Yep, not a look that I went for…
Although, Aquilo’s chest was sculptured beauty, and I didn’t hate at all the thought of how it’d feel to straddle him and kiss down from his sweet collar bone to erase the memory of how he’d once straddled me in the courtyard.
Then I noticed that he wasn’t wearing the blood moon pendant, but that it’d left behind a scorch mark on his skin. I frowned, and my crimson thrashed in possessive rage that he’d been wearing something with blood magic.
Trust me, if something burned you when you wore it, but you still didn’t take it off…? Then there was something seriously bad behind it.
“Dude, you’re hot, but I’m more interested in your seared neck than your dick.” I perched on the end of the bed, and Aquilo blushed, straightening up. “Oh yeah, and why you keep a whirlwind in your bedroom.”
For a moment, I thought that Aquilo would bolt, but then he clasped his hand to his neck, caressing over the burn, before glancing at his main door like he expected someone to burst through it. He eyed me, whilst his brows furrowed.
Huh, that was what it felt like to have your Soul weighed.
Finally, he nodded as if coming to a decision, and the small smile that curled the corners of his mouth felt like a blessing. “No one besides my mother and sister knows my shameful secret. That pendant,” the look that he cast the blood moon was filled with enough loathing to set it alight, “makes certain of it by containing my magic. Sometimes, however, I simply need relief from it.” He fidgeted with the frayed bottoms of his jeans, pulling his knees under his chin. His bare toes curled into the sheets. “The memory of you, whilst I had such relief, seems to have been rather explosive.”
I smirked. “Hey, are you saying that just the thought of me was enough to make you magically come in your pants?”
Aquilo’s nostril’s flared, as he tossed his hair. “You’re saying that. I’m saying that I shall have to remember you destabilize my—”
“Woah, hold up,” I threw myself across the bed, grasping Aquilo by the shoulders, as my tired brain finally caught up; he flinched like he’d been expecting me to strike him, “you’re a mage.”
He blinked. “Now I understand why I worked so hard at my education. After all, I need to keep up with my future wife’s brilliance.”
I shook him again. “But you can’t be a mage.”
Aquilo blanched; I could feel the sudden tremors running through him. “Are you displeased with me?” He clutched his wrist, where the blood bracelet throbbed an angry red. “I understand and I was prepared for this.” He straightened his shoulders, although his lips trembled. “I’m ready.”
I sat back, staring between him and his pulsing wrist in confusion and then mounting horror. He expected me to break the bond — kill him — because I’d discovered that he was a mage. He was sitting there like he was before a firing squad...and like he deserved to be put down, no different to how Moon would’ve been if I hadn’t selected him that first day in the REJECT cell, simply because he had magic.
Sometimes, Moon had the right idea about things.
I caught Aquilo in a cuddle, which made him jerk in surprise. Unlike Moon, he didn’t melt into my touch but held himself still, as if he’d never been hugged like that and had no idea what to do with his hands. Tentatively, he patted my back like he was the one comforting me.
“So, you’re not breaking the bond because of what I am?” He asked warily.
I shook my head, unwilling to give up the beat of his heart beneath me. My red wrapped possessively around him. “Dick move of me to scare you like that. I’m friends with an angel mage. I mean, he’s a royal prick, but he’s also freaking amazing, so I don’t care whether you have magic or not. I think the whole way that witches treat their guys is weird. I only meant that you couldn’t have survived here, you know…”
Aquilo finally melted against me, resting his chin on my head. “A boy born with magic is a monster.” I flinched at his desperate pain. “Did you imagine me blind to my mother’s faults or cruelties? But whatever else she is, she’s also my savior because she refused to kill me, when my powers (rather extraordinary ones if I may say so), first appeared. I was only just out of primary school then.”
“Let me guess, feeding you to the wolves seems the standard punishment around here.” My fists clenched at even the thought.
I remembered the thrill of my first magic, whilst my crimson had woven from my fingers like it’d always been meant to be there. What would it have felt like to have been shamed and threatened with execution for simply being who you’d always been born to become?
