90. Xander
Chapter 90
Xander
8 years ago
S elena is on her hands and knees on the hardwood floors of the bedroom of her husband’s home, her body trembling as she sobs into a hand.
“Sissy!” I cry, running over to her.
“Xander!” she screams. “Oh my god, Xander!”
I take her face in mine and immediately step away in horror as I see the giant black eye blooming across her face.
There are more bruises on her arms, her legs. Her chest.
There is no longer a question in my mind as to who has done this to her. Who has been doing this to her for the last eight months. I roar in fury. “I’m going to kill him!”
“No!” she cries. “I need you to help me, the babies are coming early—” she gasps, clutching her stomach and sticking a foot out at an angle like a woman about to give birth.
“Shit, Sissy, who should I call?”
“It’s too late!” she grunts, bearing down like she’s constipated. “They’re coming now!”
My head whips around the room and I remember what they do on TV. Towels.
“Where are the towels?”
Red-tinted water pools on the floor under Sissy. “There!” She points at the chest of drawers behind her and I run for them, pulling out five because I have no idea how many we’ll need.
I run back to Sissy and she tells me to put two underneath her.
A contraction ravages her body just as I get them in place and she grabs onto my shoulders, crying out, her body shaking violently. “Support the head!” she cries.
I look around as if there’s someone else who can do this. I really don’t want to be seeing?—
“Xander!” she cries, tears leaving her eyes now.
Without thinking about it more, I flip her dress up, only to see something big and round sticking out from between her legs. My heart near flies out of my chest before I realise it’s a head. Of course it’s the hatchling’s head.
Sissy puts one hand on the baby’s head and screams again. “Catch her!” I grab a towel just as the hatchling slides out of Sissy in a big gush of water. I catch her in the towel.
“Dry her off,” Sissy gasps, looking at the hatchling but groaning again, going onto all fours. “The other one won’t be far.”
I set the baby in the towel and on the carpet, the cord still connecting her to Sissy, and gently rub her dry. Her little face is screwed up like she’s in pain.
She gives a little, gurgling cry and I roll her onto her side, patting her back to try to clear the water in her throat.
Sissy gives a low moan of pain. Quickly, I wrap the first hatchling in the towel and set her aside.
“Is the other one coming?”
The second hatchling comes a few minutes later, this time legs first. I stare at the little blue legs in horror until Sissy screams and the baby’s head finally comes out. I catch him in the nick of time.
This time, the little boy is blue and limp like a ragdoll. Panicking, I blow into his face. “Sissy, what do I do!”
But she’s not answering me, crumpled on the floor on her face. “Sissy!” I cry. My power whips out in two directions and the little baby in my arms draws its legs up and gives a tiny cry. I set him down beside Sissy and roll her onto her back. She’s pale as a sheet, but her eyes flutter open.
“Thank you,” she says.
The first baby cries and she perks up, looking for her hatchlings. “Pass her to me.”
At that moment, the room door slams open and Ragnar Firewing storms in, the midwives and doctors rushing in behind him, their eyes wide in urgency.
“Why are you here?” Ragnar says to me, his yellow eyes wide with fury. “Get the fuck out!”
“I was helping her give birth, you fucker!” I snarl as a midwife pushes me out of the way with her elbow. Ragnar grabs my collar and hauls me to my feet, looking between me and Sissy. “Did you—” he snarls as he realises what’s happened and he hauls me out of the door, getting out his phone. “You’ll pay for this.”
“You’ll fucking pay for what you did to my sister, you sick fuck! We’ll kill you! My father will kill your whole family!”
Ragnar presses his hands to my face, and it feels like hot irons on my skin. I scream, stumbling away from him. “You think your dad is going to be happy about you being inappropriate with your sister? That you saw her, touched her?”
“What?” I gasp in horror. “I was helping the hatchlings!” I leap onto him, throwing a mighty fist drenched in fire.
Ragnar cries out as I strike his jaw, before he grabs me around the waist and takes me to the floor. I throw punches left and right, but Ragnar is bigger, stronger and dodges two of them, his hands finding my throat and squeezing.
I choke under his fiery pressure, kicking and grabbing at his wrists. But it doesn’t matter. His face is red, his mousy hair flopping over as he focuses all of his rage into my neck. Within seconds, everything goes black.
