Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
SEB
Rejected by my mate. No way did I expect this. Part of me understood she might be shocked or angry about the phone thing, but I thought she’d understand, given the circumstances. I never thought she’d reject our mating.
She didn’t say the words, my dragon protests. He means she didn’t specifically reject the mating bond. But she may as well have. It was just sex, she said. Just sex. It was not just sex for me.
And now I’m torn into a million pieces. I might as well be bleeding out from a hole in my chest. I lie on my side in bed, staring out the window toward her darkened cottage as the sky gradually lightens.
By the time the sun rises, I’m aching and hot with fever, my appetency returning with a vengeance.
Who the fuck cares? I may as well go up in flames. I won’t be able to live without her.
A knock comes on the door, and Patrick pokes his head in. “Ellison and Lucas have arrived and are waiting for you in the dining room. I’ve served coffee and cinnamon rolls whenever you’re ready.”
“Okay.”
“Sir? Are you all right? You look a little, um… Should I call Morwyn?”
“No. I’m fine. I’ll be right out.”
I can hear him breathing. He’s not leaving.
And then I hear him lift the still-full tray from last night and take it and the stand from the room.
He’s a smart man. I’m sure he sees that the food was hardly touched and that Zoe isn’t in the room with me.
Perfect. Now he’ll tiptoe around me and treat me like I’m made of glass all day. Just what I don’t need.
I slide from the bed and get dressed. It’s a tedious task. My skin hurts. I have to force myself to brush my teeth. But by the time I join my brothers at the table, I think I’ve come together pretty well.
“You look like shit,” Lucas says when he sees me.
I guess I haven’t hidden it as well as I thought I did.
“Appetency,” I say vaguely. No sense sharing about Zoe. Morwyn knows, but the brother is anything but a gossip. “It’s hit me hard today.”
“Call in another Taurus, brother,” Ellison says. “It’s uncomfortable, but you’ll feel so much better afterward.”
Even the thought of calling in Mia turns my stomach.
Besides, I couldn’t do that to Zoe. Rejected or not, I don’t want to hurt her.
Learning I was with someone else so soon after we were together would unsettle her, maybe cheapen what we shared.
Zoe’s not a dragon and doesn’t fully understand the appetency that strikes my kind during our alignment. I won’t do it.
I place the pictures of the ring at the center of the table and pour myself a cup of coffee. “With the help of Zoe, we’ve deconstructed the ring. It’s complex magic.”
“So, does she think she can create something to defend us against it?” Lucas asks.
I frown and reach for a cinnamon roll. If there’s one surefire salve for a broken heart, it’s butter and sugar.
I’d better eat two. “Unfortunately, we may need to find someone else for that part. Every time Zoe uses her magic to study this thing, she becomes extremely ill. That’s why I look like this.
I was up most of the night making sure she came out of it.
Going in again could kill her. I haven’t spoken with her yet today, but we should be prepared. We may need to find another way.”
Ellison scowls. “We should get to finding one, then, because Lucas found something in Maryland.”
I make eye contact with the Leo, and he tosses a manila envelope in my direction. I swipe it off the table and tip the contents out beside me. A series of grainy photos spreads across the table. They are all taken from a distance, maybe using a drone or a telephoto lens.
“Where is this?” I ask, trying to place the opulent mansion.
“New sale on the coast. Property is registered to a corporate entity.” Lucas massages his jaw.
“I tracked the bakery bomber by rummaging through a few heads. He was seen exiting the private drive that leads to this place, which is why I decided to dig a little deeper, and I think you’ll be as surprised as I was to see who is living at that mansion. ”
I flip to the next picture and focus in on the profile of a man standing on the balcony. “Who am I looking at, Lucas? It’s pretty far away. This could be anyone.”
“Look closer. Flip a few photos in.”
I do as he suggests, and my heart lodges in my throat. I do know who this is, and the realization sends an icy chill down my spine, cold enough to temporarily douse my fever. “Who is this? It looks like—”
“Roman Cifarelli.”
“Connor killed him. I saw his dead body pinned to the wall with his throat ripped out. We all watched his house burn down.”
Coming to my side, Lucas shuffles through the pictures and points at a close-up of the man. He has three pale scars that pucker along his neck, and half his face appears melted by fire.
“By the creator, how is this possible. No human could survive that.”
Ellison couples his hands together under his chin. “No human could survive…without magic,” he clarifies. “And Roman had plenty of dark magic.”
“And something else,” Lucas says. “When I was investigating, a name came up again and again in the heads of people who had seen the bakery bomber. A waitress who’d served him lunch remembered him telling her that she should prepare herself for the return of the destroyer.
