55. Xander

Chapter 55

Xander

T here is an inferno of thoughts in my mind as I shoot through the cold night air, letting my dragon completely steer us. All I know is that I have to get away from Serpent Spawn and the fetid energy she gives off like a malodorous, carnivorous flower that lures in prey with a pretty scent then destroys them.

If I'm not fucking careful, that's exactly what she'll do to me. That's why my wing beats lead to the place that's furthest away from her.

Drakos Estate is easily five times as big as Animus Academy. Dragon estates are always huge, to accommodate all the dragon bodies and associated hiding places comfortably, and my father's is the biggest in the country. It has the hollow feel of a creature wanting to swallow you up and spit out the bones. An old beast, broody at best, vicious at worst.

The only reason I'm able to sneak under the air-protections around the estate is because despite my parents banishing me, my sister did not. And whatever my father thinks about females, the ancient laws of our kind, and hence the estate itself, allows me entry.

I shift into my human form as I reach the top floor bedroom, leaping in through the open window with the ease of many years of practice. I'm almost too big for it now, and we'd learned the hard way that I need both stained-glass window shutters open, but my entry is blessedly smooth and I land in a crouch on the plush navy blue carpet.

Straightening, I see my sister in her pink and white polka dot pyjamas, sitting on the loveseat of the big room, an e-reader in her hand. She smells like the expensive skincare she uses on her face and the Argan oil in her long, pin-straight, black hair.

Her voice is stern. "You shouldn't be here, brother."

My heart squeezes as I open her ancient wooden wardrobe and dress with the clothes I have stashed away. Not wanted here either . "I wanted to see you. And the hatchlings."

"They're asleep."

"I know. I just…" Wanted to see their innocent, peaceful faces as they sleep. Wanted to see something pure and joyful. Innocent.

My sister's lovely, moon-like face softens. "Oh Xander." She strides towards me, her arms out as if to embrace me.

But I step out of reach. "He'll scent me on you."

She sniffs the air around me, her expression creasing into a severe frown. "You smell like…"

A funeral pyre. "I know."

"What happened? It's not one of your?—"

"Don't say it, not here."

She sighs.

I lean against the window frame. "Tell me something good. Something normal."

After shooting me a disappointed look, she speaks of little, normal things. How the kids are. That Emmerson is excellent in maths, that Delilah is painting awful portraits of the entire family. I close my eyes and soak it all in. Letting the normalcy of it all centre my nervous system, calm my mind, settle my irritable dragon down.

In the room next door, the two tiny, tiny heartbeats drum in the slow, steady beat of untroubled sleep. Breath breezes into their tiny lungs, their abdomens digest what was likely a delicious three course dinner. It's just how it should be. Just how I'll make sure it'll always be.

Just when I think I'm finally calm, my sister drops a bomb, carried on a quiet voice.

"I've been researching about her."

My eyes snap open and my voice is sharper than I intend. "Why?"

She gives me a look that says watch it, buddy, and I roll my shoulders and hang my head back, stretching out the sore tendons of my neck. I say in a much gentler voice, "Why, Sissy?"

I can hear her smile as she lights an old-fashioned lantern with a finger flame. "Because I was interested. Because everyone is interested in the Boneweaver, and she is your?—"

I'm across the room in a heartbeat, my hand pressed over her mouth, stifling her words. She lets out a low growl and I drop my hand, backing away immediately.

"I'm sorry," I say, bowing low. "You know I'm sorry."

"It's alright," she says, placing a hand on my arm. "You know I take an academic interest in such things. And our vault is full of old texts and scrolls that no one else has access to."

My ears perk up at that.

Dragons are hoarders of valuable things, and that means not only jewels and gold, but knowledge as well. There are huge, ancient tomes and scrolls locked away in the Drakos underground library.

If there was going to be any information about the weaknesses of Boneweavers, it would be in there. Why didn't I think of this before?

You know why, a low, guttural voice says in my head.

Fuck off, I retort.

My sister picks up the lantern by the ornate gold handle. "Come on, everyone's fast asleep."

I focus my ear towards the rest of the mansion. I'm met with steady breaths and slow heartbeats of sleep. We head out into the marbled corridor. I haven't been into the wider mansion for years, only coming to visit Sissy's room or the adjoining hatchling's nursery.

Nothing has changed.

Everything is cold, calculated elegance, straight lines and smooth surfaces. Sculptures of our forefathers in their dragon forms line the wide corridors, their names written on gold plaques beneath.

And yet this was home.

My sister runs her hand along the gold scrolling metalwork of the railing that stands between us and the drop to the first floor below. As a child, I'd leap over the railing and swing onto the lower floor, instead of simply walking down the grand staircase just ahead.

My mother would scold me, but my father would smile and say that I needed to be strong. That I needed to learn to fall and get up again.

None of that mattered when my mating mark appeared.

We make haste towards the entrance to the underground archives, which is a narrow stone staircase that spirals straight down. The air gets progressively colder and drier, perfect conditions for delicate manuscripts. I used to come down here all the time, when I sought the quiet, but coming down here now gives me a narrow sort of twisting feeling, like I'm being wrung out by giant hands. Sissy leads me down the familiar stone corridors by the light of the lantern. There are no automatic sconces permitted down here.

I'd never been scared playing here as a child, but I get an eerie feeling from the place now, as if the shadows playing on the walls are ghosts and the spluttering of the lantern light are spooky protestations to my presence.

Perhaps Scythe's land psychosis is catching. Maybe I'm finally losing my mind.

"Here." Sissy turns into a room with long shelves that tower up to the high ceiling. Setting the lantern on the side table, she pulls out the chair and sits in it, shifting heavy tomes and shoving aside piles of yellowed parchment that wait there.