Some time later, my Uncle Fabian and Ragnar throw me at my father’s feet in the entrance hall of Drakos Estate.
Groaning, I roll onto my side, rubbing my burnt neck. My father glares down at me, towering and imposing as heat waves roll off him, scalding my sore face.
“You’ve brought great shame to our family on what was supposed to be a happy day,” he booms.
“I was helping,” I choke, rubbing my throat as I get to my feet. “She was giving birth early because that asshole beat her up and I was helping.”
My father strikes me across the face, making my head snap so hard to the right that I fall to the ground. “That was not your place.”
“He covets her, he always has,” Ragnar snarls.
I right myself, gaping in outrage at the lies. “I do not! She’s my sister . It’s my job to protect her from monsters like you!”
My father’s eyes glimmer. “You’ve always been unstable, son. But this is a step too far. You attacked your sister’s mate, the father of the hatchlings.”
“Fuck you!” I cry at Ragnar. “And fuck you, Father! You let him beat her! You married her off. She has bruises all over and she’s pregnant! You told me we need to protect our women at all costs!”
Father glances at Ragnar, irritation flashing across his eyes. “I will deal with you later.” He returns his dark eyes upon me and I see the force growing behind them, becoming massive. Possessive, dominant draconic power fills up the room, overwhelming me, pushing on my shoulders so hard.
“You can’t do this!” I say, panicking at the silence in the room. “I’m your heir. I’m going to take your throne after you. You know I’m going to be more powerful than the other dragons. You know it!”
He narrows his eyes, the words registering as a threat, and I know I’ve made a grave mistake. His visage turns ugly. “And yet you won’t even be rex of a nest. You have a regina .”
Ragnar chokes with shock and amusement at this new information.
“I want his eyes burned out of his skull for looking at my mate,” Ragnar says with new vigour. “I never want him to look at my female again.”
Uncle Fabian steps forward. “Surely that’s a step too far,” he says. “A disowning is enough.”
My heart misses a beat and my head whips back at my father. He stares at me, assessing. I see what his dragon is thinking. In a few years, I will challenge him for his crown. But disowning me, removing me from the family, would make me an enemy. An enemy who might come back for him. This needed to be dealt with permanently, but differently.
My mother appears by the doorway behind Father. The sight of her in her night gown, the thought of never seeing her again, makes my brain scramble in panic.
“Father, I was trying to help,” I plead. “Please, there was nothing else I could?—”
There’s nothing but dragon-deep magma in his voice as he cuts me off. “Hold the boy still.”
I shake my head, not believing this, not believing my eyes when Ragnar and Uncle Fabian take positions on either side of me, their big hands around my biceps like impossible shackles.
My father advances upon me. There is something worse than death in his eyes, something I’ve never seen in my sire. But it’s been growing for months now. At some stage, he’d stopped seeing me as a hatchling and begun seeing me as a rival. A threat to him and his household.
Nobody spoke about the fact that the dragon population had been dying off because dragon animuses were killing their sons out of rabid, possessive greed. It was a nasty cult secret. But my father was made of nastier material and mere death held too little satisfaction.
“Mother!” I cry.
She blinks at me. Uncertain. Confused.
I clench my teeth, refusing to show my fear.
“Keep your eyes open, Xander,” Ragnar says smugly.
Father holds my face, placing his thumbs just beneath my eyes.
But no, not this. Not this way. I try to wrench out of his grip. Try to save myself from a fate worse than death.
“All the way, Your Majesty,” Ragnar says. “They shouldn’t be able to grow back.”
Father’s eyes snap with irritation to Ragnar. “Your punishment is coming in a moment. Shut up and hold him still.”
Ragnar’s obedience is the only thing that saves him from a fate like mine.
A dark warmth takes over my eyes as my father’s power tunnels into my skull. Suddenly, there’s blinding white light. My vision twinkles, a thousand stars appearing in my world, taking over completely. Agony sears through my face, excruciating like knives penetrating my skull.
And an acrid, putrid smell like burning flesh fills my sinuses.
Those screams can’t be mine. That scent of burning flesh can’t be mine.