FULL NOVELXO Attack: Chapter 26
I’m ecstatic that my bond brothers see me as someone capable of running the mission on the third floor. I pass Aurora and give her a smile and a slight nod as I walk past her. She smiles at me, seemingly impressed that I decided to take point on this part of the mission.
I have to admit, I’m kind of having second thoughts here. I’m not a warrior like Aurora, Klaus, or Jayce. I’m not built as heavy as the three of them. I don’t have the bulk or the strength of their beasts. What I do have on my side is speed and agility. I approach the first door that is on my left-hand side. I lay my hand gently upon the wood, feeling for any kind of vibrations or disturbances with it. With my heightened sense of hearing and eyesight, I notice that the door has been moved. More than likely, someone has entered the room probably within the last twenty-four hours. I motion to the Dire Wolves to approach the door and take a sniff at it.
Just as I suspected, the room is loaded with our enemies. From what Jayce can tell me through the bond, there has to be at least eight to ten wolves in there waiting for us. There are only six of us in our group currently since we sent Gus back with the young male earlier.
Aurora smirks, hearing the internal dialogue between Jayce and me. She bends down and presses her hand to the floor, sending a wave of ice into the room. Within seconds we hear the howls of pain echo from inside. Aurora looks up to me and smirks before freezing the locked door. Aurora stands up, then looks at Klaus and motions to the frozen door. With a decisive nod, Klaus comes forward quickly and rams the door with his shoulder, shattering it. Icy wood splinters fly across the frozen floor and stop when they hit the now-frozen Lycans. This isn’t the ice of hibernation; this is a killing blow.
Aurora motions to the room and then looks between Klaus and me. “Off with their heads,” she says like the Red Queen in the fairy tale.
I watch Aurora prowl the room, looking through all the desk’s draws and cabinets. Klaus gets to work almost immediately, and I watch him in almost abject horror. How can he be at peace with this? My eyes drift down to my sword, and I stare at it for several minutes. I hear a faint click and something sliding open. Quickly, I lift my gaze in time to see the barrel of a gun being pointed at Aurora. Without hesitating, I take my sword and throw it at the person in the hidden passage. I nail the arm that was holding the gun to the wooden frame. The gun falls to the ground almost instantly, luckily not going off in the process. Aurora spins quickly, shocked to see that someone had gotten the drop on her.
“Do you know who I am, bitch?” he screams as he tries to free his arm.
Klaus moves in to flank Aurora as she hops up to sit on the desk. I watch her arms shift, and the ice races from the floor and door frame, trapping the male in place. “Should I?”
Aurora sits there looking her talons over, studying them intently. She’s barely giving the male the time of day, aggravating him further. Her beast’s eyes scrutinize every scale and curvature of her long talons. The way she’s looking at them and her gauntlets, it’s clear that she is doing it on purpose just to agitate the male before her.
The eyes of the male’s wolf blaze to life as he stares at her. The veins in his temples throb angrily as his face starts to turn bright red from the anger that is building. “I am Josef, brother of Vladimir, heir to the Lycan throne,” he says as he grits and grinds his teeth angrily. His canines are bared at her, looking as if he could launch and attack her at any moment.
Aurora doesn’t even bother to lift her gaze to acknowledge the angry male before her. She lets out a huff of breath tinged with frost. Exasperated with the male’s attitude, frost starts to cover the desk around her. She crosses and uncrosses her legs twice, wiggling her toes out in front of her as she examines her nail polish. I swear to the gods above that my woman has been sent to personally aggravate the fuck out of this poor bastard. She rolls her eyes slightly and then tilts her head to the side as she looks up at him finally.
“Okay, and what is that supposed to mean to me?” She tilts her head to the side as she stares at him.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m staring at the brother of the usurper that assisted with the death of my mother. Also, as far as I’m concerned, your brother is a dead man, be that it may be at my talons or my father’s.” She smiles sweetly at him and tilts her head to the other side.
“You, my friend, are going to die a very slow and painful death,” Aurora says slowly, enunciating every word in her final sentence to the male.
