Chapter 13
When Thierry, Bael, and Nix returned to the house, Ryker had three suitcases packed for them.
Dragons must be used to living on the run, Nix thought.
For so long, she had listened to Mr. Oadess preach about the danger of her parents’ murderers, saying how all dragons needed to be hunted until their bloodthirsty and brutal species was wiped out. For the protection of others.
First, he had started the same with phoenix shifters, until all of the powerful creatures were gone. Then, he came for the dragons.
How many more species would he eventually convince people were dangerous until there was no one left but cygni? Was that always his goal?
He was the one who ensured the mingling of cygni females with other alphas at the academy. He had told the cygni that it was for their own protection that they marry strong alphas at graduation. What if it was all part of his plan? What was his plan?
Nix wracked her brain for any past details that could be helpful now.
“It is a lot to absorb,” Thierry said, rubbing Nix’s back. Her flames and wings had retracted, and now she strode into the living room completely nude.
“I know you said the books and records on phoenixes were burned, but…is there anything we do know about them? I mean, to warrant the…the extinction of them?” Nix asked hoarsely. “What was said about them to make everyone think they were so dangerous?” she muttered.
Thierry sighed deeply and removed his black-framed glasses.
He rubbed the lenses with a dark gray pocket square as he replied, “The Gods created shifters. Many, many species. Many different abilities. If the Gods were to have a favorite creation, then all other creations would have reason for jealousy. Yes?”
Nix blinked, processing the statement but absorbing nothing new or helpful. Her expression screamed, “And?”
Thierry placed his glasses back on and added, “And, of all of the most powerful and fearful shifters—werewolves, basilisks, dragons—only one species has ever been able to move through time, to emit the power of a nuclear explosion, to come back from the dead, to raise the dead—”
Nix gaped. “Raise the dead?”
Bael nodded solemnly.
Thierry finished, “Because the Gods did have a favorite creation. A favorite shifter. Phoenixes. You, Nix.”
“You have god-like powers, baby,” Bael told her. “Powers that are too powerful compared to what others are capable of.”
“No one would have gone up against the phoenixes if the jealousy had not been escalated by Kellan Oadess’s rhetoric.
He made every other shifter believe they were prey to phoenixes.
That phoenixes would eventually kill us all or drain our resources,” Thierry said.
“He told everyone that the phoenixes would steal all of the gods’ attention and good fortunes. ”
“Would they have?”
Bael shrugged. “Facts don’t matter when your goal is to divide people.”
“Phoenixes lived very long, immortal lives,” Thierry informed her. “Not many were willing to fight them. But, the longer the life…the more they began thinking and feeling like gods.”
He said, “They could move through time and change the future. They could undo death. It made some of them grow bored and cold. When you can control life and death and time, how are you not to begin seeing those with less power as your pawns?”
Nix bit her tongue. Were her parents that way? Cold? Compassionless in the end?
I wish I could remember them.
“Even though I was such a threat, why would Mr. Oadess knowingly keep me?” Nix asked. “You said my feathers are powerful, that people would want them. Why?”
“Phoenix feathers, when used in certain spells, can help someone temporarily move through time.”
“Temporarily?”
“They might be able to go back in time for a few hours before returning to their present time.”
Bael added, “There’s also a rumor that if a shifter can cover themself in phoenix feathers, the Gods might grant a wish to become one. Alter their species.”
Nix’s eyes widened. “That could really happen?”
“Just a rumor,” Bael murmured, but the lack of his normal blatant confidence told her there could be truth to the rumor.
Nix remembered all too well how her future captor—the man who dressed in a white lab coat like he was a healer and not a torturer—plucked feathers from her back after weakening her with elixirs so she could not move. That was why he did it.
Had he ever used her feathers for time travel? Or had his goal been to pluck enough to be granted a wish from the gods?
