89. Lyle

Chapter 89

Lyle

I watch Aurelia's every movement as she prowls back and forth in our darkened bedroom. I've asked her multiple times what she's thinking, but she bats my questions away, growling in annoyance. I would have preferred that she raged and tore the dorms down. I would have preferred that she shifted into a lioness and tried to kill someone.

But this cold calculation, because I can't call it anything else, brings a shiver down my spine.

Athena and her pack had too many warring powers to remain together. Scythe and Marduk's investigation had revealed that she and Eko had begun to go mad together and she had to let Eko go. She was never the same after that. The separation, the pining, had made her weak and vulnerable. Mace eventually got frustrated and took control in the most brutal and abusive way.

The separation from one mate made her vulnerable. The death of her second mate made her weak enough to succumb to an attack.

My regina is not the same as her mother. And much as everyone tries not to think about it, Aurelia has her father's genes too. Some parts of her had come from Mace Naga, and I can't help but wonder what type of power that would allow a person as loving, empathetic and compassionate as my regina, to wield.

Something tells me that my regina, the woman who'd shifted into a crocodile and brutally killed the man who'd destroyed my family, would never behave as prey ever again.

When I wake up, Aurelia is no longer cradled in my arms as she was when we eventually slept, and the sheets are cold. I leap out of bed and scout the suite, finding her in the TV room, putting her phone face down in her lap. Eugene is sleeping next to her.

Relief pours through my being. Her face is pale. She barely got any sleep by the way her eyes peer at me.

"They're back." A moment later, a heavy, dragon-sized thud shakes the ceiling. "Without Scythe."

As I'd surmised. "What do you want to do?"

She toys with her phone. "He made his choice, Lyle."

Savage comes stomping into the room, smelling of sweat and salt, his eyes red and puffy. He's naked, which tells me he'd plunged into the ocean to search directly. I let him into the TV room and he throws himself down by Aurelia's feet, resting his head on her lap. Her hands comb through his hair in a soothing motion as our wolf breathes hard, fighting tears of frustration.

"He always said he'd go back, but I didn't think it'd be this soon," Savage says, his voice thick. "I thought he meant when he was really old or something."

Aurelia says nothing, her calm demeanour completely rattling me. Scythe said she was in love with him, and I knew that to be true from what I'd seen and felt from her these past few months.

"What do we do?" Savage asks. His voice is broken. Hollow.

"He made his choice," Aurelia repeats quietly.

Savage cries then, his shoulders shaking as he clings onto our regina's legs. She puts her arms around him and kisses him softly on the forehead, letting him shed his grief.

Eventually, I find myself sitting on her other side, rubbing Savage's back and eventually handing him tissues. The entire time, I watch my regina, monitor her breathing, her heart, the way her power moves in waves around her.

It's then that I realise it, perhaps with a bit of relief: although her outward demeanour gives nothing away, she is furious. So furious that the rest of her body has shut down its expression to give way to it. It pulses in the field closely around her skin and I know what Scythe would say if he were here.

"Watch her."