Zodiac Academy 4: Shadow Princess
Shadow Princess: Chapter 19

“I hear you took Tory Vega out on a date, Cal,” Seth said as he stood over Darius, spotting him on the bench press.

We were all working out in the gym that we’d set up in the lower level of King’s Hollow so that we could have some privacy from the prying eyes of the other students. It was Saturday night and we were going to stay at the Hollow tonight, catch ourselves up on everything that had been going on in the last week with the Nymphs plus try and get to the bottom of what was eating Darius. Not that he was aware of that part of the plan which the rest of us had made. I shot Seth an irritable look as he brought up Tory Vega, who seemed like the worst subject choice if we were planning on getting Darius in a good enough mood to open up to us. Seth only shrugged, his nosiness knowing no bounds as always.

“Heard it from who?” Caleb asked, rising himself up into what must have been his hundredth pull up, using a bar grown from the roots of the tree we were standing within. This room was in the trunk of the huge tree which supported our hideout, hidden behind the staircase which gave entry to the main structure above. The wide space was lit with fires which burned brightly in sconces around the edge of the room.

“The Celestial Times,” Seth replied with a shrug. “Though they didn’t call it a date. They said you’d been seen charitably donating your time to showing Roxanya Vega around Tucana.”

I snorted a laugh. That paper was so far up our parents’ asses that they’d never dare release a story saying he’d been dating a Vega, even if they had a photograph of him screwing her.

“Oh, right,” Caleb grunted.

“So…?” Seth pushed.

Darius gritted his teeth, his muscles bunching as he continued to lift the four hundred pound weight above his chest. I frowned at the weight, mentally psyching myself up to try and match it, though I knew I couldn’t. Our Dragon brother was always going to be the biggest of us physically. Not that that stopped me from wanting to beat his ass one day.

A trickle of irritation was slipping from Darius at the change in conversation, his physical exertion making it harder for him to concentrate on keeping me out of his head.

“So?” Caleb asked, dropping to the ground and picking up a towel to wipe the sweat from his brow.

“Was it a date? Because I thought you were just screwing her,” Seth pushed.

Caleb didn’t hide the irritation from his features in response to that, but it was punctuated by the feeling of his annoyance washing over me. He hardly ever bothered to block me out. Unlike Darius, Caleb seemed happy enough for me to know how he was feeling most of the time.

“Well I decided to try out dating her,” Caleb admitted. “But it was a fucking disaster so I’m not sure we’ll do it again.”

Darius let a little bit of amusement slip from him at that admission and I sighed as I picked up a kettlebell and started on some squats. That girl took up far too much of his attention. Caleb’s too.

“I want the details,” Seth said like an excitable fifteen year old girl who’d just been asked to prom. I snorted a laugh and he shot me a grin. “Where did you take her?”

“Fine,” Caleb said, dropping down to sit on the end of the bench beside Darius’s. “I took her to that sushi and karaoke place on the east side of town.”

Darius barked a laugh as he placed his weight back on the rack and sat up. His muscles bulged from the workout, the Phoenix and Dragon tattoos which danced with each other on his back gleaming with sweat. “No wonder it went to shit then,” he taunted.

Caleb narrowed his eyes on him in return. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Well for one thing, Roxy doesn’t eat fish, or meat, or anything pretentious that comes in tiny little squares. So I’m betting she thought sushi was fucking disgusting,” Darius replied with a snort of amusement.

“Yeah she did,” Caleb admitted irritably.

“And she doesn’t really strike me as the type to enjoy applauding idiots for making fools of themselves. Or as the kind of girl who would like getting up on stage and enjoy being gawked at while she did her best rendition of some power ballad.” Darius looked mildly disgusted by the fact that Caleb had even taken her there at all and I had to admit it didn’t exactly seem like the best choice of venue.

“Well she likes having fun,” Caleb replied defensively. “You know, pushing limits and stuff, so I thought I’d try pushing her out of her comfort zone.”

