91. Aurelia
Chapter 91
Aurelia
I wake with a shout, sweat dripping off my chest, the sheets soaked and twisted under me. Someone is shouting, shaking my shoulders.
Gasping, I grab at the hands on me, and when my eyes adjust, my vision is filled with four worried faces. My hand reaches up to touch my eyes.
But it wasn’t my eyes that were being burned. Wasn’t my head that was filled with agony. Xander’s glow catches my attention, and I hastily avert my gaze.
Scythe touches my face, worry etched in his, before he glances at Xander.
Lyle rubs my sore leg. “You’re okay, regina. You are safe. No one can hurt you now.”
Not true, but I’ll take it for the moment. I try to smile before reaching for the water on the bedside table. Savage quickly hands it to me and I gulp it down.
“Eugene alerted us before you started shouting, actually,” Savage says proudly.
Chicken shifters can see the future five seconds ahead, but it comes randomly to them, usually when something unexpected is about to happen. I guessed he’d seen me come out of my vision.
“Thanks, Eugene,” I say. “It was just a bad dream.”
He clucks sleepily from Xander’s bed.
Savage strokes my leg, calming my beating heart.
“Sorry I woke you up,” I murmur.
“It’s sunrise anyway,” Lyle says, kissing my shin. “What can I do?”
I set the glass on my leg to avoid the way it trembles in my grip. I swallow, trying not to burst into tears because they’ll all ask why I’m upset. I take in a shaky breath. “I’ll be okay.”
“Regina,” Savage says slowly, having never taken his eyes off me. “Can we…go to the pool today?”
“Why?” Scythe asks, sitting closer to me and running his fingers gently through my hair.
Savage glances over his shoulder at Xander and speaks into my head. “I want to hold you as a starfish, please.”
I can’t help it then. The tears slip out, my throat thickens, and Scythe takes the glass from me so I can hide my face.
“Fucking hell Savage,” Xander snarls.
Savage ignores him, arms coming around me. “I’m sorry, regina, we don’t have to. I was being stupid.”
My memories of being a starfish are not good. My hands tremble as I remember the darkness at the time, the loneliness.
But I’ve never hated a form before, and I don’t want to start now. Xander’s presence in the room flutters along my skin. Perhaps it would be healing to have Savage hold me. I look at my wolf, his eyes slightly pink, his hair mussed from sleep. It would be healing for him too.
“ No, you weren’t being stupid,” I whisper into his mind. “We should do it. We should play mermaids with Scythe.”
Savage takes my hand and nods seriously.
Half an hour later, we file into the underground pool area that Scythe rebuilt after Marduk broke it that one time. It was glass and steel then, but now it’s set into the ground like a proper pool.
Everyone except Xander strips off and gets into the water. Savage eagerly stands in front of me, but there’s an uncharacteristic nervousness in his eyes.
“I have no hearing in that form,” I warn him. “So don’t be bad-mouthing me while I can’t hear you.”
Savage grins wolfishly. “It’ll only be dirty things, regina.”
I smile. “Will you catch me?”
His face turns serious. “Always.”
The shift has the potential to be triggering, but with my mates around me, watching with so much love, I pat my right leg to remind myself that it’s still there and take a deep breath. Lowering myself into the shallow side of the pool, I suck in a breath at the cold until my thighs kiss the water. I tear off my dress and toss it at Lyle, who sets it carefully at the water’s edge.
Turning back to the water, and feeling Savage close behind me, I shift. My arms are forced outwards as I become smaller, my vision becoming blurry and my hearing going fuzzy until it disappears completely.
True to his word, as I flop onto the water’s surface, Savage scoops me up, holding me under the water while his big face peers at me. Three blurry giants hover above the water, their movements in the water fluttering around me.
For a moment I struggle to breathe. The memories come crashing back. The fear returning anew, that feeling of being lost, forgotten?—
“What a sweet princess you are,” Savage coos into my head. “What a pretty star you make.”
My thoughts still as I concentrate on his words, my tiny heart rate slowing.
“Which part is your head?”
I lift the limb at the top and Savage strokes me there. “Your mating mark is so small!” he exclaims. “How cute.”
I focus on my mate. I am here. I am not forgotten. Savage is holding me.
“So clever,” Scythe murmurs, dipping his fingers in the water to stroke my left arm. “So perfect.”
His touch is like heaven to my frayed nerves. They are all here with me and I am never leaving them.
“If you turned into a barnacle,” Savage says, inspiration striking him. “You could stick to Scythe and ride around the ocean with him!”
“Can’t do a barnacle,” I reply faintly. “Never touched one.”
They take turns holding me under the water and I bask under my mates’ attention. Eventually, dark thoughts start to filter through my brain. My leg might be back, but this form is too powerless, too passive for my tastes. Without warning, I shift in Scythe’s hands, my beast of choice a surprise for them all.