Aquilo hesitantly stroked his hand through my curls like I’d bat him away at any moment. “Instead, mother pretended that I was ill, until she’d found a way to trap my magic.” Even my shadows winced at the thought of being trapped. “I owe it to my family’s name and their standing not to let my secret out or to allow them to know that you are aware. If I ever were sacrificed to the Wilds, what do you imagine they’d do to the infamous son of the Bloods?”
I shuddered, thinking of all the Omega pelts, before imagining Aquilo forced into the Hunt and torn apart. I held him closer, as my heart thundered.
It was kind of admirable that he still held loyalty to his family even now, but at the same time, his family were assholes.
“I take it that your candy sweet sister wasn’t as understanding as your mom about the whole mage thing? She kind of hates them, right?” I asked.
Aquilo shoved me off the bed, and I hit the floor with a startled oomph.
His gaze was frosty. “Forgive me, I’d believed that we were sharing lovers’ intimacies, but as unfamiliar as I am with such things, I am less so with interrogations.”
I flushed. So, maybe it’d seemed like a good time to narrow down my suspect list. I wasn’t a DI or private dick; I’d never even gone on the murder mystery weekends that my cousins loved so much.
Yet Lux was sounding pretty incriminated here.
I shuffled closer to the bed on my ass. “It’s not an interrogation to notice that your twin who used to adore you now tortures you.”
Aquilo’s eyes flashed. “She never adored me, she controlled me. She worked so hard to keep me perfect and unsullied. It broke her as much as me to discover how imperfect and tainted I actually was.” He stared down at his wrist, suddenly unable to meet my gaze. “Our magic came in together. I thought that she’d be excited, despite knowing that it was bad. That was the first time that she struck me. She told me that I was no longer her brother, but only the wind.” When he raised his palm, a miniature perfect whirlwind danced on his palm. It was beautiful. Then he crushed it. “It’s all that I’ve been since.”
Rap — rap — rap.
I jumped at the sudden knock on the main door.
Aquilo snatched me by the shoulders, shoving me underneath his bed, just as the door swung open. I slammed my hand over my mouth to mask my panicked breaths in the dark, whilst I shook. All my senses suddenly became prickling and on the alert.
“Only me.” I heard Ivy’s bright call from the doorway.
“Anything that I can help you with, mother?” Aquilo asked, icily. The springs squeaked, as he shifted. “It’s getting rather late.”
“I just wanted to congratulate you. How many times will my son become engaged and to a Wolf Charmer?” Ivy gushed.
“You’re pleased with me?” Aquilo’s confusion made me ache.
I wondered if Aquilo had been congratulated, since his magic had been discovered, or whether being a mage had canceled out everything good that he’d ever done, no matter how hard he’d worked.
“I know that things have been difficult. But my goodness, this marriage could mean everything for you and the hopes of this House, if you just… Aquilo, you wouldn’t have risked taking off your pendant again?” The door banged, and I watched Ivy’s black dress sweep towards the bed.
“My apologies, it was burning worse than normal. I’ll put it back.” A hiss
of pain, and I imagined Aquilo slipping it over his head and the blood magic searing his skin again. My shadows billowed out, seeping through the bottom of the bed like they could wrap themselves around Aquilo and save him.
The bed dipped, as Ivy leaned over her son. I turned my head to the side to stop my nose being broken.
“Do you want to end up in the Rebel Academy like your cousin surely will?” Aquilo’s breaths became ragged. What on earth was the Rebel Academy? Some kind of school for bad kids? There was no way that I wanted to find out. “Hush, then you know what you must hide. If I discover you not wearing your pendant again,” Ivy murmured like she was promising puppies and hugs, rather than issuing mafia style threats, “I’ll bind your magic through branding like on all the other mages that we train or catch. You remember the last branding you watched? Did it look pleasant?”
“No, mother, please…” Aquilo’s shuddering breaths were edged now with tears.
He was teetering on a panic attack, and I understood his fear. Mischief had shown me the M that’d been branded on the back of his neck. He’d told me that although the magic binding him had been broken, it’d still shattered him. I had to battle to hold myself back from bursting out and dragging Ivy away from Aquilo because it was my duty to protect him both as pack and my future husband. Yet I also had to honor his wishes about his family and that sucked.