She didn’t know what he meant, but it gave her the chills. Really freaked her out.”
I run through the pictures again. “Cifarelli Enterprises has moved on without Roman and Stefan. They’ve named a new CEO. Roman hasn’t been seen in public since Connor put a sword through his chest.”
“All true,” Ellison says.
“Do you think Roman is calling himself the destroyer now? Opting for the big bad moniker and telling his followers that he rose from the dead would definitely galvanize his base.”
Lucas and Ellison nod in unison. “We suspect the same thing,” Ellison says. “Roman is playing dead, but he’s still leading the charge, and he’s targeting us like never before.”
I flatten my hand next to Roman’s damaged profile. “So, to temper the Order, we have to take out Roman. And now we know where he is.”
“Yeah, we know where he is, but attacking him there will be problematic. The place is guarded around the clock by guys with rings. He must have secured a ton of Donovan’s blood before he died because they are recruiting at a record pace—and not just the rich and powerful anymore. Any man who they can convince to join.”
“We’ve found the same thing. We targeted a club owner who fit the profile, but his two friends, who definitely did not, also had rings. And they must have been recent recruits because they barely knew how to use their weapons.”
“How many rings did you get?” Lucas asks, his eyes darkening.
“Three.”
“Did you look at the inscriptions?” Ellison’s mouth takes on a sardonic tilt.
“No. Why?”
“Because Lucas and I collected five last night, and we noticed something interesting.”
Lucas leans over and digs in his bag, withdrawing a wooden box.
He opens it, and we all groan as the energy from the rings hits us.
But as he turns the box to face me, I see the differences.
At first glance, they’re all exactly the same: silver, with a Saint George’s cross on the face.
But that is where the similarities end. The metal of one is brighter white and more substantial.
“Is it just me, or does one appear to be platinum and the others silver?”
“It’s not just you,” Ellison says. “You can see the lesser rings are already tarnishing. And—”
“No inscription,” I say. I stand from the table. “We should check the ones Remus and I collected.”
I rush from the room to my bedroom and to the black bag of rings Zoe dropped in the corner of the bathroom that I moved to a wooden box for safety.
Memories of that night come back to me like I’ve been fed into a shredder.
The way she undressed me. Washed the blood off my skin.
My eyes burn, but I can’t allow myself to feel this now.
I grab the box and rush back to the dining room.
I drop it on the table between us and open it, then use a fork to tip the bag so that the rings roll out, along with a bloody chunk of finger. The stench is awful.
“Fuck, Seb! You didn’t have Patrick clean them?”
“Hadn’t thought of it.”
I push the bloody rings around in their filth with the tines of the fork until we can see their faces.
“Same story,” Lucus says. “Different metal. No inscription.”
I wrangle the rings back into the bag and drop them into the box. Once our respective boxes are closed, I promptly dispose of the fork I used to manipulate the rings in the nearest trash can. A collective sigh of relief rises up between us.
“Creator, I hate those things,” Ellison says, scratching his arms like he still has the creepy-crawlies.
“What we know for sure is that there are now two classes of rings, which explains the video of the bakery bomber. The Saint’s Order is recruiting members faster, which calls for creating rings faster.
” I pull over the drawing of the ring. “This thing has five layers of enchantments, one of which is a potion made from dragon’s blood.
Roman is using his store of Donovan’s blood to enchant as many rings as possible as quickly as possible, but why? ”
Ellison’s gray eyes lock on me. “Isn’t it obvious?
To kill us. He’s trying to outnumber us and hunt us down before we can recover from Donovan’s death and the loss of the accord.
Let me be the first to admit you were right when you sent the dragons into hiding, and also right when you ordered us to go on the offensive.
The code red was necessary, no matter what anyone says. ”
“I’ve never been less excited about being right,” I say, taking another sip of coffee.
Ellison leans back in his chair. “So, the question is, what’s our strategy for fighting back?”
I take a moment to think. There’s a reason I’ve been able to grow Full Throttle Records to be one of the top music producers of this era.
I’m decisive and I have great gut instincts.
But this is no easy decision. Thousands of lives are in my hands.
“We stay in hiding, for now. And we keep hunting rings. All twelve of us.”
“Fuck,” Lucas says.
“I know, but the faster we neutralize them, the safer everyone will be.”
Ellison shakes his head. “Shit. The dragon civilians are not going to like hearing that there’s no end date to this code red.”
“With any luck, that will change. Because I am personally going to hunt down Roman Cifarelli, and I’m going to cut the Saint’s Order off at the knees.”