Chapter 33
“So, while you were under the enchantment, did Adar Oadess… I don’t know… Try anything?”
“I told you that nothing happened. Focus,” Nix told Bael after she guzzled down the vial of protection potion that Professor Bowen provided her.
The professor had needed little convincing or time to produce the potion. He had gallon jugs of it sitting by his door.
After Bowen poured a dose and handed it to Nix, he told her cryptically, “I think many at the academy are not thinking with clear heads,” as if he thought more than just Nix were under an enchantment.
Nix and her still-working-to-be-forgiven mates walked from the faculty residential building to where the dean’s office resided in the main academy. Nix had questions for Dean Felling, including where the future potions professor “replacement,” Dr. Lemmuns, was.
Bael clucked his tongue. “See, I will be unable to focus until you tell me yes or no and what he did in great detail.”
Nix rolled her eyes. “Either answer I give you, you still plan to hurt him, yes?”
“Yes, but how long I make it last depends on your answer.”
Nix paused in her walking and blinked. “Wait, I do actually remember something I wanted to ask about.” She turned to her gargoyle shifter, who always had all the answers. “Adar mentioned offhandedly—”
“Where were his hands?” Bael asked. “Because if they were on you—”
Ignoring the incubus, Nix finished, “—that winged prey shifters don’t naturally go into heat. He mentioned some type of drug or elixir or something that the Oadess family uses to trigger a heat cycle in female cygnus shifters.”
Thierry rubbed his palm over his jaw as he said thoughtfully, “There is not much documented history on female prey shifters. History tends to be written by the victors and prey…”
Persius offered, “Have never won anything.”
“Until Kellan Oadess won shifter council president,” Nix reminded them.
“Still doesn’t make any sense,” Bael remarked.
“It makes perfect sense, actually,” Thierry commented, surprising them all. “He rose to power by convincing everyone that he was their ally in a sea of enemies. Even as a prey himself, he convinced predators to listen to him after he told them that they had a common enemy.”
He said, “Tell a predator that they are prey to someone, and you appeal to their fear. Create division, and you build an angry army ready to fight. History proves it again and again. People are more willing to fight against someone than fight for someone.”
“And the common enemy was phoenix shifters?” Nix asked.
“Amongst others. His newest fixation has been on dragons.”
Ryker grunted in aggravated agreement.
“It still doesn’t make fucking sense to me,” Bael mumbled.
Thierry sighed and recited a human, Turkish proverb, “The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them.”
Thierry said, “Kellan Oadess has a talent for convincing people that he is on their side.”
“There are no sides,” Nix muttered under her breath, remembering what the Goddess said. Granted, the Goddess had been talking about matehood.
Nix shook her head. “So, this drug to trigger a heat cycle in a winged shifter, it could be true, then? True that the threat of going into heat by taking classes with alphas is actually a manufactured threat to keep the females in line?”
“Wouldn’t put it past him,” Bael said.
The group landed in front of the tall, dark wooden doors of Dean Felling’s office.
“Do you know how you want this to go down, Nixie?” Bael asked.
“He will feel threatened to have all of us enter unannounced,” Persius noted.
“Especially after he threatened to expel you the last time we accompanied you to his office,” Thierry added.
“We just need to know about where we can find the new potions professor that he plans to replace Bowen with. Mr. Lemmuns,” Nix said. “We need to find him, grab him, and get him to tell us about the other missing students.”
Bael swung his gaze to Thierry. “Think you can stomach I-T, Stoney?” Bael asked him.
“I-T?”
Bael’s grin consumed his face. “Interrogation and torture.”
Thierry’s eyebrow quirked. “You think me squeamish?”
“I ‘think you’ stuffy and snobby and—”
“Nix said that this ‘Mr. Lemmuns’ tortured her in a cage before she died.” Thierry replied dryly, “Do not worry about my stone-lined stomach, Baelfire.”
The incubus snorted. “Oh shit, are you gonna blur your sophisticated ‘moral lines’ for our girl?”
Nix hesitantly met Thierry’s stunning and intense silver gaze as it bored into her face.
Thierry stated in his genuine and gravelly voice, “Nix, knowing that I hurt you—in any goddamn timeline—makes me want to rip my heart from my chest and place it into your palm. If at any point you wish me to do so, you need only ask.”
Nix bit her lip. It was hard to stay mad at him when he literally offered his life as penance for something a future version of him did.
Thierry looked back at Bael. “So, for any other who dares to harm my mate, I am willing to do much, much worse.”
Ryker nodded. “Good.”
Maybe others would be uncomfortable about their mates openly discussing torturing someone who hurt them, but…Nix felt good. Protected.
Because if anyone harmed one of my mates…
Nix growled under her breath as she stepped forward to open the door to the office. “We all go in together.”