“How did you know to look for her here, anyway?” Leon asked, his fingers painting a pattern against my shoulder.
“The student in question said that the two of you were involved and as we had no home address on file for Miss Callisto, we took a punt,” Dubeck explained.
“Well, no need to fret,” Marie said happily as she bustled into the room with a tray full of pastries and Latisha on her heels with a pot of coffee. “Leonidas spent the entire night claiming his mate. You can ask any of the servants. The two of them were here all night long causing quite the ruckus.”
“Yes, he really does have a lot of stamina,” Latisha cooed proudly and I about died of embarrassment. Sure, sex was natural and all but hearing your man’s mothers praising his performance was definitely not something I wanted to listen to.
“By the stars, Moms, stop with the TMI,” Leon groaned.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, son,” Reginald added dismissively. “Everyone knows a true Lion can satisfy his woman like that.”
“All of his women,” Safira added with a lusty smile aimed her husband’s way as she started laying out cups.
“Please stop, I’m going to puke,” Leon groaned.
“On that note, have you done your monthly contraception spells?” Safira asked, looking at me with a smile that said she wouldn’t mind if we hadn’t even though I was still currently being interviewed by the cops.
Reginald chuckled. “Well if they haven’t then I’m willing to bet we’ll have a cub on the way after all of that-”
“This is fast going from one of the best days of my life to the worst,” Leon said, pressing his hands over his ears.
Roary’s nose was wrinkled too and I didn’t know whether to laugh or pray for the sofa cushions to swallow me whole.
“So, what you’re saying is that you were otherwise occupied all night last night?” Carver asked, studying his Atlas instead of me as he waited for my answer.
“Half of the morning too,” Latisha added, patting Leon’s head like she was proud of the efforts he’d put in and Roary groaned as Leon buried his head against my neck and I laughed with my cheeks flushing.
“Erm, yeah, I was here with Leon last night,” I confirmed for the agents as Marie began handing out coffee. She didn’t offer any to the FIB agents and they were beginning to look decidedly uncomfortable as the Lions went about their business, Safira perching in Reginald’s lap to hand feed him.
“Okay then. Well, we will have to assume that it was nothing more than the hallucinations of yet another Blazer,” Cutter sighed as he locked his Atlas and pushed to his feet. “Sorry to have wasted your time.”
“Don’t forget to register your mate status before the end of the month,” Dubeck added and I nodded casually as Latisha gave the boys either side of me their own plates of food.
“Thanks for popping by,” I said, tossing them a salute as Marie walked them out.
Roary chuckled as they headed away, leaning back and pushing a pastry into his mouth. Apparently Lionesses grabbed their own plates, but I wasn’t going to let them push me into that subservient role without a fight.
I waited until Roary’s full attention was on his food then snatched a pastry from his plate with a spurt of Vampire speed, shoving it into my mouth just as he growled in frustration.
He lunged at me like he planned on grabbing it back out of my mouth and Leon snarled too as he lurched forward to intercept him.
I laughed as I ended up pinned between the two brothers, wriggling away as they started wrestling and darting around them to grab the pastries from both of their plates. By the time they stopped and looked around at me again, I was sitting cross legged on top of the coffee table, sucking the last crumb from my finger with a smirk of triumph.
They both cursed me good naturedly and Reginald purred as he smiled at me.
“Watch out boys,” he said as he leaned back in his chair. “I think we’ve just let a Lion into the pride instead of a Lioness and if we’re not careful, she’ll be crowning herself king before we know it.”
I slid through a puddle of blood, my scales rippling with hungry energy as I slowly circled the chair at the centre of the concrete basement I was in. My fangs dripped with venom, the bitterness trailing over my tongue. Like this, my senses were on high alert. Every sound, every smell, every scream. It all ran through my body like a rolling tide. I fed on the pain in the air, and within it, I hunted for peace.
Scarlett stood in front of the cowering Oscura asshole tied to the chair at the heart of the room. He was a traitor to his own people, a people I despised, but I despised nothing more than traitors. He was Felix's man now instead of Inferno’s. And that meant he could hold the answer I so desperately craved.
