Chapter 63
Ghoul
Apre-dawn blue lines the horizon as I re-materialise on my doorstep, getting out my keys from my pocket.
But something smells off in the air beyond my mask.
Pausing with my keys inches from the lock, I tilt my head upwards and sniff.
The skin on the back of my neck prickles as the hairy scent of wolf fills my nose.
Savage was here. But my motion detectors hadn’t registered movement inside the house.
My key finds the lock, and I twist it right to open.
A tiny snick is the only warning I get.
My body is engulfed in flames as I fly backwards, my skin bubbling and boiling, my uniform melting into flesh. Half a thought later, I’m in the air, inhuman, watching the carnage from above.
“SAVAGE!” I telepath towards Animus Academy. “YOU’LL FUCKING PAY FOR THIS.”
It’s only an echoing cackle that replies.
Ten minutes later, I’m striding into the drawing room of Naga House, where Mace sits with Generals Brown and Taipan.
I tear my melted clothes off, taking sheets of skin with them, and dump them on the tile for the servants to clean up.
I’m already healing, but even basilisks don’t heal instantly.
Blood drips on the floor from every limb; blisters pop on my burning face. The generals leap to their feet.
“Permission to destroy Animus Academy, Your Majesty,” I snarl.
The serpent king regards me with disdain. “We’ve already discussed this; you know we need the location intact. Why did they catch you off guard?”
He already knows who it was. Why would it be anyone else? In this moment, the hold I have over myself slips. Ancient fangs buried deep, deep, deep lose their purchase and hatred pours out of me. My eyes burn and I—
Mace’s voice is sharp when he speaks my true name. My mind snaps to attention, those fangs clenching around my proverbial neck, and I’m blessedly psychopathic again. “Permission to destroy anything at all, then,” I say darkly. “Especially Savage Fengari.”
Mace steeples his fingers under his chin, eyes alight with running thoughts.
He’s always been emotionless, something that’s just gotten worse over time.
Part of what makes him a formidable enemy is that he doesn’t react out of anger.
“He didn’t act alone, of course. The security system did not alert us to intruders, which means the electrical signals were disrupted.
That would be the work of Xander Drakos.
” I curse under my breath. There had been no scent of dragon on my porch, so no doubt he had done his work from a distance away.
“Disappointing,” General Brown purrs. “The famed General Ghoul thwarted by a wolf pup.”
“Hardly a pup,” Mace says coldly. “The wolf is undefeated in battle, and we’ve seen why on the footage of the Drakos battle.”
“The Silver Tooth pack will take care of him,” Taipan says. “We need not worry about any of those brothers for long.”
I hiss, turning away from them all as my shadows violently charge about me. My house. My trunk. This stinks of retaliation. They’re making a point. They think I’m not a member of their pack and I never will be. Perhaps it’s time I asserted my dominance.
“Calm yourself,” Mace says. “Their time will come. We’re almost ready. The units are coming along as planned. I need you to contain your strength so we don’t have a repeat of last time.”
Of Halfeather’s dungeon, I only remember darkness. But I turn and bow all the same. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“You will lodge here from now until Phase Three,” Mace continues. “You are due for a milking in any case.”
“As you wish.”
I have to wait until the next night to fulfil my own desires.
But to my utter delight, my regina once again seeks me out.
Her constant stalking of me is a thrill like no other.
I have her full attention, her every breath is poised on my movements, and her wing beats are drawn to me like I am the darkness and she the high priestess of the night.
My healing skin prickles as she watches me from the backyard of Naga mansion.
No doubt she has seen the ruins of my townhouse and came here to check on me.
My weary heart flutters just a little at the thought.
I saunter around the lawn like a peacock being appreciated by a peahen, smoking a new joint before handing it to General Adder and dissolving into the air.
The winds speak of change tonight, and my shadows whisper their own vow.
My dark soul-brothers cannot be allowed to think they have laid full claim to our regina.
I won’t allow this insubordination. I was born to reign over men and beasts alike. Some of them have forgotten that.
She is mine. She was mine first and foremost. I had looked after her first. I had cared for her, pined over her, fed her first. And as she follows me now, her eagle eyes fixed on my shifting mass of dark power, she finally knows it.
