“Maybe, but you didn’t witness when those three black witches came strolling in, darkness burning from their fingertips. They had slaughtered my friends and family without hesitation, and they had laughed the whole time. Blood had coated the floor, so thick there wasn’t anywhere left untouched.”
“You put all that blame onto an innocent child.”
Power hummed, and he was sure he noticed something pass behind Kyra’s eyes.
His mother tensed, eyes narrowing. “Canticum pro defunctis, that’s why the spirits have disappeared.”
Kyra paled, but it didn’t cut through her anger.
“Sienna, this should never have passed the vote,” the man beside his mother said. “Hebrought a black witch into our community knowing our history. Who says their combined chi wouldn’t attract more of her kind again?”
“We need to breed stronger children,” Sienna hissed. “That was why the vote passed, that’s why we had all agreed to invite Xander back to join us.” She clicked her fingers, and the two women purred, pulling at their sheer robes until they dropped to the floor. They ignored his warning snarl this time, their hands tentatively brushing across his chest, their fingers dancing, teasing at the edge of his shirt.
What did they want? For him to fuck them right there on the table?
“Take her away.”
Their palms were on his skin, beneath his shirt.
Kyra let out a shout, a guard reaching out to grab her manacled wrist. “Get off me!” The guard was twice her size, and he easily lifted her over his shoulder, heading towards the doorway.
Pain ripped through his body, his beast bursting through his skin without even a warning. A roar echoed from his throat, his attention on the one guard who held Kyra tightly. Cheekbones were bright with colour, but it was her fury that he scented as she twisted and fought. She hadn’t even realised he had shifted, not until the guard suddenly dropped her to the floor.
And then the screaming began.
He ignored them all, flattening his ears to his skull as he hunched down, his lips peeling back to reveal large canines. The guard pulled his gun from his hip, hand shaking.
He didn’t care about the weapons, didn’t care as the thirty or so Seers who frantically panicked, some escaping into the hall while others pressed themselves against the back wall. His growl vibrated his chest, his nails cracking the tiles beneath his paws as Kyra turned, and then stepped toward him without fear or panic. A tail whipped out, curling gently around her waist, urging her closer, into his side.
Mine.
Everyone cowered, everyone cried except Kyra, who gently brushed through the pale white hair at his neck, her fingers tracing the darkened lines that were an echo of the tattoos on the man. He couldn’t hear her words over the screams, not when he was slowly curving his body to protect her from the guns that were pointed.
It was his mother who recovered first.
“Xander?” she asked, her once powerful voice trembling. “What have you become?” She held up a hand, and the guns hesitated.
Xander pushed past the beast, shifting back into the man. Kyra had been released once his tail had vanished, but she still moved to stand with him. The Seers that remained were frozen, their faces not too dissimilar to when he was a child. He shouldn’t have shifted. Riley had been right, he was the steadiest out of them all, the least likely to lose control and yet he had shifted without even thinking it through.
Fuck.
“We will leave,” he said, his voice more of a growl.
His mother straightened her spine, a single tear glistening on her cheek. “No, I invited you here, so tonight you are our guests. Tomorrow, however, you are to leave and never return.”
It was a final dismissal by the woman who had raised him until he was eight. A tightness clogged his throat, his chest just as rigid. “After tomorrow, you are nothing.”
Chapter22
Kyra
Xander paced, the tattoos at his back flickering beneath the candle light. Back and forth, his powerful strides only taking three steps across the room. He had said nothing, not in the ten minutes they had been back in the bedroom or in the time it took to walk through the halls.
They were shunned, ignored as if they too were ghosts.
“I’m sorry,” Kyra whispered, not sure why she offered an apology, but did so anyway. His shoulders tensed, but he didn’t slow his continuous pacing, his anger tight beneath his skin. “I never thought I would find another parent as shitty as mine, and here we are,” she laughed, the sound hollow.
Xander said nothing. Which was okay, because she felt like talking, distracting.