"You're going to regret not answering me," Scarlett said, twisting an ice blade between her fingers.
The man's eyes moved to me in the shadows and a whimper escaped him as I curled around the walls, my body the width of a small car. Scarlett turned towards the door just as my tail slid past it and I gave her room to leave.
"Ryder enjoys his meal slowly." She exited, shutting the door as the man screamed and I let my body grow even bigger until I was coiled tightly around his chair.
"P-please, I d-don't know where M-Mariella is," he begged. “D-don’t kill me.”
I lifted my head, gazing down at him as my tongue flicked out and I tasted his fear followed by the stench of urine as he pissed himself. I dropped a little lower until my nose almost touched his face and he wailed like a new-born baby. It almost made me feel less dead inside. But not quite.
"Felix knows!" he cried. "H-he visits her e-every S-Sunday."
I opened my mouth and venom dripped from my fangs onto his shoulder. He screamed in agony as it burned through his clothes and left a gaping welt in his arm. I drank in his pain, letting it sink deep into my body and fill me with power. We'd drained this motherfucker good before we took him, his magic long gone. But even if he tried to fight now, it would be far too late. I had him in my grip. He was my prey, nothing but a mouse in the coils of a snake. And nothing he said would save him from his fate.
"He takes his B-Beta with h-him sometimes," he stumbled over his words, fear written into every inch of his features. "Salvatore Oscura."
I paused, committing that name to memory as my body coiled tighter around his chair, crushing his legs in place and making him wince. I tightened further until something popped and he wailed to the heavens to save him.
"That's a-all I know. I s-swear it on every star in the s-sky," he begged.
He fell into my eyes and I captured him in a hypnosis of me standing in front of him as a man, dripping in blood and my mouth twisted in a sneer. I leaned in close in his mind and whispered, "Then you're not worth a single aura to me anymore."
I released him from the hypnosis and he screamed bloody murder as I lunged at him, taking his whole head into my mouth and slicing my fangs through flesh and bone. He fell silent in an instant and my reserves stopped swelling as he had no pain left to give. I didn't eat a single part of him, leaving his mangled body in the basement to be chopped into ten pieces and left somewhere for Felix to find. I didn't eat grubby little men who pissed themselves in death. And fuck if I wanted to spend a few more wasted hours in my Order form digesting that rat.
I shifted back into my Fae form, striding naked to the door and tugging it open. My clothes were hanging on the back of it and I pulled on the jeans and white shirt, staining it red with the blood coating my body. I headed upstairs into The Rusty Nail where over half the Brotherhood were drinking and chatting. Some seemed surprised to see me and I guessed that was because I usually tore my enemies apart piece by piece. But not tonight, I wasn’t in the mood. In fact, I hadn’t been in the mood for anything since the stars had bound Elise to another Fae. A fucking dipshit of a Fae.
Scarlett was behind the bar, perched on a stool, the blood now cleaned from her skin. She idly ran her thumb over the Scorpio tattoo on her
cheek. Her twin brother had had a matching one. And whenever she touched it like that, I knew she was missing him because I could feel her loss over him. He'd died a few years back in a Lunar-Oscura gang fight and a need for vengeance now lived in her like a demon. She’d gutted the woman responsible for his death, but she wouldn’t be satisfied until every Oscura in the city lay dead in ten pieces.
I hadn't slept a wink since I'd left Aurora Academy behind. It had been two days and I’d finally headed out on this job to sate the rage in me. My magic reserves were overflowing with all the pain I'd swallowed tonight. And most of it was mine. Elise had left a gaping wound in my chest, carved out what little there was of my heart and eaten it raw. Fuck her. And fuck that fucking Lion.
"Salvatore Oscura is our next mark," I told Scarlett as I approached. "He's Felix's Beta, he visits Mariella with him sometimes."
She nodded, considering that. "I'll start laying plans to find out his routine. Whenever he leaves his pack, we’ll get him. You should get some rest for now."
