Metamorphosis—Day 50, hour 14
I was going to kill the bitch Sadie.
She had my mates under her control. They were helpless. Defenseless.
My Revered and Protector were kneeling on the ground in an incoherent state.
Sadie dared to mess with an Ignis.
The bitch dared to attack what was mine.
She would learn.
I’d graciously let her live after she’d fucked Arabella, and now she did this? She was dead.
I also didn’t like that Arabella was standing so close to her. She reached out and put a hand on Sadie’s arm.
They were touching.
It was the final straw. There was no reasoning left.
Just retribution.
An inferno swallowed me whole, and the pressure under my skin mounted.
Sweat poured off my skin as I burned with a fever.
I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. If I didn’t release my flames, I was going to explode.
Control fell through my fingers like sand.
Disappeared.
There was no mind to calm down, because my mates were in danger. DANGER.
I would not fail them. I would not fail my Revered again. The bond sickness would not return, because he would not suffer. I wouldn’t allow it.
She would never touch Arabella. Never again.
I was flame incarnate.
Where the fire began, I ended.
There was no controlling the burn, because it was me.
Sadie would learn what happened when you pissed off an Ignis who didn’t have a completed mate bond to help control his flames.
I was chaos.
I was a king.
“Malum, calm down, please.” A garbled feminine voice filtered through the crackle of flames.
I opened my mouth to reply.
But there were no words.
Only fire.
It streamed from my mouth like a flamethrower.
Faraway voices swore.
My mates were under attack, and at the end of the day, I was nothing but a vessel to serve them. I was an Ignis. The Ignis of the House of Malum. My life’s purpose was to defend my mates, but I’d let them fall into harm’s way.
The pressure increased.
Red poured off me like every cell in my body was shedding fire.
Scarlet flickered to a dark purple.
I’d never burned so hot.
The pressure climbed, and there was nothing left to do but incinerate the world. I tipped my head back and opened my mouth.
Without the mate bond, there was nothing but a forest of quiet surrounding us.
Now it was the perfect kindling.
Peaceful.
Still.
It was the ideal landscape to release the pressure that tortured me.
Relief was in my grasp.
Arabella’s voice flickered through the inferno. “Malum, get control of yourself. Orion and Scorpius are fine. She let them go.” She sounded nearby.
That didn’t change the fact that she was close to Arabella. That they’d touched. Nothing solved that.
Muscle aches made me tremble, and a horrible sense of weakness made my head spin. I blinked, but sweat and flames clouded my vision.
“Focus on me.” Arabella’s voice was mere feet away.
I shook from the fever and wept.
It was so painful.
Disorienting.
I tipped my head back and screamed.
All my life, I’d lived with the burden of aching bones and delirium. For twenty-nine years, I’d suffered from fevers.
My life was characterized by blistering pain.
I was supposed to be the strong one.
That was my job.
The leader.
But I was so tired of hurting twenty-four seven. I was exhausted from the countless sleepless nights, the endless quest to push my body to an extreme where the dark thoughts couldn’t find me.
I ran to get away from the intrusive voice that constantly told me I’d never find my missing mate, I’d never have control, the fevers would never stop. Life would always be torment.
A part of me feared that my missing mate knew who I was.
Had I unknowingly met them in the past and they’d chosen to walk away? Run. Hide.
Maybe they’d seen how destructive my flames were and how harsh my personality was and they’d been disgusted.
Ignises were special because they wielded the flames of the soul. They were great healers, artists, Renaissance men who pushed culture forward. Sure, they were also elite soldiers because devil culture was brutal and emphasized male discipline and endurance.
Ignises were usually more. They had something to offer the world.
Yet I had nothing.
I wasn’t more.
I was fire. Incarnate.
How was I supposed to live with that?
Maybe our missing Protector would rather spend an eternity suffering than an eternity in my presence.
Maybe he’d heard the stories about the dark history that tainted the House of Malum.
I was the dark history.
It was disturbingly simple: I’d cried as a baby and engulfed my fathers in flames.
