59. Aurelia
Chapter 59
Aurelia
I ’m surprised when they don’t take me back down to see Lorian the next day. The Collector seemed so obsessed with him that I assumed she wanted him fixed as quickly as possible.
Instead, I’m kept in my own cell for the next three days.
Perhaps she’s jealous of me talking to him. Perhaps she’s punishing me for my tirade. Perhaps she’s planning something.
Even so, they feed me well. The meat is good, the vegetables perfectly cooked, the juice cold. I eat the vitamins that come in the little paper cup.
On the third day, a collared anima comes into the room and takes my blood. Oddly, guards don’t follow her into my room; they remain outside. I regard the woman carefully. What type of anima would they feel safe leaving alone with me? She’s slender and pale-skinned with reddish-brown hair and a distinct port-wine birthmark on the side of her neck.
She stares at me in challenge, almost as if she’s daring me to make a comment about it. But I could care less about birthmarks. Instead I stare at the metal around her throat. Unlike mine, hers reads with only an ID number. I glare at it.
I scratch at my own collar as she brings out a vacutainer and blood-collecting vials.
“Nice,” I say drolly. “The scientists at Drakos House only ever used a needle and syringe. So old school.”
Her eyes flick up to me before she goes about her business, placing a tourniquet above the inside of my elbow.
I suppose they’re checking for ovulation. I’m not sure if my heat will even come on being so far from any mates for this long. It was coming to the right time, however. No doubt, The Collector is keeping track on a whiteboard somewhere.
“You should be more careful.”
I’m surprised by the harsh scratching of her voice and raise my brows. “And why’s that?”
“She is merciless.”
It’s cold water down my spine. She finishes up quickly, and before I can ask her what she means, the guards whisk her out. But as she leaves, her scent whirls before me and my brows shoot up in recognition.
The next day, I get to find out what she meant. They come to get me in the evening. My nails are bitten down to the quick by then, my lips peeling from where I’ve been tugging at the fine skin. There is a listlessness to my limbs and a heaviness over my chest.
The worst part of is, I know they won’t kill me. I know they’ll stop just short. That’s a new kind of mental torture.
Waiting for death I might have handled well. But this? This makes my anima thrash and snarl within me. She fights. Goddess, she fights it when they unlock my door and five guards enter with their guns first.
There is a single moment here, when I am surrounded by their hardened faces, the tang of metal in my nose, and I wonder what would happen if I shifted. If I fought them, tried to kill them. How many could I take down in the minutes before their gunfire would render me useless?
A shot to either leg would do it. They would have me on the floor.
Fight would only delay the inevitable.
So I raise my chin and walk out with them.
You will not break me, I remind myself. Not in this life or in any other. Athena Boneweaver was her name. Lorian is his name. My mates love me, and I love them.
I’m escorted to the ground level,
We walk past a number of beautiful rooms, but I don’t really see any of them. Eventually, we come to a room lit with natural sunlight streaming through white curtains, a round plush rug and a single electric medical bed in the middle.
The Collector stands with Flores Drakos, waiting for me. Both are fresh-faced with smiles, as if some good news has come their way. The Collector wears an elegant dress, tightly fitted and starch white.
As if she tries to portray with clothes someone she’s not. As if she can hide the jealous, greedy monster that lurks within. More covetous than a dragon, more cunning than a snake.
“Good evening, Aurelia,” she says slowly.
In my head comes the distant sound of knocking.
A feeling like old and dead things winds its way about my heart. I’ve only felt like this one other time: when the sounds and smells around me faded to nothing and my vision tunnelled; Scythe had told me my mother was still alive.
I glance at Flores, and to my dismay, he has a strange look in his eye and his face is slightly flushed. My gaze flicks to the bed. He doesn’t intend to sire a hatchling from me, does he?
“I’m not in heat,” I blurt out.
“We know,” Flores drawls.
“But there is still a matter outstanding,” The Collector says. What matter? What is still outstanding? “Pop up here, like a good girl.”
It’s nicer than the steel one I’ve been used to at Drakos Estate. This has thick foam padding, a crisp white sheet, and a large, soft pillow.
Someone nudges me with their gun from behind, and I walk towards the bed. I miss Eugene’s presence. I even miss Ghoul’s overlordship over my scientific proceedings.
This path I must walk alone.
When I sit on the bed, the mattress doesn’t let out a sad exhale of air like the Animus Academy medical beds. She paid a lot of money for this.
She paid a lot of money for me.
Flores gestures for me to lie down, and reluctantly, I do, resting my hands on my stomach as I try to control my breathing.
The Collector heads over to a cabinet and rummages within it. Flores comes to my side and sighs over me, looking me over from head to foot. “I knew, Aurelia, that it would come to this eventually. There was too much fire in your eyes, and we need you…” He rests a palm on my right thigh.
Broken. That’s what they’d said.
My heart gives an arrhythmic thump before kicking up into a hammering beat. I flick my gaze between him and The Collector, who’s still searching through the cabinet.
“Hold still now,” Flores instructs with clinical coldness. “It’ll be a bit of a shock.” And with the strength only afforded to the order of dragons, he grasps my right thigh in both hands and tears the limb clean in two.
The scream wrenches from my throat with a violence I’ve never experienced. Shock drives me into a block of dry ice. My mind seizes. On and on, my scream rips through the air. My blood saturates the sheets.
The Collector lunges forward with a cattle prod and strikes me in the cheek. “Shift!” she roars. Pain explodes through my face.
Everything turns black.
My anima screeches forth and takes over, shifting into the only thing it can think of to save us.