Page 205 of Psycho Beasts

Chapter 36

Sadie

PUPPETS ON A STRING

We sat around the roaring fireplace in the great room.

Well, everyone faced the fire except for Aran, who sat with her back to the fire and a hoodie pulled over her head.

I’d asked Walter to turn it off, but Aran had snapped at me that she didn’t need to be babied and was fine.

Her face was pale, and her blue curls stuck out of her hood in every direction.

She wasn’t fine.

None of us were.

The fact that we had only tonight to capture the Ortega brothers and eliminate the Black Wolves was a tangible noose above our necks.

Now, after an hour of fruitless brainstorming—while the girls screamed upstairs like they were participating in their own fight club—we were no closer to a plan that sounded effective and feasible.

The whole not being able to shift in this realm, not having weapons, and having to get the attention of what sounded like masochist BDSM-prone alphas with a sex problem seemed impossible.

Cobra said for the millionth time, “I don’t understand why I can’t just use my snake venom to take them out.”

Jax snapped, “We’ve been over this. We’re not risking you getting killed because you shifted in front of people.”

“Technically, it’s not shifting,” Cobra argued back.

“Stop with the semantics.” Jax’s chest rattled with a roar. “No one’s going to care about the technicalities when there’s an enchanted bullet in your brain.”

“Jax’s right,” I said as Xerxes and Ascher nodded in agreement.

I sipped the hot coffee from my cup, which glowed blue with an enchantment that kept the liquid warm.

A sudden thought struck me. “Wait, how is everything in this realm enchanted? I thought it was a fae thing.”

Aran waved her hands dismissively. “Common misconception. A person ‘pure of soul’ who is particularly powerful burns a part of their flesh as a sacrifice to the sun god or moon goddess, and then the gods allow them to channel their will into an object. So any species can create an enchantment.”

I had the sudden urge to fling my coffee cup out of my hand. “That’s fucked up.”

Xerxes shrugged. “In this realm, the entire industry is run by one reclusive family. No one knows how they keep themselves pure, but it’s an extremely difficult endeavor.”

“Yeah, Mother had a man trapped in a palace room. He gave the flesh sacrifice. There was a separate palace department that came up with the uses.” Aran shuddered like she’d been overcome by a phantom chill.

I opened my mouth to ask a million more questions, but I remembered Aran saying she’d helped create enchantments.

From the sadness in her eyes, it hadn’t just been for fun.

“Back to the problem at hand,” Ascher said. “How the fuck are we supposed to catch the attention of the Ortega brothers, somehow get information on the Black Wolves, destroy the latter, and capture the former? All tonight at a BDSM club?”

He raked his hands through his horns and slumped back in his chair.

We were doomed.

Jax dragged his hands over his face tiredly.

“Kill him!” Jinx screamed from the floor above, and then there was a loud crashing noise that sounded like a chandelier had shattered.

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