Chapter 13

The ball finally wound down near midnight.

Trae got to go home, being able to teleport has its advantages. He told Justine he would drop some more personal affects off for her in a couple of days, after they checked out the Guild Hall and she had somewhere to store them. In the meantime, she was to stay at the Palace.

Duchess Melody informed Ayden that Ryne would be staying with her for the foreseeable future since he wished to attend the University. Ayden was fine with this, as he hadn’t wanted him to go home and felt he was safer here.

He still felt the attraction to him even if he hadn’t opened a box and he wasn’t surprised Ryne was in male form as that was how he had tricked the entourage into letting him come along as a footman. He had noted that Ryne had come to the ball in a suit and smiled when he saw the look on Ivana’s face when she recognised Ryne.

Melody informed him that she would like to come see him the next day, as she needed to discuss something important with him. The look she gave him hinted that it was something he needed to know. So, he invited them to brunch and he invited the Smiths too.

He even invited Duke David Skinner and Duchess Tilly Elis as he had a feeling, they would become important to him. As much as they liked to get on his case, they had never asked anything from him that was unreasonable. More often than not, it was to remind him of something he needed to do.

As his advisors, he believed he could trust them.

Ayden finally got to go up to bed.

He nearly walked into his old rooms but then remembered they had spent the morning shifting him to his mother’s rooms since Trae and Justine had his. He hesitated. Trae had blinked home. He had a two-bedroom suite and Justine didn’t have a ladies-maid.

If he had known that Trae had planned to go home, he would have assigned her one to sleep in the other room. She did have her own bathroom and he was sure the staff left snacks. He quelled his worry. She should be safe in the palace and his rooms were beside hers. He wavered and then dropped a little spell on her door anyway.

He decided that he would assign Cherry to be Justine’s maid in the morning. She was efficient and had been training to be her mother’s new maid so she would be happy looking after Justine. As he went to walk away from the room, he froze. His heart sped up and adrenaline started to flow. One of his traps had been sprung.

Each trap chimed differently in his head, so he knew which one had been triggered. For the one chiming now, the intruder was in a duct that gave them access to his old bedroom. He wondered how they had disarmed the previous two traps without him knowing, to reach where they were.

His heartrate increased, Justine was in his room. He didn’t know if they were after her or him, but it didn’t matter. She was to be his paramour and she was in danger. He raced to his mother’s rooms. Once inside, he stripped off his clothes. He pushed on a half metre wide by thirty-centimetre-high grate that was near the bed, so it opened. He changed form and slithered into the space.

In the Palace’s history, a ducting system had been installed when it was built. It allowed warm air from boilers in the basement to flow around the Palace and keep it warm. His mother had told him that when their Keltrian ancestors came here the Islands had been cooler in winter than they were now. They mostly used the system to push cooled air around the palace in summer now.

While he was seven and a half metres long in his Boa form, he wasn’t a thick-bodied Slider. He also knew how to move in the ducts having had lots of practice. He turned at a junction and paused. His long tongue flicked out and tasted the air. He caught the scent of the other Boa but caught another scent as well.

While he wanted to rush, he knew the other Boa had spelled the duct using a spell that was designed to hurt him or anyone else who entered here. He wondered how long the Boa had been waiting for someone to come back to the room.

He easily disarmed the spell and placed two shields behind him, one on each fork in the duct so the assassin couldn’t come back this way. He gave a snaky smile. Even if he never removed them, they would stop intruders entering his new rooms or his old ones but not affect the duct’s true function.

He was a lot more powerful now than he had been when he first set the traps. He guessed the only reason the spy had tripped the alarm was because, being paranoid, he had set one trap over another to his room. The other traps would have seemed easy and the intruder had become sloppy.

He kept on tasting the air as he moved to take the next turn and enter the duct to his room. He almost didn’t find the second trap, but he halted just in time, being distracted by a muffled noise coming from the room ahead. He quickly disarmed it and moved on with more speed.

His heart thumped when saw that the grate was open, and he slithered into the room. Just as his head popped through, he heard a stifled scream. He pushed forward and reared so he could see over the top of the high four posted bed. ‘You scum-bag,’ he thought.

The assassin had crawled onto the bed. He must have realised that Justine was in the bed alone and that Ayden wasn’t with her. The assassin had changed back to human form and was now attempting to rape Justine who was not cooperating with him.

