Chapter 6
Xander
White Blank Page – Mumford and Sons
It takes them all night to drive to The Collector’s property deep in the outback.
They have to stop three times to re-dose Lyle and Savage.
A low growl would make the convoy stop, and the roos wouldn’t even risk opening the metal doors of the trucks, but poked their rifles through small holes in the side and shot each thrice.
“So civilised,” Katerina said, reaching over and patting me hard on the cheek. “Say, ‘Yes, regina.’”
I repeat the words, even as they try to choke me.
I keep listening to the sky for the sound of dragon wings, wondering if Aurelia has made it back to the Academy by now.
Wondering what her next move will be. There has to be some way I can contact her.
Some opportunity I can take to send her a message that I have my own mind. That we are okay for now.
We arrive at the property close to dawn.
Katerina’s house is encased in scaffolding to repair the damage I caused when I tore the place apart to find Lia.
Connor gets out first as part of the feline team to help levitate Lyle and Sav inside.
Aurelia’s feline friend inhales sharply as I clamber out of the Jeep.
I land on the gravel with my chains clattering, dutifully falling in behind Katerina and the hyena matriarch.
I risk a little power usage. “Pass me your phone at the first opportunity,” I mentally project to Connor.
“Take them all to my room,” the crocodile instructs. “I never want them out of my sight.
My stomach turns at the implication of this as Scythe and I are led inside the property.
I can’t see if her stone crocodile statue has been set right after I moved it, but I’m not entirely sure who else would have been able to move it without a truck or crane.
It doesn’t matter now, however, as the scent of women’s perfumes mingle in the air along with various types of animas.
We’re marched through a series of echoing corridors and tiled floors until we get to an even colder room, the AC on full blast. “I have three cages set up and ready,” Katerina sighs as if she considers her own work arousing.
Her scent casts a pall over me as she tugs me forwards by the chains and leads me towards the left of the room, where the scent of metal is strongest. “And one last touch—” Cold metal circles my neck before clipping into place.
The rustle of keys clicks the lock into place before she prods me hard in the bicep, indicating I need to move forward.
With my jaw clenched, I drag my feet into what I assume is one of the cells, and she swings the door shut and locks it.
I don’t move anywhere. I remain fixed at the bars, listening to my shark-brother’s steady, slow breathing.
Savage and Lyle are levitated into the room, their breathing wet and slow from sedation, as they are locked into their cells one by one.
Connor enters, then leaves, his gait the slowest of them all.
I sense no pregnancy in him, nor any signs of heat.
Scythe had mentioned to me that Connor was here on a scientific study contract.
In exchange for research, he would get money to help his poorly grandfather, who had been the one person in his family to stand by him when it was discovered he was a male with a female spirit.
The room becomes awfully quiet, and my stomach turns as I hear Katerina rubbing her hands along Scythe’s body. She hums with pleasure. “Come and lie on the bed, Scythe.”
I suck in a breath as my brother moves onto the bed.
Katerina hums again. “As your regina, I command you to kiss me.”
Blood pounds in my head as I hear the rustle of cloth. My power lashes out, draconic telekinesis holding Scythe away from Katerina.
“Kiss me!” she commands angrily.
Scythe moves against my power, and I hold him still. I won’t allow this. Not now, not ever. Not after everything he’s been through. Not just hours after he’d slain his first enemy, my own Uncle. My shark-brother strains to complete the command, but I hold him like steel around flesh.
Katerina makes a displeased sound. “Fetch me a glass of water.”
I loosen my hold and allow Scythe to complete this command and get off the bed.
His business shoes click across the tiles until he gets to an echoey area that must be the ensuite.
When he returns, Katerina takes the glass and gulps it down before setting it on a wooden bedside table. “Take your clothes off,” she commands.
Fuck this vile creature.
Scythe moves, cloth moving against skin as he takes off his business shirt and drops it to the ground.
“Take your pants off,” Katerina commands.
I clench my teeth as I hold Scythe’s hands still.
He pushes against me, forcing his will against mine.
