Page 24 of Prodigy & Tybalt
“I’ll go over it now,” Prodigy replied, fitting his hand to the back of Tybalt’s neck and kissing him in a rough press. And then like it was the most natural thing in the world, he handed me the dragon, slid his hand into my curls, and kissed me, too.
It was the softest, most chaste brush of our mouths, but it transformed the few butterflies in my stomach into a whole colony. The acid burn in my soul disappeared entirely. The kiss was over in a second, but it left an imprint that tingled even when he stepped back.
“Tyb will take care of you,” he said, meeting my eyes. “Tell himexactlywhat you need from us. Let us help.”
He brushed my jaw with the back of a knuckle and then ducked inside the clubhouse while I was still staring, shellshocked, smiling.
Tybalt draped a long arm over my shoulders while I was still processing what just happened, his voice that low, rumbling caress. “You wanna talk about your perfume, warrior?”
“No,” I muttered.
“Tough shit. Come on, let’s go make a plan for when your heat hits.”
And like he and Prodigy had colluded to wipe me of my power of speech, he kissed the crown of my head. His lips lingered, letting the affection find its mark on my damaged soul.
12
Miraya
My two calls went about as well as I expected. Auntie Teja called bullshit on every last thing I told her, until I had to give her a sugar-coated version of the truth. She knew I was grabbed off the street, and now I was staying with the alphas who stopped me being attacked because I felt most safe here.
It was as hard to admit that last fact to myself as Teja, but it was true. I did feel safe here, safer than I would at home with my heat coming. And the hormonal Miraya I was trying to ignore—it was a battle I was quickly losing—wanted to be close to her alphas when it hit. That was how I thought of Prodigy and Tybalt now, whenever my logical side slipped. Mine. My alphas.
My second phone call was to my mum, and it went from bad to worse. The greatest hits were:
Me, choking back tears, my soul tearing: “I met my mate and he—”
Mum, talking over me in her excitement: “That’samazing,honey. No wonder you stayed away from home all this time.”
Me, trying desperately to salvage the conversation: “No, Mum, he—”
“What’s he like? Is he handsome? What does he smell like?”
Leather and vanilla, I tried to choke out, but my throat closed up. “Like smoke,” I managed to say, my eyes screwed shut. “Like fire and smoke.”
“You always did love a bonfire,” she replied, a smile in her voice. “You’ll have to bring him to meet the family as soon as possible. Nikhil!” she called, shouting for my older brother. I sighed. Nikhil would care about me finding my mate as much as he did about current events and personal hygiene. He was thirteen, and in full teenager-mode at all times. “Nikhil, your sister met her mate!”
His low voice replied something I couldn’t make out, no doubt scathing and bored. If I’d been home, if I’d met my mate and it had ended happily, I might have kicked the wires out of his game console for that. Instead, I hugged my knees to my chest in the middle of my nest while my mum chatted away, so genuinely happy for me that I couldn’t stand to correct her.
I wished I had a fairy tale ending to prove to her that dreams really did come true, like she said they always did, but life didn’t work out that way.
Now, as the sun began to set, casting the clubhouse in golden tones, I curled my feet beneath me in the cosy chair by the fire in the common room and cracked open one of the books Prodigy got me this morning. I’d debated staying in my nest all night, but I was going stir-crazy on my own, the silence droning and maddening. I’d followed the boisterous, argumentative tone of Tybalt’s voice to this room, where I ought to feel stifled and threatened and on edge. But Tybalt’s presence was calming, lulling me into feeling almost normal.
Plus, I’d showered every last scrap of scent from my body and covered the rest in dark, musky perfume so no one was drawn to my irresistible heat scent.Yet,I supposed. Even if some douche approached, thinking he could talk himself into my nest, I knew Tybalt would break his nose. He was getting to that point now as he argued with some massive guy with trashy tattoos and not much hair at the bar across the room. I kept him in my line of sight even as I began to read, a fire crackling merrily to my right.
“I don’t give a dolphin’s flyingfuck,”Tybalt snarled, bringing a smile to my face. “You were put in charge of the gatehouse, so youstay the fuck insidethe gatehouse. It’s not rocket science, Crook.”
“You don’t get to talk to me like that, you jumped-up little wanker. You’re half my age—”
“I really wouldn’t, Crook,” a handsome man in his fifties advised, bringing a tumbler of whiskey to his smiling mouth. “He strung up the last man to piss him off, and he’s been cutting off bits of him day by day.”
I blinked, having to read the last sentence in my book three times before I processed it. Tybalt was cutting off bits of someone each day? Shit. I should have realised just how unhinged he was when I saw him beating the life out of my buyer, but I’d assumed he was just handy with his fists, not the kind to torture someone.
Wait. Was the last person to piss him off Lance Brown…? Who else had earned his wrath in the days since?
I stared at Tybalt, shock cracking through every beat of my heart. But he wouldn’t. There was no way he’d have my buyer strung up.
He got your phone somehow,a helpful voice pointed out.