Did my missing mate know that I’d killed my biological father and all his mates? Did he know that the famous Ignis who’d led the House of Malum for centuries had been murdered by his infant son?
Did my mate think I was an unworthy Ignis?
After all, someone like me could never defend my Protectors and Revered. I was destructive.
My father was the proof.
Death by fire.
A dishonorable way to die.
What I’d done was unheard of.
My father had been an extremely powerful Ignis who’d wielded healing fire expertly with his mates by his side for centuries. Yet he’d been burned to death by a mere babe.
A horrible irony.
The worst part of it all—I’d burned my mother after I was born. Scorched the skin off her arms and breasts when I was settled on her chest.
But she’d lived.
And she hadn’t told my father or his mates.
Purposefully.
She’d performed her function. Her duty was to birth an heir for the illustrious House of Malum, and she had. Then she’d taken the money and left without a word of warning.
And I’d killed them all.
The sins of my past coalesced with the failures of my present.
The inferno ravaged me as my fever spiked.
It demanded release into the silence.
My fire wanted a freedom that my soul could never have without a soul bond.
I fell to my knees.
Sobbed out flames and begged the fire to take me.
“Breathe. Focus on my voice.” Arabella was inches away.
Scorpius’s voice was beside hers. “You are in control. You control the flames. They are you. They don’t rule you, you rule them. Concentrate, my Ignis.”
“Concentrate on me.” Orion’s lyrical voice was so sweet it hurt.
If I could let the flames consume me, I would. I’d have done so years ago. The problem was the fire didn’t want to hurt me; it wanted to hurt everyone else around me.
It always left me unscathed.
If it weren’t for my mates and their powers, my fire would murder indiscriminately.
I was a killing machine. An abomination.
With Scorpius and Orion, I was justice.
Now I was detonating.
I opened my mouth to tell my mates to step back, but purple flames shot higher into the air.
Someone swore.
This was the end.
I closed my eyes, tears of fire streaking faster down my face. Ashes and smoke surrounded me.
There was no returning from this.
I’d lost all pretenses of control.
Even if my mates tried to activate their powers, it was too late. There was an order to things. Orion had to activate his powers first for all of us to be in tandem.
It was hopeless.
Icy pain streaked across my arm, and I looked down in slow motion. A blue crystal dagger was sticking out of my bicep.
Time stood still.
Silence wrapped around me like an icy blanket.
My aching arm cramped as it froze.
Iced over.
Cold streaked through my boiling veins like an electrocution of frost. I convulsed and tipped face forward.
My head slammed into hard rock, and blood splattered across my face as my nose shattered on impact.
I breathed roughly.
Mouth half-open and plastered against the rocks, I inhaled pebbles and grime. I didn’t care.
I no longer shook with a fever. My flames were extinguished.
Breathing greedily, I replaced the taste of ashes with fresh oxygen. The raw sensation of breathing fire still burned my lungs.
The flames that were pouring from my eyes turned to water. Tears felt cool against my fevered skin.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and hoisted me up.
The world tipped and spun.
Embers fell to the ground around me.
I coughed, and smoke exploded from my lips. I’d never felt so much like the dragon crest that represented the House of Malum.
The pads of my feet were raw.
My thighs cramped as I tried to support my weight, and I tipped forward.
This time, arms wrapped under my shoulders and caught me.
The silence was loud.
My skin crawled with the wrongness of the moment.
I’d lost control.
Everyone had seen me fail. I’d embarrassed my mates.
I hadn’t protected anybody.
Something jostled in my bicep, and I got a better look at the stalk of the crystal hilt that protruded from my skin. It was irregularly shaped.
A thin hilt stuck out, and a thick, flat blade was stuck inside me. It was almost paper-thin.
Arabella’s dagger was in my arm.
“You’re okay, I’ve got you, Corvus,” Scorpius whispered as he dipped his dark head low and kept his strong arms wrapped around me protectively.
I was a dead weight, but he supported me like I wasn’t seven feet of muscles.
