Page 60 of Property of Mako
“Calix!” she cried out, her fingers holding my shoulders in a bruising grip. Her arousal blossomed, and I inhaled it like the scent of the sweetest flower. By the time she screamed and her walls squeezed my cock, her scent seemed to fill the room—powerful and beautiful in its fragrance.
Only then, as her perfect little cunt pulsed around my shaft, did I allow myself to come. The force and pleasure blew me away every time. This one was no different. It left me in awe, as it had been ages since it had been good—yet never had it been like this.
When it was over and we both returned to Earth from where we’d launched into the stars, she curled into me. Her head rested against my chest, her breath still uneven. I held her tighter than I should have, staring at the ceiling while the truth I didn’t want pressed against me like a blade to my ribs.
She was mine. My mate. My woman.
There was no way I was going to be able to let her go—yet there was only one way that guaranteed I wouldn’t have to. That still wasn’t something I was prepared for.
And she was hiding something big enough to tear us both apart.
Chapter 27
Family Secrets
Lyra
There are things I’ve buried so deep I sometimes convince myself they never happened. But that night, lying awake with Calix’s arm heavy across my waist, I couldn’t stop the memories from surfacing.
The truth was my parents didn’t die in some freak accident, no matter what the official report said. The fire that gutted our house was no accident. I saw the claw marks scorched into the wood when I stood in front of the ruins, smoke and ash choking my lungs. I knew then something unnatural had torn through our lives, but no one would believe a scared twelve-year-old girl or her older sister who had been out drinking that night.
So I swallowed it. I carried it. I raised Lily under the shadow of it.
She was just a baby when I lost everything—betrayed and manipulated by the people whom I should’ve been able to trust over anyone. My parents were furious when they found out I was pregnant at just a month past fourteen. They threatened to kick me out. They demanded to know who the father was and told me that if I didn’t tell them, I would be living on the streets of New Orleans.
When I told them, they had gone silent. They had exchanged glances I didn’t understand.
So I let my parents’ friends believe she was my sister because I was too young, too overwhelmed, and too afraid to tell the truth. They said they wanted to protect me, protect her, and maybe they thought lies were safer than reality. They were so convincing. For years, I told myself it was the right thing.
But the weight of that choice has been crushing me ever since.
When Lily thought she lost her parents—our parents—her grief was like a poison. She spiraled hard and fast, and I couldn’t catch her. By the time she was thirteen years old, she was sneaking out, chasing oblivion in drugs and alcohol, throwing herself at boys twice her age just to feel something. It terrified me because those behaviors hit so close to home for me and were the reason she was alive. I begged, I threatened, I cried—nothing reached her.
It wasn’t until she was drugged at that rave and ended up in the hospital that something finally broke. She came home hollow-eyed, sobered by what she wouldn’t talk about. Whatever happened that night, whatever attacked her—it scared her straight. She quit the substances cold. She quit the noise.
She turned inward. Into her art.
She never let me look. Though she drew a few things for me, she had torn them from the book to give to me. That sketchbook was her fortress, always clutched to her chest or shoved under her pillow like contraband. She insisted it was just stupid doodles, but I’d seen glimpses—sharp lines, distorted shapes, and what I thought were monstrous-looking faces. I told myself that surely they were exaggerations—therapy on paper.
But tonight, as I passed by her room after she finally drifted off, the book sat abandoned on her nightstand. A little part of me whispered that I should respect her privacy. The bigger part—the one that’s been haunted since our parents burned—whispered that I couldn’t afford not to look.
My hand shook as I picked it up. The leather was soft and worn from use, warm with her touch. As I held it to my chest, I debated with myself. Then I took it and returned to my room with it.
I sat on the edge of my bed and flipped it open.
My breath caught.
The first page was a pair of eyes—inhuman, slitted pupils, burning like embers. The shading was too intricate, too real. She’d seen this.
Page after page, the truth unfolded in pencil and ink. Fangs dripping with blood. Wolves with twisted humanoid bodies. A man with curved horns and a smile full of teeth. Some were half-finished, others so detailed they looked alive, like they could’ve stepped off the page and into my room.
These weren’t distortions. These were creatures I’d only recently learned existed.
Lily had seen them. She’d obviously been seeing them for years.
The sketchbook slipped from my hands and landed open on a drawing of a tall figure cloaked in shadows, a crimson crown perched on his head. Thane.
I pressed my hand to my mouth, fighting the urge to scream.
