“Thank you,” Sabrina sobs. “Thank you.”
It takes a while to calm our leopard friend down. In the end, Blair has to carry her back to the pack dorms. Minnie and I watch her in quiet, satisfied solidarity.
“There will be consequences,” Marduk warns. To his credit, he doesn’t accuse us of anything. Doesn’t berate us as silly girls doing something reckless or insane. I think it’s because he’s just as nuts, but I appreciate it all the same.
“That’s why I’m putting us in lockdown early,” I say. “Beak, notify the guards. Same protocol as the heat lockdown. Take any tiger guards off the roster for a week. Wolves will be best, and I want the birds patrolling the northern highway. We’ll probably be safe tonight, but tomorrow, I’ll take the night watch myself.” Beak nods, a slight smile on his lips as he leaves. I turn to Marduk and Yeti. “Did I miss anything?” I’m trying to take my new job as guardian seriously. I’m not even entirely sure what Celeste meant by it.
“Is your psychic shield around the school still active?” Yeti asks.
“Always is.” My father is always a threat, and for all we know, Titus will go straight to him.
“Then there’s nothing more we can do.”
A sudden weariness creeps up my legs, and I feel the need to sit down. That feeling travels upwards, trying to drag me to thedepths of hell. I expended a lot of power tonight. Minnie is in much the same position and will likely sleep for ages now, but at least she has her mates to help her feed and replenish her power.
I bid everyone a quick goodnight, and we depart. Minnie is hurried to the pack dorms, and Beak strides off to instruct our guards. I wander into the silence of my pack’s suite, my ears still ringing, my skin still tingling from the flight. My excess of power had been a problem before I’d left for Drakos House, and I’d needed my mates to take my spillover. At Drakos Estate, it hadn’t been a problem because I was recovering from Xander’s mate severing. Then re-growing my leg had taken all of me. It still takes a lot out of me to deal with the newness of it, and of course, the ongoing pain. For the first time in a long time, I feel depleted.
I rummage for microwave meals in the freezer and find one, setting it up to heat while I sit at the dining table. Alone. “I wish you were here,” I whisper into the night.
Chapter 12
Xander
Acall comes after midnight on Katerina’s personal phone. She wakes with a grumble, huffing up at Scythe, who stands still beside her bed. I won’t let him so much as sit on it, no matter how much it makes my ears bleed to hear her screaming.
After my display with the animal activists, she trusts me a little more, taking off my shackles as long as I’m in my cell beside her bed. She says it’s so she knows whether my eyes are open or closed in the dark, and it gives me great satisfaction to know that she finds my empty eyes creepy at night.
“What?” she snaps into her phone.
My ears perk up. She often gets calls in the middle of the night, but it’s always about ‘product’ or ‘stock’, and it’s never made her react like this. I keep my eyes closed to avoid attention but listen keenly to the voice on the other side of the phone.
“Clawson House is in ruins,” a male voice says. “Two of them were there. The tigress I don’t know, but the Boneweaver girl was by her side.”
My heart stops beating. Aurelia and Minnie were at Clawson House. Whatever the fuck for?
“Let me get this straight,” Katerina says, pointing violently at the air. “Tiberius is dead, Aurelia Boneweaver did it, and this all happened just now.”
“The tigress took his throat,” clarifies the male. “I don’t know where Titus is. They killed a few others, buthisbody is nowhere to be found, so we assume he is alive.”
I almost choke on my own spit and have to crack my eyes open to see this once-in-a-lifetime scene. Katerina leaps out of bed, hurls herself out the bedroom door, and doesn’t see my light. I stare at the open doorway in shocked disbelief, and some new, insane feeling that might very well be pride.
What the actual fuck, Lia?
Slumping against the wall, I toy with my earring, trying to think of the possibilities. It’s because of this that I’m still awake when I feel it. Something I’ve only felt once before, in Halfeather’s dungeon, so long ago.
A regina’s call.
This time, I know what to expect, and my astral form practically leaps out of my body. I stride through the bars of my cell to check on my brothers. Lyle and Savage are still in beast form, snoring in their cells, with no sign of their astral forms. Scythe remains stock still in his corner.
Looks like I’m seeing Lia alone. Eagerly, I shoot up towards the ceiling and right through the solid brick. Flying in human form is so strange, but I’m lifted by pure magic into the night and over the land at roughly the same speed as my dragon form.
Halfeather’s dungeon was only a few suburbs away from where Lia used to live behind Charlotte Naga’s house, but Animus Academy is hours away from The Collector’s property in the outback. It takes a while to get there, but by the time I’m sinking down through the roof of the animus dorm and into the living room, I’m riled up, heart pounding and ready for…I can’t even describe what.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I drawl, striding into the bedroom.
Lia whips her hand out from inside her shorts, where she’d been playing with herself, and sits bolt upright in outrage. There is a sheen of dust and sweat on her skin as well as fine specks of blood. Her dark hair is loose and tousled in a halo around her.
“I didn’t think it was working!”
