87. Aurelia
Chapter 87
Aurelia
W hen we arrive at the recreation room, it’s already packed with most of the school. Beak and some other birds are directing the traffic, making everyone squeeze together. There’s a live band with a full set of drums and electric guitars.
Beak throws a smirk our way, his eyes scanning the four of us and Eugene.
“Alright there, ladies?”
“Yes,” we chime.
“I’ve put seats for you at the front.” He catches my eye, a certain knowing in them. I’d been wondering how much Scythe had told him. How much he knew about my shark’s plans to replace himself with Beak. Now I’m sure he knew at least some of it. I wonder what he thinks of all of it now.
“I need to talk to you after this,” he says.
The backs of my eyes prickle, moisture filling them. Embarrassed, I glance away and nod. Beak has always been kind to me, right from the moment I’d first met him that day in Halfeather’s mansion. Now I know the truth about his past, about how his regina had been murdered for refusing to help Halfeather and he’d sworn himself to Scythe for revenge. It makes me look at him in an even more positive light. I want to help him, but I have enough problems to keep me busy for a lifetime.
As Minnie and Sabrina lead us forward, Stacey takes my hand as if she knows I’m having a moment. “What do you think he wants?” she asks me. Our little lioness wears her ombre hair in a braid tonight, a black shift dress and sandals, but my eagle eyes tell me she’s been crying, no doubt over Raquel and Connor. It may be why Eugene chose her to be his carrier for the night.
“Nothing good,” I say darkly. “It’s never really ever been good when someone asks to talk to me. Just once, I’d like a fortune cookie joke or something, you know?”
She huffs a laugh as we reach our seats, right at the front of the hall, in the first row before the stage. Beak has left four seats on either side of the middle walkway, and we take the row on the left.
“I’ll prepare some jokes for you,” Stacey says, “and then schedule a formal meeting so we can discuss them.”
I remain clutching her hand, because I need to for this ordeal that’s about to happen. The clock above the stage ticks over to eight, and Beak calls for everyone to settle down as Savage, Lyle and Scythe walk in. I don’t even have to look behind me to know they’re here, the regina in me raising her head and keening in appreciation as they stalk towards us.
Savage bounds up first, quickly falling to my feet to sit on the floor.
I scratch him behind the ear and he grins at me, before protectively putting his arms around my calves to cuddle my legs. Lyle comes over and kisses me on the head and Scythe kisses me on the cheek before the two of them take their seats next to Marduk and Yeti on the other side. Scythe catches my eye and there is a glimmer of something there that I can’t quite place. It’s similar to satisfaction, perhaps, but darker.
My stomach flops upon itself.
“Where is Xander?” I ask the group chat. Everyone around us is casting their eyes toward the door.
The clock strikes eight, and almost immediately, the floor vibrates at the impact of something terribly large landing on the building. He’s here.
“Did he leave the academy?”
Savage sniffs the air, growling under his breath. He clutches me tighter. The very air around us becomes taut with tension. Expectation. The instincts of every beast in the room are firing off and they all go still in anticipation.
One minute passes, then another, before finally there’s a thump on the ground floor and the sound of something heavy being dragged over the threshold to the rec room.
Someone gasps.
I don’t turn around. I refuse.
Instead, I grab onto Stacey’s hand and she clutches onto mine with both of hers as the dragging sound gets closer.
The reek of blood hits my nose, along with Xander’s volcanic scent. My right leg starts to tremble and Savage growls softly, caressing me with his thumbs.
My heart pounds faster and faster, and still, I don’t turn around. Scythe lights a cigarette and blows smoke into the air.
When Xander’s giant, naked form appears in my periphery, I still don’t turn around, do not look at what he’s brought with him. He rounds my chair and comes to stand before me, forcing me to look at him, but not at what he’s dragging. His hair is neatly tied back, and his eyes glimmer with pleasure. There are also multiple bullets lodged in his torso.
Stacey makes a strangled sound, and Sabrina covers her mouth.
“Is that a cock ring?” someone in the audience asks in a hushed voice.
“It’s fucking solid gold,” someone replies. “Is he semi hard or is that?—”
Someone shushes them.
When Xander speaks, his voice is soft, almost intimate. “An offering to you, Aurelia. And the academy.”
He gestures at the thing on the floor. But in his other hand, he’s holding a drawstring bag and the handle of a large square box covered in a black cloth. This he sets down on the stage. My heart freezes in recognition.
Only then do I look down to see Xander’s offering.
There is no head on the body, but the deceased wears a starched white suit. Xander removes the black cloth from the box on stage.
Stacey, Sabrina and Minnie leap to their feet at the same time, shouting in shock and alarm.
Instead of the expected nimpins in the carbon monoxide chamber, the severed head of Damien Agnis sits in there, pale in death, eyes open as if in shock.
Xander opens his drawstring bag and five nimpins zip out. I cover a sob as Henry, shrieking and squeaking in paragraphs, bolts towards me like a bullet. He smacks into my chest, vibrating as I gather him up.