"Two kids, a full-time job, and you still have time to haunt the family archives?" I tease.

"Asshat. If it concerns you, then I do . Father was curious about her powers and I wanted to make sure I got the info first. Some are in a different language, which appears to be the realm the Boneweavers originated from, but there's a couple in English that seem to be either translations or original texts written when there were more of them about.

"Here's the one. I thought it was really interesting." She pulls out a tome that looks like it's been bound with animal skin. The pages are yellowed as she carefully leafs through the pages. "Here, it says that the Boneweavers were originally a patriarchal inheritance. So a child could only be a Boneweaver if their father was one. But in one of the family trees, a Boneweaver male was mated to a particularly powerful female sorceress. There was magical genetic mumbo jumbo, and it switched to a matriarchal inheritance. That's Aurelia's line. It's why Mace Naga never imagined his daughter would inherit the gene. Must've been a nasty shock for the old cobra. Losing his serpent heir like that."

I grunt. So her male children wouldn't be Boneweavers. They would be whatever order their father was. That's what Mace wanted to breed her for. Her male children. Male snakes. That was the missing piece of Scythe's puzzle.

"Anyway," she continues, "Dad's been trying to figure out how powerful she is, because it looks like her mother wasn't up to all that much. She might have had weaker gene expression or something."

I grunt again. "But in theory, if a Boneweaver were, say, more powerful than us , would there be a way to siphon her power down? Do they have weaknesses? What's their kryptonite?"

She sits on the edge of the chair, deep in thought. "No kryptonite as such. Although, there was mention of the need for some Boneweavers to use a ‘vayashi'."

"What's that?"

"It's a term used to refer to the mate or mates of a particularly powerful beast who needs to offload explosive power. It's where power-sharing originated from. Now we do it as a form of bonding, but really powerful mythic shifters couldn't hold all that power in a human body, so their mates helped take the burden off so they wouldn't explode and cause other problems."

"Other problems?"

"Like your powers setting off randomly when you're feeling strong emotion like anger, or sadness."

Great. So her weakness was that she could be so powerful she'd fuck everyone else up by mistake.

"But anyway, I suppose the council could mandate her to offload, if need be."

"Have you told anyone else this?"

"What?" She straightens, affronted. "Of course not. You know I wouldn't mention this stuff to Father. He'd probably try to use it against you in some way."

Relief staunches my irritation, though I don't even understand why. "You're right, he would."

Booted footsteps approach from a distance. Slow, deliberate. Predatory.

My heart seizes. Sissy's lips are pressed together in guilt. I turn my eyes to look at her aura, something I don't normally do with her. A fading, grey spot marks the pale blue field.

I'm not crazy after all. Just a complete idiot who's walked right into a trap.

"You planned this." Hurt drips from my voice like blood. "How could you?"

She turns tear-filled, pleading eyes towards me. "Just speak with him, Xander. Please. Just… Just hear what he has to say."

"Are you kidding me?" I hiss. "What could he possibly want to say to me that doesn't involve wishing my slow and painful death?"

"Please," she pleads again, collecting the tomes together and throwing a dusty cloth over them. She stands and grips my arm, a light in her dark eyes blazing. "Xander. Do not make me beg."

Her words hit home. I made a promise to her that she would never beg at the hands of a male. Ever.

I despise that she's using this against me now, but I gave her my word and I live by that. Every muscle in my body commands me to move, to get the fuck out of this godforsaken place and fly through the night back to my brothers. Instead, I will myself into stone.

The footsteps get closer. That heartbeat and breath are steady, and it reminds me to calm my own. I cannot look weak here. I cannot look anything other than arrogant, confident, and predatory.

His power pulses in a contained wave of heat around him, the picture of courtly draconic etiquette. Etiquette I've had drummed into me since I was a child. I school my own power, as having been the only dragon at Animus for the past half a year, I haven't needed to check myself.

Turning, I rise, spreading my bare feet apart to meet the man who took everything from me. And as it stands, I'm trespassing on his estate, a heinous crime for our kind.

Drakos males have always been rexes, a male centre of a pack. It's our role to propagate the line, and we can do that by having multiple females. By planting our seed in multiple women. By having a regina, by sharing a central female mate—a non-dragon, at that—I'm not only dishonouring my bloodline, I'm ending it.

There is no offence worse than that.

My father steps into the room, dwarfing the wide doorway. His shoulders are broad, his frame holding enough muscle to be imposing to any other male. Long black hair is loose, separated to drape on either side of his shoulders, telling me he was about to go to bed. He wears the elegant long black robe of our forefathers. The emerald green silk trim is studded with diamonds and emeralds. When he'd banished me, I'd had to look up at him, but now we stand eye to eye.

I watch him note that change. Along with every other detail of my person.

His tone is flat, but it still manages to strike me in the gut. "You are trespassing."

"I have permission," I say curtly, glancing to my side to indicate my sister.

He huffs dismissively through his nose. The misogynistic prick doesn't think she counts. My father regards me, his jaw set, jet-black eyes glittering.

"Well? What does the noble Lord Drakos have to say?"

He steps forward. "You can have what you want, Xander," he says, surprisingly gently. "You can have the privilege of returning to this family. Of bearing the sigil of our house, of being heir to the Drakos seat. Of freely seeing your sister and niece and nephew. Of being welcomed into a loving home. Of security and love."

With each passing sentence, my heart thuds like a stampeding dragon and we all hear it.

"And what," I grind out, "do I have to do in return for all of this?"

He tilts his chin upward and narrows his eyes. "You know exactly what you have to do."