“That’s so far out of her comfort zone that I’d imagine she didn’t even stay for an hour,” Darius mocked.

Caleb pulled a face which was an admission in itself and I smirked at him.

“So you struck out then?” I asked, though I couldn’t be too amused at his expense because Grus still wouldn’t even consent to sitting with me at breakfast let alone going out on a date with me. In fact that whole situation was driving me crazy. I couldn’t get the night I’d spent with her out of my head and she was acting like it didn’t mean a goddamn thing to her. It was bullshit. Complete bullshit. But so far, there was nothing I could do to make her admit that.

Darius on the other hand had no issues with mocking him and barked a laugh, offering Caleb a shit-eating grin which was half asking for a smack.

“Well if you know her so fucking well then tell me where you’d have taken her, asshole,” Caleb shot at him, rolling his eyes like he didn’t think Darius would be able to do any better anyway.

Darius leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he answered without even having to think about it.

“I’d take her over to Clearmont Park on the west side of town,” he replied.

“You think she’d want to go for a walk in the park?” Caleb scoffed.

“No. I’d take her there because they’ve got the best burrito truck in town parked up by the main gates every Saturday night and she practically has an orgasm every time she eats Mexican food.”

“Oh shit, that’s right!” Seth piped up. “That girl totally makes sex noises when she eats!”

“She’s louder than that in bed,” Caleb replied, earning a scowl from Darius. “So is that the dream date you’d be offering her, then? Food from a questionable truck?”

Darius seemed in two minds over replying but eventually he did. “After we ate, I’d take her to the Everland Street parking lot just as it was getting dark.”

“You think she’d want to hook up with you in a parking lot because you bought her a burrito from a restaurant on wheels?” Caleb scoffed

“No. Every Saturday there’s a bike meet in that lot. And street races to win bikes. So I’d take her to that and after she’d beat every fucker there and won their bikes from them, I’d take her to Blue Lake,” Darius added.

“Why? That bar isn’t even on the west side,” Caleb pointed out.

“I know. But they stock fifty different types of tequila and have over a hundred tequila cocktails on the menu. Plus they play good music and she loves dancing.”

Caleb pursed his lips irritably.

“That does kinda sound like a perfect date for her,” Seth said with a shrug. “Assuming she likes tequila.”

“She does,” Darius replied with enough confidence to say he was sure of that. Apparently he’d been paying rather a lot of attention to her because I had no fucking idea she could even ride a bike let alone the rest of it.

“Pity she hates you too much to ever agree for you to take her out then,” Caleb shot at Darius who just shrugged in response.

“I never said I was going to ask her. But you asked me where I’d take her if I did,” he replied.

“Well for someone who isn’t going to ask a girl on a date, you seem to have thought pretty damn hard about what you’d do for one,” Caleb accused.

“No I haven’t. You asked and that’s what I came up with.” Darius replied and I only felt honesty coming from him, making me actually believe that. Which was worrying in its own way because that meant he’d been paying enough attention to Tory Vega to figure out all that stuff about her and know it so well he didn’t even have to think about the answer before it sprang from his lips.

Caleb glanced at me for confirmation and I gave him a slight nod.

“Well why not?” Caleb asked with a huff of irritation. “She told me that the two of you almost hooked up on the Eclipse. And it seems pretty fucking obvious to me that you want her. So why haven’t you tried to take her?”

I exchanged a look with Seth, wondering if this might descend into an argument. As far as I knew, the two of them hadn’t actually discussed this so frankly before.

Darius stilled, his eyes dropping to his hands as he considered his answer. “I think she’s hot but she annoys the fuck out of me too,” he said dismissively but I didn’t miss the tension in his posture. “Besides, even if she didn’t and even if I hadn’t done all of the shit I’ve done to her and she didn’t hate me about as much as it was physically possible to hate a man, what can I offer her?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve got an inferiority complex,” I teased, aiming to keep the subject as light hearted as possible while exerting my gifts and spreading a sense of calm and friendship between us just in case. They would feel my influence touching them but I always took a lack of complaint as permission to use my gifts when it came to the other Heirs.