“Get some rest. I hear from Stella that your fiancée has a rather insatiable kinky appetite when it comes to her men.” Trust Stella to have discussed what she’d heard in the Claiming Suite with the other covens. I was glad that Aquilo couldn’t see my blush. I heard Ivy pat his knee; his breathing still came in too rapid pants. “Your duties with her will start sooner, rather than later I believe. Some motherly advice…? You’re the breeding stock, so her pleasure comes first. Maybe if you make her happy enough, she won’t hurt you too badly.”
Stop talking…just stop talking…
The last thing I needed was Aquilo getting sex advice from his mom, especially when it was preparing him for just how much I was likely to cause him pain in the bedroom.
At last, the bed dipped again, and she clopped across the room, swinging the door open, and slamming it behind her — bang.
I sighed, wriggling out from underneath the bed.
Aquilo was curled on his side in a ball, struggling to breathe through his panic attack. I perched next to him, careful to give him space. He wouldn’t want me to hold him like Moon would to comfort him.
Instead, I said softly, “Hey, just breathe. You’re OK. Your mom’s gone, and you’ll never have to hide with me.” I bit my lip. Should I risk trusting Aquilo now that I knew he was a mage? Now that he was my intended? If I didn’t, he’d continue to be alone and I’d be no better than his family. “You know, I’ll never brand you or send you to some freaking Academy for Bad Kids.” Aquilo’s breathing was slowing, although his shoulders still rose and fell too rapidly with his gasps. “I have two Omegas who are more likely to snicker at me when I trip over my own feet than kneel before me and a Beta who pretends that he’s all about sexually pleasing you but is hotly terrifying when he uses your own power against you. None of my guys are the princes that their kingdoms wanted, and it’s epic that they’re brave enough to be different than their expected role.”
Aquilo slowly uncurled, peeking up at me as if weighing my honesty. His brows furrowed. “You mean that.”
“Duh, I thought that you were the clever one.”
Aquilo drew himself up on the bed in outrage. His pale face flushed. “Do you need more evidence? After all, I know that I’m only breeding stock,” I winced, “but my grades have far outstripped Lux’s….or yours, I’d imagine.”
“Wow, how is my face not melting from the acid in your words?” I growled.
“I’ll try harder.” Aquilo leapt off the bed. His chest heaved, and I wished that I could be stroking the hard lines of his stomach, rather than getting caught in his hard gaze. “My mother wishes to believe that you can be her new daughter. She’s so desperate for our marriage that she overlooks the flaws in reasoning, however, I’m not. Why are you truly here?”
I froze. Huh, Aquilo was the clever one.
I’d decided that I had to trust him, but if I told him the truth, then I risked not simply myself but the Charms caged in the kitchen, Mischief who was dying back in the House of Silver, and every wolf and witch who’d become embroiled in the war.
I circled the bed to take Aquilo’s hands between mine. He startled. “I broke in, hoping that your mom would react like she has.”
His eyes widened, before he asked with such careful hope that I flinched, “You intended to marry me?”
Just lie…say yes, yes, yes…
“Nope.” I squeezed Aquilo’s hands, even as his eyes flashed with instant hurt, then shuttered to an icy blankness. “But only because I didn’t think that you’d say yes.” Weirdly, I realized that was true. “You expect witches to force you into an arranged marriage, but I want my husband to choose me because there’s nowhere he’d rather be than at my side. I didn’t want you to think that I’d bargained for you like property.”
Even though Aquilo’s eyes had thawed, he still glanced down at the blood bracelet. “Am I not your bound property, until you decide to marry or reject me?”
“There’s going to be no rejecting.” When I pressed closer, his breath caught. “We can figure out the rest together. But what I intended when I came here…? That was to catch the killer of your friend who happened to be a mage like you.”
Aquilo gasped, but I didn’t let him yank away. After a moment, his forehead rested against mine. “The mud?”
