101. Xander
Chapter 101
Xander
I spit what’s left of my father’s wing onto the ground as my mother roars in triumph. But I’m not done. I rip into my father’s right leg at the thigh, gripping the limb in my jaws and snapping it upwards. I’ve never heard a more satisfying sound than the loud crack of my father’s marrowbone breaking.
Tearing it from his dead body, I hold it in my jaws and search for my regina. She stands behind me, with three of our mates watching over my natal family’s kill. I stalk towards her, my eyes never leaving her bright blue ones, and lay down my father’s hind leg at her beautiful, blue-clawed feet.
If I wasn’t already in love with her, I would have fallen in love again at the sight of her as a dragon. Regal as a queen, brilliant as a living sapphire. Her eyes glisten with unshed emotion as Scythe scrambles to crouch on her head, looking down at my gift with bloodthirsty glee.
But Aurelia doesn’t say anything. Instead, she takes a step towards me, her scent filling my nose, and presses her forehead against mine.
I close my eyes, accepting this gift, listening to her giant heart thumping in time with mine. I feel my ex-brothers, their powers surrounding me, their auras pulsing, not with hate, but something else.
My throat suddenly feels like it’s going to close up. I never thought I’d be on the receiving end of anything other than hatred and violence from them.
I want to fall at their feet. I want to cry.
Aurelia’s eyes flick over my shoulder and widen. She cries out and I whirl around just in time to see my mother, now shifted back into human form, crumbling to the ground, her eyes closed, her mouth agape.
Selena, her entire muzzle coated with Ragnar’s blood, whines and reaches our mother, her snout hovering over her bare chest. I too join her, allowing my healing power to flood my mother’s torn body. Chunks of her skin are missing from her torso and legs, her damaged body fighting to keep its life.
Aurelia makes her way over to us, her gait uneven due to her lifting up her right hind leg, but her power is endless as she lets her own healing join our two streams.
My mother’s eyelids flutter open, and despite their golden hues being filled with pain, they crinkle at the edges, the corners of her mouth tilting open. She reaches up to touch mine and Selena’s wet faces. “He will never hurt my children again.”
Mother’s wounds seal up, and she closes her eyes from exhaustion. Her heart beats strong, but she’ll take weeks to recover from this battle.
“Take her inside,” I order Selena.
Selena grips our mother in a gentle claw and flies her up to the dragon-perch. Behind me, Aurelia tiredly sighs and shifts back into her human form. I remember the first time I shifted; being a dragon is a tiring thing. I want to look after her, ask her what it felt like to be a dragon, to breathe fire. To rage . The breeze is soft on me as I take my cue to shift back into my human body, suppressing a grunt as the broken bones suddenly register.
Scythe gives Aurelia his shirt, her pyjamas lying tattered across the grass as the Devi pack runs up to us, sweaty and bloody from their own exertion.
“Raquel is free,” Savage pants. “Marduk forced one of the maids to show us where they were. We undid all the shackles for good measure.”
The far-away rumble of a heavy engine reaches my ears and I go on high alert. This is not yet over. I clench my teeth and gesture to the road leading to the estate. “Someone’s coming,” I say. “I don’t know who it is, but it’s a convoy.”
“Fuck,” Savage mutters, brushing at his still bloody face. “Regina, we have to get you out of here.”
Aurelia blanches as we all look at her. “I’ve just realised,” she said quietly. “We don’t know where Francesca is.”
Fuck, she’s right. I stride towards the open gates of Drakos Estate. Ragnar and Uncle Fabian’s cars are parked in the driveway near the front stairs, hence the reason for the gates being open. But as I near the spiked iron gates, the rumble of the trucks is loud enough that I recognise the make of them immediately.
Four open Jeeps with armed guards are led by the Collector, in a red silk jumpsuit and matching headscarf.
Scythe and Lyle realise it quickly, and Minnie helps shove Aurelia behind her own pack. The Collector’s eyes light up as she spots the three dragons lying decimated on the grass. She screeches to a stop and swings out of her Jeep on black calf-hide boots, shaking a finger at me. “Naughty little dragon,” she says, eyes raking down my naked body. “Did you lot just kill three of the most powerful dragons in the state?”
My ribs are broken and there’s the start of a pneumothorax on the left side, but I lazily cast my eyes over the convoy and realise it too late?—
The final Jeep holds a group of hyenas and Lady Hyena herself, a tiny black cauldron in hand, throws a white powder at me.
I stumble back, but my shoulders hit an invisible wall. Beady black eyes gleam, and she croaks, “It’s not your night, Xander Drakos. Not your night at all.”
The scent of the powder hits me. White power. Bone white.
As Savage, Scythe and Lyle sprint towards me, I struggle to find the voice to warn them what I’ve scented in that powder: they are going to use the power of our regina to bind us, harvested right from her very bone.
“Run!” I cry to my brothers.
But Lady Hyena throws a fistful of the powder over Savage, the fastest to reach us. He stops in his tracks, trapped against the energetic bubble. Lyle and Scythe are stopped next, crashing heavily into their invisible cage.
The Collector tuts as she stalks around us in a circle, a cigarette smoking in her hand. Lady Hyena circles us in the opposite direction, sprinkling the bone powder as she goes, calling to the moon and stars with her heinous magic.
“Black moon, red moon,” Lady Hyena chants. “Black sea, Red sea,”
“Bind these beasts to me,” the Collector hisses. “A new regina comes, an old regina goes.”
“Bind them by the wind that sows.” A fierce wind whips my hair as Lady Hyena finishes the spell, fell whispers filling my ears. A vile tug pulls me towards the Collector and I frown at it, resisting this new alien urge. But purely against their will, Savage, Lyle, and Scythe turn towards the Collector.
I follow suit, copying them as I realise what this means. I clench my teeth against the nausea as I feel the powers shifting in the air.
“I thought it wouldn’t work for Xander.” The Collector frowns at me. “Scythe, tell me what happened here tonight, and leave no detail out.”
Scythe’s voice is unusually flat as he immediately gives her a brief rundown of the events, including Aurelia shifting into a dragon, and finally, the death of my father.
Shocked by the smooth obedience of the great white, I remain silent. Lyle and Savage also remain silent and still.
“Is that so?” the Collector breathes, sauntering up to Scythe and kissing him on the cheek.
He doesn’t react at all.
“The magic is binding the dragon,” Lady Hyena muses, gesturing to my stricken form. “But I do not understand why.”
“How wonderful! I get a dragon for free!” the Collector cheers. She runs her hand through Savage’s hair, then moves to Lyle, stroking the collar of his shirt.
Aurelia’s power crashes into me, protesting, demanding my attention. My breath strains as I fight the urge to turn to her. Something circles around me in a vortex. A wild power that feels heavy and golden. I begin to vibrate, my muscles trembling, my body burning up. I blink at my brothers. Then blink again.
“My my,” The Lady Hyena stares me down with those coal-black eyes. “How merciful the Wild Mother is.”