Page 170 of Her Tortured Beasts

“This is inappropriate,” I say flatly to the males. “Get out of my mother’s room.”

Ragnar has a smirk on his face as Francesa slides around me to hurry to my father’s side. Selena is nowhere to be seen, likely having been kicked out to attend to the children this late at night.

Uncle Fabian is the only one with the decency to pretend to look troubled. “You have some nerve appearing here, Xander, after everything you’ve done to betray us.”

“Well, you betrayed me as a child, so I don’t know what you expected.”

“Your father gave you a second chance,” Fabian says.

“A second chance,” I muse, approaching my mother. The yellow glow from the overhead lights makes her skin look sallow. I feel her power, her need to be free and rage. I remove one of my headphones and put it in her ear. But music had never worked for her in the way it has for me and she thrashes again. She’d never managed to find that one thing that calmed her, save for the potions. “Designed by Mace Naga.”

“Damaged,” Francesca spits. “I should have known.”

I crack my neck against my need to kill them all. My fingers crave to tear their flesh to pieces, my teeth needing to taste their blood. The sheets are hot as I pull them up to cover Mother’s legs and preserve her dignity in front of these intruders.

“What happened to your eyes?” Fabian asks.

“I respected you once,” I say in disgust to my father, who, all this time, has remained seething and silent as he glares at me. “But I was a fool to think you were honourable like our ancestors.”

“Our forefathers?” My father rounds on me, his eyes wide and draconian. I step away from the bed. “Our ancestors stole and cheated and killed to possess their wealth. A wealth thatIown now. One that you will never deserve.”

“What do you know ofdeserving?” I ask, stepping in time with him as we stalk each other around the room in an arc. “I never deserved the punishment you gave me, and you know it.”

He scoffs. “You were the son I never wanted. I wanted a leader, someone who the Wild Goddess deemed worthy of his own nest.” Never mind Fabian andhiscrimes. I cast my uncle a disgusted look. Ragnar had been punished by having Selena and the hatchlings removed but Fabian had never been punished for his crimes.

“No one here was deemed worthy of a regina,” I counter. “No one here has so much as a single mate to their name.”

Now it’s Fabian’s turn to snarl as I hit a nerve. So I dig deeper. “So much so that some of us resort to exchanging money forteenagers.”

Father cuts a look at Fabian. “I thought you stopped that nonsense years ago.”

“That’s no one’s business but my own,” Fabian says, clenching his fists. “What a dragon does in the privacy of his own lair is his own?—”

“No,” I say simply. “That’s not how it works at all. Let’s just say I found some transactions of yours, Uncle.” I smirk at him. “And let’s just say they’re being uploaded to the internet this very evening. All your little politician friends will want nothing to do with you.”

It’s then that Fabian and Ragnar join Father in our little dance around the room, their eyes locked onto me as his prey.

“Perhaps,” my father says through clenched teeth, “we deal with this the old-fashioned way.”

“What are you saying, brother?” Fabian asks, not taking his golden eyes off me.

“That this is something I should have done a long time ago.”

Three older Drakos dragons plus Francesca against one.

The odds are not ideal.

Am I resigned to death? I deserve it, yes. Perhaps this is the way my regina gets justice. The only right way to close the crime that is my current existence. I didn’t see this solution before. I look at my father, into those dark eyes. This is the beast who hurt Aurelia. Who tore her leg right off her body and kept it in his cupboard of treasures, hoarding it for his own pleasure.

“No,” I snarl. A sudden draconian rage rises up within me. Possessive, dominant. Vengeful. “You have yet to pay for all the things you’ve done, Flores Drakos. If you intend to kill me, I intend to travel to hell with you by my side.” My snarl is purely vicious. “Two of us will die tonight,” I vow. My eyes flick to Uncle Fabian and Ragnar. “If not four.”

Their eyes flare in reciprocal challenge. The room fills with dragon smoke and flecks of embers stir within it.

Given what I’d done, I should want to die. Except for one crucial thing:

The thought of Aurelia existing when I’m not is a thought I cannot bear. I need to be here watching over her, even if, after allher wanting, she decides to live her life without me. I can’t leave her again. Not ever.

Something booms from the east. Like a plane breaking the sound barrier. Like sacred fire formed into a spear.

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