“You’ll make time,” I say simply. “You’ve owed me for a while now. And I’m guessing you want these vials badly enough to do whatever it takes.”
She doesn’t scowl, doesn’t give anything away, and just for a moment, I miss the old Aurelia, whose face gave away everything. I’m going to have to be on my game now.
“Alright, what do you need me to do?”
So level. So calm. That heartbeat is focused, her breath steady. Those pupils…still slits that hook me in by the cock. “Meet me here tomorrow night,” I say, striding towards the window. “I’ll get a dress.”
Before she can respond, I’m one with the darkness and out the window.
I’m about to leave when something pulls my attention away from my exit over the academy wall, and I decide I’d better go pay my respects. I descend to the medical centre, opening myself up to whatever lurks here. Where I find Raquel. Where the wolf anim’s astral form has been running around shouting for help this entire time.
“Boo!”I shout.
The anim skids to a stop right in front of me.
Chapter 22
Aurelia
He’ll get a dress.
Whatever Ghoul was getting me to do was definitely not going to work in my favour. In fact, it’s more than likely it’s going to hurt. But unfortunately, he is right. I need the serum for my plan, and I’ll do anything to get it.
I await him after dark, this time on top of the animus dorms, with not a stitch of clothing and a scowl upon my face. I’ve only told Minnie that I’m leaving, and though she wasn’t happy about it, she gave me that half shrug that says,I know you do what you have to, just don’t get yourself killed.
Ghoul arrives on the first cold wind of the night, heralded by the scent of poison. It’s sharp but sweet, toxic but alluring. And when he un-dissolves himself from the shadows into a man, I cast him a level look. “You’re aware they’re hunting me. I can’t go anywhere I’ll be seen.”
“You won’t be,” he says, his occipital lasers glinting that severe crimson. “You take dragon form, and I’ll lead the way.”
“I can do phoenix so we get this done.”
“So impatient,” he drawls. “But no, someone will notice. It gives off too much of a signal.”
I hadn’t really thought of that, but I don’t show that I’m kicking myself. “This isn’t going to be a trap, is it?”
There’s no way for me to tell if the bastard is lying; he’s so well protected by those shadows that I barely get to see his mating mark. “No fun in that,” he says. “Besides, I need you.”
Something ancient stirs inside me at his words, but I have to brush it aside. He has always been my enemy. “I just want you to know,” I say, stalking forward. “That if you betray our agreement tonight, not even death will save you from me. Do you understand?”
He goes still, eyes flashing in something akin to anger. “Threats?” That sibilant voice is so dangerously soft. “Threats make me hard, snakelet.” It’s his turn to take a step forwards now. “Threats make me want to see what you look like bent over your precious academy wall, screaming because my cock is stretching your dripping. Wet. Pussy.”
His lethally soft wordsdomake me wet.
“You’ve been to the Jewel, with warnings from your shark and lion, no doubt. But where we’re going tonight, snakelet, will make the Jewel look and feel a puppy playpen. I know you can handle it.”
I clench my teeth at his assumptions about me. “Then let’s get this done.”
We head into the night, with me following the darkest part of it, an amorphous, shifting ball of the void moving like a missile just beyond my nose. We don’t head into the city as I assumed we would, but southeast of it to the suburbs. Ghoul leads me onto an unassuming street, lined with regular domestic houses, and makes a beeline for one property in particular. This townhouse hits me in the chest—not the vision of it, but the scent all around it that screams to keep away. There’s a tug in my gut.
“Whose house is this?” I say darkly, already knowing the answer.
“It’s mine.”
I let out a huff as he opens the front door without a key and leads me into the dimly lit entryway. It’s clear he didn’t decorate it himself because no monster except perhaps Xander has this much taste. From memory, the generals are all given houses of their own as gifts when they join my father as seniors in his retinue. Just as a king would grant land to his liege lords in the Old Way. A classy designer has decked this house out in burgundy and black, the occasional white of a lotus breaking up the dark hues.
We go upstairs to the master bedroom, where a king-size bed is decorated with black silk sheets. There is a trace scent of ash in the air. “You’re going to be under disguise as a young woman called Jade Brown.”
“That name is familiar.”
