I shrugged casually as if I didn’t know and didn’t care.
Penn’s gaze bounced from Ferne’s to mine. “What would happen if you two…” The words drifted apart as she startled, as if suddenly aware of what she was about to say. A blush crept across her cheeks, and she dropped her attention to the book splayed open before her as if it fascinated her.
“You two—what?” Kenton asked, gently urging her to continue.
The tumbler was warm beneath my fingers as I raised it to my mouth, watching Penn over its rim while swallowing back the whiskey. Penn winced, then darted a nervous look at my brother before her wide-eyed gaze locked with mine, and there was an apology in their blue depths. “Reproduced.”
My body jerked with shock. I hacked and coughed, thumping my chest with a fist to stop myself from spraying a mouthful of alcohol. “What the fuck?” I hissed through a ticklish throat.
Kenton braced a hand on the top of Penn’s high-back chair. “It’s the question we’re all asking. You’re human. Wychthorn’s part wyrm, but she’s very muchhuman.”
My siblings erupted with fast-pitched theories.
“Canthey reproduce?” Jett asked.
“A wyrm’s gestation period is a seriously long time,” Caidan offered. “Maybe Wychthorn can’t with that beast inside her.”
“What would happen if a tamer mated with her?” Kenton said. “What kind of offspring would they have?”
“Or anyone else, for that matter,” Ferne replied. “Could she mate with a Horned God?” It was unheard of for a Horned God to produce offspring with a human.
Something akin to astonishment swept across Ferne’s features. She whipped around to face me, her hair flicking overa shoulder. “What about the Children of the Harbinger? If they know she’s a wyrm, maybe this is why they’ve been hunting her.”
My entire body stiffened as an unsettling sensation crept slowly down my spine. A voice from a darker part of my mind whispered—What if this is why Silas Boon wants Nelle?
My siblings faded into the background while I processed her question, the insidious fear regarding Silas Boon clawing its way through me. And some darker feeling trembled and cracked through my bones like a vicious blast of winter.
Silas knew Nelle was a wyrm.
Did he desire her because of the immense power residing inside her, or was it more than that? He was aware she was a unique mix of wyrm and human. So did he want her because he, orsomeone, or even somethingelse, could mate with her?
What the hells was Silas?
How did he find out about her?
We hadn’t even known what Nelle was. No one had, not even Nelle herself. So how did this fucker know she possessed a wyrm? And worse, Silas was with the Children of the Harbinger too.
My mind spiraled to a cavern beneath the city of Ascendria, where I’d breathed in stale air as I’d stalked through darkness. Pitch black but for feeble torchlight and a string of blinking fairy lights wrapped about Nelle’s shoulders as she spoke to an otherworldly creature of vast age.
As I’d approached, my fingers had clenched around twin daggers, my footfall silent on damp, rough stone. I’d heard the last part of her conversation as the enormous beast towered over her tiny figure. He knew all along what she was but had refused to tell her.
But me, the Uzrek had known my truth and shared it.
A thief. A death-dealer. A spinner of deceit.
And something else, too.
You do not know what you are either, Son of the Wyrm. You do not know what you mean together.
Even knowing what we were, what it meant, it had tried to kill me.Fucking eat me.But Nelle had revealed her secret with a punch of power, saving me as the Uzrek’s jaws yawned wide, hot rancid breath washing over my face as fangs gnashed downward.
There’d been a moment prior when I swore they’d been talking mentally. Now I wondered whether she’d claimed my life in front of the foul beast, or perhaps there was something else in their exchange.
My sister’s voice cut through my thoughts, and it sounded as if she’d been repeating my name.“Gray?”
I blinked, coming to, my sister’s attention fixed in my direction while Caidan and Jett discussed what it would mean if the Children of the Harbinger wanted Nelle for breeding. Kenton was on his phone to my father’s Second in Command, Wes Zhang, ordering additional security around the estate.
Finishing up his conversation, Kenton tucked his phone into his pocket. “It’s getting late. We can talk more about this while I do everyone’s ink.” Our eldest brother was the one who tattooed our skin. He took after our aunt with her artistic soul, spending his childhood in her company, sketching and painting. After our mother was stolen, my aunt put away her paintbrushes, locked up her art studio, and hadn’t entered it since. However, Kenton couldn’t give it up. It was too enmeshed in his soul, the need to create. His fingers would be stained and splashed with rich colors as he worked on a new piece, painting right through the night until the sun rose above the hills that surrounded the Keep. I always thought it had more to do with filling in his time, rather than fucking some random, much as I’d done, desperate to deny my attraction to Nelle.