Darius smirked, giving Cal an exaggeratedly assessing look. “Well I can’t really compete with that little boy lost thing he’s got going on,” he said. “And if she’s all for blonde haired, blue eyed boys then there’s not a lot I can do about it.”

“Yeah, who the hell would want all of those muscles and the darkness and the tattoos…” Seth trailed off as he blatantly checked Darius out and we all laughed.

“I want the real answer,” Caleb said before the subject got dropped. “What do you mean, ‘what can you offer her?’”

Darius stood and started lowering the weights on the rack as Seth switched positions with him. “I just mean I can’t exactly take her on a date like that, can I? Even if she would say yes, my father would lose his fucking mind if I was seen showing her around Tucana,” he said dismissively. But it was the kind of casual tone that sounded false.

Darius glanced my way, his mental shields reinforced again so it was damn hard for me to get a read on him. But as always when he spoke about his father, there was a darkness in his eyes.

“And she wouldn’t say yes anyway so this is a pointless conversation. Like you said, she hates me.” Darius’s gaze darkened even further with that remark and for a moment I could have sworn I felt…pain. Shit.

Seth reached up to grip the bar but paused, looking up at Darius. “Lionel’s never given a crap about who you were screwing before. So long as you’re still engaged to Mildred, what difference would it make to him?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Seth,” I said, dropping the kettle bell and taking a seat beside Cal. Seth lifted the weight over his chest and started on his set. “The Vegas aren’t just some girls. They could screw up everything. None of our parents would be pleased to think we were getting too close to either of them. Unless they were hoping we could exploit that relationship somehow.” I cast a sidelong look at Cal who shrugged.

“Mom hasn’t said anything that calculating,” he replied. “But she hasn’t discouraged me from spending time with Tory. She likes to hear how her magic is progressing and stuff, I think she believes keeping the Vegas sweet can’t hurt in the long run. Just in case…”

“Just in case they rise up, claim their place and de-throne us?” Darius scoffed. “Don’t worry, Father will kill them before that day ever comes. Why do you think I work so hard to keep them beneath us?”

I raised an eyebrow at that because it sounded suspiciously like Darius was trying to protect the Vegas by tormenting them instead of his motivations being about maintaining his own power. Our power. Protecting them from the wrath of his father seemed like a secondary priority to me. Everything I did to them was for the security of our throne. For us. For Solaria. The Vegas’ protection hadn’t ever really crossed my mind.

“Lionel wouldn’t actually kill them though, would he?” I asked with half a laugh.

Darius pushed his tongue into his cheek, opened his mouth then closed it again. I caught a hint of frustration from him, but he didn’t answer.

I exchanged a look with Caleb. There was something we’d been beginning to suspect about Lionel for a while, but none of us had had the balls to ask it outright. But I was sick of dancing around the subject.

“Is it that you don’t want to tell us?” I asked slowly. “Or that you can’t?”

“What do you mean, can’t?” Darius asked, his eyes on the weight Seth was struggling with. Just as it looked like Seth might drop it, Darius reached out and helped him guide it to the rack instead.

“I mean does he Coerce you not to talk about certain things with us?” I pushed.

Darius looked up, catching my eyes as he opened his mouth. Silence hung for a long moment before he responded. “No one can use normal Coercion on me,” he said eventually.

Caleb growled, reading between the lines just as I was. “And what about Dark Coercion?” he asked in a low voice. Dark Coercion was totally illegal, if we were right about Lionel using it then it meant he was deep into some really dodgy shit. There had always been rumours about the Acruxes using dark magic but it had never been confirmed. The Orions were tangled in it with them if you believed half the shit that was whispered about their families or printed in The Daily Solaria.

Darius didn’t reply which was something of a response in itself. Of course, if he’d been Coerced not to tell us using dark magic then he wouldn’t be able to anyway. His gaze gave away his frustration but as he looked my way, a glimmer of hope entered his eyes and he suddenly stopped blocking me out.

