35. Aurelia

Chapter 35

Aurelia

S avage and Xander turn up to lunch wearing two patterned cotton slings around their necks that obviously have something small and round in them. The animas gasp and we flock around them. Minnie is the only one brave enough to look in Xander's sling, and the rest of us swarm Savage. He takes out a tiny wombat and an even tinier bottle full of milk. Xander removes a tiny kangaroo joey from his and efficiently begins to feed it, throwing a burping cloth over his shoulder as if he's done it many times before.

Minnie and I exchange raised brows because he looks so at ease handling the bottle. Savage, on the other hand, gets the rest of us cooing over him, but waves away our attempts to help.

"I have to do it myself," he says seriously, tucking the squirming joey into the crook of his arm. I hand him the bottle of milk. "Otherwise I'll get in trouble."

"Like you care about getting in trouble." Connor crosses his arms.

My wolf grins down at the wombat, greedily guzzling down his bottle at lightning speed. "Depends who's holding the whip." He glances coyly at me.

I swat him lightly on the shoulder before returning to my food.

Stacey and Raquel are sitting with Sabrina in the medical wing. We'd taken her up to the anima dorms, and she'd determinedly stomped her way up there, but the moment she'd gotten into her and Raquel's shared room, she'd gone stiff. The Clawson's had taken her from that room, wrestled her, and cut the end of her tail off.

It's a wound that will take time to heal.

So instead, Lyle is in the process of moving Raquel, Connor and Stacey into the mating group dorms, which works well because the rooms are massive and won't trigger her claustrophobia. Minnie is already there with Yeti and Marduk anyway, and Sabrina said she feels much safer with everyone around.

It's a long day of classes after that, and I look for Scythe, my anima whining sappily for him, but he doesn't attend. Xander comes to Self-Awareness class and sits at his regular table with a group of wolves and Yeti.

"What are you looking at?" he suddenly says rudely to me.

I startle because he hadn't even been looking at me, but straight ahead to where Minnie was writing the instructions for her group session. Today was the day of her presentation and she'd chosen colouring therapy as her project.

"I was just wondering what you were listening to today," I say smoothly. "You seem like you'd be in the mood for opera. Something dramatic like that."

"Ooh, like Phantom of the Opera?" Connor asks boldly. "I love that movie."

"It could be a Buddhist prayer chant," Stacey whisper-yells at me. "It's good for anger management. My grandma used to listen to them all the time."

"No," I say, taking this very seriously as I consider our options. "It's gotta be something with a real kick to it. Like?—"

The stapled colouring book set before me by Minnie just minutes ago, goes up in flames. We all cry out before Savage leans over and smartly slams his flat palm over it, snuffing it out.

"Savage!" I cry. "Are you burned?"

He turns over his palm, showing me a giant red welt.

I gasp, grabbing his wrist and immediately directing my healing power into the injured tissue.

Savage sighs wistfully, and when I glance at him, he's propped up his head on a fist and is gazing at me with a goofy smile. "I knew you'd fix it for me, regina. Like you fixed my heart."

Raquel and Connor snort with laughter while I hide the flush in my cheeks.

After I'm done, Minnie hands me a new colouring book and we begin our session. Savage takes to it with gusto, loudly declaring that Scythe really should be here because there was a whole page of sea creatures in the booklet. We all snigger as we watch Xander pick up a black pencil and angrily scribble over the page full of fairies and toadstools.

After class, Savage and I sit on the soft grass at the back of the school where we start on the spelling book specially made for wolves learning to write.

"I know most of my alphabet but miss some of the letters in the middle," he says, concentrating on the tiny wombat in his arms that he's dubbed ‘Toastie', because he'd tried to grab the ham and cheese toastie Savage had been eating at lunch.

He holds Toastie on his back, with his private parts angled towards the grass. In one hand, he has a wet wipe and is tickling the joey to make him pee. He has to do this multiple times a day to simulate what its mother would do in the wild so he won't pee in his pouch.

"Go on then," I instruct. "Recite it out loud and then we'll trace it in the— Argh!" I jump to the side, narrowly avoiding the stream of urine being shot at me.

