Page 106 of Her Tortured Beasts

“So did I,” Lyle grits out, putting a hand on my shoulder.

Chapter 61

Ghoul

On the planes of shadow and smoke, something vibrates through the darkness. The hairs all over my body stand on end.

It whispers of heinous things.

I press a fang into my lip hard enough to draw blood.

Chapter 62

Xander

It’s at the Hellfire family dining table that the wave of power vibrates the table, making the cutlery dance on the starched cloth.

To my magical eyes, a familiar sizzling energy of red and black spreads through the air. A breaking. A severing. Whoever it came from is a powerful beast.

“What is it?” Francesca says, placing her hand on the table in surprise.

I swallow my mouthful of dry turkey, and without looking up, confirm, “The beginning of the end, no doubt.”

She exchanges a worried look with her parents.

Chapter 63

Scythe

It slithers over my skin, this ominous feeling. Something is wrong and I cannot reach out to my regina to check on her. My great white no longer wants to be cold. He wants to be hot. He wants to feel water boil around him. He wants for it to burn off his skin until there’s nothing left but a skeletal being who will tear apart the world with the sharp points of his own bones.

Lyle leads us to the office of Animus Academy’s headmistress. Asking for help from the phoenix irks me. I should be able to fix this on my own, but Aurelia’s silence is making that impossible. As it is, after we’d torched their two warehouses and fifteen boxing gyms, the Clawsons have gone into hiding, making them also impossible to find. Everything is working against us right now.

Celeste answers the door in a dressing gown and slippers. “Forgive me,” she says, rubbing her forehead and stepping back to let us in. “I’m not feeling my best.”

“What is it?” Lyle says, and despite the heavy growl, his concern is clear.

“Damien’s preserved seed didn’t take,” she says, taking a seat at her desk. “But there is also something else in the bondingplanes…” She gives me a pointed look. “Xander’s betrayal has left a lasting darkness. Titus left a stink, to be sure, but a bond-rejection by a dragon carries a particular kind of distasteful fracture. It’s like a wound.”

“We’ll fix that when we kill him,” Savage says, plonking himself on the floor against the door as if to guard it.

“I didn’t know you would feel that,” Lyle says, tugging at his collar out of habit. “What are the implications of this?”

“All beasts can feel it to some extent,” she replies, crossing her arms. “It leaves everyone feeling unsettled.”

“There is something more,” I press. “Something that just shook the very air. Did you feel it?”

Celeste’s face goes from pale to grey. “I’ve never felt something like that before.”

“It was her,” Savage says, his voice breaking on that last word. “My regina. I know it. We can’t even sense where she is, otherwise I’d already be there.”

“Can you find her?” Lyle asks. “We wouldn’t ask if it were not imperative, but we don’t think she’s at Drakos Estate any longer.”

Celeste nods. She doesn’t say what we all know. That they’ve had a second, silent auction. That the winning bid could not have been Xander this time. “Give me one moment,” she says faintly.

It’s with a grimace that she shuts her eyes and us three brothers hone in on her person with an acute observance. Her aura pulses a murky colour that reflects her state of mind and body, a pulse of fire still glowing at her core. Her power suddenly flares around her as she sends it out, licking flames reaching into the ether before they go out of my psychic sight.

“Anything?” Savage asks impatiently, leaping up from the floor and coming next to me to lean across the table and stare at the headmistress.

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