Page 180 of Her Tortured Beasts

The Collector turns to me, and even over the distance, I hear her gloating voice. “It looks like I have a new pack, Aurelia,” she calls, eyes gleaming in triumph. “And I can regina-command them to do as I please.”

My insides turn to ice as I stare at my stationary, stiff mates.

“Let’s put it to a test, shall we?”

“Savage!”I scream into his head.“Scythe! Lyle!”

But I come up against a wall. As if I no longer have a connection to them at all. I scream against Minnie’s invisible powers.

“Savage, Scythe, Lyle and Xander,” The Collector purrs. “Bow to me if you accept me as your regina.”

Silently, the four of them get to their knees before the Collector, bowing their heads. I scream in agony at the sight. Even Xander, his dark head bowed in complete submission. I’ve never seen a spell like this. Never even known this was possible.

“She’s been working on this for a long time,” Marduk said. “She has coveted them for even longer. These evil beasts chose the way they hurt you specifically.”

The Collector tilts her head back and laughs. Then she smiles at me. A crocodile’s smirk. “Now, for your first regina-command, my new mates.KillAurelia Boneweaver.”

My heart drops as Scythe, Savage, Lyle and Xander turn around, their eyes dark and fixed upon me. As one, they begin advancing.

The sight of them, eyes glazed and determined, chills me to the core.

“Lia, we have to go,” Minnie desperately urges, tugging at my arm. “Lia.”

Lyle’s power lashes around me and I cast it off with an angry cry.

“How can I leave them?” I cry to my best friend.

Scythe’s power is next, folding around my heart, flooding the chambers.

“They don’t know you anymore,” Marduk cries, also desperately tugging at my arm now. “You must!”

Yeti blocks my vision and shakes me by the shoulders, his light eyes furious. “Shift into a dragon and get us out of here, Lia, or we’re all fucking dead.”

I scream in his face and he goes stumbling back as I shift. It hurts. God, it’s an awful pain that assaults my leg, my heart, every piece of shifting cartilage and bone as I become colossal again. The three tigers use their powers to levitate themselves onto my back.

“Go!” Minnie cries.

I let her voice guide me as my vision blurs and I shoot into the air with painful force.

Leaving my mates, the pieces of my soul, behind.

As I cast one last look at them, my eye catches on Xander, the way he’s looking up at me like he’s seen the first light of dawn, and the way something new mars his neck. Infinitely black as the void between stars, stark against his fair skin: a skull with five beams of light curling from it.

Chapter 103

Ghoul

Iturn away from the camera feed that our spies have set up at the perimeter of Drakos Estate, stroking my chin with a gloved hand.

“So the dragons ended up destroying themselves as we planned,” Mace Naga says, nothing but pure triumph in his voice.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” I bounce on the balls of my feet, adrenaline pumping through me from the sight of what happened tonight. “You pitted them against each other and they never had any idea.”

Mace smiles at me as he looks out the window of his new home, the picture of a proud king. A job well done. “Now we have no opposition to do as we please.”

He turns around and regards me. “Commence the final phase of our plans. It’s time we showed the world what we are made of.”

I bow low. “With pleasure, my king.”

The End of Her Tortured Beasts

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