65. Aurelia

Chapter 65

Aurelia

T hat afternoon, Scythe stalks into the pack dorms where I'm spending time with Minnie and asks to see me privately.

My heart pounds as it always does when he fixes his gaze upon me.

"I've instructed Theresa to take Sabrina to The Lily Sanctuary, with Blade and Blair as a security escort. Have you heard of it?"

"Of course," I blurt out. Everyone knows about The Lily Sanctuary. It's the state's premier mental health facility for animalia. A state-of-the-art complex with the best health professionals and rehabilitation programs. There was huge buzz about it when it was first built less than a year ago.

He nods. "It's…mine."

"Pardon?" I choke.

An unexpected, very male smirk just manages to curve the edges of his perfect mouth. I feel so lucky that I get to see it. "Yes, ma'am."

If he calls me ma'am again I might come. And because my brain is truly frazzled, I repeat my words in staccato like a complete idiot. "It's. Yours?"

"I want to show you what I built. Would that be okay?"

He wants to show me what he built. By the ever-loving gods. The Lily Sanctuary. He'd named it after his mother. Why didn't I pick up on that before?

"Yes!" I blurt out loudly. Clearing my throat, I say a much quieter, "Yes."

He pretends not to notice me losing it. "Sabrina will leave by car this evening, but I want you on dragon-back in half an hour."

Every word out of his mouth is like honey to my eardrums. I try not to look like I'm melting onto the floor when I nod and we head back to our suite to get warm clothes.

After dark, we meet on the roof of the animus dorms. After making us wait yet again, Xander stalks up there like a beast ready for murder. Smoke streams from his nostrils as he explodes into his dragon-form, making me jump back in fright. Scythe shoulders a backpack as he helps me up the wooden ladder to Xander's back, before setting it aside and disappearing. I panic for a moment before feeling a cold wave of energy behind me as he walks up Xander's back and settles himself behind me. Wrapping his arms around my upper stomach, just under the underwire of my bra, he pulls me close.

"Sleep if you need to," he says into my ear.

My toes curl from the tingles wracking my body. From the need. "Not a chance. I like seeing the v?—"

Xander leaps up into the air in powerful thrust and my sentence ends in a blood-curdling scream. It's only once we soar through the protective dome and level out that I can breathe again.

"Asshole!" I scream, slapping his hard, black scales and, of course, hurting my hand in the process.

And he probably didn't even notice.

Scythe leans his chin lightly on the crown of my head and it suddenly makes everything seem better.

Two hours later, I'm admiring the lights of the city when The Lily Sanctuary comes into view. It's the size of a big hospital: a complex with multiple levels, wings, and a helipad painted with a black dragon. Red and blue flashing lights mark ambulances sitting stationary at one of the entrances.

So they even have an emergency department.

It's even more impressive seeing it in person. Xander lands on the helipad with what I think is an unnecessary rough thud and shake. This time, there's no Lyle to levitate me down, and I don't yet trust my telekinesis to safely move my entire body. Scythe easily crawls around me and slides down Xander's leg, fireman style. He turns around and holds his arms out.

"Come on, Aurelia."

"What do you mean?" I squeak.

"Jump."

"Not a chance."

"One," Xander says threateningly. "Two."

Without another thought, I throw myself at Scythe feet first. He catches me around the waist with a grunt. Xander shifts a moment later, his naked, towering form stalking towards us, glowing eyes flashing. Under the harsh lights of the helipad, with those rippling muscles, the full sleeve tribal dragon tattoo on his arm, Xander looks like some immortal dragon god. Or perhaps a modern god with his headphones still in place and the dangling black cross earring that seems to shift with him by some dragon magic I'll never understand.

Scythe puts me on the concrete and I straighten my jacket and smooth down my hair while Xander gets dressed in a professional shirt, business pants, vest, and business jacket.

They lead me to an elevator and we head down multiple floors. Xander leaves us on an upper floor, stalking out without so much as a goodbye.

The elevator doors slide closed and we continue downward.

"Where's he going?" I ask.

"Xander is the CFO of The Lily Sanctuary. He has a few things to take care of."

"I didn't think he had the temperament for that sort of thing," I say under my breath.

A whisper of a smile curves his lips. He seems to be doing that lately. "You're more alike than you know. That's why you trigger each other so much."

"What do you mean by that?" I ask, crossing my arms.