As far as Ayden was concerned touching Justine had signed the man’s death warrant. Rape was considered a heinous crime, be the victim male or female. The assassin had straddled Justine and he was trying to pull the night dress and sheets from her upper body.

Ayden struck. The man cried out as Ayden’s head rammed into the side of his ribs with force. He let Justine go as he rolled away before Ayden could strike again. The man rolled until he was on the floor and then changed back into Boa form. Ayden went after him.

The assassin reared up and struck at Ayden just as the lights flared bright in the room. Ayden, however, was expecting him to do so and the light was blinding the assassin not him. Ayden’s head darted to one side and then he slammed it back. He hit the assassin on the neck just under his head with a meaty thunk.

The assassin reared back and slithered back more as he shook his head. Ayden slashed his tail around and smashed it into the other Boa’s head. The Boa reared again in attempt to avoid it, but Ayden launched his top half at the assassin only moments later.

He latched onto the body with his mouth, under the Boa’s head. He then rolled so that he wrapped himself around and around the other Boa as the rest of him came off the bed. The Boa struggled in his grasp and changed back to human form to try to throw Ayden off before he achieved a strangle hold. This was a mistake.

Ayden released the man’s neck and he was quickly able to immobilise the man’s arms and legs, as he wrapped his upper body around the man’s chest. The assassin tried changing again but Ayden squeezed him so tight he couldn’t concentrate long enough to effect the change.

Ayden then caught the man’s eyes with his. The assassin knew he was staring at his own death. He went to scream but Ayden opened his mouth, unhinged his lower jaw and placed it over the man’s head. He clenched his muscles, so all air was cut off to the man. The assassin struggled violently but ineffectively as Ayden tightened his coils around the body.

All that the assassin achieved was the hastening of his own death.

“Ayden, Ayden,” the sweet voice said.

“Darling, he is dead, let him go now, please,” Justine asked with a teared-up voice and Ayden felt her soft hand slide down his skin. “Please, let him go now.”

Ayden uncurled and let the twisted, stinking body drop to the floor. He changed so he was on all fours and looked at the mangled body that had once been a man. At the realisation that he had killed a man, he retched. Tears and snot dribbled down his face as he vomited again and again until no more could be spewed from his mouth or nose.

He felt a cool wet cloth on his face, and he was being pulled away from the mess he had made. He slumped back against the bedpost and Justine knelt beside him and wiped his face for him. As he looked at her, he noticed a deep scratch cutting down her collarbone and along the top of the perfect globe, which was her left breast.

“He hurt you,” he got out hoarsely. Justine looked down and realised that the ripped nighty was giving Ayden a full view of her left breast. She gasped when he bent forward and gently touched his lips to the scratch. The tingle of a healing spell and the feel of his lips sent shivers through her body.

He gently pulled her into his lap, and she had to hug him back as he wrapped his arms around her. She had not felt so safe since Collin had left her. She had truly not realised that, every night that her sleep was the best while her father lived, were the nights that her brother had slept at her door.

She knew he did it and had thought at the time that it was some perverted thing that Collin had taken to doing. It was Trae showing her the memories and telling her that Collin had slept there for his own sanity that had helped her. He told her that by Collin knowing she was safe with him there; it let him get some sleep too. She knew Trae had not shown her the worst of Collin’s memories, but she had memories too.

Once Trae had removed some of the blocks, she remembered the sometimes-dead look in Collin’s eyes and now knew that their father had been controlling him at those times. She had always hidden when he looked like that. She also remembered times when he was just Collin and her lovely big brother.

She snuggled into Ayden and hugged him as she enjoyed the safe feelings coming from him. She could feel him start to relax a little knowing that she was now safe.

“I’m sorry for putting you in harm’s way, Justine,” he said as he stroked her arm that was wrapped around his neck.

“No, I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been such a scaredy-cuttail, I wouldn’t have been in this room,” she said sitting back a little so she could see his face.

Ayden frowned. “Where would you have been?” he asked.

Justine gave him a wicked little grin that made his heart lurch and then his cock. “In your bed, silly,” she said and leant forward and kissed his nose.

Ayden looked at her with a shocked expression and felt his cock grow longer and firmer. It was at this point he realised he had a near naked delectable woman in his arms and sitting on his hard-naked cock. He blushed. Justine giggled and then wiggled. Ayden gripped her more firmly as he groaned.