Chapter 12
Xander
Acall comes after midnight on Katerina’s personal phone. She wakes with a grumble, huffing up at Scythe, who stands still beside her bed. I won’t let him so much as sit on it, no matter how much it makes my ears bleed to hear her screaming.
After my display with the animal activists, she trusts me a little more, taking off my shackles as long as I’m in my cell beside her bed.
She says it’s so she knows whether my eyes are open or closed in the dark, and it gives me great satisfaction to know that she finds my empty eyes creepy at night.
“What?” she snaps into her phone.
My ears perk up. She often gets calls in the middle of the night, but it’s always about ‘product’ or ‘stock’, and it’s never made her react like this. I keep my eyes closed to avoid attention but listen keenly to the voice on the other side of the phone.
“Clawson House is in ruins,” a male voice says. “Two of them were there. The tigress I don’t know, but the Boneweaver girl was by her side.”
My heart stops beating. Aurelia and Minnie were at Clawson House. Whatever the fuck for?
“Let me get this straight,” Katerina says, pointing violently at the air. “Tiberius is dead, Aurelia Boneweaver did it, and this all happened just now.”
“The tigress took his throat,” clarifies the male. “I don’t know where Titus is. They killed a few others, but his body is nowhere to be found, so we assume he is alive.”
I almost choke on my own spit and have to crack my eyes open to see this once-in-a-lifetime scene. Katerina leaps out of bed, hurls herself out the bedroom door, and doesn’t see my light. I stare at the open doorway in shocked disbelief, and some new, insane feeling that might very well be pride.
What the actual fuck, Lia?
Slumping against the wall, I toy with my earring, trying to think of the possibilities. It’s because of this that I’m still awake when I feel it. Something I’ve only felt once before, in Halfeather’s dungeon, so long ago.
A regina’s call.
This time, I know what to expect, and my astral form practically leaps out of my body. I stride through the bars of my cell to check on my brothers. Lyle and Savage are still in beast form, snoring in their cells, with no sign of their astral forms. Scythe remains stock still in his corner.
Looks like I’m seeing Lia alone. Eagerly, I shoot up towards the ceiling and right through the solid brick. Flying in human form is so strange, but I’m lifted by pure magic into the night and over the land at roughly the same speed as my dragon form.
Halfeather’s dungeon was only a few suburbs away from where Lia used to live behind Charlotte Naga’s house, but Animus Academy is hours away from The Collector’s property in the outback.
It takes a while to get there, but by the time I’m sinking down through the roof of the animus dorm and into the living room, I’m riled up, heart pounding and ready for… I can’t even describe what.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I drawl, striding into the bedroom.
Lia whips her hand out from inside her shorts, where she’d been playing with herself, and sits bolt upright in outrage. There is a sheen of dust and sweat on her skin as well as fine specks of blood. Her dark hair is loose and tousled in a halo around her.
“I didn’t think it was working!”
“It was just far is all.”
“Are you— Are they—” She looks behind me, which hurts a little, looking for her mates.
“They can’t come,” I say. “I checked the cell next to me before I left…” I trail off as I realise this was the wrong thing to say because she leaps out of bed and storms—hobbles, to my dismay—up to me with pure rage in her eyes.
“Did you just fucking say cell, Xander Drakos?”
I see it in stark definition. The rage that carried her to Clawson House and tore it down. “I’ve always known there was dragon fire in you,” I say softly, meeting her rage with pure, solemn awareness.
Her eyes drop to my neck, where my new, black mark shines with all the light of midnight. Those sapphires are engulfed by her pupils and I watch in fascination. She casts her gaze away, glancing at the room behind her. “Ghoul didn’t come either,” she sneers.
“He’s likely unable to step away considering the chaos right now.”
“Right.” She sounds disappointed.
A growl awakens in my chest. “Are you— You can’t like him, Aurelia.”
Her eyes narrow, dark lashes framing her rage. “What a strange thing for you to say, Xander.”
I take the hit, like I’ll take every hit from her from now on. “Point taken.”
Her power surges around her in an aura of red and black—something I’ve never seen from her before—eyes glistening, posture feral.
She is wild in a way that I once would have sneered at because I didn’t know what it meant.
Now I understand that it’s her full force coming out.
