Page 110 of Wings of Ashes
“Phase seven is ‘terminating’ Council President Oadess from the winged shifters council. We are currently still in phase three: trying to pin down the perpetrators and preventing any new students from being abducted.”
“I can assist you with that,” Thierry promised. “It has been quite a while since I got my head out of my books, as my mate once told me.” Thierry smiled softly at Nix.
“Mate?” Bael spat out in disgusted shock. He pulled his hands from Nix’s face and rubbed his index fingers into his temples. Reeling, he added, “Wait. She’s yourmate?”
Nix and Thierry both shot Baelwhere-have-you-beenexpressions.
“I thought you were just hot for your student,” Bael muttered, shooting his gaze back and forth between the two of them. “Mate?”
“Why can’t I help, too?” Nix asked, getting Bael back on track with the conversation.
“Baby…” Bael shook his head. “You’re a prey shifter. You could get hurt.”
Nix’s fingers balled into tight fists.
“I caught her trying to break into a section of the library to read and learn how to fight,” Thierry informed Bael.
Bael’s expression scrunched in embarrassment. “The library? Babe, there are way sexier places to break into.”
“She tried to do so in daylight,” Thierry added.
“Hot,” Bael commented.
“Focus,” Nix said. “Where did you find the needle? Of the shifter poison?”
“Ryker found the box with the needle buried in the woods during one of his patrols. We set up a camera there in case someone put it there for safekeeping and goes back for it.”
“The map, with the question marks,” Nix thought aloud. “Those are places where the disappearances happened?”
“They are places we found that we thought there was a chance the bastards had been holding the students there, but no luck. All empty.”
Nix cursed. “What evidence do you have against my, uh, father?”
“Promise you’re not a double spy?” Bael requested confirmation.
“If they are linked to that needle of poison, I want them destroyed,” Nix said like a dark promise.
Both Thierry and Bael stared at her, absorbing her words.
“We are still gathering evidence, actively,” Bael told her. “We should know more within the week. Right now, it’s based on the assumption of how his propaganda calls for the isolation, imprisonment, or forced sterilization of certain winged species.”
Nix blinked. “Forced…sterilization?” She had never heard him preach that before.
“Even the humans have done it to their own people before. Choose desirable traits; wipe out the rest in terms of ability to procreate. Eugenics, baby. If you want to get pissed off, look it up later.”
Nix grumbled under her breath, thinking back to her “searches” about self-defense, “It’s probably blocked.” Nix crossed her arms and hugged herself as she asked Bael, “So, you didn’t get close to me to get information about my adoptive father?”
Bael bared his teeth in anI-hate-to-say-thismanner. “Eh, love, the Oadess family has let the entire school call you the ‘Ugly Fuckling.’ I was pretty sure you wouldn’t know anything. And when you proved you weren’t enchanting me, and I realized my dick just liked you for you, I believed I could trust you were not involved.”
Nix deadpanned, “So, you trust me because I make your dick hard?”
“I’m a simple man. A sex demon who hasn’t had an erection in decades. Can you blame me?”
Nix gaped. “Decades?”
“I’m alittleolder than I look. Incubi don’t age.”
“Why are you at the academy? Now?”