She was pretty sure that Mr. Oadess had “sold” Nix to her captor at graduation. If anything, the tie between her captor and the Oadess family using Evernell poison was enough for her to draw the connection.
They are the reason I spent four years undergoing torture. They are the reason my heart finally gave out, and I died.
They are the reason I watched my mate, Persius, die in front of me.
“I would like to kill them,” Nix said aloud, meaning to keep that thought to herself.
“Murdering another shifter is punishable by death, and Kellan Oadess ‘disappearing’ would not go unnoticed. He is president of the shifter council,” Thierry told her. “You do not want the attention of the council, given what you are.”
Nix blew out an aggravated breath. “What I am is pissed.”
Did Elle know the torture Nix went through? Had Elle always known the nefarious plot to hand Nix over to someone for experiments? Was she ever really my friend?
Ten years of my life were a lie, and the ten years before that were a blur.
“Ready to go?” Ryker asked, wheeling the three suitcases to the door. He still thought they were fleeing into hiding. Nope.
If Nix was the most powerful kind of shifter, why the hell should she be the one to run? Her revenge was ripe for the taking.
“She should probably get dressed before we embark on a long road trip,” Thierry remarked.
“You ruin everything, don’t you?” Bael asked him.
Noise coming from upstairs confused her. Nix looked up, to the ceiling, and frowned. “Is your shower running?” Why wouldn’t Ryker have turned it off?
“Roommate,” Ryker said. Roommate?
“Pers!” Bael yelled out.
Nix froze. Pers as in Persius?
“I need you down here,” Bael announced. “Now.”
The shower shut off.
Oh. No. Persius lived with them? How had she not—oh yeah, because Persius spent the night in Elle’s room when Nix spent the night at the off-campus house.
All Bael had to do was ask Persius if he ever told Nix what he was, then Bael would catch her in the lie. And the blade-wielding incubus would most likely assume the worst.
Nix’s breath caught at the sound of the slaps of wet footsteps running down the stairs.
“Fuck, Pers, you just ran down here naked?” Bael asked, slightly amused. “Why didn’t you grab a towel?”
“Because you made it sound urgent,” his warm, heavenly voice floated into the living room as a naked and damp Persius stepped into the room.
Nix gasped, sharply sucking in air after holding her breath for his entire descent down the stairs. A naked Persius was…magnificent.
His long, icy blond locks were wet and slicked back, revealing an unobstructed view of his stunning, deep-set, electric azure-blue eyes.
He had the features of a chiseled Greek sculpture. Lips perfectly full yet thin. High and regal cheekbones with a strong jawline and robust cleft chin. Even his prominent, Roman nose reminded her of painted depictions of Hercules or the Greek Gods.
In the dim lighting of the living room, she swore he was lit with a walking golden halo.
Then, her gaze fell.
And she began coughing—actively choking on her excess saliva as her mouth watered and her nipples hardened.
Nix and Persius both stood nude in the living room, but droplets of water clung to his smooth, tan skin and snaked down his broad chest and rippling muscles. The droplets licked down his light happy trail and settled onto his cock.
His thick shaft featured ropey veins that called to Nix, silently telling her, “You’ll love tracing me with your tongue. Come. Try it. Try it and come.”
Nix licked her lips and finally stopped choking on breath. He is hard. Her legs clenched together, and—considering she was naked—her arousal was on complete display as her nipples tightened into little sensitive peaks.
“Please try smelling less horny,” Bael warned Nix. “You’re making Stoney harder than normal.”
Nix did not look back at Thierry. Her gaze was stolen and locked onto Persius. A naked, dripping Persius.
The rosy bulbous tip of his cockhead was plump and flushed as his large, jutting erection strained in a rigid line, pointing right at her.
“You…” Persius murmured when his azure-blue eyes connected with Nix.
Her knees weakened as she stood trembling with emotion. Desire, mourning, excitement, love, and fear.
Fear that Bael was about to think Nix was some sort of Oadess spy.
