“He knows!” I cry again to Scythe, who is the first to leap out of bed and come to me.
“How can you know this, angel?” Lyle asks, pushing himself up to sit.
“Serpent magic,” Xander snarls, rolling to stand. “What exactly did you see, regina?”
I relay what I saw in quick sentences as my mates rub their eyes awake. Ghoul in the empty club, my father and their conversation. The tug of the blood covenant.
“So you could see memories before, but now you’re seeing it in real time?” Savage checks the sky outside, and I look too. The first rays of sunlight peek over the mountains in the distance.
I pace the length of the room. Ghoul made sure I saw this. I don’t understand how I know this, but I can feel that knowledge in the part of me held just for him.
She might own your soul, but I own your blood.
The pain in my chest is like a gash. There was a reference to his cold heart and a task to come. Something important only my basilisk mate can do. He wanted me to hear this full conversation. Wanted me to know, so I could prepare.
I will have you with your fangs out or not at all.
“Regina—” Lyle begins.
“I can take him.”
I come to a halt before the window, turning to face them, and am met with silence. “Scythe, you were wrong.” My voice is heavy as a corpse. “Ghoul is not the most dangerous member of this pack.” The weight of my power fills my bones. “I am.”
The truth stretches out like beams of light between the five of us.
“Aurelia,” Xander says, “are you sure about this? That you want to do this?” I give him a small, grateful smile. Out of the four mates here, he is the one I can count on not to stop me. His respect for me lies on a different level. He’s the one who’s seen me at my worst. My most vulnerable and frightened. He’s seen me come back from the impossible. Gold flashes through my dragon’s eyes, almost as if he’s reminding me of words said before. That he’d been my own general in wars so long ago.
And Ghoul.
He wants to see what I’m made of. He wants to see that I’m strong enough to face the truth and what goes along with it. Jaws snap inside me, seeking my attention. A whisper of a smile curves my lips as I sink into the icy cold depths that is my shark. The temperature of the room drops. My heart slows to a methodical drumbeat. Clinical. Precise.
“Yes.” I turn to look at Scythe and Xander, and to me, my voice sounds like it echoes in an empty, dark chamber. “I will do what needs to be done. Our enemy moves in the dark, but so do we. There is something else to be done when night falls again.”
“I don’t like it when she’s like this,” Savage admits. “She won’t give me cuddles.”
“I think it’s cool,” Minnie chirps, eyes wide as she considers me from across the dining table. “She’s like an assassin or something.”
Scythe agrees, my big shark animus always keeping close to me and enjoying the power we share. Somewhere inside him, the Great White gnashes his teeth and lashes his tail in joy. Henry levitates before my face and chirps experimentally.
“Small, pretty creature,” I say, my voice flat. “You will stay with me today.”
Obediently, he sits himself on my shoulder, pushing his tiny body up against my neck as if he can push warmth into me all by himself. Xander watches from the corner of the room, and I turn to him, gaze unblinking.
A stomping up the stairs tells me Sabrina and Stacey have joined us. But when Sabrina appears, she throws her hood back and marches towards me. “Is it true?” she pants, her voice uncharacteristically harsh. “That psycho general is your mate? It’s all over social media, that video of you in Club Venom.”
“I know what he did to you,” I reply in the same flat-as-wood voice. “Tonight, we fight to the death.”
Brown eyes blink back at me. “What do you mean?”
“The basilisk general has been ordered to kill me, Sabrina. I am going into battle.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” Savage says, leaping to his feet. “It’s not to the death! I’m going to be there to make sure it’s not!”
I give him a slow nod before turning back to Sabrina. My leopard friend sighs and takes the seat next to Minnie at the dining table. “Something big is going to happen,” Stacey says. “I can feel it. The serpents have never been this riled up.”
“The council is basically dead at the door,” Minnie says with disgust. “We can’t rely on them to do anything. We have to take action now, right, Xander?”
“Right, Minnie,” he says. “But that also includes making sure Aurelia doesn’t get herself killed.”