"Almost got you," Savage chuckles, before kissing Toastie on the head and placing him back into the sack around his neck.

I shake my head and we sit down and get to work. Savage is always a step ahead, however, and refuses to do anything unless I agree to give him a kiss when he's successful.

After dinner, I lie on the couch in our TV room with Eugene and video chat with my animas before lights out. We're plotting our revenge on Dolores and a strategy to rescue our nimpins. I'm so used to having Henry on my shoulder that it leaves me bereft not to have him. Cherry is still missing, and it's a real shame because Sabrina could have used her help right now. But I have a bad feeling about our little red friend, and I could see the same thought in Minnie's eyes. Savage must have been thinking the same thing this morning, because he gave Sabrina a contraband phone, declaring that she was allowed due to kidnap privileges. She'd snatched up the phone, immediately planning what rhinestones she was going to hot glue gun onto a custom case.

Once I bid my friends goodnight and hang up, I kiss Eugene goodnight on his head frills and head to the bedroom. The guys had gone to the gym after dinner, but Scythe and Xander's beds in the front bedroom are still empty. The bedroom I share with Savage and Lyle, with its gigantic pack-bed, lies in shadowy darkness in the room beyond. I tiptoe in, and when my eyes adjust to the darkness, I stop dead.

Scythe is lying with his head on Savage's chest, my wolf's arms holding him tight. Next to him, Lyle is on his stomach, the steady rise and fall of his bare, muscled back telling me he's fast asleep. And on his other side, as if reluctantly there but too tired to be anywhere else, Xander lies shirtless on his back, one arm over his eyes, as if even in sleep he's unimpressed with the world. They must've been so tired after working out they just collapsed into the same bed on instinct.

My chest fills with warmth.

None of them have noticed me enter, all breathing deeply and evenly in sleep. Smiling faintly, I seat myself in the tub chair by the wall where I have a good view of them and pull a blanket over my bare legs. I sit there, resting my head on my propped-up hand and simply stare at them.

Four males that are supposed to be mine. Dangerous, lethal, unhinged males that fate demands I have.

Savage twitches and growls in his sleep and my eyes are drawn to the blood brothers again. What had made Scythe seek this comfort from his brother? The same thing that sent him away after what happened in The Jewel of the Jungle?

Me?

Quite suddenly, tears prickle my eyes as a dark feeling winds its way through my stomach. For the longest time, I felt like an outsider looking into everyone else's lives. An invisible person with no place in society. But the last months made me realise that I do have a place. I have beautiful, strong, kind friends. Savage and Lyle dote on me, declare their love for me on a daily basis, and cater to my every need.

But there are five parts to my soul. And three of those parts do not want me. There is still an entire void in my chest. A cavern where my heart should be.

I whip out my phone and take a picture, then hold the screen to my chest as if I can fill the empty spaces within me with their image.

A shift in the air, a tug at the core of me, makes me open my eyes—only to meet Scythe's intense stare. Through the dark, his light eyes are glowing sapphires. Beautiful and raw. Like power made into crystals.

He takes my breath away every time.

My breath catches, because he raises an arm, the hand stretched out in an offering. In a command. It's so unexpected that I'm stunned for a moment, before a spark of excitement and a shower of relief tunnel down my spine.

He does want me. Or is this something else?

Unravelling myself from the tub chair and setting my phone down, I tentatively make my way to the edge of the bed, wondering how I'm supposed to get in between all these sleeping male bodies.

Scythe moves backward, and Lyle blinks open one amber eye and rolls onto his side, making more space. Scythe moves Savage's arm and I see my spot, climbing over Savage and easing myself down.

I'm nestled between wolf and shark before I look up at Scythe again. I find him watching me, his gaze unreadable. Those eyes have always seen through me. Into me like I'm splayed open for his perusal. It's spine-tingling and on the edge of uncomfortable. But tonight, there is something else in his gaze. From what Savage says, he must remember everything of the night at The Jewel. A night that was wholly unexpected.

Because the Great White shark that I'd met many months ago had made a decision that had almost gotten me executed. Had looked at me without compassion, without any emotion, and had decided that I deserved to be dead.

"You wanted to kill me once," I whisper. "Is that still true? Do you still wish me dead?"