60. Scythe

Chapter 60

Scythe

A s I shut my laptop for the night, I risk a look at Aurelia. She looks sweet, dozing with her head on Savage's lap where they sit on the TV room lounge in front of me. Tonight, she had finally asked the dark question I could see sticking to her aura like a venomous slime.

She texted Ghoul a single line: Did you know about my mother all these years?

When Ghoul's reply came back, I detected no lie. No.

I knew it to be the truth. In all my short discussions with Ghoul, in the ether or in person, I'd detected no lies in him. Whether his shadows obstructed the truth from me was a different matter.

We could never trust him entirely.

But it quelled Aurelia's discomfort over the matter, and I had to trust that her regina instincts would tell her the real truth. If she was satisfied about this, then so was I, for the moment.

Just from looking at her, no one would guess at the colossal power that lay snaking through her veins. As her mates, we can feel it, and the urge to mingle our powers together grows more and more frustrating as each day passes. My cock aches for release, my balls demand to be drained, and my mind…

The swarm moves steadily around me at all times. As agitated as the rest of my body.

Rip them, shred them, bend them . Break them, bleed them, bind them.

Lyle is in the gym, working out some aggression left over from Damien's intrusion into Aurelia's mind.

I should have broken his beak for it.

Savage glances at me as I shake my head, chastising myself at the aggressive response.

Tiredness makes me rise from my armchair. Makes my feet move towards Aurelia. Makes me ease myself onto the couch, lifting her bare legs and putting them in my lap.

To my dismay, it awakes her, and she opens one eye to glance my way, her aura flashing yellow at her delight to see me.

There are very few beings on this planet who flash yellow when they see me. Sometimes I see it in Lyle's aura these days, and Savage has had it forever. But Aurelia's aura lights up like the sun. It sends a quiver through my tired arteries and gives me a boost of energy.

"What's your plan, Scythe?" she asks sleepily. "About my… Mace Naga?"

I nod in approval at her correction, but I'm seriously distracted because she's adorable when she's sleepy like this. Almost irresistible. She makes me want to pull her away from my brother and cradle her in my arms, inhaling the curious, enthralling scent she has this week. It could never be as maddening as her heat scent, but it's luring me in just the same.

"Never tell anyone your plans, Aurelia," I reply, smoothing a hand over her feet. Her toes curl and I brush a thumb over the pad of her big toe. Connor was painting everyone's nails a few weeks ago in exchange for pocket money, and Aurelia had chosen a deep navy blue.

"Tickles," she murmurs as Savage adoringly strokes her hair, a lopsided grin on his face.

Aurelia was right to worry. Burning down the house of royalty was not done without consequence. But I'd made sure in my handling of this that any retaliation would come my way.

She might have her own walls of protection around the school, but I am the wall between her and the criminal underworld. Every beast and his hunting creatures is after her, and now that Mace has faced an attack, everyone's hackles are up.

Xander is currently flying around the local area, patrolling for any sign of retaliation from Mace.

There has been none just yet, as I predicted.

But next week, Mace will target one of my biggest warehouses and try to pull the rug out from under me. He'll try and recoup his lost assets by stealing them back. But I've already sold that entire warehouse to the falcons, ensuring Mace will have a new enemy once he launches his attack.

Aurelia nods in her sleep as if she understands completely.

I close my eyes and just sit there, stroking Aurelia's foot and tolerating the swarm around me.

Part of me had hoped Aurelia's mother would appear as a ghost to my sight. That she would try and talk to us, impart some crucial information. But she hadn't. Perhaps her time here had already been too long and painful, and she'd gone to the Wild Mother without looking back.

I sigh a long breath and open my eyes against the whispers filling my head.

Not just a swarm, I realise with a jolt, looking at the apparitions circumnavigating the room. They make a clock. A ticking clock.

A dark feeling wraps around my heart like a shroud.

I raise Aurelia's foot to my lips and kiss her toes, then her arch, then her ankle. She squirms in my grip, her eyes drifting open.

She sees a strong mate. Her Great White shark that will destroy anyone that tries to harm her. That tears himself apart every day to devote himself to her and the pack.

Whatever is left of me by the end of this, I don't want her to see it. Not me at my worst. Not me mad and raving, lost in the reality of my own mind. I can't subject her to that.

She will have me completely sane, or not at all.