Chapter 8
Aurelia
Isit on top of the academy for a long time. No amount of coaxing could get me down from my perch, where I stare out, narrow-eyed, growling low in my chest, the taste of embers in my mouth.
My breath is a pant at first. Threatening, heated.
But it’s important to me that I stay in control.
To recognise my power and not let it take me over into the wild madness that feels so tempting.
So I settle my breath into slow waves of deliberate control, sending my overflowing power out to fortify my protections around the school.
Next, I seek out my mates, closing my eyes and feeling for them through the air.
Calling out to them. Nothing returns. Not even a snicker from Ghoul.
I can feel their existence. They live. They breathe. But I am blocked from them.
It’s after dark that we get a visitor. From my perch, I see the marking on the car. A lone car. A lone tiger. “Minnie,” I call into my friend’s mind. “Send Marduk to see which tiger dares enter my domain.”
A few minutes later, I hear Bastien calling a greeting to the Caspian tiger as he stalks out of the animus dorms and heads out to speak to the guards at the gate.
Only then do I descend from my perch onto the grass below to sit and wait for Marduk to return.
Minnie and Yeti come out to wait with me, my friend perching cross-legged on my left claw and leaning back into my shin like it’s an armchair.
We watch as her mate returns with a strange, grim expression and a black piece of paper in one hand.
“It’s addressed to you, Lady Boneweaver. ”
Accepting that my current form is not conducive to holding paper, I shift back into my human shape, and Minnie hands me the dressing gown she was using as a blanket.
Once I’m covered, I take the letter from Marduk, and sensing no malignant powers on it, I tear it open. It’s written in white ink, the scrawl large and dominating the surface of the paper.
“Tacky,” Minnie mutters as she reads from my side.
I request an audience with Lady Aurelia Boneweaver tomorrow night at 6 p.m. at Clawson House to discuss matters regarding her protection.
Lord Tiberius Clawson
The words on the paper ignite my blood, and I feel the urge to shift into hard scales again.
Passing the letter to Minnie, I blink hard in my rage.
Did he send such a letter to my mother’s mate before he killed him?
Did he use such kind words when instructing his felines to tear down the Lily Institute and kill hundreds of vulnerable animalia inside?
Minnie breathes hard through her nose and grants me a blessing by speaking first. “He wants to see you in person. Lia, I don’t think you should do it.”
I meet Marduk’s eyes, cunning and assessing. There is an eternal wound there. Just as Minnie is scarred by Titus’ rejection, so are her mates, powerful as they are. “They mean you no good, Lady Boneweaver,” he says. “Nothing good can come out of this. But…”
My smile is dark. “But we may learn something.” He nods. Learn something that might end them. “The tiger that delivered the letter?”
“He is detained,” Marduk says.
I turn to Beak. “Put him in a locked room for the night. Take any electronics from him.”
Yeti follows after the eagle. “I’m coming too.”
Minnie takes her remaining mate’s hand for comfort, and it lightens my heart to see it. But my leg also aches, and I’m cramping from sitting on the roof for so long. “I need a shower,” I mutter, hobbling back inside. “We really need a lift. This building is very ableist.”
“Say no more, my lady!” I flinch at the sharp voice of Bastien the gargoyle and glance up at him, sitting above the entrance to the dorm. He beams down at me through his monocle, and spindly arms wheel excitedly as he points inside. “Lo and behold!”
Both glass doors swing open of their own accord. Frowning, I head inside and stop short. Before, the left of the tiny foyer of the dorm had only held stairs. Now, nestled into the wall before the first step is a single-person lift.
“Wait, why didn’t you do that for her before, Bastien?” demands Minnie.
The creature shrugs. “She wasn’t the lady of the house before. It’ll only open for her.”
Still frowning, I press the button for up and the metal doors whir open. A soft golden light reveals a black lacquered fancy elevator interior with gleaming gold buttons.
“Now you don’t have to storm dramatically up and down the stairs,” Minnie says. “And your leg won’t hurt so much.”
I get inside and press the topmost floor.
“Beat you to the top!” Minnie says.
As the doors close before me, Minnie’s pink Converse pop off the floor as she levitates herself to race. I don’t know how I feel about special rules being made for me, but if the school really is mine to command, I could use it to our advantage.
To my surprise, the topmost floor is the rooftop.
I stick my head back inside the lift and go one level down, and it opens directly into my pack dorm from a spot that used to be the bare wall.
Minnie, flushed-faced and panting, clears the topmost stair and lands in a heap.
“You win,” she says in a muffled voice. “The corridor is longer than I estimated.” I stand there for a moment as she pants.
“I think I need to see my mates,” she admits, her eyes glancing down at the black envelope still in my hand. “Will you be alright?”
“Of course,” I say quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t start. Otherwise, we’ll be saying sorry to each other every five minutes.”
We say our goodbyes, and I finally head into the shower, where I don’t even touch the hot water tap. I’m too riled up. Too ready to blow fire onto the world. Tomorrow night is too far away, how am I supposed to sleep tonight?
When I exit the bathroom into the dark of the bedroom, red gleaming eyes stare at me through coiling shadows from the corner of the room. “Don’t go, it’s a trap,” Ghoul says.
He’d been secretly listening! Hidden in the shadows around the dorm, perhaps. “I know all about traps, Ghoul,” I say irritably, toweling my hair dry. “I don’t want to see you right now.”
“I don’t care, my sweet little venom.”