“Why does she know what you are, Pers?” Bael asked him point-blank.
Persius’s gaze had trickled down Nix’s body, but he paused and looked at Bael. “What?” His voice reminded Nix of sunshine and deep-toned bell chimes.
“Did you tell her what you were?” Bael asked.
Nix pressed her lips together and silently pleaded with Persius to say, “Yes.”
Persius replied, “Of course not. You and Ryker are the only two that know.”
Bael sighed deeply. The incubus appeared right beside Nix, causing her to jump in alarm. Bael pinched her chin and steered her gaze to connect with his. Bael’s red eyes pulsed and burned into hers as he palmed her throat again.
He tsk-tsked her and said, “I don’t like liars, baby.”
And the world went black.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Thierry snapped at Bael as the incubus, wordlessly, ran an unconscious Nix up the stairs to his bedroom and threw her onto the black silk-covered bed. “Did you just knock her out?”
Thierry’s instinct was to steal Nix’s sleeping body from Bael and fly far away. But Bael cares for her too. Thierry’s brows furrowed with anxious uncertainty. Surely, he wouldn’t hurt her…
“Not violently,” Bael replied calmly as he began tying Nix’s limbs to the bed posts, spreading her naked body out like a starfish. “I just told her subconscious that I wanted to play with her. She has a very submissive and horny subconscious.”
Thierry stepped up to Nix’s side and worked to untie the ropes. “You can’t just—”
Bael’s blade flung from his hand and bounced off Thierry’s rock-hard chest. Even though he could not penetrate the gargoyle shifter’s silvery skin, the threat was blatantly clear. “Do not untie her.”
“Do not throw knives at me. It could have bounced off me and landed in her.” Did Bael expect Thierry to just sit back and watch whatever was about to occur? “She is my mate,” Thierry growled.
He may not know why she lied to Bael about Persius, but she was Thierry’s fated mate. If she lied, she did so for good reason.
After all, Thierry’s mate was clever. Everything she looked at, she analyzed; Thierry loved watching her do it. Just like me. Though, she was impulsive—unlike him.
We are the perfect balance. Thierry did not understand why the gods gave her more mates than just him. Ryker was fine, but Bael was a real pain in the ass.
“My mate too,” Ryker rasped from the bedroom door as he and Persius both entered to see what Bael did with her.
Cygnus, female dragon, or phoenix shifter, matehood was unquestionable. It did not matter what she was, only who she was.
Persius politely raised his hand from the doorway and asked, “Can someone please tell me what is going on?”
Bael finished tying Nix’s left leg to the last bedpost and stepped back to admire his handywork. “Nix lied about how she knew what kind of shifter Persius was.”
Persius exhaled and scratched at his left pectoral muscles. “She really knows what I am? How?”
“That—” Bael grabbed at the back of his shirt, tore it over his head, and flung it to the floor. “—is what we are going to find out.”
The incubus unbuckled his pants and stepped out of them, leaving him standing in nothing but black boxers.
“You tie my mate down, and now you are stripping?” Thierry asked ominously, his fists clenching at his sides.
Bael’s black webbed wings stretched from his back, branching out and sparkling with a carmine, ruby-like dust. Bael’s black horns sprang from his head and curled sinisterly. His red eyes became big, enlarged black pupils.
His fully shifted incubus form.
Thierry quickly looked away, having learned the threat of eye contact with him in that form.
“She lied when given the choice,” Bael said around his sharp, distended fangs. “Now, we find out the truth.”
“You think she is a spy?” Persius asked, stepping further into the room to watch the scene. “She is a friend of Elle Oadess. The adoptive daughter of Kellan.”
“She just told us she wanted to kill Oadess,” Thierry reminded them. “She is not a spy for them.”
Bael climbed on top of her on the bed. He straddled her thighs and spread out his wings. “Nixie, time to wake up, baby,” Bael cooed to her as he projected hypnotic spirals from his eyes.