I sense his hands vibrating against our opposing forces, but I hold on to him with everything I have.
Sweat trickles down my spine and I clench my teeth against the rage.
Katerina huffs, and I let out a relieved exhale
“Turn the fuck around, dragon. Your eyes make me feel sick.”
Silently, I turn and face the wall my cell shares with Savage and Lyle’s.
“Scythe, lie next to me and go to sleep. I’ll deal with you later. You, dragon. Sit down and sleep.”
Sighing through my nose, I take up a position against the wall as Katerina’s clothes come off and she heads into the bathroom.
What a fucking pervert. I slide to the floor and come to rest on my ass, ignoring the command to sleep.
Scythe can never be left alone with Katerina.
None of my brothers can. I will sit and keep vigil every night, if I fucking have to.
Around midday the next day, Katerina gets out of bed to check on my wolf and lion brothers, darting them for good measure.
She’s going to run out of darts if she’s not careful.
I’m sure she has the biggest supply in the state, but how long is she expecting to keep this up?
I don’t feel as exhausted as I should, having had to stay wide awake all night and I think part of it is adrenaline still courses through my system from the fight at Drakos Estate.
“Dragon.” The volume of Katerina’s voice increases as she stands before my cell and unlocks it. “Get up, we’re heading out.” Scythe’s breathing is coming from the door.
“I need to use the bathroom. Scythe will need it as well,” I tell her.
“Don’t tell me what Scythe needs.” She mutters under her breath about the spell not working as planned as she walks away. “Be quick about it.”
As I head to the ensuite, wondering if this is how Lia felt when I held her captive in my room.
I had never intended it, but when the time came and my father gave me the golden collar, it had felt right in a twisted way.
The part of me I kept locked away had wanted to keep her close.
Had wanted her scent to remain by my side, and had wanted to keep my eye on her.
It had started as hate. And then I’d spent more time with her.
Every moment of my day and night, actually.
I began to see past the screen of my blind hatred.
It had taken my forced physical blindness to really see the perfect parts that made her special.
The delicate sound of her breath, the reliable thump of her heart, the sad sigh between her lips.
The way her skin—
The sudden mental image of my father dragging Aurelia’s shark’s body up the aisle before my wedding ceremony flashes across my mind’s eye and I retch into the sink.
My returned mark burns even more when I splash water on it, the droplets sizzling into steam as they hit my skin.
I find the edges of the sink with my hands, and I’m unaware that I’m gripping so hard until I hear a fine crack.
I have half a mind to tear the thing out of the wall and swing it at the reptile behind me, but a strange cooing stops me short.
When I return to the bedroom, the crocodile is running a brush through Scythe’s hair as he sits still and cold on the bed. “Are you going to do mine next?” I ask in a dead voice.
I feel her eyes on me. “Yours isn’t pretty.”
Mine is much longer than Scythe’s, but silver hair is a whole different thing. In the cages behind her, Savage growls and rolls over. Lyle twitches, stretching his paws out as he wakes up, his breathing ragged as the confusion hits him. This is going to be fucking interesting.
Katerina stands, apparently satisfied with her work. She turns towards my beastly brothers and commands, “You two stay,” then she turns to me. “Both of you walk in front of me where I can see you. We’re heading to breakfast.”
Savage’s black wolf form gets to his feet as we leave, and it’s not until the door closes behind Katerina that a mighty, angry roar rattles the walls.
The crocodile halts us with a sharp command, and I’m forced to stop as she storms back into her room and barks, “No noise. No growling. No barking. No roaring.”
The room behind me goes quiet save for heavy breathing. Katerina makes an approving noise and exits the room. “Continue on,” she says, shoving at my back like I’m an idiot.
Silently, Scythe and I walk down the corridor, and I follow my nose to the food.
To my surprise, we end up outside, a little way from the entrance, under a marquee built for shade from the harsh outback sun.
Food is laid out on a long table where the hyena matriarch is seated, sipping, from the smell of it, an espresso.
