Chapter 11
“Idon’t know if you know this,” Bael began. “But I have a particular talent for pissing people off.”
“Can attest to that,” Thierry confirmed.
“Under oath,” Ryker grunted.
Thierry nodded and added, “In paranormals court.”
“Maybe it’s something about being raised in Hell.” Bael shrugged and strode over to where Nix sat on the ground. “I bet I could get you to burst into flame within one minute and get you to admit you like us.”
Nix’s nose crinkled. “Am I hiding that I like you?”
“No, but my love language is clingy verbal professions of obsession, and you haven’t necessarily been forthright with your feelings.”
Because of guilt. Because of the idea of betraying Persius.
But…this is a new life.
“I do,” Nix whispered as her gaze flicked to each of the men. “Like you. Each of you.”
Bael waved off the sentiment. “Stop, you’re going to give Stoney an erection.”
Thierry glared and pointed to Ryker’s bulging crotch, stretching his light gray sweatpants. “We are all hard here.”
“Yeah, but you’re hard as stone, gargoyle.
” Bael kneeled in front of Nix’s seated position and touched the cut over her lips.
“Don’t get me wrong, if your face scarred, it’d be pretty hot.
But I don’t want you thinking you can’t shift and heal if something happens to you.
The fire means your power is leaking out of you.
Whatever you are is strong. You can shift. You just need to get out of your head.”
“Okay…”
“And let me into it,” Bael whispered, connecting their gazes head-on.
The forest faded around them.
They were back in the living room of their house. And…Nix watched herself be kissed and touched by Ryker and Thierry. But something was off. Because Nix stood, watching a different version of herself moan and grope her men.
Nix gasped when she realized what Bael showed her. A scene where the imposter had distracted her men.
“Doesn’t it piss you off—” Bael reached around her to hold her chin and force her gaze onto the scene. “—how they cannot tell it’s not you?”
The imposter Nix looked over and flashed a sinister smile at her. “Guess who they like more?” the other fake Nix asked. She turned and kissed Ryker.
Nix’s body burst into flame.
“What do you think he is showing her?” Thierry asked Ryker as they watched Bael mesmerize Nix. Whatever it was, the incubus had been right in saying he could get her to expel her fire within one minute.
Flames rose from her skin until fire covered her naked form from her hair to her toes.
This was Thierry’s first time seeing it occur; he had only been told about it after the fact. He stared in awe at the raw power pouring from her pores.
But one thought caught in his frontal lobe. Dragons do not typically expel fire from their skin.
Nix blinked, and she scowled at Bael. Standing, she asked, “You really just showed me that?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Bael remarked.
“No one else touches you. Any of you,” she announced in an enraged voice that stroked over Thierry’s cock. She cares who we touch. Maybe she did like Thierry. Maybe she would fully accept him as her mate. I want to be linked to her. He wanted her heart and her mind. Her trust.
She was an enigma when it came to trust.
I want to know all of her secrets, Thierry thought to himself.
Bael must have shown her the men with another woman. That pissed Thierry off as well.
“Yeah, channel that rage, baby,” Bael egged her on. “Now, think about all the tension flowing right to your back.” He slipped behind her and palmed her bare back. “Right here.” He massaged under her shoulder blades and stole a surprised moan from her lips.
“Feel the anger, so warm,” Bael rasped. “Right here.”
He dug his fingers into her back muscles harder, and her legs trembled. Her face scrunched into pained pleasure as he kneaded her back.
“Just think about if we hadn’t been able to tell it wasn’t you. Another woman touching your mates. Her hand, her mouth, on our cocks.”
The fire burned hotter and brighter over Nix’s body. Being a creature of Hell, the incubus touched her freely, not burning. Her fire would not hurt any of her men. After all, fire did not destroy stone.
Thierry stepped closer to her, watching the flames with wide eyes. Dragons do not do this. They breathed fire; they did not light their own bodies aflame with it. Thierry stood very still as the dread seeped into him.
