Chapter 90
Aurelia
My senses go on high alert, and something I cannot fully comprehend demands my attention with teeth and claws.
My instinct to protect my nest and mates forces my canines to come to the front, and I snarl as I rush out of Minnie’s suite and down the corridor.
Scythe is in the lead behind me, closely followed by Savage and the Devi pack.
Another dragon has never come to Animus Academy before. Except for Xander, but the school recognised him as my mate from the start. So who is this?
I don’t even bother heading down the stairs.
My blood is boiling, my head is raging, and I wave my hand before the window at the end of the corridor, and it smashes under a telekinetic blast. Shifting into an eagle, I spear out of the window and aim towards the front of the school.
Once I’ve gained good height, I shift into a dragon and charge out of the protective dome.
“Where are you, Xander!” Savage calls in the group chat.
“Why?” Xander snarls into our heads.
I can’t see the dragon yet, but I circle the school, knowing they will be close, or hidden.
Beak appears out of one of the guard towers and lets out a shrill cry, and I change directions to guard westward.
I see mighty wings, and a tiny bag hanging on a claw.
She was difficult to spot at first because of the colour of her scales, a light blue, brighter than I saw her last at Drakos Estate.
“Aurelia?” she asks. “Is that you?”
“Stand down!” I shout to everyone in the vicinity. “It’s Selene Drakos!”
We meet at the school gates, Selene’s weight shaking the ground as she lands before shifting into human form. She covers her slender, pale figure with a form-fitting forest green silk robe that buttons down on the right side.
“It’s so good to see you,” I say, pulling her into my arms. “I didn’t know when we’d get the chance again.”
Selene places both hands on either side of my face, smiling down at me, her golden eyes warm as she smiles. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t come sooner, Aurelia. Truly I am.”
“Sissy!” Xander charges through the school gates, and I get out of the way so they can embrace. I pretend not to notice as they share a few moments and Selene sheds a tear or two. Xander asks about his mother and the hatchlings. Selene marvels at what remains of The Collector’s head on the gate.
“We are all well,” she says as I lead them onto the academy grounds. “Though I don’t think I can say the same for you here at Boneweaver Estate.”
I whirl around and gape at her audacity. But Selene only chuckles. “Well, this is your stronghold, is it not, Aurelia? It’s protected like it’s yours, in any case.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sigh. “You’re not wrong.”
“Rarely am I wrong.”
Xander laughs through his nose. “We have a lot to catch you up on.”
But as it turns out, Selene’s visit is also to relay news of her own.
We sit in the empty academy dining hall, which seems to Xander and me, the cleanest part of the school in which to receive a noble dragon lady.
Selene takes out an unadorned wooden box from her bag.
It has Xander’s name on it, inked in a simple black stamp.
“This was delivered to us by a very frightened courier.”
Xander goes rigid as he accepts it, his nostrils flaring as he detects the scent. I detect it too late, and my dragon opens the box, nodding before he turns it around to show me. Set upon plain crumpled kraft paper is a blood-red stone, split cleanly in half by a giant claw.
“It’s a formal dragon divorce from Francesca,” he says. “In the traditional way. We were never legally married as dragons are above human marriage laws, but this is as clear as a divorce contract.”
I raise my brows, but don’t know exactly what to say. Thankfully, Selene knows better. “Congratulations, brother,” she says, patting his hand. “At least she didn’t try to kill you like I did with my husband.”
Xander and I both choke on air. I cover my mouth to stifle the snort trying to get out. “We’ll consider ourselves lucky then.”
Xander clinks me with his mug of coffee in cheers. “Hear, hear.”
Selene insists on visiting the academy library, and there we call the rest of my mates to meet her. Savage and Lyle delicately shake her hand while Scythe bows formally to her.
“How I’ve longed to meet Xander’s soul-bonded brothers.” Her eyes glisten with emotion. “I am pleased to see you don’t actually have blood in your teeth like the rumours mention, Savage.” She smiles at him.
“It’s often enough,” Xander says darkly.
“But these days it’s Aurelia with the bloody teeth,” Savage says proudly, hoisting up Eugene on his hip. “We’re very proud of her.”
“As am I,” Selene says. “It’s the second reason why I’ve come here.
” She pins me with a look. “There is much we don’t know about your order.
You are the last, Aurelia. But the old book I loaned Xander spoke of the ancient Boneweavers and the world they came from.
There must be more information out there. There was word of a unicorn.”
My heart thumps rapidly in my chest. “Lorian, yes. We don’t know where he and Celeste went after we rescued him. It’s like they disappeared—”
She nods. “From this world.”
“You know?”
“The Drakos lords collected many old texts,” she says. “There is a lot under the estate if a person is willing to look. But…did you manage to touch him?”
I sigh. “I couldn’t do it. He’d been through so much already under Katerina, touching him felt like a crime.”
“A shame,” she says. “If you could travel between worlds, we may have gained something.”
An old power, a distant memory, brushes over my skin, and I shiver, glancing toward the end of the library.
Lyle glances in the same direction but lets me take the lead.
“You speak of knowledge under Drakos Estate,” I say.
“I think Animus Academy also has…something underneath it too. I came across it one day and asked it to go away.”
Selene’s brows shoot up, as do Xander’s, and they look so much like siblings in that moment. “You’ve never mentioned this,” my dragon says darkly.
I scratch my neck. “It was a bit…well, creepy is the only word.”
“The fact that you have a basilisk as a mate and you still find something else creepy is hilarious.” Selene chuckles under her breath. “You know you have to show us now.”