His eyes roam my face until the elevator stops on level two and he leads me out. The corridor is empty at this time of the evening, the soft warm lights so unlike regular harsh hospital lighting. He's paid attention to every detail.

"I knew you'd been seeing our memories from the beginning, Aurelia. I didn't know if it was from your Boneweaver side or serpent side, but I knew."

I stop dead in my tracks. "How?"

Scythe shrugs his broad shoulders. "I could sense it in your auric field."

"You see auras?"

"Yes. You probably could too."

Now that I'd shifted into a shark. But I hadn't seen something like that come up yet. "It's from my serpent side," I say quietly. "Serpents can see their mates' memories and sometimes even visions from the present. It's not something we control."

He exhales slowly. "There are some uncomfortable memories there. Things that no one should have to see. I'm sorry if?—"

"I haven't seen anything like that," I say quickly. I briefly describe the memories I'd seen from him, the one about his mother, going to The Jewel of the Jungle for the first time, his first meeting with Marduk.

He visibly relaxes. I understand what he doesn't want me to see and why, and it makes the backs of my eyes burn to think about it.

Scythe gestures to a map of the complex on the wall next to the elevator.

"Originally, this place was going to be just for marine shifters stuck here away from home, but the idea grew into something bigger. We treat all shifters now, and we've just built the human wing. They're separated into wards that focus on treatments specific to their illness. Sabrina will stay in the Starfish unit."

Starfishes can grow new limbs. I nod, taking this all in. The amount of work that must have gone into planning a place like this. Pride wells in my chest. My mate built this. But one thing catches my attention. "Is that how you see it? The ocean is your home?"

He graces me with a curve of his lips just enough to be called a smile. "I feel at peace there. Is that not a place you would call home?"

"And you named this after your mother."

"I did," he says softly. "The first unit we built was more of a safehouse for beasts rescued from sex trafficking and breeding rings." He points to another spot on the map. "We call it the Hope unit now."

My heart squeezes.

He'd built a place he wished he'd had for himself. A place that now others like him could use as a place of comfort to get the help they desperately need.

Scythe turns and looks at me as if he wants to say something. My heart leaps into my throat. Then he shakes his head and offers me a hand.

Tentatively, I take it.

His hand is cool and so much bigger than mine. I wrap my fingers around it and we walk down the corridor in silence until we come to a set of glass doors. A sign above it declares ‘Seashell Ward' in cutesy blue bubble letters.

Scythe presses a silver button by the door. A person on the other side greets him by name.

"I'm here for a short visit."

"Of course, of course, Mr Kharkouros."

The doors swing open.

We're greeted by a handmade, colourful banner that is mounted to the wall, stretching out on either side. Illustrations made by many different hands in texts and crayon depict sea life, ocean waves, and every so often there are words written in the marine language.

We enter and turn right down another corridor painted a cheery blue, but this one has bedrooms at large intervals because each one holds a ten-foot-long inset pool. The smell of saltwater fills the air as we walk past these rooms and come to an open area where an Olympic-sized pool fills most of the space. There's a nurses' desk on one side and couches, and tables and chairs on the other. A woman in pastel rainbow scrubs hurries to greet us.

"It's almost bedtime, Mr Kharkorous, but?—

"I've finished my book, sir!" comes a male shout from the couches.

A tall, silver-haired man in his thirties, wearing only striped blue pyjama bottoms and a towel around his neck, strides over with a wad of seaweed.

The nurse steps to the side to observe as the marine-shifter stops before us. He beams, showing two rows of pointed teeth. Each of his colourless eyes are focused in opposite directions. It makes me dizzy to look at him.

"I finished my book," the man repeats, holding out his wad of seaweed.

"Have you now?" Scythe says, accepting the wet slimy thing.

He nods proudly as Scythe leafs through the seaweed like it's a book. "Have you got a title?"

Spreading his hands through the air in an invisible billboard, he says, "A Study in Madness."

"I like it." Scythe hands the seaweed back.

He accepts it graciously before saying, "You brought your regina!"

"Please meet Aurelia. I'm showing her around."

The animus inclines his head. "My name was not meant to be uttered in this world," he says earnestly. "But land-dwellers are permitted to call me Hammer."

A hammerhead shark?

"Pleased to meet you, Hammer." I smile.

"The pleasure is mine, Lady Boneweaver. Oh yes," he says when my smile falters a little, "we get the news here!"