I inhaled sharply at the sudden assault of emotion pouring off of him, realising just how successfully he’d been blocking me out and for how long as I almost drowned in the feeling of it all crashing over me at once.

“There are some things I can’t tell you, which is really fucking frustrating,” Darius said, his voice rough. “But maybe you can guess what I’d like to say if you can feel it.”

“So is he using Dark Coercion on you?” I almost whispered, my heart pounding at the implications which weighed heavily on the answer to that question.

“No,” Darius replied. But it was a lie. I could feel the dishonesty, the frustration, his guilt compounding it as he was forced to lie to us.

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

“Did he lie?” Seth asked, his gaze yo-yoing between me and Darius like he wasn’t sure where to hunt for his answers.

“He did,” I confirmed.

Darius’s shoulders sagged and relief fell from him in a wave. I could only stare at him, my head spinning with all the implications posed by his answer. The next answer we needed to know was how long this had been going on for. And what he’d been forced to lie about. But it was going to be damn near impossible to figure that out if he couldn’t tell us. We’d have to ask the exact right questions so that I could read the lies as they spilled from his lips.

“When did this start?” Caleb asked, his eyes wide with horror.

Darius frowned for a moment before seeming to realise he could answer that.

“Since I was Awakened. Since he started preparing me to take his place on the Council. Not that I believe he’ll ever really let me take his place while he still lives,” Darius ground out.

“So what does he stop you from telling us?” Seth asked, frowning as he seemed to realise that was a dumb question. “I mean, what kind of thing?”

Darius looked between all of us for a long moment then sighed. “The worst kinds of things,” he said eventually, giving an answer that wasn’t an answer at all. “Look, I know you guys want to help and I love you for that. But there is no helping me with my father. You can’t stand against a Councillor, hell, you can’t even expect your parents to. It would disrupt the balance of power, unsettle Solaria while the Nymphs are the strongest they’ve been in a long time. In the grand scheme of things, my misery isn’t relevant.”

Darius gave us a defeated shrug and turned, heading out of the room before we could say anything in response. His sneakers thumped up the stairs carved into the hollow trunk beyond the door and I looked between the others with a frown.

Seth whimpered and started pacing, his Wolf instincts making him restless.

“I don’t like the way he just said ‘my misery’ like that’s some kind of constant state he’s in,” he said. “I mean, it’s not that bad is it? We haven’t been so blind that we’ve just totally fucking missed the fact that Darius is actually that unhappy… Have we?”

I exchanged a loaded look with Caleb and pushed my hands through my mohawk as I expelled a breath.

“He’s been blocking me out of his head for a hell of a long time,” I said with a frown. “But he just let the walls down and…fuck, I think we really screwed up. He’s not just miserable, he’s a ball of anxious energy and darkness and pain. I don’t even know how to marry that with the guy who makes me laugh every morning over breakfast and wrestles with me in Water Elemental. He’s been hiding this shit for so long that I don’t even think he knows how to drop the mask anymore.”

“So what the hell are we gonna do about it?” Caleb demanded, getting to his feet like he was about to race after Darius that second.

“I…” I looked between the two of them and slowly shook my head. “I don’t have a fucking clue. But whatever the hell it is, we’ll do it. Give me a minute alone with him so I can see if he’ll keep letting me get a read on his emotions. Maybe it’ll be easier to figure out how to help him if I can get a clearer picture on the issue.”

“Okay,” Caleb agreed reluctantly and Seth whimpered again.

“One minute,” Seth said. “Then we’re coming up to deal with this. Together.”

“Alright,” I agreed.

They both nodded and I headed out of the room, following Darius upstairs.

He was sitting on the grey couch as I came up, still not shielding his emotions from me as he looked at something on his Atlas. Whatever it was was confusing him a hell of a lot. There was some lust, longing, anger, irritation and a hell of a lot of pain. I stepped closer and snatched his Atlas from his hand before he could stop me.

