Page 48 of Zodiac Monsters

The Act of the Aries

Chapter 19

“Son of a fucking bitch.” Marcus slammed my head into my own whiteboard, while he squeezed his fist around my throat. His face was contorted with rage, and by a rare turn of events, I got to be the cool, collected, uncaring one among us.

“You shouldn’t talk about our mother that way, baby brother.” I took a page out of his book, and the satisfaction that zipped through me almost made me wonder if he might be onto something with his devil may care attitude. This was curiously liberating, getting to mock him for once.

“How many times did you fuck her? Wait, actually, you don’t have to tell me, because I felt every goddamn time she finished. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Oh, that was what this was about. It took legitimate effort not to laugh. “Annoying, wasn’t it? Don’t you just hate the consequences of your own actions?” I placed a hand on his forearm, and I shifted my Incubus claws, until I was cutting through his thick uniform jacket and diving half an inch deep into his skin. Blood trickled down to his elbow as he continued to hold me against the wall. “It’s almost as if this whole set up of yours was a horrible idea.”

His eyes narrowed, then he ripped his arm free of my nails and spit on the wounds. He healed quickly regardless, but he healed instantly that way.

“I’m going to teach her how to reject marks and be done with it. You win. I don’t want to torture you anymore.” He made an exploding gesture with his hand, signifying some sort of fireworks or celebration or something. It was typical, immature Marcus.

“You think if you teach her to reject her marks, she’ll actually do it?” I lifted a brow in his general direction. “No, better yet, you think she’ll reject mine and not yours.” I was laughing now. “No offense… actually, scratch that. All offense intended: in what world do you think she’d pick a vampire over an incubus as a permanent mate? A Virgo picking a Leo Vampire, over a Capricorn Incubus, no less.” I didn’t even want her, but this was too easy. “It’s too late for any of that anyway. Regardless of what you manage to talk her into, even if by some miracle you make her reject my mark, I’ve already implanted on her by taking her virginity. I thought I’d explained that.”

His mouth fell open, then he closed it before he could say anything dumber than he already had. He covered the lower half of his face with his hand, and he broke eye contact. “I still don’t understand what that means.”

“Do you know why my father is still with our mother, despite the fact that she had another man’s child and crushed his spirit?” Here we go again.

“Our parents are happy as shit. Why wouldn’t he still be with her?” Marcus shook his head at first, but when I narrowed my eyes, he stopped pretending. “Sure they fought a lot when I was little, but never enough to break them.”

“It didn’t break them because my father didn’t have a choice. Like you were so happy to recall, my full blooded Incubus father took our mother’s virginity. By custom and by magic, he had no choice but to marry her and stay with her. While my human body isn’t bound by those same rules, my monster certainly is.” For once, my curse felt like a weapon rather than a burden. “That was what I meant when I told you, because of what you did, I will always hunt her down on a full moon night. The difference between Lila with my mark and Lila without it is simply how violent and obsessive I am over it. So long as that scar gives me a claim over her, my incubus blood and my Capricorn’s obsession are both sated.” I sucked in a breath before I continued. “But if that mark isn’t there, my beast will do anything to repossess her. I need her full consent to complete then officially reject the bond if there’s any hope of freeing her from my beast, and even then I can’t say with absolute certainty I won’t have any urges towards her. But if that does work, if I could get that level of commitment at this point, I wouldn’t be able to remain her teacher as her rejected mate. For the sake of her education and not ruining her life, a one sided mark is the best I can do. She’s better off this way, even if you’re not.”

“You really thought this through.” He sounded surprised, but he shouldn’t have been.

“And yet you clearly didn’t.” I smirked just to drive the nail in. “So what you actually need to do is get her to reject your mark, so you never have to deal with this again, since you have no other magic claim on her. Then I’ll ride out the school term with her under my power. I can’t undo what’s been done, but after a year or two of this hell, I’m sure she’ll agree to a full rejection ceremony, and we can all go on to live normal, separate lives. If you want to try again for a completed mate bond with her after that, then you have my blessing.”

“Fuck.” Marcus grumbled under his breath. His expression was complicated, but his lips offered little more than a single expletive.

“Why is that a problem anyway? You said it yourself, you don’t actually want her, and sharing her isn’t a problem for you. She’s just a game, right?” I rubbed in every word smugly. He had no idea how much ammo he’d given me with his reaction. “Your interest is so casual that it shouldn’t take much mind to drop your claim. So go on. Free yourself. Put yourself out of your misery, while I deal with the consequences of everything you set in motion.”

“You really are a bastard, you know that?” He sighed, even though he had no right to be angry. Unless, of course, he was the one in too deep now.

I held up a finger between us. “Technically, you were the bastard. My parents were married when I was born.” I’ll admit it felt nice to put him in his place. I wasn’t ordinarily one to antagonize him—he was unpredictable, after all, and it was dangerous to get him riled up—but, at the same time, these were the kind of just deserts that I couldn’t resist. Where Lila drew out a carnal side of me, Marcus was good at forcing me to drop my social mask. Maybe it should have been comforting to have people who stuck around despite the fact that I offered no pretenses around them, but the only reason either one of them accepted my ugliest faces was because they were, respectively, either naïve or more fucked than I was. “If you can’t help yourself, go back to being her friend, and show me you can play nice. Then maybe I’ll figure out some way to nullify this goddamn Incubus Virgin problem without the need for suffering through a permanent rejection. There are plenty of warlocks among the administrators. I’m sure one of them has something.”

“You’re serious.” His shoulders slumped in an unusual signal of defeat. “Even with Hybrid blood, the hold is that strong? Or do you think that has something to do with whatever she is?”

I was almost taken aback by that question. Since when did my brother ask my opinion instead of making dangerous assumptions? I must have been dreaming.

“It’s hard to say where my curses end and her gifts begin, to be honest. But yes, it’s that strong.”

“Well, that’s frustrating.” No shit. “You honestly don’t know what she is, even after spending that full moon with her?” He frowned. “I assume it’s safe to say you shifted at some point, unless you just got shit faced and took her home and did something wild for once.”

He just couldn’t help himself.

“I know she’s half Beta, and not much else. Though the fact that we could mark her had all but confirmed she wasn’t an Alpha, so I suppose that isn’t entirely shocking or new information.”

“Half Beta and a Virgo Shifter.” He confirmed aloud. “That’s still good to know. At least that lessens the chance of either of us getting her pregnant in the interim.”

I nearly choked on my saliva at that statement. Being an Alpha, I didn’t typically have to worry about accidental pregnancy, but the fact that she could have been an Omega all this time, and we’d both… contributed… My whole body fucking shuddered at the thought. Thank the stars she was a Beta. Though the hybrid halves of all three of us could still mean there was some risk. Our Alpha mother bore two children, after all, thanks to mixing with species that weren’t bound by Shifter rules of fertility. I’d say that was something to be mindful of in the future, but the chances of a moon fueled Incubus stopping to put on a condom was unrealistic, to say the least. Not to mention that such a contraption wouldn’t fit anyway.

“No physical tells?” Marcus asked, reminding me that we were having a discussion about her species and not breeding her. Seriously what in the devil’s black abyss is wrong with my head?

“You should know as well as I do. You saw her shifted form last month. As a Beta, she’s always the same.” I answered the question smoothly by forcing myself to focus on the less disturbing topic at hand.

“Right.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and his demeanor calmed. It was hard to ever know what was going through his head, but I would have had to be completely oblivious to not notice he was getting much too close to her. He’d tell me he didn’t care and that he was just using her, but his actions and expressions were of a man who was smitten.