She’s showing who she really is underneath all the shields.
She’s showing everyone what real power looks like.
It gives me goosebumps.
It’s then that I notice a tremble at the edges of her being. With some alarm, I see that she’s depleted her power. “Have you eaten?”
She scowls at me, her rage only growing.
“I hate you.” Whipping around, she paces the room, her sore leg giving her an uneven gait.
“Tell me about these cells my mates are in. Are they being fed? Is she hurting them?” A regina in full force.
Slightly unhinged, but in full control. No one else could be regina of my brothers.
“Wipe that fucking smile off your face.” Her eyes are murderous on me, staring unblinking at my form.
Her nostrils flare, unconsciously looking for my scent.
“If you’re going to kill me, I’ll wholeheartedly let you,” I say. “But can it wait a week or so? We need to plan—”
“Fuck your plans. Fuck everything!” she hisses, stepping up to me threateningly.
Yes, baby, yes.
Even being the second-worst-mate in existence, I know what my regina needs. I step around her rigid body and lean down to whisper in her ear. “Let me fuck your fury out of you.”
Aurelia shivers, her bare shoulders trembling.
But she wants to be angry. Whirling around, she smacks me across the cheek with the full force of her body.
Before now, she’s been too tired, in too much pain to be furious at me.
At the world. But with her dragon at the forefront, with fire threatening to split her veins, she has finally given herself permission.
So I don’t move. Don’t so much as flinch. I take it with my eyes closed, savouring my regina’s furore. “Good girl,” I whisper. “Now do it again.”
She stands on her tiptoes. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she whisper-yells right into my face.
Once, I might have pulled away. Now, I press closer, touching my forehead to hers. “One of the things I always thought I hated about you was your need to fight for those you love. For your friends. For Savage, Lyle, and Scythe. A part of me wished someone would have fought for me when—”
She shoves at my chest with a choked noise, storming away for all of three steps before she storms right back, poking me hard in the sternum.
“Let’s get one thing very fucking clear, Xander Drakos.
There is no one in any world who can take my mates from me.
There is nowhere you can hide. Nowhere they can hide you.
I will destroy everything and everyone in my path until you are all back in my nest. Including”—she bares her teeth at me—“your cursed ass. Is that understood?”
My hand flies to my heart as something crumples in me.
I didn’t realise how much I needed to hear that.
How much my soul needed to hear my regina declare herself for me.
It’s my dragon that comes forward, his voice nothing but gravel and smoke as he steals the words from my mouth. “Yes, my queen. You are ever merciful.”
Her eyes simmer as she glares at me with pure, feral grace. “Call me regina!” she cries, her voice near shrill.
I can hardly believe it—my luck, the gift she’s just given me. I have to wrangle my excited dragon back so the human in me gets to drop to his knees and whisper, “Yes, regina.”
The movement seems to placate her as she grabs my chin in a painful grip and demands, “Now kiss me.”
I surge upwards, crashing my mouth into hers.
She claims my bottom lip with her teeth, biting hard enough to draw blood.
I groan, catching her around the waist and pulling her down onto me.
It doesn’t fucking matter that I’m in astral form, apparently; when a Boneweaver regina wants to fuck her non-corporeal dragon-mate, she will.
Her legs come around me as she drags her fingernails up my arms and rips my shirt open.
Astral buttons go flying to either side before she wrenches the material off me.
Aurelia almost tears her tank top when removing it, and I can’t help but drag my teeth down the column of her neck.
She cries out, grinding against me. “Fuck, I can taste you,” I say as her scent, her sweat, fills my nose and mouth.
She is sweet and salty, fiery and smoky all in one. Like golden vanilla lit on fire.
In response, she buries her hands in the hair at my scalp, tangling the long strands between her fingers, and wrenching my head backwards.
She hovers her mouth over mine, and it’s torture not to be able to kiss her.
Her breath is smoke, and it streams over our faces.
I bunch the top of her shorts in my fists.
“I could blast fire onto your face, Xander,” she snarls softly.
“And I would love every fucking second of it.” Fabric screams as I tear her shorts in two, and she scrambles out of them and undoes the zip of my trousers. She tugs them off in commanding, hurried movements, her naked body, blazing with heat, touched by moonlight and waiting for my tongue.