The others are doing the same with their nimpins, Stacey sobbing fat wet drops onto her orange nimpin, Sabrina consoling Raquel and Connor’s green and pink nimpins and Minnie crying over Gertie.
“Henry,” I whisper, cuddling him to my cheek. He chirps his version of my name. My ball of soft blue fur rubs himself against my skin as if he can bury himself into me and never be kidnapped again. I pull him away from me to look at him, holding him in both my palms, his massive liquid black orb eyes blinking at me with a million different emotions. “I’m never letting you go, ever again.”
He chirps in happiness and I hold him to my chest, where he buries his face with a big sigh. Finally, I look back at Xander, and am surprised to see his lips curved into a small, pleased smile. He seems to shake himself the second my attention is back on him, however, before swinging himself onto the stage. There is something about the way he does it that makes me stare, though. A small wince is the only sign he gives of pain as his body curves and rises to standing despite the bullets. I push that aside as Xander comes to stand at the lectern.
The last time he stood at a lectern was at the kangaroo court that condemned Sabrina and me for stealing Titus’ laptop. He’d passed judgement on us then, and now it’s our job to pass judgement upon him.
How the tables turn.
My friends calm down enough to settle their nimpins and move their gazes to Xander. The dragon holds the sides of the lectern as if bracing himself, the corded muscles of his arms bulging. When he speaks, it’s directly to me, glowing eyes serious and firm.
“I am one of the worst people you will ever meet. I’ve done reprehensible things. Hurt people. Killed people. Some who didn’t deserve it, some who did.” He gestures to Damien’s body and head beneath him. “But…” He clears his throat. “But the worst thing I did, by far, the thing that condemns me the most, is—” He casts his eyes down as his Adam’s apple bobs. My chest grows tight. Xander takes a deep breath. “Is the fact that I made my regina bleed and severed our bond.”
I thought I knew everything there was to know about Xander Drakos. I’d spent every day for months with him, watching him and his family. But the one thing I didn’t know was that when Xander cries, he cries blood. A crimson drop tracks down from his right eye, trailing down his cheek. Henry coos softly into my chest as my own vision blurs and that crucial part of me cries out. The urge to shift into the safety of feathers and claws is strong, but I push it aside as Xander fixes his attention onto me.
“It doesn’t matter how much I repent for this,” he stresses. “Nothing I do will ever repay what I did. Nothing will ever make up, ever heal, ever resolve this. I will always be a walking, dead beast.” Stacey is quietly crying next to me, and I think Sabrina is too, as she holds Minnie in her arms. “Aurelia,” Xander says. My hands tremble. “I am sorry for what I did to you. You were the best part of me. Kind and strong.” He grimaces and his voice wavers. “And good . And I couldn’t let myself have that. I didn’t know what to do with that. So I broke it.” He shakes his head, his voice strong once again. “I won’t ask for death; I don’t even deserve that. I don’t deserve the dirt from your shoe.” His eyes bore into mine, and he breathes as if in pain. A fine sheet of sweat coats his forehead. “There is only one thing I will not accept. I won’t accept it if you send me away. I need to be near you. Scenting you hurts me, but I still crave it with everything I am. I crave your voice in my ears, your beautiful gaze on me.” He puts his hand over his heart, leaning over the lectern, his voice almost desperate. “I need to protect you, and I pledge to do it, body and what’s left of my soul. Anyone who comes after you will meet a bloody, violent end. Even if it is my own family.”
A thousand emotions pummel through me as a chill runs down my spine at the intensity of his voice. I have no doubt in my mind that he means every word he speaks.
Xander leans back from the lectern, stepping away and letting his hands drop from his heart. Then he leaps down from the stage and kneels before me, his hands resting in his lap. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I will beg for everything else. I beg you to let me stay.”
The room is silent. No one claps. I think everyone is far too shocked. Maybe their chests feel hollow, like mine does. Maybe their beasts are screaming in maddening protest too. I tear my gaze from Xander’s and look at Minnie. Sabrina has her arms around my best friend, holding her together as Minnie trembles, her mouth parted in distress. Gertie, her nimpin, huddles against her neck, quietly chirping reassurance in her ear. Both of them had lost their mates. What right do I have to deny a living one who clearly repents?
“His guilt does not absolve him, regina.” Scythe’s voice is firm in my head. “These are pretty words.”
“ And,” says Lyle, “no action of his will ever undo this damage. A mate bond cannot be re-made.”
My anima screams at that. Screams and shrieks for the bond to be re-made, re-joined. But we scream for a future that cannot be. What is dead cannot be brought back to live.
“Am I never to be whole, then?” I ask my mates. “Are we always going to feel this emptiness?”
“When he condemned himself, he condemned us all,” Scythe says. “There’s no coming back from what he did.”
It confirms what I’d suspected. Scythe is not the forgiving sort. He will never forgive Xander for this.
“I’ve had enough,” Savage announces to the room, getting up and holding his hand out to me. “We’re done here.”
I glance at my animas and take Savage’s hand, letting him lead us out from the rec room and away from the naked dragon on his knees. With every step, my heart sinks deeper into the catacomb that used to be my chest.