“Dragon.” The volume of Katerina’s voice increases as she stands before my cell and unlocks it. “Get up, we’re heading out.” Scythe’s breathing is coming from the door.
“I need to use the bathroom. Scythe will need it as well,” I tell her.
“Don’t tell me what Scythe needs.” She mutters under her breath about the spell not working as planned as she walks away. “Be quick about it.”
As I head to the ensuite, wondering if this is how Lia felt when I held her captive in my room. I had never intended it, but when the time came and my father gave me the golden collar, it had felt right in a twisted way. The part of me I kept locked away had wanted to keep her close. Had wanted her scent to remain by my side, and had wanted to keep my eye on her.
It had started as hate. And then I’d spent more time with her. Every moment of my day and night, actually. I began to see past the screen of my blind hatred. It had taken my forced physical blindness to really see the perfect parts that made her special. The delicate sound of her breath, the reliable thump of her heart, the sad sigh between her lips.
The way her skin?—
The sudden mental image of my father dragging Aurelia’s shark’s body up the aisle before my wedding ceremony flashes across my mind’s eye and I retch into the sink. My returned mark burns even more when I splash water on it, the droplets sizzling into steam as they hit my skin. I find the edges of the sink with my hands, and I’m unaware that I’m gripping so hard until I hear a fine crack. I have half a mind to tear the thing out of the wall and swing it at the reptile behind me, but a strange cooing stops me short.
When I return to the bedroom, the crocodile is running a brush through Scythe’s hair as he sits still and cold on the bed. “Are you going to do mine next?” I ask in a dead voice.
I feel her eyes on me. “Yours isn’t pretty.”
Mine is much longer than Scythe’s, but silver hair is a whole different thing. In the cages behind her, Savage growls and rolls over. Lyle twitches, stretching his paws out as he wakes up, his breathing ragged as the confusion hits him. This is going to be fucking interesting.
Katerina stands, apparently satisfied with her work. She turns towards my beastly brothers and commands, “You twostay,” then she turns to me. “Both of you walk in front of me where I can see you. We’re heading to breakfast.”
Savage’s black wolf form gets to his feet as we leave, and it’s not until the door closes behind Katerina that a mighty, angry roar rattles the walls. The crocodile halts us with a sharp command, and I’m forced to stop as she storms back into her room and barks, “No noise. No growling. No barking. No roaring.”
The room behind me goes quiet save for heavy breathing. Katerina makes an approving noise and exits the room. “Continue on,” she says, shoving at my back like I’m an idiot.
Silently, Scythe and I walk down the corridor, and I follow my nose to the food. To my surprise, we end up outside, a little way from the entrance, under a marquee built for shade from the harsh outback sun. Food is laid out on a long table where the hyena matriarch is seated, sipping, from the smell of it, an espresso.
A little way from the table, someone is crying; another is whimpering, and I smell human blood and the tang of steel. There are humans in cages here.
The Collector bids us to sit down, and I feel the witch’s eyes on me. Scythe is instructed to eat his lemon-marinated salmon. I’m starving, but I haven’t been instructed to pull forwards that plate of bacon I can smell. “Look at him,” Katerina says. “Do you really think the spell is covering his dragon animus?”
“At least partially. It would be wise to test it.”
It would have beenwiseto leave us the fuck alone.
“Better get to it then,” Katerina says. “Xander.”
“Yes, regina?” I say obediently, turning towards the sound of her voice.
“There are some humans from the wildlife protection league who tried to break in and steal some of my breedable females. That can’t stand, can it?”
My blood heats, my heart pounds, and I say, “No, it can’t.”
“Will you protect your regina?”
“Always.” I’m going to vomit acid onto this dirt.
“Follow the guard.” She gives a signal, then chains clank, a lock clangs open, and a quiet female whimper turns into a sob. The prisoner sounds young. She’s not a child, but a young woman. Probably around Aurelia’s age. “Kill her.”
Without my powers, she’s forcing me to do this with my human hands. A vision of Aurelia flashes through my mind’s eye. Specifically, her screaming on the floor of my cavern, glass shattered around her, half of her right leg still missing. My blood wants to explode through my eye sockets.
I decide that Katerina Crocodylus can’t die. She needs to suffer for this. If I am to stay here and look after my brothers, she must be convinced I’m under the curse and there can be no hesitation in my movements.
Somehow, I convince my legs to stride right up to the young lady. I can’t tell her I’m sorry. I can’t stop her murder. Once again, I find myself helpless to powers more malevolent than me. She doesn’t fight as I approach her. Doesn’t do anything except pant and whimper, the scent of her tears filling my nose. I snap her neck efficiently, then carefully lay her on the ground.
I’m just thankful it’s me and not Savage or Lyle. Savage would be ruined by this.
The hyena matriarch sniffs, and I can’t tell if it’s from disgust or contempt. “He cries blood,” she says. “What a joke.”
