Page 95 of Her Tortured Beasts

He patrols for hours, no doubt plotting his revenge against the Chens. We hear him every so often, fortifying the protections and roaring into the dark.

Eventually, I put my earphones back in and pay a visit to my sister and mother in their nightly drawing room. To my surprise, I can hear Spawn’s eagle’s breath from the corner. I’d left her with them, but had not expected her to remain in this form. The twins and Eugene have formed a nest of pillows and cuddle next to her, apparently finding comfort there.

Spawn is more shaken than I anticipated. Occasionally, her feathers tremble.

“Are you alright, Sissy?” I ask.

Selena lets out a long-suffering sigh from where she’s cocooned in a blanket on the couch. “We’re fine, Xander. Thanks to Lia.”

That stings, but I swallow it down. “Mother?”

“I am well, my son,” she says, sipping from a sherry glass, which tells me she’s not, in fact, well. She rarely drinks alcohol, yet her voice is louder today, her breath less laboured. “Xander,” she continues, and I turn to her keenly. “You should attend to your wife. I have a feeling she’s shaken by the events of today as well.”

The disappointment may have been clear in my body language because I can practically hear my mother give an uncharacteristic scowl. “You must attend to your duties. I fear she has not been happy.”

“Of course, Mother,” I say dutifully. “I will see how I can help her.” But I don’t leave. I stand there, lamely for a moment. Just…listening.

Emmerson coos to Spawn, stroking her feathers. Spawn exhales a long breath, her heart suddenly kicking up its tempo like the climax of a song. She swallows, then shifts as Delilah feeds her something. Cake, from the scent.

Suddenly, I realise from the silence that Selena is watching me. So is my mother.

“Xander,” Selena murmurs.

“I’m going,” I reassure her.

Feeling like I’m being dismissed from the drawing room, I leave without protest, shutting the door behind me. Something makes me pause outside the door.

Sometimes being without my sight feels akin to being lonely. Iammissing a crucial part of me, so it only makes sense, I suppose. Inside the drawing room, Selena pours Mother another drink and Emmerson giggles at something.

Spawn makes a small bird sound that makes both hatchlings giggle. My heart clenches. That treasure haze is long gone, but something is making me linger by the door. I wish I knew why I was given this misfortune. Why I had to be the sole dragon bound to a Boneweaver.

Why I was the only one who’d had the gall to sever it. And why, at every turn, I was led further down the path to misery. I lean against the wall next to the door, listening to my family.

I’d done everything I could to return to them, so why does it still feel like I’m still utterly alone?

When Francesca returns to my room that night, I’m waiting for her in my chair by the fireplace.

Her bare feet slap against the stones before she tries to quietly open the door. “I thought you’d be asleep,” she says upon seeing me.

When I catch a whiff of her, that scent of my sire and his cum, I feel nothing. No spark of anger. No boom of fury. There is only dull emptiness. There is only the dark.

My voice sounds like it’s cut from cardboard. “I couldn’t do anything today. Because of the shackles.”

She pauses at the threshold to the bedroom, watching me for signs of violence. She swallows. “Well, it was supposed to be a punishment. Perhaps now you’ll understand what I’m going through.”

Through the dull shadows of my mind, a flicker of orange flame lights up a silhouette of dry, bare branches. I set my whiskey glass down. “I hope you don’t mean that witnessing the kidnap of my niece was intended as a punishment for me.”

She takes a step back from me and swallows again. Despite her fear, her tinny voice remains sharp. “I permit them to come off.”

I remain silent.

Francesca clears her throat. “We are leaving in the morning. It’s high time we visit my parents at their holiday home. They wish to see me before they return to Melbourne.”

“I’m guessing you planned this with my father already.”

“You’d be correct.”

“Was that before or after you fucked him?”

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