I almost refused, but I wanted to be alone anyway. Not that that meant I was going to get any sleep tonight. I grunted, heading past the bar and upstairs to the few rooms there, heading to the end of the corridor and pushing into the one reserved for me. It was as empty, cold and unwelcoming as I was, so it felt just like fucking home.
I pushed the door shut and dropped down onto the king size bed at the centre of it, kicking off my shoes and staring up at the blank ceiling. I wanted to detach myself from all emotions, slip into the most hollow place inside me and thrive there in the dark. Return to the two feelings I knew how to deal with. Pain and lust. It was how I'd coped with life for so long. Since Mariella. Since before I'd Emerged into my Order form and the whole world had learned to fear me.
I was a weapon given flesh, a leader carved by torture and death. I'd thought losing my father had broken me, but it had been an Oscura who'd done that. With magic designed to flay and maim. Like a fucking idiot, I'd thought Elise had brought me out of the shadows at long last, I thought she might be an offering from the stars for all the fucked up shit of my past. Something good just for me, to keep. But I shouldn't have been so fucking naive.
My Atlas rang, buzzing against my thigh where it sat in my pocket and I pulled it out in case Scarlett had found a lead already. But it wasn't her name shining on my screen, it was the girl with lilac hair who haunted me awake or asleep. The girl who now belonged to someone else, marked by the stars with silver rings around her eyes. It made my stomach roil and anger flash through me like fire in a pan as I stared at her name.
The call rang out but immediately started up again. I was tempted to throw my Atlas at the wall and watch it shatter before my eyes, but something possessed me to answer on her third attempt to reach me.
I pressed my thumb to speaker phone, my eyes still locked on her name, my upper lip peeling back.
"Ryder?" she asked, a note of desperation in her voice. A voice which was as sultry smooth as butter and even now got my dick jerking to attention.
"What do you want?" I snarled.
"I just want to talk. I need to know you're okay."
I blew out a derisive breath. "I'm not a fucking child snivelling in his cot."
"I didn't say-"
"You didn’t have to," I cut her off. "Because I hear it in your voice, the fucking pity. Well I'll do you a favour, baby, and put you out of your misery. I don't have a heart, so if you think you affected it, think again."
"You don't have to act like you're some emotionless rock, Ryder. What we have-"
"We didn't have anything except one night of fucking with an unwelcome guest. Not exactly my idea of fun, Elise. But I guess I really wanted in your panties. And now I’ve had a taste of your mediocre pussy, I’m more than satisfied." I was a living fucking Pinocchio right now, except instead of my nose growing with every lie that left my mouth, it was my damn cock.
"Fuck you," she hissed.
"Fuck you right back," I growled.
"Why won't you drop the bullshit? I didn't ask the stars to do this. I love Leon, but-"
"There is no but. It's done. The stars chose your perfect match," I spat the words.
"You don't understand."
"I do, actually," I said icily. "I understand that you and The Lion King are designed for each other in every way. So go and enjoy your life without me in it, Nala, I never asked to be a part of it anyway."
I hung up and turned the phone off for good measure. Elise could go fuck herself. Or Simba. I didn't give a shit. She had just been a temporary fascination for a while. A distraction. And I'd had her scream my name like I'd wanted, so what more did I need from her anyway?
I stared at the ceiling, the laughter and chatter from the bar carrying to me. I cast a silencing bubble to block them out and the world became so deathly quiet that all I could hear was the slow thud of my black heart. Usually, killing got my adrenaline pumping and made me feel something that wasn't nothing. But tonight, that Oscura had died quicker than I normally would have allowed and I'd walked away from him feeling just as dead inside as I had before I'd entered the basement.
Whether I wanted to admit it or not, losing Elise was affecting me. It was ripping me open like a knife dragging down the centre of my being. I was being slashed and gutted by a thousand twisting blades that lived beneath the surface of my flesh. But no one would ever see, or ever know. Least of all her. I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of knowing that she could cause me this much pain. The kind of pain I despised, the kind I refused to even acknowledge I could feel. Emotional fucking pain.