Quickly, he brings me above water and I curl my long body around his thick wrist and forearm, rearing up to peer at him.
His lips twitch into a smile and he lowers his head, kissing my hood before setting me down on the concrete next to the pool.
Xander sits on the floor off the side, watching us from afar with a carefully blank expression. I slither up to him and his eyes lighten with hope. Goddess, the way it makes my heart pang to see him like that. I’m aware of my other mates watching us I slither right up to his booted feet. I bare my fangs and hiss at him.
The bastard smiles and lowers his hands to the ground. I consider him for a moment before slithering into them. There’s a stunned silence behind us as Xander carefully raises me to his face. He’s shaved this morning, the skin of his cheek smooth and soft.
I strike.
Sinking my fangs into his cheek, I pump venom into him, hoping it stings, hoping he understands that I want him to hurt for everything he did and did not do. Luckily, he doesn’t drop me, just barely stiffens under the pain I’m inflicting.
I lift my fangs out of him, letting them fold back into the roof of my mouth and easing back to hiss at him again. The two puncture wounds drip blood down his cheek.
His eyes are keen on me, glimmering with different colours under my vision. “I’ll take it, Aurelia,” he says. “I’ll take anything you deign to give me.”
Xander walks around with those puncture marks on his face all day. Teachers and students stare, and even when he gets rude remarks, he simply ignores them. My animas raise their brows at both the bite and his bandaged arm and Minnie gives me a significant look, before turning back to Marduk and grabbing his hand for comfort.
“Nice one,” Sabrina says with approval.
But I can’t take my eyes off Minnie and the way Marduk pulls her into him and kisses her on the cheek, whispering something in her ear. They walk off together and I hope he’s going to eat her out or something similar. That always makes a person feel better.
“So!” Sabrina says, glancing at Xander, who’s taken a knee by my seat at the lunch table. Stacey procured the dog kibble for us and Xander picks at the bowl. Sabrina opens Minnie’s folder. “Take a look at these and see which one you like. We’re calling it the torture menu.”
Lyle chokes on his coffee, but I chuckle under my breath.
Accepting the folder, I check out the tabs Minnie has placed to section the papers. There is green, yellow, orange, and red. I flip to the yellow section and see she has written in her neat bubble cursive an addition: Dog kibble (the cheapest kind)
The dragon in question is trying to peer at what’s written, but I have the front of the folder angled upward so he can’t see.
“You should eat actual food,” I say, picking up a blackberry and offering it to him.
But Xander doesn’t take it. “Naughty boys should be fed by hand.”
It’s Savage’s turn to choke on his lamb shank. “Is he serious? Are you serious, regina?” He gapes at me.
Xander licks his lips by my side, and I can’t help but remember his tongue last night. The way it teased and coaxed tingles from me. I suppress a shiver, knowing the entire table is staring at me, though Blair and Blade are trying not to out of respect for their bosses.
Without a word, and holding my breath, I hold up the berry to Xander’s lips. It’s a fat, juicy one, and Xander leans forward and places his lips around the berry, skimming my fingers. His eyes flick up to mine and he drags his lips over my fingers as he takes the berry. My fingers hang in mid-air, now stained purple, as I watch him chew.
Savage lets out a jealous growl. “You never feed me by hand, regina.”
Xander gives him a vicious smirk.
“I’ll feed you your dinner, sweetheart,” I say.
Savage presses his lips together, but I know he’s placated, if not excited now.
After lunch, Sabrina falls into step with me and pulls me aside. Her hood is drawn up, and she still has a little pallor from her time in captivity. “Lia, I get it, he’s hot. If you were to boink him, I wouldn’t judge you at all.”
I snort.
She pulls me to a stop, leaning against the notice board behind her. “Are you going to forgive him?”
Nausea rolls through my stomach and the halogen lights above us are suddenly far too bright. “I don’t know if I can,” I say honestly. “I don’t even know if it’s the right thing to do.”
The males stop to wait just ahead of us, out of earshot.
“Fuck the right thing,” Sabrina whispers, grabbing my arms, her eyes suddenly bright. “Fuck everyone. Do what’s right for you.” She glances at our males down the corridor, and the leopard assassins who follow her everywhere, despite being too old to be at the academy. “Blair and Blade have made me see things a different way. You know what they do for a living.”
I nod. They’re Scythe’s assassins. Hitmen. They kill people for money.
“They didn’t use to feel guilty about their job. But since they’ve been away from it while they’ve been with me, they’re reconsidering things. Blade cuts himself sometimes, when it gets really bad. Blair smokes way too much. We have each other. We understand how it feels to feel so much pain you want to go to sleep in a permanent way. How maybe we’ll fight that feeling for the rest of our lives.”