I flipped it around to look at it, expecting something from his father or maybe a newspaper article. I did not expect to see a photograph of Tory Vega in her underwear and a pair of filthy walking boots.

Darius snatched it back out of my hands with a possessive growl and quickly locked his screen.

“What the hell is that about?” I demanded.

“Nothing,” he replied angrily.

I threw up a silencing bubble so that Caleb wouldn’t hear my response. “Bullshit. I thought you said nothing was going on with you and Tory.”

“It’s not,” he snapped. “She sent that to me the night of the Eclipse. I’ve got no fucking idea why and I can’t ask her because all she’s done since that night is ignore me unless I’m literally right in her face pissing her off so much that she has no choice but to give me her attention.”

“Why are you so obsessed with her?” I demanded. “It couldn’t come to anything serious even if she was interested. Not to mention all the fucking reasons why you shouldn’t be getting close to a Vega in the first place. And Caleb-”

“I’m aware that he’s seeing her,” Darius growled, jealously and anger mixing with a tug of possession and hurt. “I don’t need reminding.”

“Yeah. Well I don’t think he should be either. Those girls are nothing but trouble. For you, him, us, for the whole of Solaria! You shouldn’t be agonising over her, you should be concentrating on getting rid of her.”

Darius looked at me with a weird kind of desperation in his gaze. “I know,” he growled. But with his emotions still wide open to me I could feel how much that thought tore at him. It actually hurt him to think about getting rid of her. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Max, I’ve never…I can’t stop thinking about her and wanting her and hating her all at once.”

I opened my mouth to respond but the sound of Seth and Caleb approaching up the stairs reached us. They couldn’t hear our conversation from within the bubble but they’d want to know why we were keeping it private if I didn’t drop it sharpish.

“You need to try,” I said firmly. “Try and remember all the massive fucking world and future altering reasons we need the Vegas gone. Promise me you will.”

“Fine,” he ground out, sagging back into his chair.

My heart lurched as I felt a stab of hurt coming from him directed at me. He’d just tried to open up to me about his feelings for Tory and I’d shot him down. But what else could I say? Even the idea of him liking her was insane. It wasn’t like he could ever have a future with her anyway and if he felt everything he was feeling about her now when they hadn’t so much as kissed then what the fuck would he feel if he managed to start something with her only to have to end it when he married Mildred? I didn’t want to hurt him, but he had to let go of whatever the fuck he was thinking or feeling about Tory Vega. And so did Caleb. I’d be telling him that too.

I dropped the silencing bubble as Seth and Cal walked in, casting curious looks our way.

“I thought you wanted to talk to me about my father?” Darius asked irritably, clearly ending the subject of Tory Vega. Which was probably for the best while Caleb was here anyway. This situation was so fucked.

“We want to talk to you about everything that’s making you feel the way you are,” I snapped back. “Because you’ve been hiding a whole chasm of fucking dark shit behind those mental walls of yours for way too long. We’re your brothers. You can tell us anything! Don’t you trust us?” I demanded, realising that I was feeling pain of my own too. How could he have been bottling this up for so long? I understood the Dark Coercion had tied his tongue on some things but to bury his misery the way he had was wrong on so many levels. We could have helped him with this a long time ago. He should have wanted us to. The other Heirs were my first port of call whenever I needed anything and I’d always thought that was the same for all of us. But this revelation made me reassess that. Did he really think he couldn’t ask us for help when he so clearly needed us?

Darius held my eye for a long moment, his mental walls flickering in and out of place as he fought against the desire to block me out again.

He finally sighed, scrubbing a hand across his jaw as he left them down. “That’s not it,” he replied and the honesty in his words made me relax a little. “I just…didn’t want to drag you guys into this. I can deal with it. Lance is helping me train and soon I’ll be strong enough to challenge my father for his position on the Council. Once I can get rid of him, everything will be better. I’ll be able to make my own choices, live my own life, help Xavier to… Everything will be better,” he reaffirmed, clearly not planning on elaborating. But I hadn’t missed the fear that had come with the mention of Xavier’s name.