A tiny movement rustles the hair hanging by his left shoulder. I stare at the ball of pink fluff that pokes his head out, liquid black eyes staring curiously.

"We've been trialling the nimpins with some of the residents," Scythe says. "I got the idea after I saw how Henry was with you."

"You have a nimpin?" Hammer asks excitedly, taking his pink fluffball into his hands. "Baked Bean is very helpful, and she can even swim!"

I chuckle at the name. "I do. Henry is one of my best friends. He loves having baths."

Hammer beams, stroking Baked Bean's head with a finger. "I must part from him, though. I have to return to my ocean home and he will drown there."

"Time for bed!" The nurse returns, carrying a glass of water and a paper cup of tablets.

"My brine!" Hammer says, licking his lips and accepting them. "Goodbye, sir. Goodbye, Lady Boneweaver."

We bid them goodbye as the nurse guides Hammer down another corridor of rooms.

"Why is he here?" I ask quietly. "Why do some of them choose to be on land?"

"Hammer was reared in captivity," Scythe says, taking my hand again. "That is why he speaks so well. He always comes back. And when he does, he inevitably gets confused and thinks tap water is plotting against him and runs back to the sea. Paranoia and delusions are a key part of advanced land psychosis. It's a cycle he may never break from. We are all born on land, after all. And after being a human child, it can be very confusing to suddenly develop a need to be in water all the time. We have an extensive children's unit to help with orphaned hatchlings and family units if the parents are willing to stay."

"Did you ever find out how your parents met?" I ask.

"My mother was hardly ever lucid and my father never spoke on it. But from what I gather, she came onto land looking for him."

It makes me feel sick, knowing that she'd sought him out on primitive instinct and he'd taken complete advantage of her.

"She could have left at any time," Scythe says quietly. "It took me a while to realise that she didn't stay for her rex. She stayed for me."

There is still guilt in his voice. It's subtle, but I pick it up like a current beneath the water. "She loved you," I say.

"I wish she hadn't," he says. "She shouldn't have hurt herself just to be near me."

I swallow through a thick throat. "I doubt she regrets it."

"You don't know that, Aurelia," he says, as if it's final.

We leave the unit, heading down another series of corridors as Scythe changes the subject, telling me more about the programs here.

"Celeste has been donating phoenix tears, and we've been testing it as a treatment for complex PTSD and other severe mental health conditions. I thought since it healed the body so well, it might heal the mind too."

"Like land psychosis?"

He pauses. "Land psychosis is like a cancer that festers the longer it plagues a beast. There is no treatment."

"Yet," I say firmly.

Scythe pulls me to a stop, his eyes searing me, melding me to the spot as he speaks urgently, his grip on my elbow firm. "People like Hammer, like me, are not made for this world, Aurelia. My heart beats for something it cannot reach. Our souls yearn for something that's so close and yet very distant. Our eyes are too bright. We are too sensitive above water. Sometimes…we can't even find solace in one another."

The backs of my eyes burn more fiercely with every impassioned word he speaks. He squeezes my arm. It doesn't hurt, but I get that he needs me to understand what he's saying.

I can't accept it. I want to shake him and tell him he's wrong. I want him to kiss me and tell me it's going to be okay. That all of us will be together forever.

"Why did you bring me here, Scythe?" I ask quietly.

A muscle in his jaw feathers out. "I need you to know," he says slowly, "that I wasn't raised to be honest or decent, but a part of me is good. It might be a small part, but…it's there. It's the part that began all of this." The part of him that came from his mother. That's what he means. The part of him that is good is the same part that wants to take him away from me. That's the part he cannot lose. His eyes bore into mine, the ice chips glowing. I try to blink away my rising emotion. It only makes him stare at me even more deeply. Like he finds my tears fascinating.

"Why are you crying, Aurelia?" he murmurs.

I angrily wipe at an errant tear. "I don't even know."

"Aurelia, I can never be yours. We cannot. Not in this life."

"No," I whisper, gripping his shirt in a fist. He'd only brought me here to convince me we couldn't be together?

"You said it yourself," he whispers, placing a hand over mine. "You said you will never be safe with me."

Words come to me echoing through time. In our first months at the academy when I'd hardly spoken to him at all and he'd threatened Minnie. He'd remembered those words. Kept them in his heart like a poison.

"No, I didn't mean— I didn't know?—"

"You still don't know,Aurelia." He shakes me. "You can't know."