I lead her to the place where it began, where her soul shone to me first through the natural shadows of the cottage behind Charlotte Naga’s house.
I re-materialise under the eaves of the double story, quiet in its vacant state.
Charlotte Naga, her remaining mate and their three children have long since been evacuated from this property, and the adults now reside at the Naga mansion for their own protection.
The hatchlings live separately, but that is less for their protection and more for Mace’s convenience.
I lean against the brick, simply watching her, simply enjoying her attention.
This night, this space is one only we share.
She appears from between the acacias that line the fence in her human form.
And on a night with no moon, there is no light to touch her skin, only me and my covetous, crimson gaze.
Bare olive skin, long dark hair, and…fangs that poke out under her plump upper lip.
My body stiffens to attention then, my spine bouncing off the wall as my attention hones in on her blessed mouth.
She walks with languid perfection, like a serpent in human form, smoothly across the grass.
There is a new grace to her, seeded and then grown by the adversaries she’s crushed. By accepting her own power.
How long I’ve waited.
She turns toward the cottage, looking at it contemplatively. I am drawn to her side, though my limbs hardly know how they get there. Her scent on the breeze sobers me instantly. “It looked a lot better when you lived in it,” she muses, her eyes fixed not on me, but the house.
“My presence has always been a corrupting force,” I say, my gaze only for her.
She inhales through her nose, and I allow my shadows to fall back, to let her see the man beneath. Hardly a man. I’ve earned the name Ghoul time and time again, but I crave for her to see me as I am.
“There’s still something missing, isn’t there?” she says. “Even after the memories you’ve shown me, I feel like I’m missing something crucial.”
Her soul senses it. What is about to come. The horror that will come to pass by my hand. “You can’t tell me,” she sighs. “The blood bond—I know, I know.”
“Look at me,” I hiss.
Her lips press together in agitation, but she complies, albeit narrow-eyed. A scarlet sheen crosses her pupils, and I blink, stunned for a moment. “They tell me you’ll betray me,” she says. “That you’ll hurt me.”
Betrayal. Pain. Torment. These things are mere words in the face of what it is we must do. Here, where it all began, in the dark outside our cottage window with my heart trying to bite out of my chest, I finally demand of her what I’ve always wanted.
“Let me claim you publicly.”
She stares at me, her heart beating with desire, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why do you want this?” she asks. “You’ve never wanted to claim me before.”
“Oh, the things you don’t know.”
“Then tell—” She scowls at herself. Aurelia swallows, and I can see the accusation in her eyes. You would be with me if it weren’t for a blood oath, I know it.
“You don’t know what the shadows know, snakelet.” She doesn’t know my destiny.
But my snakelet is a stubborn regina. “I’m not doing it. I did what you asked. I repaid the favour. You’ll need to take someone else as your pretend pregnant wife.”
I see the gleam in her eyes, the set in her jaw. “I don’t want to take anyone else, snakelet. Not a pretend Jade Brown but as you are. You are my regina.”
Her pupils flare as I say it, her hair billowing out under her own brutal power. “You’re baiting me,” she hisses, dark and low. “Don’t you dare.”
I lean back, sucking air through my teeth. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but you’ve forced my hand.” I let that sink in between us before— “I have Raquel.”
She frowns. “Raquel has always been at Animus Academy.”
“Their body has, yes,” I say smugly.
“Minnie and her pack freed Raquel’s mind.”
“And then I found the little wolf anim’s consciousness wandering around the halls of the medical ward. They were screaming, you know. I imagine it’s frightening and painful to be separated from your body for that long. It was easy to bring them with me. Tortured souls are drawn to the shadows.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me, basilisk.”
I bare my fangs. “If you want Raquel to wake, do as I ask.”
Aurelia leans away from me as if disgusted. “So this is what it’s come to.”
I grin with my teeth. “This is what it’s always been.”
“You selfish bastard.”
The chuckle escapes me on a breath. “So much like your other mates.” She can’t argue with that, and doesn’t. All five of us are selfish, awful bastards.
“And what does this public claiming involve?” she demands. “Is it another orgy?”
“Where I come from, I would have been a king. So I will claim my bride in the way that befits a king.”