Chapter 72 Aurelia
Aurelia
The basilisk lord leaps right off the warehouse roof, jaws wide open, fangs angled at me.
Excited that he’s taken my bait, I release the shadows over my eyes, letting loose the blue lasers.
My power hums through the air once again, hitting Ghoul square in the face.
His head snaps back before he veers away, rolling off to the side, his landing making the very ground shake.
The serpents watching us from nearby flee in their vehicles, shouting into their comm devices, tires screeching. I cover my eyes once again as Ghoul recovers and rears up. We circle each other on the concrete, the harsh floodlights showing me every centimetre of burned flesh on that mighty snout.
“Does it hurt?” I ask. “When your mate wounds you?”
He doesn’t take his eyes off me, the faint red glow focused behind the shadows. “I would say you’re the expert on that. Must be a record. Four of the beasts you call mates tried to hurt you.”
I watch his every muscle as we continue our circle. “You really hate them?”
His tongue tastes the air, big and forked. I remember how it had licked me in Club Venom. “How could I not? They did nothing to deserve you.”
My mind reels in pure shock. Shadows shoot out from his body, and not expecting this movement, I fly to the side and they simply follow me. Bands of shadow wrap around my body, trapping my muscles. I writhe against them as Ghoul advances, the red of his eyes powering up.
I shove at him with a telekinetic blast that sends him spinning backwards like a horizontal tree trunk.
The shadows binding me loosen, and I shake them off to make my pursuit.
Ghoul lands, rolling over the concrete, and I leap onto his back, spiralling my tail around his, wrapping my body around him until I am taut, trapping him entirely. He hisses in protest.
“An excuse to get close to me?” he taunts.
“No,” I snarl. “And keep your hemipenis away from me.”
“You can put your cloaca wherever you like.”
There was once a time when I let a mate make a mistake.
Allowed a mate to take advantage of me. “Xander might never recover from what he did. His regret means nothing to him. I’m not going to let that happen again.
” I squeeze my body around his, like an anaconda around prey.
“I feel your lungs,” I say viciously. “The air that’s trying to get in. ”
“I feel the beat of your heart,” he whispers.
I try to unwrap myself, but it’s too late.
We are tangled, and Ghoul, sensing my intentions, begins to spiral himself around me.
His power coils around me, dark and intense.
His scales against mine, now warm, sliding and loosening something inside of me.
Suddenly, I want to breathe that dark power into the bases of my lungs and let it consume me until I’m drunk on it.
“I waited for you,” he says, just before my vision blinks out and everything goes black.