I dropped into the armchair next to his position on the couch and Caleb moved around to sit beside Darius, exchanging a confused look with me.

Seth headed to the kitchen, grabbing four bottles of beer and handing them out before perching on the arm of the couch beside Darius. He reached out to pet Darius’s hair and for once he didn’t try to bat him off. I even felt a tendril of comfort coming from him in response to Seth’s actions.

“Why are you so worried about Xavier?” I asked gently, begging him to answer and at least let us help with that much.

Darius opened his mouth to respond, but the fear he was feeling sharpened and he shook his head instead.

“Is that something you’ve been Coerced not to say?” Caleb asked.

“No…it’s just, if I tell you, you’ll be duty bound to tell your parents. I don’t want to put any of you in that position.”

Seth whimpered, looking to me like I might have some magic solution to that problem.

I chewed on my bottom lip, wondering what the hell it could be if he thought he couldn’t share it with us for that reason. It made me think of my own secret. The one I’d kept from all of them. The one Tory Vega was holding for me.

My pulse hammered as I considered telling them about my lineage. Would they care? Would they support a claim pressed by my younger sister when she came of age just because she was legitimate and I wasn’t? I didn’t think so. And maybe I had held onto this lie for too long. Maybe it was time we all exercised a higher level of trust.

“What if we exchange a secrecy oath?” I suggested. “And I’ll tell you all my secret too?”

Darius frowned, leaning forward in his chair as he looked at me. “What secret?” he asked.

I only smiled, offering him my hand as I summoned the magic I’d need to perform this spell. Once it was in place, we could tell each other the lies we’d been holding back but we’d be bound by the magic so that we wouldn’t be able to speak of them again outside of this place.

“I’ll tell you a secret as well,” Caleb agreed, shifting closer, his leg pressed against Darius’s. The four of us were huddled so close together that it should have been uncomfortable but somehow it wasn’t. This was the bond of our brotherhood. Darius needed us and we were going to show him that we’d be here no matter what.

“Me too,” Seth agreed quickly.

Darius only hesitated a moment longer before nodding, clapping his hand into mine. We both dropped the barriers on our magic and I inhaled at the assault of his power as it wound its way beneath my flesh, forming a tide with my own magic so that the two washed back and forth between us. We were evenly matched but the heat of his fire magic flared beneath my flesh as my air power swept beneath his. Our water magic met and swelled, the power of it blooming as it joined for a little while.

Caleb reached out and clasped his hand over ours from the left while Seth gripped us from the right. As they dropped the barriers around their own magic, earth power rumbled through the bond too. I didn’t think we’d ever all power shared together like this before. The four deep wells of our magic swelling and combining into something truly terrifying. We were a force of nature individually, together our power was cataclysmic.

“Shit,” Seth groaned heavily.

Caleb chuckled and I grinned too. It was more than a little overwhelming, but it felt really fucking good. Even Darius smiled as the waves of energy slid between us and we were each caught up on a tide of power so raw it was intoxicating.

I worked on placing the secrecy oath over our power and could feel Darius, Seth and Caleb strengthening the spell as they cast their own magic into it too.

I wasn’t sure if Darius would speak right away so I decided to open up first to show him how much I trusted him. “My mother isn’t my mother,” I said, my voice trembling as I spoke those words aloud for the first time in my life.

“What?” Darius asked, clearly surprised that my secret had been so heavy. Seth and Caleb both stared at me like they couldn’t quite believe what I’d said and I barrelled on, wanting to spit it out before I lost my nerve.

“My father had to marry the woman you think of as my mother because of an arrangement for power. But he loved my real mother before that was decided. He kept her close and got her pregnant before his wife. They covered it up, pretended I was legitimate to hide the scandal. And I’m pretty sure my step mother poisoned my real mother to get rid of her after she’d had her legitimate children.”