“Come to gloat?” I try not to look at him, glaring out the window instead. Whenever he has his shadows up like this, I can’t see his mating mark. It doesn’t matter, though, the pull I feel towards him is inexplicable. My feet take a few halting steps towards him.
He hums as if amused. “The way I see it? You have no idea what you’re doing.”
I find myself standing before him, furiously pointing out the window. “Get the fuck away from me, General.” I’m pretty sure that’s how he gets around—flying through the windows. It’s not like he’s ever walked through doorways whenever he’s snuck into the academy.
His shadows recede, revealing the dark figure underneath.
Instead of his usual bone mask, tonight his face is painted with the white skull pattern.
“Forgetful little thing, aren’t you?” That voice gets deeper.
Huskier. “We made a deal.” I go still, my eyes narrowing in suspicion.
Fangs glint. “You promised me your venom at any time of my choosing. That was in exchange for passing a little message to your friends, remember?”
Throwing my towel onto the bed with a feral sort of aggression, I turn away to leave. “Come back another time, you bastard.”
I feel his heat behind me, radiating like something toxic. Poisonous. A muscled arm snakes around my waist, tugging me close to a tower of muscle at my back. He smells like leather and something spicy as he lowers his mouth to my ear. “I do enjoy it when you’re like this.”
Unbidden, I turn to see his face and find those lips mere inches from mine, the fangs poking out.
His scent is intoxicating, filling my head, my torso, and surging all the way down.
His hand, gloved in firm black leather, comes up to hold my jaw.
“I think I’d murder someone to get your venom in my mouth, snakelet. ”
The memory comes back to me, at Drakos Estate, when he’d milked me for my venom for their so-called research. Not long after, they’d injected me with hormones to make me go into heat.
Some of that time is a haze. Being in heat is like that. It can be like coming out of a dream. You’re a different person, and afterwards, your memory can be hazy. I remember that I’d been insatiable. I remember that Xander had carried me to his room and had called Ghoul.
They’d…helped me. Ghoul had drunk my venom, but then Xander had left, and Ghoul remained…
“We never fucked at Drakos Estate, did we?” I ask curiously. “I would remember that.” His body is a stone pillar at my back, and I remember the sensation of being close to him.
He chuckles, his thumb finding my lower lip and brushing against it.
Suddenly agitated that my memory is foggy, I turn and shove him.
It does little to actually move him, but I get to put distance between us before I do something stupid.
Ghoul bares his fangs at me. “You bounced in my lap, fucking my fingers until you were so exhausted you fell asleep, snakelet. I, however, have not fucked you yet. You’d remember that. ”
Wild Mother, I do remember some of what he describes.
I’d been dizzy from all the panting and…
bouncing, as he calls it. I cross my arms and regard him.
He regards me back, those red lasers harsh, those shadows lazily dancing around his shoulders.
Slowly, he stalks backwards and sits in Scythe’s armchair.
A finger beckons. “Sit on me, pretty poison.”
I don’t move a fucking inch.
Fast as serpents, two bands of shadows strike out.
My arm whips up to reflexively cover my face, but they band around my hips, firm yet velvet soft.
I’m yanked off my feet and fly forwards, right towards Ghoul.
I’m forced to raise my feet, and he catches me.
I’m breathless as he chuckles, arranging my thighs on either side of his.
Pressed against him, I glare down into his eyes.
“I would never strike you, let alone your face,” he says matter-of-factly.
“I might hurt your little fangs, but then how else would I get my sweet venom? Open up.” He strokes my cheek with a finger, and his lids lower across his eyes, turning the red beams into tiny half-moons.
I bare my own fangs in annoyance. “There she is. Now, think about biting me as hard as you can.”
He’s lucky I make good on my deals, otherwise I would be tearing up his neck right about now. I feel the venom surging out of my fangs and lower my mouth over his.
Ghoul parts his lips on a practically reverent breath.
His tongue snakes out, licking at one of my fangs hard enough to draw his own blood.
I snarl softly, that serpent part of me rearing her ferocious head.
Hands tighten around my hips, and he surges forward, covering my mouth with his.
I rear backwards, annoyance sounding from my throat, but he holds me firm as he drinks from me.
I shove at his chest with my palms, and he moans into my mouth, wrapping his arms around my waist and locking me in place.
He swallows once, then twice. And I can’t help it then. My hips grind against his. My hands slide up his chest, his neck, and cup the edge of his painted face.
His shadows slide around my shoulders, brushing at my hair and neck, touching my mating mark. My skin tingles, the regina in me needing so much more.
“You hate that you love this,” he says into my head. “You hate that I love it so much.”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s it, baby. Give me all of your rage.”
He holds me tight, and he’s fucking correct.
I hate how, in the arms of this basilisk, this general of my father’s court, it’s the first time I’ve felt grounded in two days.
As the venom in my glands nears empty, I feel light.
The place between my legs is heated. I burn for my mates, and it makes me squirm.
Finally, I’m empty, and he pulls away, his arms sliding down my thighs and onto the armrests on the chair. He sits like a king, watching me with no small amount of pleasure sitting there, panting, horny out of my mind. But I’m not in heat, so I can control myself. I climb off him.
“I enjoy our little visits,” Ghoul says, wiping the side of his mouth with a thumb. “The Clawsons are up to no good, snakelet. Don’t go tomorrow.”
“I’m not taking your advice.”
He shrugs. “Yeah? And what happened the last time I warned you not to do something?”
With that, the monster disappears into the dark.