Page 34 of Bros Come Before Hordes
"You said you heard three of them.” I dragged Asa along with me down the hall to Calhoun’s room. No sign of him in there. Just another hole in the wall. We moved down the hall toward Vance's room. “Three of them what? What exactly?"
"Three explosions. The walls shaking. And three sets of chains rattling outside.” He stared up at me with his big blue eyes. “Like ghosts, Yara."
Chains, like what were used when my shifters were plucked out of the car on our way to Evenza. They'd been kidnapped then.
My stomach curled in on itself at the sight of Vance's room, same as the others’. All three of my harem were gone. Taken. By who? The fae? Were they dead already?
I gagged on the thought, crumpling against the wall in a cold sweat.
"Yara." Asa plucked at my arm. "Yara, listen. Tavis and I put cameras everywhere. We can see what happened, even from the outside."
"Cameras." I pulled in a loud breath, my lungs feeling much too small. I'd forgotten about the cameras.
Asa nodded his head back the way we'd come while he rubbed my back. "Come see."
He was always the concerned caretaker during my mental breakdowns, always the face of calm. He definitely hadn't learned that from me, though maybe that was how he coped with everything—by taking charge of his big sister's freak-outs, of which there were many.
God, I didn't deserve this kid in my life.
We clung to each other as he led me back to the art room, which had changed some since the last time I'd been in here. A computer sat in the corner with a grid of different live views of the castle. Asa sat down in front of it and started clicking and typing like he'd done this a thousand times before.
"Look." He pointed to the screen. "Who are they?"
I peered closer. The full-screen picture was grainy, but I could make out three wrecking balls attached to three large cranes. Then seconds after the debris cleared, three figures with chains in their gloved hands rappelled down from the rooftop and into my shifters’ rooms. My harem all fought back, but the chains glowed silver. Iron, I’d bet, and it had further weakened them. It had all happened within seconds, and then they’d sped away, surprisingly fast for three cranes. On the final camera shot, Asa zoomed in, and two faces turned to throw one last look at the castle. Petra and Rio, enemies over the crown, but united against me.
I dug my fingernails into my palms. What a pair of petty, ugly, basic bitches.
"Do you know them?” Asa asked.
"They're barbaric stovetops that horde assholes," I ground out.
"Why did they take Tavis, Vance, and Calhoun?"
To embarrass me at the coronation? My harem were the ones who were supposed to hand me my crown, who were to stand behind me when I faced the shifters as their queen. They would be my moral support and help straighten my backbone when I told everyone we were already at war with the fae. Without them, it would just be me. Alone.
Was this some kind of stunt to get me to cancel the ceremony?
"Asa," I said, my mind already spinning, "can you copy that to something so I can show it to some people? And could we go through and search for more things to copy?"
"Yeah, it's not that hard," he said, like I should know better.
After we went through the camera feeds and I showed him what else to copy, I leaned down to kiss the top of his head. "I'll be right back, okay?"
He nodded and set some headphones on his ears.
Fiery rage bit at my heels as I hurried from the room. I wanted to hunt down my harem, steal them back, and pop the heads off of Petra and Rio. But I couldn't. Not yet anyway. I needed to cross into the fae land and kidnap back Léas so she could restore dragon shifters' power so we could fight this war. And I needed to do this quickly so we had a fighting chance.
We. Humans. Dragon shifters. Everyone but the fae.
Why I was helping the stovetops when honestly they deserved to die off was a mystery to me, but I wasn't doing this for them. This was for humans. This was for my harem. They'd helped me, saved Asa, saved me, and I would never be done repaying them for it. And if I didn't succeed, they could die at the hands of the fae.
Not while I was queen, though.
Back in my bedroom, I tore the dress from my closet door and threw it on my bed so I could change. Would Petra and Rio be there at the coronation? Would they be brazen enough to show their faces? Probably. Anything to watch me squirm.
I stepped into the dress, unable to keep from touching the beaded details as I fastened it and adjusted the sleeves. Gorgeous. I hated it. Without bothering with hair or makeup, I declared myself ready since I only had about ten minutes left. If the shifters were offended by my bedhead and sleep lines likely still on my face, they could suck my balls.
The first step toward my bedroom door dropped me to my knees. A terrible pain erupted in my gut, like acid and lava and the surface of the sun boiling up inside of me. I cried out, a breathless scream. What was happening? The burning simmered outward along the surface of my skin. It felt like I was being burned alive, torched like a witch tied to a stake. I retched, clawing uselessly at my body. My eyes flooded with tears, and I was thankful because I was sure that if I looked down at myself, I would be nothing but charred skin and blisters and bone. The pain in my gut intensified, and I curled in on myself with a loud moan.