“But…” Darius frowned, trailing off as he thought over what I’d said. “Does she want you gone too? Do you think Astrid will challenge you for your place in time?”

“I’m not sure what my sister will do,” I admitted. “I don’t think she knows…but my stepmother has always forced competitiveness between us. There’s no love lost between me and her and I expect that if my stepmother can’t kill me off, she will want Astrid to challenge me eventually. I’m pretty sure the only reason I still draw breath is because Dad placed protections on me. He’s made it clear that he wants me to sit in his place. He doesn’t care about my legitimacy but the scandal it could cause…”

“I know,” Darius growled. “But we would stand by you even if the whole world found out you were the son of a mortal, let alone being a bastard. What difference does it make anyway? Your power comes from your father. So fuck anyone who would give a shit about your blood not being pure enough. There’s no better man or woman to sit in your father’s place after you and if your stepmother thinks she can replace you with Astrid, she’s fucking deluded.”

“Too fucking right,” Caleb agreed, looking straight into my eyes.

“I always thought your mom was an asshole,” Seth added thoughtfully.

A warm smile spilled across my face and my grip on Darius’s hand tightened. Why had I always been so afraid of the others replaceing out about this? I shouldn’t have doubted them. I shouldn’t have doubted him. But the Acruxes were well known for their pure blood beliefs. Darius was already engaged to his second cousin just to make sure they kept their line pure. Powerful. Dragons. I’d thought that might mean he held prejudiced beliefs too, but maybe it really meant he could understand my position better than anyone.

“Thank you,” I said, looking around at my brothers, my heart swelling with emotion at the unfaltering loyalty and love in their eyes.

I looked between them, wondering which of them was going to reveal their secret next as the flood of our magic continued to sweep between us.

Darius seemed to want to speak, but he hesitated and Caleb stepped in to stop him from having to voice whatever was haunting him before he was ready.

“I almost killed a girl a few months after I was Awakened,” he said, chewing on his bottom lip. “I let myself get too low on magic and we were drinking…she was all over me, begging me to bite her and I did. But I guess I was too drunk because I tore her skin too much and she just started bleeding everywhere. I didn’t know how to heal someone magically then so I had to run for my Mom…” He cleared his throat before going on. “She got there just in time. Saved the girl and then paid off her family. She gave them this massive estate on the other side of the country and covered the whole thing up so it wouldn’t cause a scandal. That’s why she made me go home on the Eclipse, just in case… But I wouldn’t do that again,” he added defensively. “I’m careful now. I know it wouldn’t ever happen again, but sometimes I still dream about her lying there, bleeding and bleeding…”

Seth whimpered sympathetically and Darius reached out with his free hand to clap him on the shoulder.

“We know you wouldn’t hurt anyone like that on purpose,” he said firmly.

“I’ve never been worried about you hurting me when you bite me,” Seth added, grinning wolfishly and breaking the tension as Caleb smiled back.

“Good.”

“Xavier emerged as a Pegasus,” Darius breathed before Seth got the chance to offer up his secret.

We all stared at him for a long moment, shock rendering us speechless.

“Fuuuuck,” Caleb said.

“I’ll second that,” I agreed.

Seth actually fucking howled and Darius dropped his head back with a groan.

“I don’t know what to do. Father has him locked up in his room like a fucking prisoner. He won’t let him out, won’t let him join a herd or even transform at all. And every time he loses control of his Order form and turns into a goddamn lilac Pegasus he’s…punished.”

The last word seemed to stick in his throat and I got the feeling that was one of the things he wasn’t allowed to say.

“You mean Lionel beats him?” I growled because I was so fucking sick of us having to pretend we didn’t know about that shit.

Darius locked his jaw but the emotion I caught from him confirmed it.

“He never used to pay Xavier much attention but ever since he Emerged…”

“Fuck,” Caleb said, even though it wasn’t really necessary.

“We’ll figure it out,” Seth swore. “Somehow.”

“He’d rather kill him than have the world replace out what he is,” Darius said and the hopelessness pouring from him broke something in me.