No, he thought. She couldn’t be.
“Feel all that hot rage penetrating your back right here.” Bael firmly massaged her. Unable to help himself, Bael leaned forward from behind her and ran his serpent tongue up the back of her neck.
She shivered, and he groaned and rocked his hips behind her, rubbing his erection to her bare ass. “Bael.”
“I want you to expel the anger right here. Release all that build-up from your shoulder blades right now. Just think about if that bitch had fucked your mates—”
Nix’s flames jumped from her skin and lit up so brightly that the men had to squint at her before their supernatural eyesight adjusted. “AHHHHHH.”
Wings ripped out of her back, shoving Bael to the ground behind her as he laid back in awe.
The men simultaneously stopped breathing. The breeze rustling the tree leaves was the only sound that filled the forest.
“Dear Gods…” Thierry rubbed a hand over his gaping mouth as her wings unfurled and fluttered.
“Oh,” Nix moaned at the feeling of freeing her wings, but she still stood in human form. A half shift. Only the most powerful shifters were capable of that.
Lit with flames, she stretched out her stunning vermillion-colored wings. Nix tried to crane her neck to look behind her.
“She’s…” Ryker trailed out, stunned.
“Those are not dragon wings,” Thierry stated in a low voice. Did his tone mask the dread he felt?
“What do you mean?” Nix asked, trying hard to see her wings behind her. She spun around, trying to catch a good glimpse.
Making up her wings were fluttering feathers the color of burning orange lava. They sparkled under the flames encasing her.
Ryker started slowly, “Dragon wings are—”
“Membrane,” Thierry finished the sentence.
Bael slowly rose from the ground behind her and muttered, “You have…feathers.”
“What does that mean?” Nix asked, not sensing the shift in the men. Not understanding the rising tension as they realized what she was.
“Rarer than dragons.” Bael’s tone leaked with “shit, this is bad.” Bael looked to Thierry and said, “I thought they were extinct.”
“They are.” Thierry fingered his glasses, struggling to understand what he was seeing, and said, “The last few were killed in the trials ten years ago…” Nix’s parents. Thierry’s chest tightened as he realized the danger his mate was in just for existing.
“Well, shit,” Bael said. “Maybe I should have never made you shift, love. Humans say ignorance is bliss.”
“What do you mean?” Nix flexed an arm behind her so she could feel her wings. She shivered as she gave a soft, exploratory stroke.
The men moaned at the sight. Did she not know that touching wings was a sexual act that resulted in a toe-curling sensation? She might as well have just put her hand between her legs and touched herself right in front of them.
She cleared her throat and removed her hand from her wing. “What are you guys talking about? If I’m not a female dragon, then why did I survive Ryker’s fire? Why do I burst into flame? Only dragons do that with fire.”
No. Not only dragons. Thierry stared at the ground and pressed his fingers to his temples. “Fuck.” It couldn’t be true. Thierry had to be misremembering another creature with wings like that and that could create and survive flame. She can’t be a…
“Damn, babe, your species just broke his brain.”
Thierry jolted toward her and grabbed at her flaming arms. His hands transformed to stone to avoid any burns as he clamped his fingers around her.
“Nix, do you recall how you got your name?” Thierry asked her while his thoughts were: fuck, fuck, fuck. “Who gave you that name? Did your parents call you that?”
Her face strained as she absorbed Thierry’s question. “I…”
“Think back. Who first called you ‘Nix?’”
Nix inhaled deeply and mumbled, “When the Oadess family found me, I couldn’t… I can’t remember anything before my parents being engulfed in flames in the woods and yelling at me to run.”
“Who first called you ‘Nix?’” Thierry repeated in a hard, demanding tone.
Do not say it. Please, do not say it, Thierry silently begged her.
“I think…I think when I was adopted, they started calling me ‘Nix.’”
Thierry released her arms in horror and staggered back. “They know. They’ve always known.”
“What?” Nix asked tensely.
“Nix…you are a phoenix shifter.”