Chapter 113
Aurelia
That cold dread in my stomach only grows into something colossal as I helplessly float away from the exit to the outside world. Suddenly, I am utterly alone, and the silence is deafening.
I had been alone at the beginning of all of this. My family had abandoned me to a life of silence and isolation. But I hadn’treallybeen alone. Ghoul had been there the entire time.
I close my eyes against the dark, summoning his face. And from so very far away, his voice, nothing but a soft hiss from amongst the shadows, comes to me. “What’s that in your necklace, snakelet?”
My eyes fly open. Xander’s necklace gleams gold against the skin of my chest. I reach for the pendant, and turning it over, find a tiny clasp I hadn’t seen before.
I suck in a breath as I flick it open. Inside gleams something wholly unexpected: a coiled hair, glowing an ethereal silver that could only come from one mythical shifter.
Just one.
Chapter 114
Xander
Ithought the shadow realm would be a place of complete despair. Instead, being shoved out of it feels like a very real sort of hell.
Spinning backwards into the vortex, I feel this heinous reality in my bones: a world without Aurelia.
“Ghoul!” I roar down into its starting point. “Ghoul, you fucker, you took my regina!”
The only thought in my mind is revenge—is murder and blood on my face and in my mouth and a black soul ripped from a basilisk’s body. My dragon form takes over, angling its nose towards the earth and tearing downward towards the source.
They will all die for this.
Chapter 115
Ghoul
My eyes fly open as Xander’s voice tears through the darkness and rips into my mind. I look up into the spiralling dark above my sitting position in the truck. We’re moving now, General Adder accelerating towards the school where the vortex will suck up every non-serpent soul.
The cursed blood covenants on my body burn as I tug against Mace’s commands. But I cannot stop this; my body has finished its metabolism of Aurelia’s venom. I can’t close it. My leash is too tight, his hold on me too absolute, and no one, including my regina, is able to save me.
So as Xander makes his way down to me, with murder in his heart, I smile. Who would have thought my saviour would come in the form of the Berserker dragon?
Chapter 116
Lyle
Helicopters roar in the sky before us, their engines loud in my ears. Behind them, trucks screech to a stop, and from them spills an entire combative force of serpents, led by two generals.
They’d been holding back.
I have no choice but to turn around and chase after Mace’s truck. Stacey and Savage leap to do the same. Scythe growls under his breath from my back as he grabs the walkie-talkie and gives instructions for the second wave. “Reload,” he says.
“But we’re still fighting these ones!” comes Minnie’s panicked voice. “I don’t think we can take another lot. The vortex is coming right for us! And has anyone seen Lia?”
The nimpins chirp in fright behind me. Savage takes up a dropped gun and starts running backwards, shooting at the oncoming soldiers. Ahead of us, Mace’s truck has almost reached the academy gates, the vortex making our males on the wall scatter in either direction.
My regina is not dead. I would know. I would have felt it. This is the only thing that keeps me running. We have to carry on the fight for her. And as for?—
“Xander!”Ishout into the ether.“If you’re not fucking dead, where the fuck are you?”
An answering roar rattles my bones, and I stumble in shock. Everyone on the battlefield stops as Mace’s truck explodes.
