He laughed, but it was a strained sound. “That’ll do.”
And then, suddenly, he was kissing me. It wasn’t a soft kiss. It wasn’t hesitant. It was a hard crush of lips and it sucked the breath right out of my chest. His hand tightened in my hair again, and a fissure of his Pain spread out over my scalp, trickling down the back of my neck. Immediately, a shot of pleasure followed. Stronger. Headier.
It tore my mouth away from Coen’s powerful kiss, and I felt myself falling into a molten gold gaze.
“Are you going to ask, this time?” Aros’s voice was only a velvet murmur.
“I have no freaking idea what you’re—”
He didn’t even wait for the rest of my answer. His lips took mine in a rush, and then suddenly I was being backed against the bed. I had no idea how it happened, but my tattered dress was ripped off, my back was against the mattress, and two very different hands were on my breasts. My back was arching with a combination of drugging sensuality and biting pain, and whoever was currently in control of my mouth was forcing me to moan into their kiss.
I really had no idea how it happened, and I didn’t even realise that there was something wrong until the heat began to make me dizzy. It was too strong. Too much. Less like the burn of magic and more like an actual …
“What the hell,” one of the guys muttered, pulling back from me. “She set the room on fire.”
Suddenly I was being bundled into blankets from Aros’s bed: they wrapped them so tightly around me that I felt absurd. And far too warm. Aros was still with me, his hand fisted in the blanket wrapped around me, keeping me there. Keeping me prisoner while Coen dashed out of the room.
“Where’s he going?” I asked, my voice sounding alien to my own ears.
“He’s fetching someone who can put out this fire.” Aros’s voice was careful. Neutral. To-the-point. Completely unlike him.
He turned to face me fully, blocking out my view of the doorway just as it swung open. I heard footsteps pounding in, and the voices of the others. They were trying to approach me but Aros kept glancing over his shoulder and making a strange noise in his throat. Half a grunt, half a growl. It wasn’t a noise I had heard from him before, and apparently it was enough to keep the others at bay. That surprised me. When the door opened again, it was to admit a harried voice that I didn’t recognise.
“Just fix it,” Coen snapped. “We can talk about your issues with the dwellers later, right now—in case you haven’t noticed—the walls are burning down.”
There was another murmured reply, and then gradually, the heat began to lesson, and the orange glow of fire finally spluttered out. I didn’t even get a chance to see who Coen had dragged in to deal with the fire before the guys were ushering him out again.
“What the hell happened?” Yael demanded, attempting to get close to me again.
This time, Aros allowed it, though he didn’t release his grip on the blankets wrapped around me and he turned to the side stiffly, watching Yael with narrowed eyes.
“She’s a Beta,” Aros growled.
For just a split moment, I was more shocked at his tone than I was at his actual words … but then the reality began to sink in.
“A BETA GOD?” I shrieked, scrambling away from him. The blankets started to unravel, since he hadn’t loosened his grip on the fabric, and five sets of eyes were locked on my bare leg, which was now on display all the way up to the hip.
“Why the hell is she naked?” Rome demanded. “You were supposed to rile her up, not …”
“We riled her up,” Coen interjected.
For a moment, nobody spoke, but then Coen’s smile cracked, taking over his whole face, and Aros started to laugh. And then Siret was trying to punch Aros, and Rome was tackling Coen to the ground. Yael was staring at me. I stared back at him, and then at the others as they crashed into walls and tables and grunted at each other. I was completely dumbfounded. They had just dropped the whole beta bomb on me, and then immediately jumped into a wrestling match because I was naked.
They were all insane.
“We heard that!” Siret yelled, ducking to the side to avoid Aros’s fist.
“STOP FIGHTING!” I yelled back, jumping to my feet on the bed. My voice was a little bit shrill, but that was probably because only half a click ago Aros had casually mentioned that I might be a god.
Whatever the cause of the shrillness, it apparently worked, because the guys all stopped wrestling each other and returned to the bed. Rome reached up, hooked his arm around my waist, and tugged me down to the floor with the blankets still wrapped around me.
“Get down,” he muttered, setting me on my feet. “Before you fall off and break your face.”
“Wow.” I wrinkled my nose at him. “So charming.”
“You shouted,” Siret said. “We’re listening.”
“No.” I shook my head so violently I was surprised it didn’t come unhinged. “I’m listening! You—” I jammed a finger in Aros’s direction— “start talking!”
He captured my finger and used it to pull me forward, but Rome’s arm tightened, so I ended up bent at the waist, pulled between the two of them. Aros rolled his eyes and stepped forward so that I could straighten again.
“You’re not a god, Willa, so stop freaking out.”
“You said I was a Beta,” I accused.
“You are,” Coen replied, causing my head to swing in his direction. “But you won’t become a god until you die.”
“Until I die?” I squeaked, fixating on the dying part rather than the god part—because I’d been preparing to die my whole life but I hadn’t done any preparing to become a god. “What are you trying to say? I need to go and die now?”
“Actually …” Coen paused, looking as though he was trying not to smile again. Siret wasn’t so subtle. He was outright laughing. “Actually,” Coen tried again, “we’d rather you didn’t do any of that. The dying, or the becoming a god … because we’re pretty sure you’re Rau’s Beta, which would make you a god of Chaos, if you died.”
“Come again?” I managed, my expression completely deadpan. “You think Rau’s curse was some kind of …”
“We haven’t figured out how yet, but yes … it seems as though his curse was meant to create a Beta—out of one of us, though, not you. Because his sol Betas down here in Minatsol …”
“They never survive.” I nodded. “I remember. So he was going to turn a god instead. But I got in the way. And I should have died, but somehow … we formed a soul-link, and it kept me alive.”
“Another ‘why’ that we haven’t figured out yet,” Yael admitted.
“But we will.” Rome spoke from beside me, his arm tightening around me momentarily. “We will figure out exactly how all of this happened. In the meantime, keeping you alive just became a hell of a lot harder.”
I was a Chaos Beta.
I couldn’t believe it.