What the ever-living witch did he mean? Had I got it wrong and Aquilo had killed his friend?
“I recognized it, of course.” Aquilo’s gaze flickered to mine. “And before you ask (because you’re already bouncing on the spot), my apologies, but I don’t know who murdered Kolby. Sincerely, I wish that I did.”
“Convenient.” My eyes narrowed. I remembered all those times that Aquilo had stood by, whilst his sister had tormented me. How long would he simply stand by and watch his family tyrannize everybody around them? “Do you really care about the wolves getting hurt? You know what goes on in this house but you haven’t done a damn thing to stop it.”
Aquilo’s face reddened with rage. “Convenient?” He hissed. “What about my life or any of this has been convenient? And you wish to talk about wolves being hurt…?”
He yanked me even closer, trailing the back of his hand down my cheek, before hauling both of us up onto the bed so that we could touch the ceiling. Pressing a secret trapdoor, it caved inward. I peered up into the blackness.
What the holy hell did Aquilo need to show me so urgently?
Aquilo reached up and pulled himself agilely through the trapdoor like it was a familiar routine. Then he held down his hand to me. I stared at the blood bracelet around his wrist. He’d trusted me enough to place himself at my mercy so that I could kill him at a word with our engagement. How could I not trust him now?
I clasped his hand, and he helped tug me up into the shadows.
When I swayed, Aquilo rested his hands on my hips, steadying me. I stared around at the dusty beams and piles of toys and books. The light from his room lit them in a twilight. In the heat, Aquilo’s body was close to mine, fresh like the scent of sunshine, as his breath gusted against my neck.
“The attic.” His lips curved soft against my skin. “When I was young, I’d hide up here because Lux didn’t know about it. In fact, until about six months ago, I always knew that I was safe up here.”
Boy, how much didn’t I want to know the answer to this, but still… “What happened six months ago?”
Aquilo shunted an old collection of Harry Potter books to one side (and no surprises why he’d had to hide stories where the wizard was the hero), and wriggled his hand through to a large blanket box.
“Did I not mention how I no longer exist for Lu
x? The only exception is if I shame her. Six months ago, I admit that I put on a truly shaming performance to ensure that one of Lux’s best friends, and a renowned sadist, didn’t ask for my hand in marriage. Lux was less than pleased.” He smirked. “I wasn’t quick enough to hide, however, and for the first time, she discovered me.” His smile faded. “Let’s skip over the punishment and get to the part where my family underestimate me because I’m male. The next time that I came to the attic, I knew that everything had been moved. And I discovered that Lux thought herself clever to hide something where no other witch would look for it…in the innocent attic of a non-magical.”
Aquilo slid open the blanket box.
I grabbed onto his arm, whilst cold flooded me.
Hundreds of needles that bubbled with silver lay inside the box. They were the same as the one that had been used against Moon in the Clocktower to force down his wolf form and had caused him such agony: The Wolf Tamer.
I shivered to think why the House of Blood would have so many and what so much of it could do to a shifter.
“My mother only used the smallest amount on your wolf. Hazard a guess on what a full needle of this size would do?” Aquilo’s jaw clenched. “This is magic and tech combined in a deadly weapon to use against the wolves. My family are stockpiling and have been before you even returned to England.”
“Why…?”
Aquilo’s gaze was level. “In case you weren’t what they wanted as Wolf Charmer or weren’t prepared to kill on their command.”
“To be fair, they were right.” I frowned. “Does this mean that they’ve always wanted the war?”
Aquilo shook his head. “I don’t know. But they’ve been expecting, planning, and stockpiling for it. And if war comes, this Wolf Tamer will ensure that the House of Blood leads the witches to victory.”
Rap — rap — rap.
I jumped at the loud knocking behind on the trapdoor, whilst Aquilo hissed as he slammed closed the box.
“Hiding again?” Lux called, and Aquilo stiffened. “The wind is already invisible, so there’s no need to hide. But are you also whispering our secrets…?”
Only Perfect Omegas: A Reverse Harem Fantasy Romance Series (Rebel Werewolves Book 1) Page 26
