still hasn’t found a fourth, and they’re sagging on the leaderboard because they’re a fucking mess against the SWIM. None of that is the fault of a random female.”
“Still, it’s unseemly, Heath,” he went on. “I called Ward Gale to insist he stop this madness, but that stubborn bear seems to think this female can actually kill wraiths.”
No one in this room was going to give Holden Blackwell an ounce of information about Avery, even to come to her defense. “Dad, if the girl can hack it in the program, she’ll advance, and if she can’t, she’ll be cut,” I said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
“We remain at the top of the leaderboard,” Heath added.
“I’m pleased to hear that, but I still don’t like this,” Dad growled. “If this nonsense goes much further, the Council will issue a censure letter to the Guardians. With Stephen and I, we only need three more votes for a majority, which I know we’ll have.”
Wyatt rolled his eyes. The Guardian leadership would take one look at that letter and then have a good laugh as they fed it through the shredder. The Guardians existed as a completely autonomous entity outside the control of any of the regional councils, and Dad hated it.
We, on the other hand, counted on it.
“Good luck with that,” Heath said simply. “Back to Clara—”
Dad slammed his fist on his desk. “Son, we can’t have females—females with a beast, especially—running around in the Guardians and doing the Moon knows what else. It is against the divine will—”
“Dad, it’s late,” I said. It was time to end this insufferable call before he really got going. “We’ll bring Clara back to the house when it’s safe to do so. Tell Mom we said hello.”
He leaned into the screen, his stark gray eyes flashing molten silver for the briefest of seconds. “Fine. Your mother will be sad to have missed an opportunity to see you, but the events of the evening were upsetting to her, so she’s taken one of her elixirs. She needs her sleep.”
Our mother, Octavia, had a shockingly strong affinity for apothecary magic for a woman who cared more about the brand name on her clothes and jewelry than she did training the affinity.
It was her little hobby, and she put some effort into it when she needed a potent draft of something, which was at just about every inconvenience.
“Right,” Heath said. “Good night, Dad.”
He reached over my shoulder and slammed my laptop closed.
All three of us glared silently at the computer for a moment, and then Wyatt got to his feet. “I’m going to bed,” he declared, stretching his arms over his head and yawning. “Well, I’m going to jack off first, since I’ve had to smell the wildcat’s delicious pussy on Heath’s face for the last hour.”
Heath’s cocky smirk flashed, but he wiped it away quickly. He pointed at Wyatt. “Don’t get any ideas.”
Wyatt strode from the room, throwing a middle finger over his shoulder as he went. “Fuck off.”
I watched him go, then slumped in my chair. “That went well,” I muttered. “Maybe all our problems will disappear when we wake up in the morning.”
“Keep dreaming, man,” Heath replied, staring at his phone. “At least Elijah’s checked in. He’ll be at home with his aunt and uncle until curfew is over, then he says he’s going to make one more trip to South Fulton before he heads back to campus.”
I removed my glasses and scrubbed a hand down my face. “Are we being reckless, letting him go on this crusade alone?”
“Probably, but we can’t all be gone from campus for weeks at a time. Until we see clips of a twelve-foot basilisk raging through the streets of Fulton City trending on ClockTok, we have to just let him do this.”
He deserved answers, after all, and none of us would get in his way.
Except that his control had started slipping again, and it seemed to be happening mostly around Avery.
None of us knew what to make of that, especially not him.
I had no doubt he was as entranced by her as the rest of us, but he’d figured out long ago how to keep the beast at bay when he was aroused.
He’d never had even a near miss when he’d hooked up with girls in the past, and he swore up and down that he hadn’t touched Avery beyond briefly holding her hand.
Just another entry on the list of reasons why we needed to find our central—the stability offered by bonding with a magically strong but latent shifter was said to settle even the most volatile beasts.
My head hurt.
“I’m going the fuck to bed,” I told Heath with a defeated sigh. I did not mention that I, like Wyatt, would be getting myself off to the thought of Avery before I finally let sleep take me.