She rises slowly from the desk, her bare feet landing on the thin sheet of ice that she has created on the floor. She raises up onto the pads of her feet and walks over to Josef, staring at him at eye level. She doesn’t even bother keeping her eyes shifted anymore. Her pale-grey, human eyes stare into the eyes of his beast, and she just smiles at him. Then we feel the sudden influx of her Alpha power being forced onto this male. We watch him attempt to fight it, but it’s a losing battle, his sad attempt to maintain eye contact. He apparently thought that just because she’s a female means she’s not strong enough to make him submit. That was his first and last mistake—assuming she is like any other female that ever walked this Earth. Yeah. He just doesn’t know. She is the first of her kind, but the last of her name. There is no equal to my mate. Aurora is making this male want to bow and genuflect before her. It doesn’t help that I had nailed his arm to the wall with my sword. He would probably be in a tight ball on the ground instead of standing, whining and whimpering like the wuss that he is.
Aurora looks at the sword and how badly he’s pulling on his arm. He’s trying to drop down to his hands and knees to save himself from the power she’s bathing him in. She places her hand on the sword and quickly pulls it free from the wall making sure to slice his arm a little further than it was previously. He’s already in an extreme amount of pain from the power that she’s pressing on him; the additional slice to his arm is barely even registered by him.
Aurora hands me my sword and smiles ever so sweetly at me. One would think that she’s borderline insane. Aurora can flip back and forth between being a vicious monster and then back to the sweet angel that we know behind closed doors in seconds. Her eyes bore into Josef as she stares at him curled up on the ground. His blood is slowly painting the wood floors crimson, and it brings a smile to her ruby-red lips. He’s one of Vladimir’s bloodline; therefore, he must die. Boy, this is going to be an interesting one. She releases the grip of power that she has on him. Immediately after, he starts coughing and sputtering. He struggles to draw in a deep breath after being released from the oppressive force. He digs his now-shifted claws into the wood to try to help himself stand up.
Aurora just stands there smirking at him. We watch this massive male try to stand up as weak as a newborn calf. “You are no Alpha. You’re not even strong enough to be considered an Omega in the pack.” Aurora waves her hand dismissively in his direction. “How dare you even think that you are male enough to stand before me.”
As soon as she finishes speaking, Aurora sends another wave of her Alpha power down upon him. Josef crashes to the floor much faster and harder than he did the first time. She stares at him with sadistic glee. I can only imagine what Aurora’s going to do to Vladimir when she finds him. I didn’t know my mate was capable of this level of cruelty that she’s inflicting on him, but then again, he was sent to kill her if he found her.
“My love, we still have so much more to search for,” I say to her gently, hoping to appeal to her on some base level to remind her of the mission that we have before us.
Klaus decides to speak up at this moment also. “My angel, my love, do you wish me to end him for you?’ He gently places his hand on her lower back, offering support. “That way you don’t bother getting your talons dirty with this scum’s blood,” he says to her ever so sweetly.
Aurora seems to contemplate his offer for several moments before she shakes her head no. Aurora’s eyes take on a feral appearance. I feel the tension through the bond as our other mates reach out, sensing her rage. They use the bond to see through her eyes to see what or who stands before her. The click-click-click of her talons reverberates in the room as she contemplates precisely how she wishes to end Josef’s life. Through the bond, I hear her speaking to herself. She’s debating between ripping out his heart or taking his head and then the third option of both.
I understand the need and the pressure of her being judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to those who have betrayed her bloodline. Things would have been much different for all of us if Aurora’s life hadn’t been disrupted the way that it had. Aurora moves slowly around the male that’s before her. The tension is thick, and I can feel the weight that’s upon her shoulders. Suddenly, she reaches down and shifts her hand back to human as she grips the back of Josef’s neck. She lifts him off the floor and dangles him in front of us. His feet aren’t touching the ground, and I can see the tension in all of her muscles as she struggles to hold him up in her human form.
Then it happens. Her body starts to bend and break and shift into that of her enormous, white Lycan. Now holding the male off the ground is absolutely no problem. Her talons slightly dig into the flesh of his throat as she wiggles him a little bit. He makes the stupidest move in the history of stupid moves—he decides to take this moment to shift. I know it’s a last-ditch effort to save himself from the death that is surely upon him. He just doesn’t seem to realize he just switched her into full-on predator mode. There are a few major issues with our current situation. One, she has three mates in the room with her. Two, he poses a threat to her family just by breathing. And finally, if I know her, she believes he had a hand in her abduction and everything that’s happened since.