My hands tremble, and Sabrina’s voice turns thick as she grasps them in both hands. “You’ve lost a lot. I’ve lost a lot. But Xander…” She casts a glance at the dragon, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking anywhere but us, then down at Minnie’s folder tucked under her arm. “If he truly regrets what he did. If he truly hates himself for it, then…” She looks at me meaningfully, then grins. “I mean, we’ll make him pay for it, but then, what after?”
My stomach churns at her words, my mind a tumult of dark emotions.
“We’ll be late,” Savage calls.
Sabrina gives me a hug and we hurry after them. “Since when are you worried about being late?”
After the next class, Scythe leans over to me and says, “Aurelia, I made an appointment for you with the academy physio.”
“Oh no,” Xander says. “I also made an appointment for tonight.”
Shark and dragon stare at each other over the table in challenge. I wait patiently, before Xander’s glow flickers and he nods. “I concede.” Scythe takes my hand. “This time.”
Minnie snorts from the table next to us. She catches my eye and gives a dramatic eye roll.
“They should have picked up the double booking,” I say reasonably. “It’s no one’s fault.”
“Maybe they thought Xander’s appointment was for him,” Savage says. “Eyeball physio or something.”
“I have no eyeballs, you fuck,” the dragon retorts.
“Eye lid physio, then,” Savage clarifies.
My chest goes tight as the vision of Xander’s torture flashes through my mind. His father’s pure malice and the screams that followed. “Let’s go,” I say, heaving myself to my feet before the panic attack starts.
“Can I come?” Xander asks politely. Hopefully.
It’s Scythe’s shark that turns his gaze to Xander, the temperature in the room suddenly dropping. I stroke a hand down my great white’s muscled back, and he cracks his neck. The other students flee the room, rubbing their arms.
“The choice is always yours, regina,” Scythe says in my mind, but the hand that comes around my waist is fraught with tension and possession.
“Next time, Xander,” I say softly.
The dragon nods, but his eyes flash with something I don’t really want to see right now.
Scythe helps me to the medical ward, but just before we get there, he pulls me aside in the corridor. His mouth crashes onto mine, dominating and intense. He possesses my body with his own, picking me up and pressing me against the wall.
“Mine,” he growls into my mouth. “Always mine.” His tongue snakes down my mating mark.
“Yours,” I reassure him with a sigh.
He makes a purely animal sound and hikes up my dress. “I need to be inside my regina,” he rasps, his movements jerky with need. “I need to claim you again.”
Breathless, I let him rip my thong in two before his hand slides down my new leg. “Leg up or down, beautiful?”
“Um…down.”
He swivels me around and I press my cheek against the wall as the sound of his zip coming down makes my pussy weep with joy. Scythe bands one hand around my hips to find my clit, and on the other, he spits, rubbing his cock before easing it into me.
“My perfect woman,” he says, voice haggard. “My perfect regina.”
Gasping his name as his girth finds me, I grind against his hand and cock. “Never leave me again,” I pant.
Scythe’s other hand stabilises my new leg. “Never,” he agrees. He fucks me hard and fast then, desperate, stuttering strokes that make me cry out.
Someone walks past us with a small cough—a doctor, I think—but neither of us care, too caught up in each other.
My shark grunts, thrusting hard enough that he has to hold me in place against the hard plane of his body. I take it all with relish, letting him fuck away my dark, troubled thoughts. Teeth scrape my shoulder as he lifts me up completely. My power searches for his, and his cold waves penetrate my insides, demanding union, demanding that he claim me.
I look at him over my shoulder and find his eyes are wild with desire as he captures my mouth.
The vision of Scythe Kharkorous losing control because of me makes me come and I scream, leaning back into him and squeezing my eyes shut as I feel all of him inside me. My muscles contract and Scythe growls into my shoulder, lifting me off the floor and violently emptying himself into me with each grunting thrust.
“Give me all of it,” I moan, contracting around him again. “I need all of it.”
“All of what?” he demands into my ear. “Tell me what you need.”
“All your cum,” I moan. “Give me all your cum, Scythe.”
He stills as he finishes, both of us panting against each other. Eventually, he slides me down his body so my shoes touch the floor once again.
“You mean everything to me.” He kisses me much more softly now, his tongue exploring my mouth, taking care of me as he always does. I stroke his chin and he melts into my touch. “I needed that, regina,” he whispers against my mouth.
Heat floods my face like it always does when Scythe is being sweet. “I did too.”
“Next time you come up with an insane plan,” he smiles and it stuns me for a moment. “I want in on it. I was born for a little insanity.”
My breath feels haggard. Perhaps the weight of long, isolated years finally dropping off my shoulders. “I don’t want to keep things from you any more.”
“Thank the Goddess for that. Promise me we’ll scheme together from now on.”
It’s my turn to smile. The image of us both bent over a table, pointing at papers under a spotlight flashing through my mind. “I promise.”
He tugs my dress back in place and brushes my hair off my temples. Then he bends down and picks up my thong, pocketing it. Without a word, he takes my hand and kisses the back of it, before we continue on into the medical centre.