His pale skin contrasted with my darker bronze, and the heady scent of bergamot calmed me.
Scorpius trailed his fingers across my forehead and wiped the sweat off my brow.
I relaxed against him.
There was something intoxicating about Scorpius because he was a Protector through and through. He’d been by my side since puberty, and he always picked me up. No matter how ugly things got, Scorpius was there.
“Relax against me, don’t worry,” he said as he carried me.
I leaned harder against him as I gasped with shaky lungs.
To the rest of the world, Scorpius was cruel. He liked pain and wasn’t afraid to tear a person to shreds. He was made of sharp edges, like the blade tattooed across my throat.
Weaker men were afraid of his energy because he was strength incarnate.
I turned my head. Rested my lips against the side of his neck and whispered, “Thank you,” so quietly that only he could hear.
His fingernails dug into my side and created little pinpricks of pain.
It had always been how he showed that he cared.
Digging his nails into skin was his way of saying I love you.
I moved my head infinitesimally so he could feel me nuzzle his neck, but nobody else would be able to tell what I’d done.
That was how Scorpius and I operated.
Over the years, we’d perfected the act of creating a show of strength at all times, while leaning on each other for support in a myriad of small ways. Little stolen touches. Just enough to calm our fire but not too much to drive us mad.
Since puberty we’d walked a tightrope.
But we walked it together.
“That was wild.” A raspy female voice brought me back to the present, and I realized I had an audience.
The shifter legion gaped at me.
Arabella stood beside Scorpius and stared at me with worry.
“Here,” Orion whispered, then pulled his hoodie over his shoulders so his golden abs were on display. He knelt at my feet and wrapped it gently around my waist.
Even in this state, mentally and physically destroyed, I swallowed thickly and had to look away from the sight of him offering himself before me.
A Revered was supposed to be taken care of.
But he took care of me. All the time.
Orion gently knotted the fabric around my waist and adjusted it so I was fully protected.
It was so wrong, but a part of me liked when Orion took care of me.
I liked that all three of us had one another’s backs.
I was a shitty Ignis.
“Really, are we sure we want to cover…” The future dead cunt named Sadie gestured with her hands toward my crotch. “All that?”
Had she not disrespected me enough? Had she no mercy?
Scorpius and Orion turned to her with a snarl.
Arabella dragged her hands over her face, then smacked Sadie on the shoulder. “Really?” she asked her with exasperation.
I didn’t like that she touched her.
I liked that she glared at her.
Good.
Hopefully Arabella would realize how much of a bitch she was. The memory of them fucking in the shower made my hands fist, and I focused on my breathing.
Before one of my mates could lose their cool and attack the woman for ogling me in my weakened state, Sadie’s mates pulled her behind them and blocked her view.
The shifter legion launched into a furtive, whispered argument that I was too drained to care about. One of them hissed, and knives were drawn.
Let them kill one another.
“Are you okay, big guy?” Orion mouthed as he touched my cheek gently. “That was terrifying.”
I nodded and tried to stand up straight so I would appear strong for him.
I doubled over and coughed out clouds of ashy smoke.
“We need to get him back to the room so we can take out the dagger safely,” Scorpius snarled and walked faster as he supported me.
A mess of curly blue hair came into my field of vision. “Uh, sorry about that.” Arabella rubbed her arms. “I panicked and knew that my daggers were made of ice and just thought, what the heck, might as well, and then before I knew it, I was—”
“Stop apologizing,” Scorpius snarled at her.
Arabella’s jaw clicked as it slammed together, and her shoulders slumped.
She nodded and turned away to go back to the shifters as we limped toward the academy.
A loud whimper echoed.
Must protect. Must keep her safe. She is mine.
We jostled to a stop, and I swallowed a moan of pain as my muscles cramped from the sudden movement. Orion lunged forward and grabbed me to keep me upright as my mate turned.
Scorpius’s voice was laced with venom. “Come with us. Now. Stop walking away.”