A little way from the table, someone is crying; another is whimpering, and I smell human blood and the tang of steel. There are humans in cages here.
The Collector bids us to sit down, and I feel the witch’s eyes on me.
Scythe is instructed to eat his lemon-marinated salmon.
I’m starving, but I haven’t been instructed to pull forwards that plate of bacon I can smell.
“Look at him,” Katerina says. “Do you really think the spell is covering his dragon animus?”
“At least partially. It would be wise to test it.”
It would have been wise to leave us the fuck alone.
“Better get to it then,” Katerina says. “Xander.”
“Yes, regina?” I say obediently, turning towards the sound of her voice.
“There are some humans from the wildlife protection league who tried to break in and steal some of my breedable females. That can’t stand, can it?”
My blood heats, my heart pounds, and I say, “No, it can’t.”
“Will you protect your regina?”
“Always.” I’m going to vomit acid onto this dirt.
“Follow the guard.” She gives a signal, then chains clank, a lock clangs open, and a quiet female whimper turns into a sob. The prisoner sounds young. She’s not a child, but a young woman. Probably around Aurelia’s age. “Kill her.”
Without my powers, she’s forcing me to do this with my human hands. A vision of Aurelia flashes through my mind’s eye. Specifically, her screaming on the floor of my cavern, glass shattered around her, half of her right leg still missing. My blood wants to explode through my eye sockets.
I decide that Katerina Crocodylus can’t die. She needs to suffer for this. If I am to stay here and look after my brothers, she must be convinced I’m under the curse and there can be no hesitation in my movements.
Somehow, I convince my legs to stride right up to the young lady.
I can’t tell her I’m sorry. I can’t stop her murder.
Once again, I find myself helpless to powers more malevolent than me.
She doesn’t fight as I approach her. Doesn’t do anything except pant and whimper, the scent of her tears filling my nose.
I snap her neck efficiently, then carefully lay her on the ground.
I’m just thankful it’s me and not Savage or Lyle. Savage would be ruined by this.
The hyena matriarch sniffs, and I can’t tell if it’s from disgust or contempt. “He cries blood,” she says. “What a joke.”
I put my hands behind my back to hide the fact that I need to clench them into fists. Darkness follows me like my own personal Grim Reaper. I thought I was becoming a better male. I thought my time doing bad things had come to an end. How stupid I’d been to even entertain the thought.
“Well, the rest need to go too,” Katerina says. “Take your earphones out.”
I stop breathing. Of course she wants to go for the throat.
This spell allows her to take full advantage, and she isn’t going to waste the opportunity.
With the obsidian chains around me I can’t shift, but my Berserker genes will still take over.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I nod. “Yes, regina.”
Let her take out this bloodlust on me. By the time she gets to my brothers, she’ll be satiated and will hopefully leave them alone.
I take out my earphones and put them in my pocket.
The doors to the cells screech open. There’s no red haze that takes me because I can’t fucking see.
But it’s still ‘red’ in my ears, and in my head.
In my blood-soaked, blackened soul. It’s a sort of song. Ugly. Malicious.
The entire time I’m chasing and killing these humans, I’m fully aware, unable to control the way my body wants to maim, to destroy.
The screaming soaks into me like wine, and it fuels me to tear and break and snap.
Human screams come and go. Blood mists the air. I can’t help but revel in it. So much.
I need more. I can’t escape it.
Then, far away, I hear the sound of something new. My head snaps southward. Scythe’s head—and further away, Savage and Lyle’s heads too—snap in the same direction.
The sound is pure violence. Pure agony.
It’s the rage of my regina.
I shake my head as the sound reverberates through my skull. It focuses me enough to allow me to think. To go still. Settling down on my haunches, I close my eyes and listen to the one who tugs at my soul.
A regina rampage is a thing of myth. It is usually driven by the death or danger of children. Very occasionally, however, the capture or death of a regina’s pack drives its central mate into a frenzy of bloodlust.
My skin erupts in goosebumps, and my mouth curves into a smile.