“It’s over here!” Savage says enthusiastically, marching with Eugene under his arm to the back wall. We all file down, past the stacks to the black wall. I recount my steps, going roughly to the middle of the wall.
“Ashfang?” I ask tentatively. “Are you still there? Remember how I told you to disappear? I’d like you to come out now.”
Power moves along the black brick, raising the tiny hairs on my body before the door fades into existence, black wood under the curved stone.
Ashfang’s broad face blinks down at me, eerily alert above the arched door.
Savage gasps dramatically while Scythe and Xander unconsciously huddle close to my side. Lyle growls.
“Greetings, Lady Boneweaver,” Ashfang drones. “Dark are the times.”
“Sure are!” Savage exclaims. Eugene gives a croon.
“Everyone, this is Ashfang,” I say quietly. “He is keeper of the door.”
“Hello, sir,” Selene says.
Ashfang bows in his mortar. “My lady dragon.”
“Shall we open it?” Selene asks, raising her brows at me.
“It’s not pleasant,” I warn. “And nobody should be going in.” I glare at Savage so he knows not to go bouncing anywhere. “Ashfang? Kindly open up.”
The gargoyle bows again, and the wooden door groans inward on its hinges. Darkness expands beyond, yawning as the door opens to its fullest extent. A sound like a low, deep hum resonates, and the power makes my heels lift. “It keeps pulling me in,” I say warily. “I don’t like it.”
“I’ve never felt a power like this before,” Xander says. “What on earth?”
“I want to go in!” Savage cries.
“No!” multiple voices say at the same time.
“The power within,” Scythe says, putting his arm around my waist. “Looks like a whirlpool to my shark-eyes. It reminds me of Lorian.”
Suddenly, I feel the likeness of it. “You’re right.”
“It sounds like a portal,” Selene says in wonder, the fair black strands of her hair wafting towards the door. “Aurelia, there’s a portal under Animus Academy!”
“Surely not,” says Lyle.
“No, I think she’s right,” Xander says. “This is how our kind arrived in this world. There were many such portals on each continent, but scientists just assumed they’d all closed over or were so well hidden that no one could find them.”
“This one is certainly well hidden,” Scythe says. “Especially considering it requires a guardian such as Celeste and now Aurelia.”
“Mythical shifters.” Selene nods. “Makes total sense.”
“Who needs a unicorn if we have a portal!” Savage says, squinting his eyes as if he can see beyond the darkness. “I say we go in and see what’s on the other side.”
Selene’s eyes light up. “If you can find more mythical shifters, Aurelia, they will have knowledge about basilisks. They will be able to help you take down Ghoul’s power.”
“But we don’t know what we’ll find on the other side,” Lyle says. “These other shifters could be hostile. Who’s to say they’ll help us? Imagine if we had strange people from a different world coming here, wanting to talk to Aurelia. We’d probably try to kill them.”
“Lyle’s right.” I say. “We just don’t know where the portal will take us. It’s not worth the risk right now, when my father is taking next steps.”
“There could also be a time discrepancy.” Xander nods. “What if we go and return to find three years have passed and everyone we know is dead?”
My stomach roils at the possibility. Minnie, Sabrina, Stacey, Eugene—all gone.
“No,” I whisper. “I won’t risk this unknown power for a possibility.”
Selene nods. “If I didn’t have my hatchlings, I might have risked an academic expedition. Perhaps after all this ends, we can send some willing soul through.”
“Agreed,” I say. “Ashfang, close the door.”
Dinner is a quiet affair, after which we separate into groups.
Selene lets Xander and Savage give her a tour of the academy while Scythe goes to soak in the tub.
Lyle and I sit in the TV room together. Lately, I’ve felt I haven’t given my lion enough time, making his animus irritable and prone to growling.
But as Lyle rubs balm into my tired leg, I sink back into old thoughts. The last of your kind. There has always been something eternally depressing about this fact. That with the death of my mother, I became the one. The last. The only.
The thought of other Boneweavers existing somewhere in the universe is a concept I dare not grasp.
I barely know the extent of my own powers.
What could I learn from them? What would it be like to have…
family? Being discarded by my own blood family hurt enough.
What if they, too, rejected my existence?
What if I was too other for them as well? Too different.
There’s no point in trying to find out. The threat is here. My enemy is here.
“I’ve suddenly realised I’m the only one of my pack without siblings,” I mutter.
“Don’t do that to yourself, angel,” Lyle says. “Don’t find ways to isolate yourself further.”
I frown at him, offended. “If I isolate myself, Lyle, it’s for a reason.”
“I know,” he says softly. “I just mean…right now, we need to band together. Not withdraw. If there’s something on your mind, we are always willing to work through it with you. Sometimes it can be good to think out loud.”
He’s right, of course. “I was just thinking that I’ve not entertained the thought of others like me in a while.
After I was exiled, I just avoided thinking about family, and now those ugly feelings are coming back.
I don’t want to hope and then have it stomped on again.
We just don’t know what’s on the other side. ”
“To be fair,” Xander’s voice says in the group chat. “None of us knows what tomorrow really offers. We don’t know how Mace is going to attack us. We don’t know who he’s going to try to kill.”
I rub my eyes, the weight of his words heavy on me.
Scythe’s voice pops in like a cool breeze. “Xander is trying to say that we are operating in unknown territory. We need to use what tools we can.”
My brows shoot up in surprise. “Tools like the portal?”
“If it comes to it, yes, regina.”