Arabella jogged and stumbled toward us. “Sorry,” she gasped. “I forgot.”
She stared up at me with wide dark-blue eyes.
She looked heinous, like a war prisoner who’d spent months being tortured for information.
The Legionnaire Games were tearing her to shreds.
An unfamiliar emotion made my throat close and my breath shake.
It hurt to look at her.
Protect her. Do better.
She studied me like she was looking into my soul, and I felt my face heat. Lately my blasted cheeks were constantly on fire.
I closed my eyes from embarrassment.
I tried to help support myself as Scorpius and Orion resumed dragging me toward the academy.
I reached my hand out to the side pathetically.
For long moments, I thought she wouldn’t take it, but icy fingers wrapped around my much larger hand.
Arabella’s skin was a sharp contrast to my clammy skin.
I wrapped my fingers tightly around hers.
She didn’t let go.
Memories of her resting against me in the shower flashed through my mind. Her lean, powerful body had completely relaxed as she closed her eyes and smiled while I soaped her hair.
Such a small interaction.
Fuck, the most I’d done was kiss along her jawline.
Yet it had felt more intense and potent than any fuck I’d had since I’d gotten to the academy.
By the time we finally made it back to the room, I was shaking. My skin was ice cold, but I convulsed with hot flashes.
It was too much.
When Arabella released my hand, I made a pathetic sound of distress.
Orion pulled out one of the bloody mattress pads from the competitions, and Scorpius laid me down gently onto the makeshift cot.
Orion, Scorpius, and Arabella paused above me. They looked at one another with wide eyes.
“Do it. Pull it out now,” I ordered.
Arabella nodded and looked down at me with determination as she leaned forward.
I swore. “Not you.” I gritted my teeth. “Scorpius.”
Her bruised eyes filled with hurt.
Scorpius nodded as he understood what I was saying and forcibly pulled her back. “Turn around,” he ordered her. “Don’t watch.”
Orion shoved a strip of leather between my teeth. It was indented from where Zenith had bitten down as we stitched him three days earlier.
I nodded up at Orion, who used his body to shield Arabella’s view.
Grateful that he also didn’t want Arabella to have to see this.
My mates and I had talked about it at night. None of us liked how she was being targeted in these games.
There was purposeful hazing and power dynamics—sometimes you had to use force to make your point—but what was happening to Arabella was cruel. Pointless.
For some reason, the gods had singled her out.
They were targeting her.
She was falling apart before our eyes, and we could do nothing to help.
It was infuriating.
And I wasn’t so conceited that I couldn’t see that Arabella had saved me by using her ice fae powers to stab me. That was why I didn’t want her removing the dagger. She didn’t need more guilt and pain heaped onto her already fragile state.
Not today. Not because of my weakness.
Scorpius nodded down at me. “Breathe in through your nose.”
I sucked in air.
My chest expanded.
He gripped the hilt of the dagger. “Now bite down.” In one smooth motion, he ripped the blade from my skin. Metal razed flesh.
My teeth cracked.
I bellowed into the leather strip, and my back arched off the ground as I planted my heels and screamed.
Scorpius pressed cloth over the wound to stop the bleeding, and the sensation was worse than getting stabbed in the first place.
I writhed in agony.
What type of power was in her dagger? It was not normal ice.
Arabella tried to turn around, but Orion stood strong with his thighs parted, and he blocked her view with his golden body.
Scorpius’s face contorted with concentration as he used his full strength to stem the bleeding. “I got you,” he promised.
I tried to nod.
Ice sizzled as it mixed with fire in my veins. I boiled alive.
Tears streamed down my face.
If it weren’t for my mates surrounding me, I wouldn’t have found the will to fight through the pain.
But they were there, so I bowed my back, planted my feet, and gritted through it.
I left broken pieces of my teeth on a leather strap.
But I kept fighting.
For them—my Protector and Revered.
I was an Ignis.
Even if my destiny was that of pain.
I would wield my power, and I would not fail my mates.
Not while I lived.
