Page 24 of Zodiac Demons

I stayed against the bookcase, breathing through my nose while he kept his hand over my mouth. In one last ditch effort, I shifted my pupils, hoping to paralyze him long enough to get out of his grip.

But… nothing happened.

Why did nothing happen? Since when can anything disable a Basilisk’s gaze?

I accidentally swallowed in surprise, and a devious smirk painted that too pretty face. He let go of me slowly and took a step back, leaving me to hold myself up with only the aid of the shelves at my back. I stared for several stunned seconds before a full panic took me.

I tried to spit but it was already too late. I knew I’d taken enough that I was now completely vulnerable. He couldn’t mark someone if he’d never come inside them, and now I qualified.

We both qualified. We were a fully mate-able pair the second he decided he wanted me to be his.

“I told you you were mine.” Marcus offered an arrogant smirk.

“Why didn’t it work?” I was shaking in front of him like I’d just seen the devil himself. Maybe I had.

“Why didn’t what work?” He asked with a raised brow, completely nonplussed by my reaction.

“My Basilisk gaze,” I knew better being an Omega and from a coveted heritage. I couldn’t just… Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

“Are vampires immune to magic gazes or something?” I was still reeling as I shoved my fingers into the back of my throat, as if in any world I could trigger a gag reflex. Maybe I’d find some magical part of my Gemini side that wasn’t immune, I told myself, like some misguided wish that I could just throw up and fix this.

“I guess so. That explains why neither my compulsion nor my Alpha bark worked on you, either. I guess since our gazes are both laced with magic, they cancel each other out.” He eyed me as I sank nearly my whole hand into my mouth, hoping to find some limit. His cheeks flushed, and he cleared his throat. “I’ll keep that in mind for later.”

My cheeks blazed just as red at the implication, and I thanked my dark complexion for at least trying to hide it for me.

“There won’t be a later,” I shot back, now feeling incredibly sober, free of whatever psychosis I’d given myself to.

“Sure,” he said with a casual shrug, very clearly not buying that at all. He should have been, because I meant it. “There probably shouldn’t be an anything, considering you’re an Arya, and I’m an Emery.” He’d known that coming in, so it was ridiculous to acknowledge our family’s collective disdain for each other now. “Though to be honest, I wouldn’t mind—”

“Please don’t finish that sentence.” This was so stupid. “You’re not forcing me into a mate pact or some fucked up dating arrangement.”

He looked at me like I was insane, and I wasn’t certain he was wrong. “I’m not going to force you into anything. I just couldn’t resist the way you react to being terrified, and the threat won’t have the same impact if it’s not real.”

“Fuck, I…” I shook my head, at a loss as to what I was supposed to say to that. Not the least of which because the pull to be around him was starting to creep in even stronger now that this magic was starting to find its way into my bloodstream. “I have to go. I can’t… we can’t. We shouldn’t have… fuck.” I pushed past him and got out of the library, not stopping when he asked me to wait and to talk to him. I didn’t know where exactly I was going to go from here. Maybe I would let my Gemini out to play just to get out my mortification through violence.

What the fuck was I thinking? Maybe this was the trap Omari had set all along.

No. He wasn’t associated with my brother. Omari was still trying to set me up with his asshole friends. Marcus had nothing to do with any of my drama.

This was fine. It was fine. Everything was fine.

He said himself that he wasn’t going to go through with marking me, anyway. Just because he now had the option, that didn’t mean he would exercise it. This could be a one and done. I’d been in this position before. There had been more than one Alpha who had decided to go too far, and not one had ever survived to get away with it. He was just the only one who I couldn’t paralyze and murder with my Basilisk gaze.

They also… none of them had felt quite like him.

Stop. I’m not entertaining this.

I will not.

Absolutely fucking not. He’s an Emery, of all the families he could belong to, it was that one.

I needed to know what the other half of his bloodline was, and I needed it to have absolutely nothing to do with mine, or I didn’t know what I was going to do.

I took a moment to calm myself down, before I locked myself in the cafeteria, needing to wait out the moon since I wasn’t able to go home. Nothing good ever came of nights like these. Not now, and not ever.

Present Day