The much-smaller, black Lycan male turns slowly and looks up at the almost ten foot tall, half-ton hybrid standing before him. If a Lycan can smirk, then Aurora is definitely trying not to laugh at the pathetic male before her. I’m guessing Josef is on a suicide mission since he tries to lunge at her, thinking that he may overpower her. The minute his flesh touches hers, he leaps back, howling in pain. Aurora has coated herself in permafrost and burned his flesh instantly because of how cold it is. Through our bond, I can hear Nicodeamus telling Aurora exactly what role in Vladimir’s family Josef played. That is more than enough to push Aurora over the edge; two swipes of her talons come at him quickly. The first one disemboweled him, spilling his intestines upon the floor. Aurora stands there, watching the state of panic he is in. Her second swipe comes the minute he looks like he may attack again. Crimson ichor sprays the room, painting her white fur vermillion. After the blood settles, we watch him dangle there with unseeing eyes just before his head rolls free of his shoulders.
I stand there in shock, watching how easily my mate dispatched the man before her. Even though he was purely evil and held nothing but hatred in his heart towards my mate, sometimes I question the necessity of killing our enemies. It’s times like this that Dominik usually pulls me aside and explains the failed justice system in most countries. That they would rather sit there and lock people away for the rest of their lives than dish out punishment that matches their crime. The dark ages are long over, and the weights and measures are in their place for a purpose. If we were to attempt to hold a trial, too many species have been harmed or entirely driven to extinction, there would be no unbiased parties available. Nicodeamus says I’m the voice of reason within this bond. But unlike his daughter, my sense of justice is different than hers. While hers is strictly black and white, mine has all the different shades of grey in between. What can I say? Being a Mystic, I have a very soft heart, and I feel that all life that walks this Earth, no matter how sick and twisted it is, has value.
The rest of the third floor appears to be empty. We double check all the rooms, leaving no stone unturned and no door unopened. The final assault on the tower that we know Vladimir is in is upon us. The night is falling quickly, and the unique sounds of the forest are starting to come alive. All the nocturnal creatures are beginning to wake up and go about their evening. Aurora’s beast turns and looks at me; her eyes take on that ethereal glow. I watch the crackle of the purple energy coursing through her snow-white fur. She’s been waiting for this moment for over two hundred and twenty-nine years. She runs to the open window that’s in the hallway. Her talons grip the ancient stones, and she tilts her head back, howling her death song into the night.
Her howl echoes through the valley and the courtyard of the castle, reverberating off of every structure for miles. I turn just in time as Klaus’s and Jayce’s wolves rip from their bodies at her call. Every wolven ally tilts their head back and answers her. The night is filled with these deep, haunting howls, all of them calling for blood and vengeance. Their death song is sung for the last man left standing that has destroyed a bloodline. Aurora goes silent for a moment, as if listening to something. She tilts her head slowly left then right. Her grip tightens on the stones under her talons before she throws her head back a second time. This call is unlike anything I’ve ever heard escape her lips; it’s pure dragon. It’s a deep, guttural roaring sound that makes the hairs on my arm stand on edge. Within seconds, the sky is blackened with the wings of the dragons that are on our side. They all begin to roar and unleash their breath weapons into the air. It’s a singular show of force to strike fear in the hearts of those who stand against us. The faint click of Aurora’s ignitor can be heard, and then she unleashes a stream of what looks like purple lightning and her frost breath. The courtyard practically glows from the color of her breath weapon. Her eyes now focus across the yard at the last tower that hasn’t been touched. Her suffering ends here. Her wait is over; revenge is a short trip across the courtyard.
Aurora makes yet another dragon sound before launching herself out the window and into the air. Thankfully, for my poor heart, I see Alaric come swooping in under her and catches her as she starts to freefall. I can feel the pull through the bond that Aurora is summoning every single solitary ally she has brought with her. Without question, I shift and take to the sky. I will not be the last mate left behind simply because my animal can’t fight. I will be her eyes. I’ll keep watch over her target until she’s in place.