I slipped a razor blade from my pocket and before I knew it, my thumb was sliced open and the wound throbbed keenly. But it didn't distract from the ache in my chest. Or from the knowledge that I was alone again and always would be. I would quietly ache for her in the dark and eternally hate myself for not being good enough for the stars to consider me for her. I’d punish her, myself, the whole world until this pain went away. But I had the feeling it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And it made me realise that the stars weren’t on my side. I’d done too much bad in my life. Maybe Mariella was payment for all the fucked up shit they knew I’d eventually do. But apparently they weren’t done punishing me yet.
I sat in my favourite rocking chair on the balcony outside our room with a book in my hands and my gaze on the rolling hills that spilled away in the distance as I slowly kicked off of the railing before me. The door to our bedroom was open and the long, white curtains billowed out every time the wind blew just right, hiding me here in my corner of solitude.
Leon was out on a job and Roary was off on his own one too. I’d stayed behind to enjoy the sunshine, lazing in the rocking chair in a little silver bikini which was a part of the new wardrobe the Nights had bought for me. I’d tried protesting to all of the purchases made on my behalf, but it turned out that telling them I didn’t want them to spend their money on me really offended them and I’d eventually caved to peer pressure. My agreement for them to buy ‘a few items’ had turned into a new obsession from Leon’s moms to buy me more clothes than I could ever wear in my lifetime. Ryder would love to see all of it and scoff at the ridiculous waste of money on pointless crap. Of course, I’d probably be able to convince him not to hate it so much if he got to see me in some of it…
Or maybe not.
I’d tried calling him again every few days since the one and only time he’d answered me. I’d messaged too. But I received nothing back. And I got it, I was mated to someone else, the stars had chosen me and Leon to be each other’s perfect match and I’d accepted that fate with all my heart. But it hadn’t just erased my feelings for him or for Dante or Gabriel either.
I’d gotten the same response from Gabriel when I called. The phone just rang out every damn time. Once, he’d cut it off after a single ring. And I knew I should have been more understanding about that, but it fucking hurt. It wasn’t like I’d made this choice. It wasn’t like I deserved t
he blame for the pain they were feeling, or even like I was responsible for it really. And I was hurting too. I hated being away from them and their refusal to even speak to me about it just cut me deeper.
Even Dante hadn’t given me much. He had texted though. A few messages that told me his feelings hadn’t changed, but he needed time to come to terms with what had happened. He wanted space. And I’d respected that. For a whole fucking month I’d respected it.
It wasn’t even like I could say I was unhappy here. Leon’s family had welcomed me into their pride with open arms. I’d fallen into the routines and rituals of their household, bonded with all of them, enjoyed watching Roary and Leon get along better than ever with a push or two from me to encourage them. But when I was alone like this, sitting in the quiet moments between the hustle and bustle of this household, or the thrill of the jobs they ran, or the mind blowing nights I spent in Leon’s arms, I felt...lost, aching, raw and bleeding for the other men who had been doing so much to build me up and help fix the shattered pieces of my soul which had been left behind in the wake of my brother’s death.
I chewed on my lip as I tossed the book aside and pulled my Atlas into my grip from its place on the floor.
Dante had asked for time and it had been a month. A whole month of missing him and hurting for him and...wanting him, even though I knew I shouldn’t. This bond should have taken that need from me. It should have meant that Leon was the only man I ever ached for and although he was more than able to satisfy every part of my soul, I still missed my other kings. I felt like I was bleeding for them and I couldn’t help but want to fix that hurt.
I chewed on my lip as I stared at my call list, the rotating unanswered calls with their names dominating it. Not Dante though. He’d asked for time and I’d given him it. But I couldn’t go another day without at least trying to speak to him again.
Taking a deep breath, I hit call on his number. My pulse hammered as it started to ring. That fucking noise was beginning to give me palpitations. I swear, every time I tried to call one of them, the droning tone of the ring made my gut twist and my blood run cold in anticipation of the pain I knew was coming when they refused to answer.
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