Page 178 of Her Tortured Beasts

Aurelia takes a step forward.

“No, regina,” Scythe says. “Let his family take him.”

She rumbles with discontent in her chest, but she knows on land she’ll be a liability.

Flores lets out a muffled, almighty sound, but he doesn’t let go of Lady Drakos, instead thumping her onto the earth by the force of his thick neck alone.

So Selena does something that’s considered taboo amongst winged orders and snaps her jaws around her father’s left wing.

Xander immediately lunges for the right.

Together, the siblings dig their claws into the earth andpull.Flores Drakos finally lets his wife go and emits a terrible sound that makes Savage and me plug our ears. Tendons groan, bones crunch, and flesh rips as Xander and his sister pull their father’s wings from their joints.

Lady Drakos, bloody and torn, leaps to her feet. She snarls at the sight of her husband being torn apart before lunging for his exposed ribcage. She angles her head sideways, and just as I realise what she’s doing, blood sprays in a fan, litres and litres of crimson liquid burst from arteries as Lady Drakos tosses the dragon king’s heart to the side.

Flores gurgles on his own blood, his dragon’s head screeching to a sky that won’t help him, before he goes limp and crashes sideways to the ground, dead.

Chapter 101

Xander

Ispit what’s left of my father’s wing onto the ground as my mother roars in triumph. But I’m not done. I rip into my father’s right leg at the thigh, gripping the limb in my jaws and snapping it upwards. I’ve never heard a more satisfying sound than the loud crack of my father’s marrowbone breaking.

Tearing it from his dead body, I hold it in my jaws and search for my regina. She stands behind me, with three of our mates watching over my natal family’s kill. I stalk towards her, my eyes never leaving her bright blue ones, and lay down my father’s hind leg at her beautiful, blue-clawed feet.

If I wasn’t already in love with her, I would have fallen in love again at the sight of her as a dragon. Regal as a queen, brilliant as a living sapphire. Her eyes glisten with unshed emotion as Scythe scrambles to crouch on her head, looking down at my gift with bloodthirsty glee.

But Aurelia doesn’t say anything. Instead, she takes a step towards me, her scent filling my nose, and presses her forehead against mine.

I close my eyes, accepting this gift, listening to her giant heart thumping in time with mine. I feel my ex-brothers, theirpowers surrounding me, their auras pulsing, not with hate, but something else.

My throat suddenly feels like it’s going to close up. I never thought I’d be on the receiving end of anything other than hatred and violence from them.

I want to fall at their feet. I want to cry.

Aurelia’s eyes flick over my shoulder and widen. She cries out and I whirl around just in time to see my mother, now shifted back into human form, crumbling to the ground, her eyes closed, her mouth agape.

Selena, her entire muzzle coated with Ragnar’s blood, whines and reaches our mother, her snout hovering over her bare chest. I too join her, allowing my healing power to flood my mother’s torn body. Chunks of her skin are missing from her torso and legs, her damaged body fighting to keep its life.

Aurelia makes her way over to us, her gait uneven due to her lifting up her right hind leg, but her power is endless as she lets her own healing join our two streams.

My mother’s eyelids flutter open, and despite their golden hues being filled with pain, they crinkle at the edges, the corners of her mouth tilting open. She reaches up to touch mine and Selena’s wet faces. “He will never hurt my children again.”

Mother’s wounds seal up, and she closes her eyes from exhaustion. Her heart beats strong, but she’ll take weeks to recover from this battle.

“Take her inside,”I order Selena.

Selena grips our mother in a gentle claw and flies her up to the dragon-perch. Behind me, Aurelia tiredly sighs and shifts back into her human form. I remember the first time I shifted; being a dragon is a tiring thing. I want to look after her, ask her what it felt like to be a dragon, to breathe fire. Torage. The breeze is soft on me as I take my cue to shift back into myhuman body, suppressing a grunt as the broken bones suddenly register.

Scythe gives Aurelia his shirt, her pyjamas lying tattered across the grass as the Devi pack runs up to us, sweaty and bloody from their own exertion.

“Raquel is free,” Savage pants. “Marduk forced one of the maids to show us where they were. We undid all the shackles for good measure.”

The far-away rumble of a heavy engine reaches my ears and I go on high alert. This is not yet over. I clench my teeth and gesture to the road leading to the estate. “Someone’s coming,” I say. “I don’t know who it is, but it’s a convoy.”

“Fuck,” Savage mutters, brushing at his still bloody face. “Regina, we have to get you out of here.”

Aurelia blanches as we all look at her. “I’ve just realised,” she said quietly. “We don’t know where Francesca is.”

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