“That’s not going to happen,” I snarled. “I swear it.”

“Me too,” Caleb promised.

“The four of us can do anything if we set our minds to it,” Seth said confidently. “We’re the strongest pack Solaria has ever seen. The most powerful alphas of our generation all bound together through love and brotherhood.”

The weight on Darius’s shoulders seemed to ease a little in response to that and he sighed. “Okay. We’ll figure it out together.”

“Come on then, Seth,” Caleb urged. “What’s your secret?”

“Oh…well I always tell you guys the big stuff so mine’s not really important…”

“Spit it out,” I demanded, sensing his embarrassment as a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.

“Fine.” Seth looked between the three of us and blew out a breath. “So I…might have tried that nipple thing again after all-”

“I don’t wanna hear it!” Darius barked a laugh and reared back in disgust.

“I’m stuck between morbid fascination and total repulsion,” Caleb admitted.

“No. Fuck no, I don’t need to hear anything else about you and that weird suckling thing. This secret session is officially over,” I said.

Seth grinned and we all drew back, releasing our grip on each other and drawing our own magic back under our flesh.

My skin felt raw as I settled back into my own body, the power within me familiar and deep but no longer all consuming.

I looked between my brothers as a moment of silence passed between us following our revelations, feeling closer to them in that moment than I ever thought I had before.

“We need to focus on building our strength,” I said slowly, turning over the various issues we were contending with. “Lionel is by far the biggest problem we’ve got.”

“I don’t think he’d do anything against the other Councillors,” Darius said with a shake of his head. “Or you guys either. At least not unless he was utterly sure he could challenge them and win. So unless something changes…” He trailed off like that could actually happen and I frowned.

“He’s our problem either way,” I said firmly.

“Your issues are our issues,” Caleb agreed, gripping Darius’s shoulder.

“We stand together in this like we do in everything else,” Seth said, nodding firmly.

“So what are we going to do?” Darius asked, a faint glimmer of hope shining in his eyes.

“First,” I said. “We need the Vegas out of the way. They’re distracting us from bigger issues. I say we go ahead with our plans to destroy them once and for all at Halloween. Once their reputations are destroyed and their confidence is battered, we won’t have to worry about them anymore. They’ll know their place and stick to it rather than cross us again.”

“I agree,” Seth said firmly.

Caleb frowned but didn’t voice his protests on Tory’s behalf again. All eyes fell on Darius.

“Fine,” he said eventually, though I didn’t miss the flicker of heartache the word cost him. “Let’s just get it over with. The Vegas have had enough chances to bow willingly.”

We turned to Caleb. He was outvoted; this was the part where he would fall in line.

Caleb’s lips parted and he pushed himself to his feet. I could feel the arguments he wanted to make brewing beneath his skin but he held them back until he choked on them, stalking away from us to get another beer from the ice chiller.

He took the top from the bottle and drained the beer in one long drink, tossing the empty bottle in the trash.

“Fine,” he said darkly. “But this had better be the end of it. If it doesn’t work, then we need to think about other options.”

“It’ll work. There’s no way they’ll be able to bounce back from this like they have everything else. No one will ever forget it,” Seth said excitedly.

I was grinning too and I got up to claim a second beer for myself. “Let’s get drunk,” I suggested. “We need a night off.”

“Fuck yes,” Darius agreed, catching another beer as I tossed it to him. “Let’s drink until we forget who we are.”

I snorted a laugh, wondering if he really was aiming for that. It would be pretty damn hard to achieve, but I guessed sometimes it was nice not to have to think about the pressure on us. Or the responsibilities put on us that went hand in hand with our claim. Being an Heir wasn’t even something we had a say in. We were the most powerful Fae of our generation. It was on us to prove that point, but it would never stop being true.

We were born to rule.

I just hoped that when we sat on the Celestial Council, we’d still be able to do this. That we’d still be as close as we were now, still love each other as brothers. Because there was nothing more important to me than the three men in this room. And one day, we were going to rule the world together.